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

  “Well, then,” I said with a broad grin, letting her pull me down into the chair atop her, “let’s get to work.”

  Unlike Alyra, Clara wasn’t virginal, not in the least, even though she had been chaste during her time under the Matriarchy’s control. In fact, she was almost as well practiced as Tulip was, which meant that, while we were forced to limit ourselves to fifteen minutes of wild lovemaking in, over, and on top of the captain’s console, we accomplished quite a lot.

  Let’s just say that I discovered that Clara’s wings were far more limber and dexterous than I could have ever imagined and that she certainly knew how to use them.

  Somehow, we had the wherewithal to find the nearest cabin, one of the two dozen ones still unassigned, and get some semblance of clean and tidied in a hurry. I couldn’t speak for Clara, but I had mastered the ability to go from completely mussed to presentable for inspection quick, fast, and in a hurry from my Marine days. As I was getting my power suit back on, Clara emerged from the cabin’s shower, her alabaster skin practically glowing as she dried herself.

  “We better get down to the bay before they start wondering where we are,” I chuckled as the suit repressurized, but I certainly wasn’t hurrying to move, not when I had a chance to watch a practical angel in front of me.

  “Oh, darling,” Clara said with a giggle, hand over her mouth, her chest delightfully bouncing as she did so, “they won’t be wondering. They’ll know exactly what happened.”

  “Fair assessment,” I agreed as I scooped up her white, filmy suit and held it out to her. “Still, we do have a revolution to start, and we certainly won’t want to be late for it.”

  12

  I took a deep breath as I cracked my knuckles, standing fully armored in the center of the deployment bay of the Orion. As Tulip had said we would, we had punched out of hyperspace right on time, well outside of Leonis IV’s sensor grid, and slipped into cloak without incident. We were only minutes out from the blasted planet, the massive scarlet giant of a sun lazily burning at the center of the system.

  Tulip leaned with cat-like grace by the air-lock, ears flicking as she read intently on her wrist screen, seemingly cool as a cucumber as we waited for the final approach. In stark contrast, Alyra paced on the other side of the bay, wings tucked tight and arms clasped behind her back, all coiled muscle and tense nerves. At my side was one of the hover carts we swiped from Exo, laden with weapon crates, supply boxes, and one of the ancient exoframes.

  In addition to our normal load outs, we each were shouldering an extra pack, similar to Turner’s demolitions kit but loaded with more traditional supplies. With deconstitued meal packs, water-condensing filter bottles, spare med-kits, and a micro-food reconsitutor, we were loaded for bear. Of course, compared to the needs of the slaves, it might be chicken feed, but this was just the start, the spark to get this thing going. The rest, we would get on the move, like Robin Hood but with far more advanced weaponry.

  “So, Tulip, what all do we know about the Resistance leader we’re going to make contact with?” I said, resting my hands on my hips. “It’s not like we had to time to read every dossier during the trip, with there being, what, a dozen cells?” I dredged up what I had already absorbed. “Ferria Dain, formerly of Synata Minor III. Head of a miner’s union in her home sector, taken into slavery along with everybody else when the Matriarchy swept through that region a decade ago?”

  Tulip nodded slowly, a faint smile on her face. “Someone was paying attention during the briefing!” That smile turned into a grimmer expression as she tapped at her screen and began to read off other salient facts about Ferria. “Synata Minor was one of the most mineral-rich systems in this end of the Milky Way, and they held out for quite a while leveraging those resources and the hard-working nature of the natives. Now, the system has been strip-mined to near-oblivion, and the Synatans are a dying people.”

  Alyra frowned a moment at that. “I have read of the taking of Synata Minor and the purges of the Synatans.” The memory of it seemed to disturb her for a moment, but she shook it off. She turned her blues eyes toward me, halting her constant pacing for a moment. “The captain of the Blue Skies, Captain Essia, was a Synatan, David.”

  “I thought so, but I didn’t want to assume,” I acknowledged. “I just hope this Ferria has caught some wind of us, or else she might not take kindly to working with an ex-Matriarch.”

