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

This cross between a tiger and a raptor fixed its three eyes on Matt’s image. “You cannot evade us forever. Surrender your ship and we may allow you to survive. As a cloneslave decanter in the Flesh Markets of Alkalurops.”
    Three seconds, five hundred milliseconds , said the nanoBit.
    Matt thought quicker than he could talk a nd chose to PET image a message to BattleMind. Time to bring this to an end before the battleglobe recovered from the shock of his attack.
    “Commander, my name is Matthew Raven’s-Wing Dragoneaux, aboard the Dreadnought-class starship Mata Hari ,” his voice replied via tachlink. “As I advised your Intelligence dome AI, we are at war with the Anarchate. No longer will we obey your Four Rules, nor ignore the enslavement of planetary populations to groups like the Halicene Conglomerate.” The alien’s dirty brown wings began to lift in outrage. “We will leave a beacon beside the remains of your Nova for whatever services your crew deem proper for passing into the great beyond. Goodbye.”
    In his mind’s eye and in the forward holosphere, the Mican’s hand moved toward a touch panel, aiming to send a neutron antimatter beam toward the source point of Matt’s tachlink. But Matt had already given his PET orders well before his image began slow-talking.
    Outside, between starship Mata Hari and the battleglobe Pursuer , there appeared a grey sheet of flat Alcubierre space-time, a shield against all incoming matter and energy weapons. Thanks to BattleMind. That was followed by a shiver of the ship as its Bethe Inducer speared out at lightspeed, passing through a hole in the Alcubierre field and impacting on the battleglobe.
    For the second time in his short life, Matt saw wondrous destruction.
    The Anarchate battleglobe had begun to shimmer with its own Bethe Inducer start-up field, but now, bathed in the orange glow of the Bethe beam, it began shrinking. Wreckage flowed back to the battleglobe as the beam induced an implosion similar to that which formed a black hole. Except in this case, instead of causing a star to go nova, Matt had chosen the beam setting that would reduce the Anarchate ship and its occupants to a few grains of collapsed neutron star matter. Sighing mentally, he imaged an order to emit a locator beacon for eventual discovery by a follow-on Anarchate battleglobe.
    Four seconds, ninety milliseconds.
    Leaving ocean-time felt like . . .  hitting the ground at a hundred miles an hour. His body felt wasted. His mind felt overstimulated. And his eyes, sweeping over to the sober, spare, sculptured profile of Eliana, felt wet.
    “My love, we are done here. Do you mind if we Translate to Zeta Serpentis? I have a chore to complete there and a lesson to share with BattleMind.”
    Eliana nodded slowly, her black eyebrows crinkling with concern. “Of course Matthew. My love. I support you. Always.”
    Support him she had, ever since the end of the battle in Halcyon system when she had broken the isolation tube that held his slow virus-infected body to grip his hand and declare she loved him. Openly declared love was something he’d experienced only once before.
    Eliana knew the story of his lost love, Helen Sayinga Trinh. A baccarat card dealer who was bond-owned by a casino dome on the airless resort planet Omega, a Mercury analogue that orbited close to the F3V star Zeta Serpentis. Her Owners had pursued him and her when they had left without buying out her contract. They had fled in a decrepit freighter, aiming for a Sixth Wave colony planet that lay in Perseus Arm. They had never made that refuge. Resource pirates had attacked the freighter with KKPs, killing her and leaving him to float in stasis in a lifepod. Until he had been found by starship Mata Hari , and given the chance to do something good for people victimized by the Anarchate. He had become a cyborg-human mix, and had taken jobs as a Vigilante for hire. He’d even used the words of the ancient vidpic hero