Vigilante Series 2: Nebula Vigilante Read Online Free PDF Page A

beat. Oh, how it beat! It beat in sync with the Alcubierre Drive that could move him and Mata Hari from one star to another in days.
    Instinct allied to emotion allied to analytical thought. Matt was a true cyborg . . . and it was time to go to work.
    Femtoseconds sped along and picoseconds felt like the ticks of an ancient mechanical clock. A nanosecond would feel like an hour, while a millisecond would feel . . . longer. He sighed, knowing there would be reentry shock when they materialized behind the battleglobe. He hoped he would not faint, as had occurred during the battle with the Nova battleglobe of Commander Chai, in Sigma Puppis B system.
    This was a gamble. But this time he knew about the super-weapons in the Restricted Rooms. And he knew how long it would take the Nova battleglobe to start up its own Bethe Inducer field in an effort to turn starship Mata Hari into a few neutron star particles. He would act decisively before that occurred. Eliana was his new love, a unique person he would never sacrifice for any reason. Nor would he betray his AI partner Mata Hari, who had rescued him from a lifepod and had remade him into a cyborg-human melding of unique abilities.
    In the Pit, Matt felt the inertial fields come on, pressing him into his chair. He relaxed, but did not shut off external ship sensors. His bare skin flew through the coldness of space. Like a double-image, he was both inside the ship, and outside. It would be rough experiencing the timelessness of Alcubierre Drive Translation while still in cyborg-link with his ship. Matt had no choice. He must be completely alert and aware when they materialized behind the Anarchate Nova-class battleglobe. He had a surprise he wanted to try out.
    Fifteen milliseconds , pulsed his internal timelog.
    “Translating!” called Mata Hari.
    All about him, reality went grey, amorphous, indistinct—and shocking. Space-time changed.
    All his senses suddenly cut off. Nothing communicated to him. Sensory deprivation screamed across his extended, raw nerve endings. And pure blackness greeted the flexmetal hull’s vid sensors. His lungs wanted to gasp. His mind wanted to blank out. But anger at the uncaring nature of the Anarchate, of a galactic system that enforced anarchy among the stars because it was profitable, gave him the strength to remain aware. To be ready. To be—
    Translation ended.
    Three hundred milliseconds, said his onboard nanoBit computer.
    Matt blinked, slowly, still in ocean-time , still feeling his Dreadnought starship like a suit of clothes one wears to the first day of school. Well-fitting, but a bit . . . tight-feeling. He PET-imaged his “surprise” and hoped the battleglobe commander had not set his StratTac CPU on automatic Combat Mode. Mentally inhaling, Matt saw his new location in all its glory. And danger.
    Black space surrounded them, speckled by a few bright stars and a nebula or two. Ahead of them, just three hundred kilometers away, loomed the twelve kilometer wide hull of the Anarchate battleglobe. In less than fifty milliseconds it would detect the gravity wave pulse of starship Mata Hari behind it. Its organic commander would take a few seconds to order the Defense modalities to fire in their direction—unless the StratTac CPU was on automode.
    Three hundred twenty millise conds.
    “Matthew,” whispered Mata Hari in his mind. “Our surprise is initiating.”
    “Thank you, partner , for a perfect Translation placement,” he PET replied.
    Matt watched as, per his PET thought-image, both the right and left antimatter pontoons fired coherent beams of black neutron antimatter at the battleglobe. Other lightspeed beams followed as the proton beamers, plasma cannons, hydrogen-fluorine metal punch lasers, excimer lasers, free electron lasers, and neutral particle beam lasers fired from dozens of hull mounts that left his starship feeling like a prickly cactus. The lightspeed weapons were followed by four 20 megaton thermonuclear torps that