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

to that. It should never come to my attention, much less become my problem,” he frowned. “Work on that.”
    “Aye aye, sir,” said Eric, turning back to his computer, seething.
     
    Eric left work, a little early, leaving by the side door away from his manager’s office. He walked out into the early September evening, frustrated. He wasn’t concerned with his job; he’d closed off that annoyance as he left his cubicle. He was frustrated by his inability to outfit the HMS Westy as much as he wanted. Needed, he corrected himself.
    He boarded the bus home, wondering how he’d raise the funds to buy the cladding that would cloak his ship from pirates. He’d figure that out later, he thought, then began doing the mental calculations for the advantage a cloak would allow him.
    If he hunted outside of a gravity well, he only had to get up to the few percent of C required to make a jump. He needed his hunting ground to be far enough away from the likely attack point that the pirate wouldn’t detect his sudden acceleration until it was too late. If he was ten light seconds away, but it took him thirty light seconds to accelerate to jump speed, then his adversary would get twenty seconds notice before the attack.
    The Westy had to be, he thought, close enough to be able to “see” the attack quickly, but not so close as to spoil his attack before it began. He’d try one-eighth of an astronomical unit, or AU. That was about a light minute. Sixty seconds.
    So sixty seconds after an attack, he’d see it, then go to flank speed. If it took him thirty seconds to get to speed, he’d still be able to jump in on top of the pirate a minute and a half after it had attacked the cargo ship. That was much better than thirteen or so minutes he was used to working with.
    In addition to being a larger shock to the pirate, to be hunted so quickly, it would give the Westy a much smaller area of space to sort through; if he was close enough to detect the actual launch of the torpedo, not just the explosion, he’d have a pin-point location to jump to.
    Eric smiled into space, confusing the little girl bus passenger who happened to have glanced at him at just that moment. Then Eric stood as he reached his stop and, rejuvenated, dashed off the bus and to his building.
     
    Eric spoke into the phone, this time in his flat.
    “Yes, I know I’m a little late on the August payment, but I’ll send it off today.”
    He paused, listening.
    “No,” he said, “it will just be the minimum amount, I’m afraid. I’ve had a bit of a family crisis, you see,” he smiled, trying to project that friendliness into the phone line and through to the credit card support agent on the other end.
    “Thank you, yes, everything will turn out alright for mother, I’m sure,” he continued, “but it would be awfully helpful if I could get a little extension on my credit line. To help her out.”
    He listened.
    “Really?” he brightened. “Thank you. That will help immensely.”
    He closed the line, ending the third such call he’d made to his creditors in the last hour. His lines of credit now extended, he had enough, barely, to add the cladding to the HMS Westy and begin hunting earnestly now. He smiled and, finishing the last of his microwaved dinner, walked into his computer room and sat heavily in his chair.
    “Number One,” he said, “bring up the purchase listings for cloaking devices and cladding, if it pleases you.”
     
    Eric looked to his newly updated sensor systems. The cladding he’d just purchased wouldn’t stand up to much of a direct scan; but it would help. He’d need a full cloaking system in order to really be invisible at a distance to an active search, but the cladding would allow him to sit quietly and not have to worry about being detected by a visual scan.
    As long as he got to the system well before the pirate, he’d just sit still, quietly, as he usually did. He could now do it much much closer to the action than