The Process Server

  ***

  The thing about Short Space is that even though each dimension is a separate entity, there are, theoretically anyway, an infinite number of them. So the unpredictability of the situation makes plotting a safe jump that much more important.

  Any kind of collision between our form of matter and the other dimension’s form of matter could, conceivably, cause an implosive rift in space that would make a black hole seem like a vacuum cleaner.

  Just jumping in blind is a recipe for disaster, then. During the development of the Quantum Drive, Hui-Matsumori reputedly lost nearly two-thirds of its crews to bad jumps.

  And as the blinding white light gave way to new space, the view ahead of the cabin filled with brown stone, a sheer cliff face filling up our view.

  Jayde yanked back on the yoke as we closed on the cliff face. We weren’t going to make it, coming so close our shadow covered the wall, the Esmeralda’s nose pulling up, almost touching… and then we were running parallel to it, pulling up into a planet’s atmosphere.

  “We got anything left for a burn?” I asked.

  “Yep, brace yourself.” She punched it, and we shot up and out of the planet’s atmosphere, the ship’s outer skin heating up, but the interior systems keeping us cool even as the planet’s gravitational pull yanked us backwards into our seats.

  Jayde looked at the monitors above us. “Any guesses on how close we just came to testing the theory on competing forms of matter, boss?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t want to know kid. Now let’s…”

  And that was when Vega’s shipped jumped into the vast blackness of space behind us.

  Having twin Jofari cores meant he could skip Short Space if he wanted, use any Quantum string dimension. But it also meant he could follow us with precision.

  “He’s bringing his weapons around.”

  Vega appeared on the Sat Com monitor. “Now, Process Server Smith, Ms. Chen, you’re going to return what’s mine. I don’t really want to chance salvaging it off the remnants of your piece of junk vessel, but if that’s the way it’s gotta be…”

  I said, “Who are you kidding, Vega? You aren’t gonna take the chance of blowing up that many credits.”

  “What, you forgot about those two very expensive warheads you just managed to avoid?”

  Jayde piped in. “He has a point, boss. We’re gonna have to…hang on.” She stopped talking and peered at the long-range sensors for a moment. She whispered, “Keep him talking.”

  What was she up to? I said, “What I don’t get, Vega, is how you managed to lose the holo drive in the first place.”

  “Don’t be cute,” he said. “What I wanna know is why you risked contacting me in the first place. Were you gonna shake me down, or what?”

  I looked at Jayde but she motioned silently for me to keep talking. “Vance, Vance, Vance,” I said. “Do you really think a Smith and an RDH would try to cross you like that? No way! That’s why we came out to talk to you.”

  “Yeah?” He sounded confused and doubtful. “Explain.”

  Jayde whispered “Look at the scope.”

  Another vessel was coming up behind the Mixed Blessing, an even bigger ship, its shape difficult to define, from generations of stripping down its vanquished opponents and integrating them.

  It was the Technocracy Dreadnought, the same one that had mysteriously spared us not a week earlier.

  In the monitor, Vega had tilted his head sideways, as if listening to someone.

  “Shit,” he said.

  Jayde had already turned us around and pushed the throttle to full.

  Behind us, Vance Vega’s 16 cannons were chewing off small pieces of the encroaching behemoth, but didn’t appear to be slowing it down, a semi-rectangular mass, dark and foreboding, with no use or need for light amidst its AI crew, barely visible against the ebony backdrop of Short Space, the 60 mm shells sparking silently off its hull in the vacuum.

  The front of the vessel began to open up along an invisible seam, like a pair of monstrous jaws, encircling Vega’s ship.

  The Mixed Blessing fired its massive engines and began to pull away, but a blue-white glow emanated from the Technocracy vessel, holding Vega’s ship in place.

  “Tractor beam’s got him,” said Jayde.

  We were at 40,000 kilometers when the two sides of the ship came back together, the Mixed Blessing disappearing silently into its giant, black maw.

  This time, the Technocracy ship didn’t even bother chasing us.

  “Well,” said Jayde. “It answers the question of why they let us go the last time: they really think this ship is a heap of crap.”