Star Conqueror: An Epic Space Adventure Read online

  There was a small part of me that wondered how much truth there was to Alyra’s side of things, but with the situation we were in, I’d have to save the deep thinking and critical analysis for later. Besides, at that moment, what was important wasn’t the beliefs of the Matriarchy or of the Resistance, but my beliefs. I was the one who had to decide what to do, and I would do so based on the man that I was, the ideals I held. I had freed Clara instead of enslaving her, so I was going to free Alyra too, not because of prophecy, but because I was David Briggs.

  With a flick on an eye, I purchased the Enhanced Dragon Will upgrade. I was going to need it awfully soon.

  “Alyra, look me in the eyes, see the truth I’m about to lay down to you,” I said, trying to channel every drill sergeant and squad leader I had ever known in my time in the military. “That truth is simple. It doesn’t matter what you think, and hell, it doesn’t even matter what the truth about the past was. Maybe you’re right. Maybe Tulip’s right. Maybe you’re both a little right.” I took a deep breath as Alyra caught my eyes, staring through me with those blazing baby blues. “What’s the truth here is that right now, I’m the dragon, and I’m going to use that power to help the needy, free the oppressed, and do what’s right. You don’t know it yet, but this Mother of yours has pierced your mind, hidden away the real you, and lashed you into submission. What I aim to do, right here and now, is free you.”

  One minute on my dragon timer and I could feel the spirit coil and gather itself. “I sure as hell don’t want to hurt a beautiful, innocent woman, so please, don’t make us fight you. Let me summon the dragon and help you.”

  “And lo, the winged serpents spoke with forked tongues, offering our mothers solace and instead brought them servitude,” the Left Hand recited, her voice sing-songing as if it were a hymn. “Never again. We have been free of you for a thousand years, and we will be so for a thousand more.”

  That was when she made her move. Before any of us could even blink, her Wander, longer and more intricately designed than Clara’s, surged with blinding white light. A beam lanced out, expanding into a shimmering white column of pure force that rocketed right down the middle of the room. Instincts took over, throwing me to the side as Clara cried out and dove to the other.

  However, neither of us was Alyra’s true target. No, the battering ram of force hurtled between where we had been standing, lancing straight toward Tulip, still absorbed in hacking the vault door.

  “Tulip!” I cried and that might have just saved her life.

  Her ears flicked about a micro-second before the blast would have struck her and her inhuman agility forced her to roll, her body doing that seemingly boneless thing cats on Earth do. Tulip didn’t duck the column entirely, it was too close and moving too fast, but instead of taking the solid wall of energy head-on, it slammed into her shoulder and upper back. She pinwheeled in mid-roll, her suit shielding trying to cushion the blow, and she flopped gracelessly into a heap by the wall.

  The place where the cylindrical force had slammed into the vault door and wall had cratered in a good inch, twisting and tearing metal as well as utterly annihilating the lock mechanism and Tulip’s tablet with it.

  “Did you really think you could stall me long enough for Null-K there to break into the vault?” Alyra said with a roll of her eyes. “I have seen ‘heroes’ like you come and go, and I am but the tenth, the youngest of the High Priestess’s entourage. Compared to me, you’re weak, and to my sisters, you are gnats.”

  Gritting my teeth, not bothering to worry about just how wrong the Resistance had been to think the Left Hand was the third most powerful as opposed to the tenth, I swung my Arclight Double around. “I’m sorry that you’ve forced me to do this, Alyra.” The only reason I didn’t bring out the big barrel was the fact that Tulip’s vitals were still strong, even if her suit power had gone to about zip from absorbing the hit. She was stunned, but alive. “You’ll thank me once we get you free.”

  I had no illusions about my burst of blaster bolts actually breaching her shielding. Alyra’s armor was lighter than mine, but seeing this first expression of her magic, if she didn’t have a force field around her, I was a monkey’s uncle. We had to feel it out though, and I still needed forty-five seconds.