  Alyra was about to say something in answer, but Tulip cut her off as she pushed off the wall. “Don’t worry, David. If Ferria makes any trouble over that, I’ll deal with her myself. Alyra doesn’t deserve to take any hell from anyone after all she’s been through and all she’s doing to make things right!”

  Alyra’s eyes snapped toward Tulip at that then at me, as I added, “Damn straight. I couldn’t agree more, but I really appreciate you stepping up and saying it, Tulip.”

  The ex-Matriarch’s baby blues widened, and a smile crept over her lips as she turned her head down. “Thank you, zadavios,” she said softly, her voice full of love and thankfulness. “I will do my very best not to antagonize these people though.” She looked up, giving us both a last glance before resuming her pacing. “It is not their fault that my former sisters and I have tormented them so badly that they would react in fear and hatred towards me, so I will not force the issue.”

  I was about to add something else and give Alyra a warm embrace, but before I could take a step, the departure bay’s lights shifted from clean white to a dull red, the signal that we had to be getting close to our landing zone. As if to confirm that fact, the ship’s intercom buzzed to life, a few pops as if someone were tapping their microphone with a finger.

  A moment later, Turner’s cheerful voice boomed over the speakers. “Okay, my friends, we are four minutes from Leonis IV. I’ll turn on the green light when we’re about to land, but we won’t be able to linger long.”

  “The cloaking device is tied in with the ship's shields, you see,” Clara’s voice added. “Opening the bay for your exit is going to also open a small chink in our shields, hence our cloak. You’ll need to hustle, darlings, or we’ll be found out.”

  I glanced between the two ladies with me, and they each gave me a short nod. “Understood,” I answered to the ceiling. “We’ll be out the door within a minute of landing.”

  I could hear the grin on Turner’s lips as he said, “Good luck! Not that you need it, David Briggs, with your tremendous brass balls and the power of the dragon, but I would not be a great friend if I did not wish it to you all the same!”

  Clara audibly sighed. “Really, Turner?” She clucked her tongue. “Though I have to agree, I don’t place stock in luck myself. Just trust in your destiny, David, and please, Alyra, Tulip, keep him safe in my stead.”

  Alyra’s pacing stopped, and she stood up straight as a rod, eyes glancing towards the intercom speakers. “You need not be afraid. No harm shall come to our dragon.”

  “Ditto, sister,” Tulip said with the hint of a smirk. “We’ve got this, Clara. You just make sure you keep Turner from blowing up the planet while we’re doing this.” She giggled for a moment before going serious. “Normally, I’d say that as a bit of a joke, but this time, it’s a real possibility. One wrong blast into the wrong pocket of raw phasic crystals …”

  Turner scoffed. “I’m the demo expert, Tulip. If anyone knows the danger of the situation, it’s me.” He laughed. “It also means I’m the one who best knows what explosives are safe to use!”

  I ran my hands down my face, unable to contain a chuckle of my own. “Well, good buddy, if the planet blows up, I’ll know who to blame.”

  “Well, all jokes aside, get ready to hold onto your asses,” Turner barked, “because we’re hitting the atmosphere. Get ready to go!”

  On cue, the Orion shuddered just a bit, the inertial dampers absorbing most of the shock of our rapid atmospheric entry. With time being of the essence, we eschewed the whole ‘slow entry’ or ‘precise angle’ you would normally want
when going into even the thin atmosphere of Leonis IV. Instead, we hit it fast and hard, trusting in our shields and Turner’s steady hand to get us through intact.

  My muscles tensed as the adrenalin started to kick in, my dragon pacing and rumbling in my chest. While we had picked what should be a relatively safe landing spot, away from the numerous collection hubs where transports gathered the refined crystals from the mines and refineries below the surface, there was no way to be sure of that. To be on the safe side, I pulled my Swarmer off my hip, the steady weight of the tri-barreled pistol a comfort. With my left hand, I grabbed the hover cart’s handle and got ready.

  Alyra’s pacing ceased as she put on her game face, drawing her Wander as she flanked one side of the bay doors. Tulip matched the winged woman’s position on the opposite side, her two Starshot pistols gripped loose and at the ready.

