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

acceleration from a slow orbital speed. But our ships are overtaking them quickly.”
    Why were they fleeing? And toward the local sun at that?
    “After them!” snarled BattleMind, the anger in the T’Chak AI’s mind striking Matt like a hurricane snapping through buildings and trees. Even Mata Hari’s mental buffering did not save Matt from milliseconds of disorientation.
    Hexagon Prime fleet streaked past planet three and headed into the inner system spaces. In time swift as light, they lay within five AUs of the orange flare star. Their course had been calculated to take the fleet well south of the star, into space below the system’s planetary ecliptic. Matt shook his mind free of BattleMind’s disruption.
    “Fire on the—”
    “Matt!” cried Suzanne and Eliana both in his mind, their voices preceding any physical image. “Translate! Translate now!”
    “Why can’t we—”
    “The star is going nova! Translate!” the women cried in the minds of each pilot.
    Ahead, the orange corona of the star bulged outward visibly, moving toward them as fast as light.
    “Translate!”
    Matt and each of his ships diverted all power to entering Alcubierre stardrive. About his ship grew the grey cocoon of Alcubierre space-time, that strange universe-within-a-universe that allowed all starships, Human and Alien, to travel from star to star at large multiples of the speed of light. For within the Alcubierre space-time bubble, the rules of its universe made the outside universe very small. Small enough so that sublight speed within Alcubierre space-time translated into FTL speed in the normal Riemannian space in which stars, galaxies and planets existed.
    One second, 323 milliseconds, 67 nanoseconds14 picoseconds and 13 femtoseconds.
    “What happened?” he asked as the minds of his pilot battlemates told him via tachlink node that all eight ships were safe in Alcubierre space-time.
    Suzanne and Eliana, a blond and an albino, appeared simultaneously in the mindlink they all shared. Gone was the Park grassy field. Only the image of a star billowing out its substance in a lightspeed expansion of its corona filled the background behind them.
    “A trap!” Eliana yelled.
    “A Courier with a Bethe Inducer weapon onboard lay on the opposite side of the system star,” cried Suzanne, her green eyes filling with tears.
    “The ship induced a nova expansion when the two Couriers sped toward the sun,” Eliana said breathlessly. “Must have used a tachlink to alert the ship that was hidden from our view by the star itself. The unseen Courier was lying in wait for anyone who attacked the admin planet.”
    Sarah’s blue-eyed gaze filled with alarm. “Ben! He is our newest pilot! It could have gotten him!” she said in the voice tone people used when referring to someone special.
    “I’m fine, Sarah,” said the young man who had withstood neurowhip beating from a slaver just befor e the Intel Base battle. His mind image tipped back his Aussie bush hat.
    Matt, feeling the fatigue of still being in ocean-time superfast thinking, put it all together. “Well, Ben, now we know the new battle tactic of the Anarchate. Blow up the system’s star when any T’Chak Dreadnought shows up to attack an Anarchate facility.”
    “Matt,” cried Sarah as she brushed at her brunette hair as if she were attending a formal event instead of an informal mind chat. “We have to let the other cohorts of Ocean Fleet know about this! Now! Or they could be caught too close to the local star to enter into Translation!”
    Matt blinked. Sarah was right. A minor reason all starships exited Alcubierre space-time at the heliopause of a star was because the closer one came to a star, the greater the gravity field in local space-time. Within a half AU of any star the Alcubierre space-time field could not form, no matter how many fusion engines fed it the power to tap into the negative energy of the universe. And this was not the time to allow his attention to