Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4) by T. Jackson King Read Free Book Online Page A

Sharing his Bridge with a giant, black winged AI dragon whose two forearms and belly showed yellow scales, while its purple spine ridge carried a zigzag line of sharp thorns, had become normal. What was not normal yet was the sharing of combat decisions.
    “Correct,” Matt said dryly. “BattleMind, please activate your Sun Glow weapon and fire on that asteroid base. I would see it become a stellar plasma ball. Then let us move away, quickly, so I may interrogate the captain of the Dodemeron .”
    “At last, a target worth my attention,” rumbled BattleMind.
    In the front holoscreen floated the black rock, silver skyrises and tiny repair bots that were futilely trying to seal the shuttle-sized hole in the base’s clear dome. The armed Corvette dispatched by the Control Station operators was just 500 meters from the lower landing dock opening. The entire conversation with his cyborg allies and their AI friends had taken much less than a half second.
    “Firing!”
    A white spear of coherent neutrinos slashed down at the black rock of the slaver base. The rock shimmered in both the holo and in Matt’s superfast thinking mind. Then the rock became a roiling ball of yellow plasma, held to its globular form by a magfield transmitted by the Sun Glow beam. That plasma included the Corvette.
    Beyond the giant stellar plasma ball lay three of the five slaver ships that had tried to hide behind the asteroid. Already they were moving away from the plasma ball. And into Matt’s line of fire. Flexing his muscles as he sat in the Interlock Pit, he tensed his arms and outside, on his wings, three of his antimatter cannons fired black beams of coherent neutrons at the three slaver ships.
    Three blue-white explosions of total matter-to-energy conversion filled a part of space that lay just seventy kilometers away. The white vapor fronts of the destroyed slaver ships joined with the golden yellow plasma ball of the asteroid to make local space very unhealthy. In his mind he gave the necessary order.
    “Mata Hari, Translate us to the area of the ship Dodemeron !”
    Grey emptiness surrounded his ship for the brief time it took to travel a quarter light second, then a band of white diamond stars sparkled in the front holo. Behind them glowed the yellow and green ionization belts of the Ring Nebula. To the side, rear and down ecliptic occurred other blue-white explosions as his Hexagon Prime battlemates destroyed their slaver targets using coherent neutron antimatter beams. In front of him floated the slaver starship. The Dodemeron showed a habitat globe at the front, a boxy body that ended in a ruptured tail section and two side pontoons that mounted proton beamers. Already the Spelidon ship captain was using attitude jets to turn toward Matt’s ship, clearly aiming to fire on him.
    “Mata Hari, fire a few neutral particle beam lasers at those pontoon beamers,” Matt said. “Then move us to within five kilometers of the slaver ship.”
    “Firing Matthew,” said Mata Hari as her steel sword shot two beams at the pontoons.
    To his right BattleMind spread wide his black wings, wing-claws curling as if trying to rip and tear something. Which gave him an idea.
    “BattleMind, when we arrive close by the slaver ship, orient us so that this ship is parallel to the Dodemeron . Once done, I would like to slice the ship into flat segments, beginning at the rear and moving up the box body to the habitat globe. Which lasers would do the best job?”
    In his ocean-time mind and by real time vision, Matt saw the giant T’Chak dragon open its long snout and display sharp white teeth. Its version of a smile. “Ahhh. Torture before destruction. Use the CO2 and hydrogen-fluorine laser domes on my spine. They have sufficient power for metal cutting.”
    Twelve seconds, 21 milliseconds and 13 picoseconds , noted his cyberclock.
    On the horizon of his mind Matt felt Eliana pay brief attention to his plan, give a  mental nod, then return to her own