  My expectations were met in spades. As Clara let out a growl and took flight, the concentrated barrage of charged particles I unleashed were dead on target, and Alyra didn’t even waste the energy to dodge. The whole of my Arclight Double’s burst exploded with sparkles of light across her body, her shielding not even wavering an inch.

  “What really surprises me is that,” Alyra began as she lazily slung her Wander towards me, the column of energy dissipating in the process, “you dealt with Tur and his bots so quickly. I’m just not seeing it right now.” With a flick of her wrist, a half-dozen foot-long spears of glittering white light materialized in an arc over my head before descending with terrible speed.

  This was major Green Lantern shit. There was no way to dodge them all, so I turtled up, throwing my arms over my head because I just didn’t completely trust the force dome helmet in this situation as I tried to dodge what I could. Going flat to the wall, three of the force shafts shattered the marble where I had been standing, burying themselves entirely in the earth.

  The three that hit me … well, I had never felt pain quite like it. Now, I’d taken more than my fair share of lumps and wounds in the Marines, had even been shot before. But I had never had someone drive spears through my forearms.

  The spears tore clean through my shielding, my armor, and my flesh, but at least they didn’t pierce through to my head. One of the three deflected off, the one that hit my Cestari, but even that ripped a gouge in the enchanted super-alloy.

  I didn’t scream. I roared, fire and smoke spilling out of my mouth and nose as I fought through the pain, the fiery aura of my Ascension powers roaring to life, even as my suit fired off everything from shield failure alerts to requests to seek immediate medical attention.

  Alyra started from that, showing for the first time a drop of that fear she had shown before, but before she or I could say a word, Clara let out a shrill, piercing war cry, diving down at her former mistress. A moment before impact, she pulled up, slinging a sickly green Necrotic Bolt right at the Left Hand’s face.

  To everyone’s surprise, the bolt of direct biokinetic energy slipped through Alyra’s layers and layers of force armor and shields, striking her in the shoulder. Her scream of pain made her sound even younger than Clara as the necrotic force ate at her, and in that slip of concentration, the spears of force in my arms dissipated, blood spilling from the wound even as a tremendous surge of Recompense energy circled around me.

  Clara spiraled upward, wings flaring like a victorious angel. “You shall not hurt him again, Alyra! I won’t allow you! I am through letting the Matriarchy hurt that which I love!” She spread her arms wide. “Radiant Light!”

  And that defiant speech was all she had time for, though her starlight fell on Tulip and me. My wounds began to seal even as my dragon timer ticked to three seconds, and Tulip began to rise as her suit power surged back to life. However, hurt as the Left Hand was by Clara’s attack, she wasn’t out of the fight, growling through her teeth as she raised her Wander with an unsteady hand.

  I sprinted for Alyra, but the white crystal on the end of her Wander burst with light as she manifested a giant clutching eagle’s claw in midair around Clara.

  In the blink of an eye, the claw closed around Clara, shattering her minimal shielding, and as Clara hung there dazed and broken, Alyra flicked her wrist. The claw hurtled down like a comet, shattering the marble underneath it into a million pieces as it pinned the unconscious healer to the ground.

  “Now, stay there, Clara,” Alyra cried. “I’ll get you fixed after I slay your slaver. I know you are not of your right mind.” She turned to glare at me. “You will pay for what you have done to my sister.”

  I know Tulip shouted Clara’s name
as she leaped to her feet, her pistols springing to her hand, but I didn’t hear it because my being was swallowed up by the raging fire inside me. Anger for the hurt that this puppet was causing, but more so sheer fury at what was at the heart of it. I would turn this fire inside me on Alyra first, yes, but only to melt her chains, and then I’d fight up through every one of the ten that she mentioned.

  Hell, I’d fight through a thousand Matriarchs, if that was what it took.

  Alert! Your dragon form recharge time has hit zero seconds. You may once again assume dragon form!

