Star Conqueror: Recompense: An Epic Space Harem Adventure Read online

  Star Conqueror: Recompense

  Star Conqueror Book 2

  J. A. Cipriano

  Edited by

  J. B. Garner

  Copyright © 2018 by DDCO Publishing, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

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  Also by J.A. Cipriano

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Thank You for reading!

  Author’s Note

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  Also by J.A. Cipriano

  The Pen is Mightier

  The Pen is Mightier: Company Ink

  The Pen is Mightier: To Vegas… with Love

  Star Conqueror

  Star Conqueror: Recompense

  Star Conqueror: Legion

  Super Human

  United We Stand

  King of the Gods

  Falcon Punch

  World of Ruul

  Soulstone: Awakening

  Soulstone: The Skeleton King

  Soulstone: Oblivion

  Bug Wars

  Doomed Infinity Marine

  Doomed Infinity Marine 2

  The Legendary Builder

  The Builder’s Sword

  The Builder’s Greed

  The Builder’s Pride

  The Builder’s Wrath

  The Builder’s Throne

  The Builder’s Conquest

  The FBI Dragon Chronicles

  A Ritual of Fire

  A Ritual of Death

  Elements of Wrath Online

  Ring of Promise

  The Vale of Three Wolves

  Crystalfire Keep

  Kingdom of Heaven

  The Skull Throne

  Escape From Hell

  The Thrice Cursed Mage

  Cursed

  Marked

  Burned

  Seized

  Claimed

  Hellbound

  The Half-Demon Warlock

  Pound of Flesh

  Flesh and Blood

  Blood and Treasure

  The Lillim Callina Chronicles

  Wardbreaker

  Kill it with Magic

  The Hatter is Mad

  Fairy Tale

  Pursuit

  Hardboiled

  Mind Games

  Fatal Ties

  Clans of Shadow

  Heart of Gold

  Feet of Clay

  Fists of Iron

  The Spellslinger Chronicles

  Throne to the Wolves

  Prince of Blood and Thunder

  Found Magic

  May Contain Magic

  The Magic Within

  Magic for Hire

  Witching on a Starship

  Maverick

  Planet Breaker

  Starcrossed Dragons

  Riding Lightning

  Grinding Frost

  Swallowing Fire

  Pounding Earth

  The Goddess Harem

  The Tiger’s Offer

  The Wolf’s Hunt

  The Dragon’s War

  Justice Squad

  Miracle’s Touch

  Her Angels

  Heaven’s Embrace

  Heaven’s A Beach

  The Shaman Queen's Harem

  Ghosts and Grudges

  1

  “Brace yourselves!” I called out from the captain’s station of the Orion, as the Hunter-class patrol vessel burst through the vibrational barrier between hyperspace and real space. “We’re going in hot!”

  The front viewscreens resolved from the strange, stretched-out sights of hyperspace, each pinprick of starlight a string along the void, to a more normal starfield. Well, it could have been, if the Orion didn’t jump straight into a sprawling firefight. Dead ahead of us was the blocky, mile-long hull of the Blue Skies, a Hauler-class Resistance transport vessel and source of the distress call we were responding too, and she wasn’t doing so well.

  Long, blackened gouges from concentrated laser fire ran down her hull, showing that her primary shielding had already failed, and one of her four primary thrusters was cold as the surrounding space. It was only a matter of time before the Blue Skies was going to be dead in space. Spiraling around it, rapidly getting picked off by the onrush of Matriarchy ships, were a few Darts, short-range escort fighters launched from the Skies.

  The little things were barely larger than a luxury car, all swept back angles that did actually look a bit like an actual dart, with enough room for a pilot, a big ass engine, and dual particle cannons in the nose. If the odds had been even, they would have stood a good chance at defending the Hauler, but with the swarm of needle-like Zultar-class remote fighters on them, well, let’s just say the odds definitely weren’t even.

  While we would have come calling to any Resistance distress signal, the fact that the Blue Skies was loaded with rescued girls from the Denara girls’ camps brought us even faster. Those nasty places were where the High Priestess and the Mother of Chains culled magically-talented young women to brainwash and turn into the Matriarchs that held their collective heels to the Milky Way’s throats. Not that you’d know about it if you were on Earth, especially if you didn’t play Star Conqueror, the most popular VRMMO shooter on the planet.

  On Earth, this would all be considered a game, but here, it was real, and it had been real for me for about a month now. Ever since I beat the game, found myself attuned to an ancient dragon spirit, and met what I now considered my surrogate family, the very crew surrounding me on the bridge of the Orion.

