Star Conqueror: An Epic Space Adventure Read online

  I was a little lost for a split-second. As I said before, while the VR gear did a good job with visual and audio stimuli, the tactile feel was a new element that continued to surprise me. When I saw just how few ground-level entrances were in this stretch of alley, the soft, spongy street suddenly made sense. Flight was the way to get around here, either by Matriarchal wings or Quib jump-packs, and this wasn’t a street. No, these alleys and roads were a safety net in case someone took a dive from one of the many second or third floor entranceways I saw overhead.

  Tulip was already starting to stalk down the alley. “This way,” she whispered over the comms. “If we stick to the ground level, we’ll escape the notice of most of the fliers.”

  “Right.” I shook off my surprise and caught up, pulling the Arclight Double back to the ready. “The drones and spiders will be the problem.”

  She glanced back at me and nodded. “Precisely. I’ve pulled up a Static Field.” She held up her left arm, showing me the HUD display on her tablet, and I could see the glowing yellow icon of the ability she mentioned. “It will dampen and interfere with electronic sensors rigs, but it won’t make us invisible to them. That would raise more alerts than it would be worth. Unfortunately, the Static Field will cut into my suit power, so if we get into a fight, I won’t be at full strength …”

  The Matriarchy focused on anything and everything that would advance their power, and that included science as well as magic. That’s why the bots would be the real hurdle to overcome here. Even the little boxy scrubbers that kept everything pristine were connected to the security net. Hovering recon drones would be common once we went the next few blocks to the arcology proper, and spiders, eight-legged metal bugs with hardened claws that could pierce even power armor, were the equivalent of the police here at ground level.

  “We’ll be careful then,” I finished for her, gesturing towards the end of the alley. “You know where this Resistance contact is, so lead the way.”

  She flashed me a thumbs-up. “Your suit map should be updated with his location, just in case we get separated.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I put a hand on her shoulder softly on her shoulder. Tulip was a pro, a hardened vet, but still, I wanted to reassure her. After all, she put a lot of faith in me and this prophecy thing, and I didn’t want to let her down. “But that isn’t going to happen. You’re stuck with me.”

  “I hope so,” she said with a wink. “Come on, before the virus cuts out.”

  I nodded, and we were off, creeping to the edge of the ‘alley’, every step like walking through a bouncy castle. Tulip was the queen of covert ops, so I trusted her leadership here totally, and did my best to stick to the walls like she did. It was harder than you would think, with the curvature of the streets and their squishy texture. I kept watch behind us as she glanced around, her cat ears swiveling forward as she tried to take in every bit of our surroundings.

  The larger channels (that seemed a better way to put it than roads) were the arteries through which both robots and hover sleds for the Ar’abi trucked in to do all the menial labor for the Matriarchy made their way from place to place. God forbid they be allowed to fly above ground level and mingle with the people in power.

  Oh yeah, I was going to enjoy lighting the fire that would bring the Matriarchs down.

  The couple of sleds that shot by, simple steel platforms with glowing anti-gravity mounted on the undercarriage, seemed to not even notice us, the red-skinned aliens slumped over against the safety rails in a general sense of depression and defeat. The robots, well, that would be a bigger problem.

  The scrubbers were everywhere, but they also had the weakest protections from Tulip’s Static Field, and the drones, sleek, black fliers with four ducted fans, tended to cruise the mid-levels of the sloping white canyons we found ourselves in. The spiders were our biggest concern.

  Clusters of their shiny white bodies clung to the walls of the Matriarchy buildings at strategic points, dormant until their sensors picked up on threats and intruders. Each cluster consisted of six of the Doberman-sized robots, and I could plainly see six of those clusters just down this one stretch of channel.

  “Thirty-six spiders?” Tulip gasped into the comms. “On one block? That’s some serious overkill! I guess they aren’t playing with their security at this facility.”

  I nodded slowly. “They aren’t.”

