Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

tickling his feet as they pushed thermonuclear implosion products out past magfield throats.
    “ THREAT! THREAT! THREAT !” keened Mata Hari in a loud voice.
    Eliana looked over with alarm. “Where?”
    Images filled his mind as the AI flooded him with inputs, pushing him back into ocean-time and speeding up his slow human reflexes.
    Laser beams reached out and touched Mata Hari ’s flexmetal hull, coming from one of the ships lying behind them that was docked at Hagonar.
    Matt’s left shoulder burned to the touch of coherent flame. The pain of a thousand ant bites scored him.
    He shrugged.
    Mata Hari rotated and emitted gaseous mercury, diffusing the laser beams even as they refocused. Adaptive optics mirrors seeded into every inch of Mata Hari ’s flexible hull warped the ship’s skin into a convex bulge, breaking up and reflecting back all coherent energy beams that got through the gas cloud.
    Fingers tapped.
    Within a heartbeat, free electron laser beams reached back to the aggressor, impacting its power plant. Primal energies erupted, staggering Trade Station Hagonar in its languid orbit about the star Hyperion. Within that heartbeat, Mata Hari vibrated once, twice, three times. Defense torpedoes streaked toward the station. The torps carried white noise generators, holo decoys, Seek/Identify sensors, and Nanoshells that would envelop the expanding cloud of debris, sample it, taste it, and report back to Mata Hari —by faster than lightspeed tachyonic senses—the identity of their now-dead opponent.
    It all left Matt wondering at the attack. Who would be stupid enough to attack a Dreadnought-class battleship? And an alien one at that? As he sighed, his mind said “Thanks” to Mata Hari and he chose to leave ocean-time .
    Sitting in the Pit with his chin just above the deckplates, Matt turned and looked back at Eliana, who now stared at the purple-glowing debris cloud on the sidewall screen. She seemed a young woman trying to do her best on a deadly stage larger than her planet or her fears. Someone smart and brave but uncertain of how to move in the deadly game of Anarchate survival.
    “Who hates you, Eliana?”
    She turned away from the screen and faced him, her look immensely sad. “What? What did you say?”
    “Who hates you enough to hire an armed freighter as a backup to a Level Three Enforcer?”
    “Hates me?” Eliana said nervously. “Uh, Halicene Conglomerate?”
    “Possibly.” There was something unusual about this woman of quick mood changes, something she hid. “But unlikely. The Enforcer was likely a throwaway assassin. Nice if it worked, no big deal if it didn’t. That attacking ship—” in his mind a datastream from Mata Hari ’s torps caressed Matt’s forebrain, excited several neuron clusters, and died out “—the ship that attacked us was a Second Wave human charter, on Trade lease to the aliens of the Pegasus Cluster. According to the remnants of its central Core memory. Why are humans after you?”
    Muscles jumped in her jaw. “I don’t know.”
    Chitin-mange! “Try again.”
    She blinked, then turned distant. “Are you accusing me of lying?”
    “Yes.”
    A pink flush spread across her albino white face. As the pulse beat in her slim neck, Matt felt the looming bulk of Mata Hari ’ s own entity-mind overshadowing his awareness. Much like a cloud might shadow a flying hawk. Able to enfold it fully, but standing apart from something quite different from itself. Mata Hari, he could tell, was also curious. Her Mata Hari persona image lifted a black eyebrow, adding her skepticism to his.
    “No!” Eliana said tersely. “I don’t lie!” Her green eyes flashed with defiance, but also with fear, as if he might discover what she was hiding.
    Matt changed his data-query approach. “All right, you don’t lie. But perhaps you’re not recalling something you already know, something hidden deep inside? A memory?”
    Eliana winced and looked away. “I have many memories I