  29

  In mid-charge, my muscles surged with might and bones grew, turning ten strides to reach Alyra into three. Scales slipped out of my skin, turning my body into an impregnable fortress as my internal fire surged through every vein. The world opened to my eyes, my nose, my ears, and I could see every pore in Alyra’s perfect marble skin, smell the sudden surge of fear in her heart, watch her swivel in almost slow motion as she tried to brandish her dagger in time. As claws replaced my nails and razor-sharp teeth poked out of my gums, I cocked back a fist.

  After all, I needed to weaken her, break through her defenses, but I still didn’t want to kill her. No, I could smell the cuts in her soul, the punctures from the barbed chains I had seen in Clara’s mind, my spiritual senses expanded both by my expanded Dragon Will and the magic now surging through the Cestari.

  So, instead of spearing her on my claws or scouring her with dragonflame, I punched the ever-loving shit out of her.

  The crystals of the gauntlets exploded with heat, even as the tremendous force of my blow backed by all that Recompense energy shattered the layers of shielding wrapped around the Left Hand.

  Physics took over from there. My fist sent the Left Hand rocketing toward the opposite wall. Alyra let out a cry that was more of alarm than pain as she slammed into the far wall, cratering it beneath the force of the impact before she slumped onto the floor.

  She took a deep breath, obviously trying to reorient herself, and as she did, the claw that had still pinned Clara’s unconscious body to floor shattered into an explosion of golden shards.

  “Keep her pressured,” I roared, even as Tulip bounded across the hallway in feline leaps. “If we break her concentration, I can break through to her!”

  Dust and debris blew away from the Left Hand as she surged with translucent force, her wings flaring as she rose off the ground and reoriented in midair. “That almost hurt, you scaled monster!” She spun the dagger in her hand to point it at me as the wall and floor around her buckled from the intense pressure her fields were generating around her. “But it wasn’t enough. I’ll flay—”

  I had already crossed half the distance to Alyra as she ranted, but I wasn’t the one who cut her off. The Left Hand’s complete focus on me meant she had unwisely ignored Tulip’s existence. Tulip was still faster than me by a mile, even when I was in my dragon form, and she leaped upward, bouncing off the dented wall and then rebounding off of Alyra’s back. What she left behind as she leaped ever higher was two primed Banger Elites, stuffed in between the Matriarch’s wings.

  The dual detonations cut off the Left Hand with explosive finality. Though the shrapnel tore through the metal wall and the shockwave blew out another four of the stained-glass displays, the whole mess still didn’t cut all the way through Alyra’s insanely tough defenses. It did, however, crack open another shield and shatter one of her power suit’s shoulder plates, the one where Clara’s Necrotic Bolt had passed through. As the blast wave threw the Matriarch back into the ground, in the crater she had just made, I could see where her undersuit had also been torn away and the nasty wounds Clara’s attack had left.

  It was a miracle Alyra could concentrate at all through that, knowing firsthand how agonizing that attack had been to me.

  Tulip wasn’t quite done though, twisting in mid-air as she kicked off the wall near the top of the vaulted room. As she hurtled away, she unloaded a double shot of Magic Bullets. Despite the power behind them and their unerring accuracy, Alyra swatted them, the force around her erupting in a wave that flattened the bullets out of the air as she rose.

  “Hit her hard and I’ll come back behind you,” Tulip called over the comms as she tucked and rolled behind me. “Maybe I can hack her suit if I can stick close!”

  “You’ll get your chance,” I rumbled back as I closed the distance with the Left Hand, lowering my shoulder with the full intent to bulldoze her into the wall. If I could pin her and Tulip could bring down her last shields …

  It was a great plan, but Alyra hadn’t reached her position by being an easy fight. Maybe I had gotten a little sloppy, high on dragon rage and my seeming invincibility, but her slight sway of disorientation was a ruse that drew me in. Right as I would have slammed into her, the smaller woman slipped to one side with the grace of a ballerina, almost pirouetting aside as she lashed out with that diamond blade of hers.