  While I shouldn’t have been surprised, considering the cloaking technology was something that gave the Matriarchy an amazing advantage, I wasn’t expecting this much security this soon. Still, we’d find a way through.

  Glancing up at the map route Tulip had marked to our contact, we only had two sections of channel to get down. With my dragon form ready to rock, I was sure I could bull through even that many spiders … but that would only drag all hell onto our contact. If they were willing to help the Resistance, I didn’t want to get them killed in a crossfire with a bunch of ‘bots.

  “We can’t throw down here,” I said, glancing around for some other way through. My eyes kept being drawn to the scrubbers running around. As Tulip’s brow furrowed and her fingers started to glide across her tablet, I followed one of the little things, noticing for the first time just how big their grinders and metal mandibles were as it chewed up a discarded steel can.

  Tulip shook her head slightly as she stared at her tablet. “The spiders are on their own individual, isolated networks. I could hack them, sure, but for each cluster I took over, there would be a bigger and bigger chance their intrusion countermeasures would see the problem and scramble a full alert. Stealth isn’t a real option either. Those things have hardened sensors and my Static Field won’t do much good.”

  Glancing up, I caught the buzz of the black-shelled recon drones buzzing a story or so up. “Up’s even worse. Those drones look like they mean business.” I considered the scrubbers again. “What about those cleaners?”

  In Star Conqueror, they were just parts of the background, fluff that wasn’t able to be interacted with. Here, though …

  “What about them?” she asked, her feline eyes focusing on me as her cat ears swiveled curiously.

  “They have to have much weaker security,” I pointed out, pointing from them to the spider clusters. “And their grinders look like they could eat right into those spiders.”

  Her eyes widened, and her ears stood up on end with excitement. “An attack that wouldn’t implicate us but occupy the spiders! If we make a break for it while the scrubbers and spiders are fighting, the security net will be focused on the ‘maintenance issue’, and we can get by scot free.”

  I grinned. “Exactly.” I gripped my rifle tighter and stretched my legs. “You work your magic. I’ll be ready to run the second you give the word.”

  Delight danced in Tulip’s eyes as a mischievous grin played across her lips. The game didn’t delve too deep into the lore of the various NPC companions you could pick, but that grin told me more about why Tulip had delved into hacking and electronic trickery than any bio page could have. When faced with an enemy that steeped themselves in technology, what better way to play a trick on them than turning that technology against them?

  It only took a few swipes and taps of her skillful fingers to do the deed. “Judas Hack in five seconds.” Tulip exchanged her tablet for the Stinger Elite. “Give it another few seconds for the scrubbers to go crazy, give or take.”

  “This will be awesome,” I grinned at her. “You trying to make me fall in love with you?”

  “You haven’t already?” She raised an eyebrow with a wry smile.

  “So, the feeling is mutual then,” I said, and as I spoke, her cheeks flushed.

  “Well, what fun would it be if I just told you?”

  Flashing her a smile back, I inched as close as I could to the edge of the alley, right behind Tulip to see the hack take effect. The change was almost imperceptible at first, as the scrubbers down the channel seemed to stutter in their duties for a moment before going on. Afte
r another second or so, after they finished whatever task was right in front of them, they all whirled as if possessed by one mind, which I suppose wasn’t far off, and charged their little motorized hearts out towards the nearest cluster.

  As the scrubbers got close, they broke into little bunches, orienting on other spider clusters along the channel and picking up speed. They almost seemed eager to feast on their big brothers as they surged forward those last few meters, grinding wheels spinning up and mandibles spreading wide. When the scrubbers first latched on to the spiders all down the channel, a horrible screech of tortured metal and tearing plastic echoed up and down the way. A low whine of beeps, boops, and static pulses, the almost confused chatter of the spider robots followed as they broke loose of their clusters, hardened forelegs starting to thrust and stab at the scrubbers gnawing at them.