  “Hoorah, David Briggs! We will fight with honor today!” Turner, Earth action movie buff and barrel-shaped demo expert, shouted from the engineer’s station just to my right as a light show of particle bursts, rail gun streaks, and guided missiles burst around us. “Reactor at maximum efficiency. We’re as hot as we can get unless you want me to light the outer shields up with plasma …?”

  I was pretty sure he meant that as a joke, but I wasn’t going to question him. With the Bolderian’s knack for both explosives and starship engineering, he might very well be able to turn us into a phoenix streaking across space. “No, just blowing up those Zultar fighters will do for now. I’ll take the stick.” As I said that, my fingers danced across my captain’s console, something I’d gotten very familiar with over the last few weeks, pulling up primary navigation. “Tulip, try to get some countermeasures up for the Blue Skies
. If that freighter gets hammered by those missiles—”

  From the navigation station directly opposite of Turner, Tulip, Fertish shapeshifter, catwoman, and the galaxy’s greatest hacker (something more than she had said, so you know it’s not just ego), flashed her Cheshire grin at me, winking with one feline eye as she cracked her fingers. “Consider it done, David! By Felinus’ whiskers, those girls are going to be safe, even if I have to hack every guidance system one at a time!”

  If anyone could do that, Tulip could. Drop-dead gorgeous, an ace markswoman, and so much more, she was a legend among the Resistance. I returned the wink, grinning wildly myself as I took the Orion in a broad arc. If we hit hard, we might even save a Dart or two, but where the hell had all these short-range Matriarchy fighters come from?

  “Alyra, fire at will. I’m taking us right through the center of this little scrum.” As the inertial dampeners on the ship whined to compensate for the tight maneuver I pulled us through, the large, boxy shape of the Hauler filling the viewscreens, I show a momentary glance to the two ex-Matriarchs ahead of me. “Clara, try to find the cluster ship that brought these guys. There’s got to be one, there’s no hyperdrive on these little bastards.”

  It was the fact that both of these beautiful, winged aliens now fought on our side that gave me hope that we’d kick the Matriarchy’s ass in the end. See, the dragon bonded to me let me take its form, a giant, near-invulnerable dragon man. That alone was badass, but the really crucial thing was the magic that I could summon through it, a magic that could slice the chains on the Matriarchs I encountered and bring them back to the people they were before.

  “Of course, darling,” Clara cooed over her shoulder at me, the blonde-haired healer and former low-level administrator’s wings fidgeting a little from the science station. “I’ll feed them through to your screens as soon as I get a read on them.”

  Alyra, the former Left Hand of the High Priestess and tenth in the Matriarchy hierarchy (though I wasn’t even sure of that anymore from what I had seen), didn’t look back, the polished marble skin of her face only visible in the reflection of the tactical station’s viewscreen. Her coppery curls did bob, though, as she nodded, her voice cool and rigidly controlled. “I’ll destroy them all for you, my dragon. Railguns online, anti-missile systems primed, and main particle cannon charging.”

  She was putting words into action already, the four ball turrets arrayed across the forward arc of our wedge-shaped vessel already unloading magnetically propelled bursts of heavy metal into the swarms of attacking fighters. The moment she started firing, our stolen cloaking device cut out, revealing us in all our righteous glory. Clara’s first scan threw up a baker’s dozen of red targets across the three-dimensional map of the battlespace as I sped us forward, diving towards the freighter and its precious cargo.

  Two Zultars exploded in the first volley, and suddenly, the Orion became the most popular girl at prom, nine silver-white javelin-shaped craft suddenly reorienting on us. That was good. We could take some heat. In response, I cut starboard and threw us into a spin. Zultars had one big weakness, and that was the fact all their weaponry was on forward fixed mounts, much like the Darts. Now, for maneuverable fighters, that wasn’t a huge weakness, but against a scout ship like the Orion, they would never be able to mass their firepower.

  As streaks of red laser light lanced out at our twisting vessel, a few grazing shots raking across our shields, the missiles that had been hurtling towards the Hauler summarily exploded a good hundred meters out. While the blast waves rocked the limping freighter, it was a million times better than what would have happened if they had hit.

  “Shields holding like a boss,” Turner called out with a massive grin. “That’s who the kids on Earth say it these days, right?” More seriously, he focused on his read-outs. “The bad news, David, is that the Blue Skies got hit with a full volley of vibrational tethers. Which means—”

  “We have to take all these assholes out for them to be safe,” I finished for him, as I worked in tandem with the tactical read-outs from Alyra’s station, sweeping the ship from side to side to let each arc of turrets unload with deadly efficiency. “Good job on hacking those missiles, Tulip, by the way.”

