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

through each of the ground floor windows. The explosions, rapidly following each other, ripped through the room. Duncan mused that one or two grenades would probably have been enough. He wasn’t sure that any of the Arn were alive in the room after the first explosion, and the third had definitely been overkill.
    “Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?” laughed Tex. Duncan smiled.
    They watched the rest of the fight; laughing, cheering and congratulating each other. Duncan received a response from Phani, sent a thank you, then opened the package. Looking through it in his inventory, he smiled. This was perfect.
    “Shannon,” he interrupted the small talk, “I’ve got a present for you!”
    He placed a basket on the floor in front of her, a standard wicker picnic basket covered with a red and white checkered blanket. The blanket moved.
    Shannon looked at Duncan, cocked her head, then bent to lift the blanket off of the basket.
    Duncan’s apartment filled with Shannon’s sudden, shrill squeals of joy.
    “I figured,” said Duncan, “that your heroism and genius deserved a special prize. So, there you are, Omegaverse’s very first basket of kittens!”
     
     

Chapter 18
     
    Eric West smiled, looking at the smoking wreck of the pirate, rolling slowly, leaking gasses and randomly illuminated by the flashing light of fires sparked by exposed hot wiring, quickly extinguished as the escaping pockets of oxygen were consumed.
    He’d jumped in from one light-minute away less than thirty seconds before; about ninety-seconds after the freighter-cum-pirate had launched its torpedo toward the oncoming cargo ship. For all the good it had done; the torpedo had been a miss. The cargo ship continued on its course, uninterrupted, while the pirate had begun to accelerate to jump speed. Too slowly, though. The more powerful engines of the HMS Westy, a Delta class destroyer - one of the quickest ships in the universe - had reached jump speed first, and Eric had jumped in nearly on top of the pirate.
    His first shots, a spread he’d programmed in and named “Beta Strike” had fired five missiles, spread to target vital systems throughout the ship. Two had hit the engines, taking them out, while the remaining three had ripped through the remainder of the ship - the last exploding outside of, and sending shrapnel through, the bridge. It was now dead in the water, coasting and rolling through space. Helpless. Eric brought the Westy in alongside the derelict, matching speed and course.
    “Number One,” he began, “send the drone to examine the cargo hold of that bastard, if you please.” He sat back in his chair, began drumming his fingers on the arm rest.
    “Aye aye, sir,” said the AI XO. “We’re being hailed, sir.”
    “By the pirate?” Eric answered. “Ignore it.”
    He thought.
    “Wait. Answer it.”
    The screen opened into the bridge of the pirate. Eric read through the ship and captain information.
    “Never mind,” he said, “chop the communication.”
    It wasn’t Taipan, he’d seen. That was the only pirate he wanted to talk to. The only player he wanted to see, humiliated, in front of him. Otherwise, it was just another player. He wasn’t interested in speaking to them; just blowing them out of space. Even Kato and the Inner Lizard fleet held no particular interest for him. He’d killed them; they’d killed him. A fair exchange. Honorable, exciting, combat.
    Taipan, however, was a worm. The worst kind of play-acting hypocrite. Pretending to be an upright, law abiding citizen-miner of the universe, while underhandedly stealing from players to enrich himself. No doubt, he thought, that fancy mining ship of his had been paid for through ill-gotten gains.
    It didn’t matter, to Eric, that the shipments pirates took were insured - that was part of the transhipment costs - and that the players never really lost anything; their objects were replaced by the system. They never even knew their particular