  As we pierced through the skies above the planet, the ship seemed to hit rougher and rougher turbulence, something beyond what we had faced hitting the upper atmosphere. Tulip swayed to adjust with each buck and twist, while Alyra kept an iron grip on a stabilizer grip by the door. Me, I turned on the magnetic grips in my boots and just rode it out, glancing towards the intercom speakers again.

  “Turner, what’s going on up there?” I asked. “Things are getting really rocky back here, and we should be almost landing.”

  Speaking of that, the red light shifted to green as Turner’s voice echoed back into the room. “Big windstorm just rolled in out of nowhere, guys! This is a damn dead world with barely two scraps of atmosphere to rub together, this should be flat-out impossible! I’ve got no clue what caused it.”

  Alyra’s eyes narrowed. “It must be Xara, well, not her so much as any number of artifacts the High Priestess could have sent.” She looked across the bat at Tulip and me. “The Illuminator’s ultimatum spoke of the resources she had been given to defeat us, zadavios, and even I have no idea as to their extent. I did not know that the High Priestess had a weather creator or manipulator, but it is not impossible.”

  “Alyra’s got to be right, because I’m reading massive storms across the entire planet,” Turner reported. “Dammit, if we could have foreseen this, I’d have loaded gravanchors into the supplies before we left Centaurus. Look, David, we can make a landing, but it’s going to be rough out there.” He paused just a moment before starting to ask, “I hate to say it, but do you want to abort and—”

  “Negative, big guy,” I answered without hesitation. “Whatever it is, we can handle it, and we can’t afford to lose any more of our lead on the Leonis fleet. We won’t get a second chance to get entrenched with the Resistance here.” Glancing at Alyra and Tulip, I moved to the edge of the bay door. “Stay close, stay frosty, and keep an eye out. This could just be the start of our troubles.”

  Before I could add more, there was one last shudder as the Orion landed, the entire fuselage shaking as winds lashed the ship. My HUD flashed with a Drop Doors Opening! Prepare to Disembark! warning, and the rapid hiss of the chamber equalizing pressure with the outside air filled my ears. A split-second later, the thick bulkhead door cracked open, instantly blasting us with tornado force winds and blinding stinging dust.

  Even with the dust and grit blasting over my shields, I could barely see as I struggled to keep a hold on the hover cart, its turbines whining to try to keep it steady. The only reason I didn’t immediately go flying was my magnetic clamps to the deck floor. Alyra was thrown off of her feet, but she somehow managed to tighten her grip on the handle she was already holding, letting out a cry of pain as she held on for dear life.

  I was a little surprised to see that Tulip took the sudden surge of wind the best of us, using her feline agility to roll with it before shapeshifting in mid-tumble into a large, six-legged feline beast as big as a bear. She tumbled back up to her feet, claws digging into the floor as she tried to push forward for the widening door, something that only seemed to increase the force slamming into us.

  Growling under my breath, I knew our drop window was closing fast, and I also knew that whatever was in the air was quickly stripping the paint and gouging the metal walls of the chamber. Glancing at my squad status in the corner of my HUD, I was a bit surprised to see I wasn’t losing any suit power even as Tulip’s and Alyra’s shields were getting torn into. The pulsing icon of Breath of the Wilds answered that puzzle though. Guess ‘environmental effects’ had a broad definition.

  And that dropped everything into place for me. I let the growl in the back of my throat build, calling upon the dragon spirit inside me, channeling its magic through my Cestari even as I let the mighty wyrm out and into my body. With a month’s practice, calling upon my Dragon Form was easy, like slipping into a pair of well-worn boots, as my body swelled with a thousand pounds of muscle, bone, and scale. Polished black scales melded out of my skin as the ends of my boots, and the tips of my Cestari pulled back to let my golden claws loose, my foot talons digging into the floor like butter to keep me in place. Smoke blew out of my nose as my entire face reshaped, my snout fully forming as the familiar sticky-sweet taste of dragon oil filled my fang-filled mouth.