  Most important of all, no security klaxons had gone off. Not that we could linger. Maintenance crews would be by soon to try to sort this mess, but the spiders and scrubbers both were very occupied. Tulip let out a small mrowl of delight at the sown chaos and sprinted out of cover, staying low as she outpaced me, but not by too much. Honestly, I was a bit surprised I was close to keeping pace with her, charging full-steam past the cacophony of dueling trash-bots and spindly spiders.

  It seemed I had gained more than strength and toughness from the dragon now living inside my flesh.

  As Tulip hit the end of the channel, she cut a sharp right into a side alley, following the indicated route on my HUD map. Ducking my head from a burst of sparks as a scrubber was torn apart by a chewed-on spider, I took the turn myself, my armored boots digging a gouge in the rubbery ground as I skidded.

  This was a smaller channel, a little larger than the alley we had come up from the sewers into, with fewer spider clusters. Not that those spiders mattered, as they had their own raging battle with garbage munchers going on. We had one more turn, back down into a main channel and into what I guessed was a building right around that corner. Home stretch and it looked like clear sailing.

  Now, I should have known better. As I said, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. As we approached the end of the alley, roars of thrusters echoed overhead, coming from the highest levels of the arcology and overpowering the constant hum of the hovercraft and aircars that had been the constants so far. They weren’t angling right for us, but I looked up quick enough to see the black streaks of Quib armor overhead before they passed, armor thrusters blazing.

  Damn, I wanted flight thrusters in my suit!

  “Tulip!” I called out as I slid to a halt, finding it harder than I thought it’d be to arrest my forward momentum on the rubbery ground. “Quibs!”

  Tulip had a much easier time stopping than me, her claws popping out as her suit shaped around them, tearing gouges in the rubber. “I saw, but there’s just three of them. I’ll jam their comms while you—”

  “Oh, darling,” a deep, sultry woman’s voice echoed across the alley as the three Quibs landed on the far side, standing between us and our destination. “If that were all you had to worry about, your flippancy would be justified, but you have much, much bigger things to deal with.”

  15

  The source of the voice swept overhead, a golden radiance reflecting off the perfectly white walls on both sides as the powerful beat of wings signaled the arrival of what could only be one thing.

  A Matriarch, an actual honest-to-God one in the flesh.

  And of course, she had to be one of the most beautiful women I had even seen. As with every Matriarch I had encountered in Star Conqueror, she was an alien, a humanoid race I wasn’t familiar with, but almost entirely human looking, with pale skin, and long, flowing hair with was almost pure white, touched with only a trace of honey-gold in the highlights. Of course, her wings, a trait shared by all Matriarchs, stretched wide, magnificent feathered things that would have looked at home in the painting of an angel.

  In form, something easy to see with the almost obscenely skin-tight, white power suit she wore, this particular Matriarch had the slender, fit physique of a dancer, a contrast to Tulip’s hourglass shape. Golden ankle-high boots and gloves accessorized the look, lines of glowing gold trim accenting the lines of the membrane-thin suit. The Matriarch’s pert breasts were barely contained by the thin, shell-like breastplate that conformed to every contour of her chest, and if I didn’t know what we were facing, I’d be suckered in by the heavenly beauty that landed daintily behind the three two-stripe Quib Elite.

  I did know though. While Matriarchs were born of tragedy, kidnapped young women from across the galaxy who were changed by some unknown means into these winged majesties, they were the enemy. As a rule, they were efficient, ruthless, and powerful, always infused with powerful magical abilities the Quibs were forbidden to access. There was no way to know ahead of time outside of good intel what a Matriarch might be capable of, and that was one thing we didn’t have in the Resistance files on Balarian.

  I whipped the Arclight Double up to take aim at her dead-center, even as her Quib escort fell into line in front of her. Tulip had turned her backpedal into a crouch, fingers tapping at her tablet. To my surprise, the alley didn’t turn immediately into a crossfire, as the Matriarch cleared her throat.

