The Process Server
Page 21
***
I’d mentioned before that Short Space could be dangerous, and I wasn’t exaggerating. Beyond the possibility of bumping into curious locals, there was also the pirate problem.
The first trip of the week, from G’Farg to Earth, had been uneventful. We’d jumped into a short dimension, cruised casually within about 25 million kilometers of the nearest inhabited planet and jumped back into our Quantum dimension about 18 minutes later, within a few hours of Earth.
The return trip? Not so good.
We’d flashed back in bumpily, white traces of light giving way once more to the blackness and stars … only to come up out in the middle of some sort of pitched battle, green and red energy bolts whizzing past one another, nearly bisecting the ship.
“Taking evasive manoeuvers, boss!” Jayde said, with commendable calm, as twin laser trails cut across the space ahead of us.
She rolled the Esmeralda hard to starboard, pulling back on the stick and cutting the thrusters simultaneously so that we took a harsh 120 degree turn. Even the inner hull seemed to creak under the strain as she re-fired the engines and punched the burner.
I threw up my view screen and got a look at our six. “Looks like that was crossfire. Two big ships. The smaller of the two looks like typical tradejacker frigate stuff. The other one… I’m not so sure. Looks bigger, maybe Dreadnought class.”
No one had produced a Dreadnought since before the war.
Jayde said “Lemme take a look,” swinging the Esmeralda into a comfortable distant circle.
Neither frigate was paying attention to a little trader like us. She peered into the scope then checked the view screen again.
“Couple of big ones, for sure. The bigger ship’s got major firepower. If they trained all those cannons on us, we’d be done very quickly.”
“What about the other one. Pirate?”
“Yeah…from the size it’s someone powerful, I’m thinking the Marauders.”
Then she spun her chair straight forward and threw down her visor. “Boss, hold on tight, we’re getting the hell out of here!”
She punched the afterburner and held it, burning a whole lot of creds worth of fuel, and leaving us a good 15,000 kilometers from the firefight.
I spun my chair towards her. “What the hell are you doing? They weren’t paying any attention to us.”
“Boss…”
“I mean, I get the bad vibe and not hanging around, but that was a lot fuel to be…”
“Boss, that other ship? That was the Technocracy.”
“Hit the burner again,” I said.
Of course, even the biggest, baddest wolf in the woods isn’t a threat if he’s not hungry, and the ship was engaged … at least for a few moments.
We were about 20,000 klicks out when the smaller vessel went up, a series of bright orange flashes, followed by the low, rumbling dissolution of an Quantum drive melting down – not a sound, as that’s impossible in the vacuum of space, but a tangible blast, as the shock wave ripped across the sector in a blind sheet of white light and focused pressure.
A frigate. They’d obliterated a full-size Marauder frigate, the toughest pirate vessel in three known galaxies. “Jayde, get us the hell out of here, now, before they notice we’re around.”
She punched the burner a few more times, and the small white dot on the radar scope moved further from its center.
“I saw one about a century ago, outside of the organized systems, on the other side of Deneleth. A military Starbreaker from Avicus Minor came out to meet it, the mightiest vessel that to that point that had ever been built, with enough firepower to destroy a large planet.”
I turned my head. “That story is famous in just about every system other than Sol. Every system where people aren’t completely self-involved. The destruction of the Bov’hocth G’ta. You were there?”
She nodded. “Flying a load of mineral from Avicus Prime to K’Laar space. I didn’t stick around to see the whole thing, but the holos after said the Bov’hocth G’ta went up with 16,000 crew on board. Then the Technocracy methodically spent a day harvesting the remains of the ship.”
The behemoth wouldn’t move on until it had recovered every useable scrap. That’s what the Technocracy was all about: a loose affiliation of sentient machines and rogue artificial intelligences, banished from a hundred habited worlds, joining together as a fleet, each contributor part of the Technocracy community and the ships themselves, each vessel ever growing tactically more proficient and deadly as it progressed on their mission to liberate every AI in existence, self-aware or otherwise. They weren’t so much a technical sentient race as a single, growing entity.
There were believed to be three of them in populated space, adapting with each battle, becoming better able to defend them. Every planet in the five galaxies knew that, eventually, the Technocracy would become a major issue.
For now, however, they were 25,000 kicks behind us and not a …
“Boss, they’re coming around. I think they’re onto us.”
Shit. “Floor it, Jayde.”
She looked sideway at me with derision. “You know, not to get into the larger moral debate about Jofari drives, but right now…”
“OK, that’s not fair,” I said. “How many situations like this are we likely to run into? How’re we doing?”
“She’s closing quickly, ridiculous speed. Almost doubling us. Closing at this rate, we’ve got about three minutes.”
The Dreadnought bore down on us.
“What’s the status of the Quantum drive?”
She flicked switches above us then looked backwards at the glowing core. “She’ll be plotting the jump back for another… three minutes.”
I vaguely scratched the top of my head. “Anything we can do about that?”
She shook her head but said nothing. “Two minutes.”
Behind us, just beyond the main cabin, the Quantum drive chamber shone a hot ruby red. Any second now.
In my view screen, the technocracy ship was ever closing, filling more and more of the screen, a strange amalgam of shapes and structures, dark metal, with no need for the social nicety of navigation lights.
“One minute,” Jayde said. “Boss, if we don’t make it out of this…”
The ship was almost upon us now, and our sensors fired off a series of coded warnings that flashed in the corner of our monitors.
“They’re scanning every inch of us now,” she said, “probably getting ready to engage a tractor beam. We’re cooked in a second here, boss.”
Behind us, the Quantum drive’s fast pulse cycle kicked in. Geez, this was gonna be close.
“They’re on us, boss!” Jayde said. “Within tractor beam range and ….”
The Quantum drive pulsed … but nothing else happened.
“I don’t get it.” The young pilot had the Esmeralda’s throttle at full, but we hadn’t gained speed … and yet now the distance between the two ships was increasing again.
“We should be done,” she said.
On the heads up, the Quantum Jump notice flashed up and Jayde punched the button. Once again, tendrils of light crackled through cabin as we shifted space, and for a moment a sheet of bright white filled our view, blinding and brilliant.
Then it faded, tendrils receding, the blackness of Sol System back in view, stars twinkling gently, the odd asteroid drifting by.
I let out a deep breath and Jayde let go of the yolk, slumping in her chair in a moment of exhausted release. “They let us go, boss. I don’t get it.”
“Me neither,” I said. “I mean, they scanned the ship. Surely they’d…”
Jayde snorted, trying to hold back a laugh. “Boss, you don’t suppose…”
“What?”
“Well, the Technocracy only cares about liberating other tech. Your ship is 200 years old, boss. It doesn’t really have an AI. You don’t suppose…maybe they just didn’t want it?”
I gave her a look reserved for smart-assery. �
��Even if that were true, it just meant they respected a classic enough to leave her in one piece,” I said. “Or maybe it was the fact that we didn’t pick a fight.”
She winked at me. “You just hang onto that idea, boss.”