  Even as the shift finished, and I easily found the strength to not only pull the hover cart forward but shove against the wind. Magic surged through the crystals of my Cestari as I activated Through the Fire and Flames. Ethereal flames roared outward in a spiral, washing over Alyra and Tulip both, and their shield degradation stopped in an instant.

  Crisis number one down. Now, for the rest. I swore that both ladies were trying to talk through their comms. While the roaring winds made even that almost impossible, that was okay. Slapping my Swarmer back onto my thigh, I pushed forward, my draconic might easily able to move through the gusts, and my enhanced vision could see through the blowing debris to get a clear view of the desolate, slate-grey rocks of a wind-swept valley.

  Hoping that the others could see well enough to follow my lead, I stabbed a talon in Tulip’s direction and pointed at the cart, not even bother to try to shout above the din. She got the hint though, whatever powerful cat creature she had changed into having enough mass and muscle to claw forward just enough to latch onto the crates with all six pairs of claws. Overhead, the green lights started flashing, a visual cue that we were almost out of time, that Turner would be forced to abort the drop regardless of our status in ten seconds.

  Though Alyra was managing to hold on, she didn’t have the strength to pull her Wander around, despite her best efforts, no doubt to create a force shield to deflect the wind. She wouldn’t have to, as I let out a tremendous roar, audible over the storm, and pushed off with both mighty legs. Draconic muscle mixed with the strength-enhancing myomers of the power suit to power through the wind and towards the slowly-closing door. In mid-leap, I snagged Alyra with my free arm, tucking her close to my side as I carried her, the entire cart, and Tulip clinging on tight out through the airlock and into the harsh tempest that tore through Leonis IV.

  13

  The Orion’s bay door slammed shut behind us, as the ship, partially visible with the cloak compromised, started to return to full invisibility. We had picked a landing point in the base of a valley, a tactical choice in case the cloak didn’t hold up well to the open bay door, but one that only served to focus the unnatural wind down onto us. We needed shelter, and we needed it before the four minutes and thirty seconds, now four minutes even, of Dragon Form ended, or I ran out of suit power to maintain Through the Fire and Flames.

  Dragon form time remaining is 238 second, and current suit power is at eighty-eight percent.

  The sound of my suit in my ears was a relief. That meant that now that we were out of the enclosed quarters of the bay, we could vaguely hear one another over the comms. The enclosed area had only made the sound of the roaring winds reverberate louder and louder.

  “Alyra, I’m going to try to block the wind from you,” I growled, throwing my massive bulk down onto one side as I pulled her around to my chest before she could
really answer. As I did so, I also yanked the hover cart along my impromptu windbreak, shifting my grip down to its side. Tulip was already slipping down the side of the thing, trying to use both it and me as protection. They were both wreathed in my ghostly dragonfire, an orange-red glow that flickered but didn’t melt the ground on which Alyra and I were laying.

  Her voice sounded strange, a feral growl no doubt from her shapeshifted vocal chords as she cried over the noise. “There’s supposed to be an abandoned mine entrance about two kilometers south-east down this valley! If you can keep doing … whatever you’re doing, David, we can take shelter there!”

  Alyra gritted her teeth as she tried to work out what was quite possibly a dislocated shoulder from where she stopped herself, only nodding to me as some assurance she was fine. I nodded my snout back, glancing toward where Tulip was concealed. “I could probably manage it if not for this wind! Sharing my dragonfire with you is putting me on a power deficit, and the storm is going to make it take longer than that to get to that mine, even with my draconic strength and speed. And when that runs out …”

  “Maybe there’s something in the supplies we can use?” Tulip spitballed. I could hear the growl growing in her voice, feel the strain it was taking for her to keep her position even with the protection I was giving her. “If we can set up a force tent and fire it up, that could work.”

  Force tents were the revolutionary camping innovation every outdoorsman on Earth would kill for. By setting up the four field emitters and mounting the central base, the force tent created an energy field, similar to the shields that protected our power suits, but opaque and tuned primarily to deflect electromagnetic energy. Between that and the environmental seal created by the network of emitters, it could maintain a constant, controlled atmosphere and temperature.