Free Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4) by T. Jackson King

short-range Translation. And while the wrap-around Alcubierre flat shields protected each ship from any kind of matter or energy weapon, it was not an absolute protection. As the larger Ocean Fleet had discovered during the Intel Base battle. Assault Asteroids and antimatter-laden Supply Tube ships had tried to Translate into the normal space-time occupied by each ship within its Alcubierre cocoon. They had lost five ships to those attacks.
    Three hundred milliseconds, 142 nanoseconds, 323 picoseconds and 47 femtoseconds , murmured his cyberclock.
    About him the inertial field came on to guarantee his body stayed in his seat if there was hard maneuvering that exceeded the adjustment ability of the inertial fields. Similar fields protected the pond, plants and small critters of the Park habitat at the rear of the ship. And since the three freed captives were on other T’Chak Dreadnoughts, he had only himself to worry about.
    “Matt,” called Sarah over the tachlink as her brown face loomed in his mind. “My Human captive Gareth Davies wants to do something. He does not understand about ocean-time thinking and battle maneuvers.”
    “Put him in sedation and have one of Imperial’s servebots deliver him to the Community Hall and an accel-couch.”
    His mind saw Sarah do as he’d ordered. As the former human representative at Omega Casino, she was used to organizing lots of people. This Davies must have done something to get under her skin. At least the Orko and Meligun captives were not bothering Toktaleen. But ahead of Matt the lightspeed images of the three battleglobes showed them moving away from planet Stony and toward his ships, albeit on a spiral vector.
    “Everyone! The battleglobes must have seeded tachRemotes in our emergence area. They are moving to intercept us while vectoring away before we can fire at their positions.” Matt’s body swayed ever so slowly in his seat as ship Mata Hari took a sideways move to a new vector angle. “We will be within 100,000 kilometers of Stony very soon. Start firing your AM beams as soon as we hit that range. Try to bracket the likely spots where the battleglobes will be!”
    Matt wished the battleglobes were larger than 12 kilometers in size. That would make targeting at the maximum range of the antimatter cannons so much easier. But the Anarchate had never needed to build warships larger than a battleglobe in order to rule the Milky Way for the last two million years. And since the Anarchate ships had the advantage of seeing his ships’ movement in FTL real-time while Hexagon Prime’s targeting depended on slower lightspeed images, their main advantage lay in ship numbers and the ability to blanket a part of space with multiple antimatter beams.
    “Firing!” cried Eliana and Suzanne together, their minds so telepathically linked that in battle they operated as one.
    “Three beams out!” cried Toktaleen, followed a few milliseconds later by three beams from his ally Sarah.
    “Bracketing,” murmured George as he and Rafael both fired at their single battleglobe target.
    Nine hundred milliseconds, 12 nanoseconds, 23 picoseconds and 27 femtoseconds , reported his cyberclock.
    Soon they were within a quarter light-second of Stony and the battleglobes, which moved hardly at all compared to Matt’s approach at three-fourths lightspeed. But Anarchate laser and AM beams moved at lightspeed. As did theirs.
    “A hit!” cried Rafael as Matt’s ship perception saw a blue-white flare of total matter-to-energy conversion occur on the southern quadrant of one of the battleglobes.
    “Ouch!” cried Ben as two antimatter beams hit his ship Flowering . Their newest pilot was reacting to what his ocean-time perceptions told him was happening, even as his analytical mind said each ship’s Alcubierre shields were soaking up any beam that hit a Hexagon Prime ship. Matt knew that Ben would soon ignore the incoming lasers and AM beams in order to focus on combining his efforts with