  “Oh, you’re good, as good as the stories say,” she said with a strangely respectful tone. “When my personal code-monkey said that Null-K, the Resistance’s most renowned electronic warfare specialist, was making a run on my sector of the city and brought someone claiming to be a dragon along for the ride, well, I didn’t believe him. But I decided to play it smart, have my coder keep an eye on the security net for any … discrepancies in the system with your particular fingerprint. The Left Hand was convinced you had a ‘dragon’, after all, and after that little display out in the city …” The Matriarch’s voice trailed off with a soft, seductive hum. Through the press of the Quibs, I caught sight of her golden eyes glowing as she arched a delicate eyebrow. “I was right to look, even if my superiors thought I was being paranoid. You’re really her, aren’t you? I mean, you’ve already cut off all of our communications, I see.”

  “I do love to be recognized.” Tulip smirked at me as she unslung the Stinger. “The Matriarch here sounds like she’s a big fan. What do you think, David?”

  “She obviously is.” I could work with Tulip’s reputation. “You should know, Matriarch, that if she’s here, we’re not playing games,” I growled as I flipped the Arclight over to the big barrel. Two-stripes Elite had heavy armor, but with the growing spike of my Ascension bonuses, I was betting I could probably punch through one to hit her. “So, I’ll give you one of three choices.”

  The Matriarch laughed. She’d have the voice of an angel if there wasn’t an undercurrent of twisted arrogance to it. She even did that falsely polite ‘cover her open mouth with the back of her hand’ thing, showing that she had a Wander-Z pistol in her hand.

  Wanders were pistols wielded entirely by Matriarchs and were powered by their magical abilities. Energy weapons, they resembled literal magic wands from a fantasy movie in some ways, though made of gilded white metal as opposed to strange wood, with a twisted grip much like a fencing foil. As each Wander focused the Matriarch’s powers, they each had radically different effects, damage types, and intensities, which made them literal wild-cards.

  I let her get the laughter out of her system. Not because of any sense of propriety. No, I wanted to know a bit more first. This Matriarch had to be a low-end administrator, or else she would have Royal Guards with her and a Wander above Z-class, yet she had enough foresight to look for signs of Tulip’s hacking. Most Matriarchs would have called in a city-wide alert on the security net over this, and yet, she was here with just three Elites by her side.

  She was either more powerful than her rank would indicate, way more arrogant than your average Matriarch, or had some ulterior motive that we could use. With my dragon ready to call forth, I was confident we could handle her and the Quibs, unles
s she was the first. And if she was the first, well, I could try to call forth Dragon Will on her. In the end, every Matriarch but the High Priestess was a victim, and turning the enemy’s strongest soldiers into allies was the best way to win a war, if you asked me.

  “Oh, darling, this should be rich,” she cooed as she got her laughter under control. “Fine, tell me what my three options are.”

  “But Anchorite Danton, the Left Hand’s orders —” one of the Quibs began to say but was cut off as she smacked the Wander over his helmet.

  “Silence, dog! Don’t speak over your betters.” She favored me with a twisted smile of false beneficence. “Please, brave Resistance fighters, you have the floor.”

  Tulip’s fingers cinched their grip on her rifle as she refocused her aim. Over the comms, she whispered, “We should just take them down, David. My hack won’t last forever.”

  “Trust me, Tulip,” I whispered back. “This could be the first step to really win this thing.”

  For a moment, I don’t think she understood, but her ears twitched suddenly as she responded, “I trust you but … oh. Oh, great Felinus, that dragon legend …”

  I only nodded slightly to her as I focused my attention on the Matriarch, barely catching her eye through her guards. “Anchorite Danton, the choices are plain and simple. Option one, you leave now and forget you even saw us.”

  She sniffed, and I think the Quibs were laughing at us over their comms, though it was hard to tell with their faceless helmets. “It’s actually Anchorite Clara Danton, Fourth in Ascension to the Left Hand of the High Priestess of the Matriarchy, Light among the Star Callers, and —”