  Even in the heat of the moment, the catwoman reached out and stroked my arm, sending soothing warmth through my body. Sure, it was a Fertish thing, but Tulip and I had done a lot closer touching than that, and the thought made me grin. “My pleasure! And if I’m reading the sensor reports from Clara right—”

  “Which you are, Tulip dear,” Clara chirped, even as the Orion’s shields rippled from another volley of laser pulses.

  Tulip flashed a smile down at the ex-Matriarch and continued. “Yeah, I’m highlighting their command ship now! They must still be cloaked, but with the information we swiped from Balarian, they’re easier to detect than a catnip mouse. We can’t get a weapons lock, but we know where in general they are.”

  Clara nodded. “But that also means they can’t send an active control signal to give new orders to the Zultars without giving us a signal we can lock on to.”

  While the Matriarchy had no qualms about using disposable grunt cannon fodder, they also loved their technology, especially in space battles. Guess the average Quib wouldn’t really make it through starship training very well, so they tended towards drone ships for their little stuff. It also made the Zultars nastier than they should be. No pilot means no life support, no crew compartment, and no need to worry about organic frailties.

  It also made them as predictable as the enemy AI in Star Conqueror. And that gave me a brilliant idea.

  Alyra let out a grunt of annoyance. “It’s definitely a Hive-class controller, David Briggs. Our particle cannon is charged, and I need no petty weapons lock to hit it. Can I please obliterate them from the face of the galaxy so that we may continue our more vital mission?” There was an edge to her normally harmonious voice, and I didn’t quite buy her stated reason. Not that it mattered, because blowing the Hive was the ultimate plan, but not quite like that.

  “If you can make a blind shot on a cloaked Hive,” Turner chuckled, “I’d acknowledge you as the greatest shot in the galaxy and give you my last box of Twinkies.”

  I shook my head as I took us on another evasive twist, sweeping past the Blue Skies and towards the marked signal Tulip and Clara had found. The last two Darts still flying fell into formation, coming up behind the swarm of Matriarchy fighters that were trying to light up our backside. “Hold your shot, Alyra,” I ordered. “Turner, try to pump any spare power into the particle cannon, and please, don’t tempt her. You know she’ll take any stupid bet if her pride’s on the line!”

  “But I could destroy it right—” she tried to argue, glancing over her shoulder with those piercing blue eyes of hers, but I stared right back.

  The ship rocked as our rear shields buckled, a few laser bursts raking across our hull. “I said hold that shot! Taking out the Hive is great and all, but the Zultars will still be on AI control until they run out of fuel, and every second they’re live, the Hauler’s in trouble.” I cracked my neck, ignoring the damage reports and trusting Turner would keep us together long enough. “Nope, we’re going to exploit the hell out of this, take them all out at once.” I glanced from Alyra, properly chastised, to Clara. “Tell the Darts to ignore the Zultars and get ready to sweep past and take out the Hive. They’ll see it in just a moment.”

  Technically, what I was about to try was a gamble, but it was a gamble from an educated guess. While Star Conqueror didn’t have the cloaking technology that the real Matriarchy had, I had been in enough space battles to see how the Zultar AI reacted when they had sensor damage, fought in a nebula, or otherwise had their sensors clouded. They fired at what targets they could still detect, without care for friendly targets they couldn’t see.

  All that meant that I was about to give the Hive’s captain a simple choice. They either would have to decloak to keep their own fighters from shooting them
or get torn apart anyway by all the lasers that weren’t hitting us from the swarm of Zultars.

  Assuming I was right. If I was wrong … well, I was just going to assume I was right and worry about the consequences later.

  “Less than two kilometers out,” Tulip warned. “David, we need to—”

  “Trust me, Tulip.” I flashed her a reassuring nod. “Alyra, I’m about to pull some serious G’s, but get ready to fire right down the line of Zultars. Give them the business.”

  Turner leaned forward in his seat. “I’ve given her all the power we have, but our shields are failing.” He laughed heartily. “But who wants to live forever?”

  Clara raised a finger. “Actually, darling, that doesn’t sound sooooo—” Her angelic voice stretched out into a scream of excitement as, at the moment our shields cracked, I spun and twisted the Orion in a tight arc.

  The inertial dampeners threatened to cut out entirely as we were pressed into our acceleration chairs. We slipped through the Zultars’ barrage, most of their beams not slashing across our hull but slicing through empty space … and the shields of the Hive ship that was uncloaking behind us. On cue, the Darts hit their afterburners, rocketing around and past us, the void of space lighting up white lightning from their fully-charged particle cannons. Even as the Hive’s hull was shredded by the blasts of charged particles, the Orion jerked to a halt as I hit the maneuvering thrusters hard, our front end pointing right at the onrushing stream of silvery fighters.