Shepherd's Crook: Omegaverse: Volume 2 by G.R. Cooper Page A

infiltrated a human colony, threatening to disrupt the human foothold on the world. The humans of Kepler station had answered the call, only to have their attack threatened with annihilation as they were taken in ambush by an Arn battery that almost destroyed the entire human command and control infrastructure. If successful, that attack would have left the human forces on the ground nearly helpless, outnumbered and unable to regenerate their shields or rearm their conduit powered weaponry.
    The picture switched to a view within the cockpit of one of those C and C ships, Shannon in the control seat. She began to coordinate throughout the fleet, her voice calm and in control, adding enough power from ships not under attack to the ones that were, such that the attacked ships were able to maintain at least an equilibrium with the power being thrown at them from the planet below.
    The Arn had switched their tactics at that point, focusing all of their firepower on a single ship at a time, which was enough to take out the shields in a single blow. If Shannon hadn’t adjusted her response as well - turning the entire fleet into a shield regeneration force for the single beleaguered ship, allowing it regenerate in between the attacks that came every thirty seconds - the fleet would have been decimated in only a few minutes. As it was, Shannon had saved the fleet, the attack, and, thus, the colony.
    All of that, Duncan marveled, and she’d still had enough brain bandwidth to be able to shunt off enough power from her and Jordi’s ships to give him the power needed to fire the gatling gun. He wondered if missions like this would be generated on player run colonies - if, someday, players would flock to defend Shepherd’s Cross from alien attack.
    He looked at Shannon, laughing and smiling with everyone else and he had a thought. He sent off a quick email to Phani.
    After the newscast ended, Duncan opened his inventory to go through the loot he’d gathered as sole survivor on the planet. He began handing out, one to each of his friends, the heavy laser guns that the Arn had used in the ambush. The massive, power hungry, heavy hitting weapons weren’t good for much of anything except, of course, the kind of ambush Duncan and his friends had triggered.
    Once he’d given the guns out to everyone else on the mission, including Shannon and Jordi, he still had five left over. He gave two more to the Bigweek guys and kept three for his group. They’d make a nice beginning to his station’s arsenal he thought, amused.
    “Well,” said Clancey, “this explains how they could take us out so quickly. These things are monsters.”
    “Yeah,” said Third, “it also explains how Taipan could take out the whole house by himself. They’re not much good for close quarters combat.”
    “The grenades did most of the work,” laughed Duncan.
    “Let’s see,” said Matt. He changed away from the news channel, bringing up a replay of the battle. They watched the view from inside the Arn attack house from just before the ambush was triggered.
    Duncan saw himself and his friends, through a window on the lower floor, dashing across the open ground as the eight Arn on the ground level hefted their large weapons then simultaneously fired at the charging humans. The powerful laser fire from both floors ripped through the armor and bodies of his six friends as each was targeted by at least two of the Arn. He didn’t see any bolts that weren’t aimed true. It was devastating.
    Then they watched as Gray Eagle’s fire ripped through the building. All of the Arn dropped for a moment, presumably to allow their weapons to recharge, before standing in twos and threes to begin returning fire on the gatling gun. As the heavy bolts swept through the building, the Arn in the targeted location would drop to the floor, only to rise again to fire after Gray Eagle moved his fire to another part of the building.
    Then they saw the three grenades, in turn, come