  It sliced clean through my power suit, and then clean through my scales, tearing a slash right across my gut. Streaming red blood spilled out and caught aflame the second it hit air as a roar of pain welled up in my throat. Thank God I had so much more mass now, because if she had managed to cut deeper …

  “This is a dragon slayer,” Alyra cried as she spiraled away from me. “Mother gave it to me to deal with you. This is the true tool of freedom.” She lashed out, trying to press her advantage, but I gave her a sweeping slash of claws to worry about as I pressed my hand to the bleeding wound.

  She respected that, floating backward, just as I now had an intimate respect for that dragon slaying knife. And now, it seemed, Alyra was paying attention to Tulip now as well, because as I looked for an opening, Tulip tried to blind side the Matriarch again, shifting in mid-pounce to her dire panther form, probably to take Alyra to the ground and disarm her.

  “Bad kitty!” she cried, sweeping her Wander up and around, a wall of light bursting to life out of nowhere between her and Tulip.

  The panther let out a growl of surprise, still managing to avoid crashing into it by pulling up her paws and rebounding away, but before she bounced even a foot, the entire wall wrapped around her, putting Tulip in a sphere barely big enough to hold her.

  And that was when it hit me. Alyra could have killed Tulip or Clara several times now. Yes, both had been fighting hard, but what I saw right then convinced me that, if she wanted, the Left Hand could wrap either of them in the same ball she had Tulip in and just squeeze. Gruesome way to go, but why didn’t she?

  There was something in her, as there was with Clara, struggling to get free.

  “Alyra,” I roared, blood seeping through my fingers, “I know you don’t want to kill us. I can see it in every move you make here. You want me to help you, to free you, don’t you?”

  With a scream of frustration, the Left Hand whipped her Wander back and forth, rattling Tulip around in her gopher ball before releasing it and sending the panther flying towards the vault door. Despite what they say, cats don’t always land on their feet, and Tulip hit hard, rolling a few times before hitting the far wall, dazed and bruised, but not dead.

  As Alyra spun back to me, she didn’t notice Clara groaning, pulling herself up out of the ground, golden light mending her injuries.

  “No, you selfless idiot,” she shouted, rearing back with her blade. “You want to take me away from where I’m special, where I’m important! You want to cast me into the dirt like you did with Clara, make me like the Ar’abi or the Fertish!” Tears streamed down her face, a mixture of rage and fear. “I want to be special, I want to be loved, and I want you to die!”

  With that affirmation, Alyra threw herself at me, wings flared and dagger lashing out. Despite the grace and expert training I had seen until then, she was lashing out like a scared, upset child, wild, all-or-nothing swings that cut shining arcs in the air. As much as the raging part of me wanted to grab her and plant her into the ground, pound away until she was beaten into submission, the rational part of m
e caught Clara’s eye, saw her raise her Wander with a shaky arm, and take aim, incanting some spell she hadn’t used before under her breath.

  Guess I wasn’t the only one who was buying upgrades under pressure.

  “I’m not going to hit you any more, Alyra, but I’m not going to let you hurt anyone else either,” I growled with defiance as I dropped back into a defensive posture. Clara’s biokinetic magic had punched right through the solid force of Alyra’s field just like it punched through my dragon scales, so if she had a play, I was going to back it. Of course, that meant that I had to keep Alyra’s attention while also keeping her from filleting me with her dragon slaying knife.

  You know, no pressure.

  So, I went on the defensive, blocking the first swing at the elbow and grabbing Alyra’s Wander hand, my huge dragon claw closing around her entire fist and wrist. An instinctual, omnidirectional burst of force projected out from her as she thrashed, catching me full in the chest and causing me to gasp in pain as it blew into my open wound. My grip involuntarily loosening, Alyra spun around with her dragon slayer again, and all I could do was take another agonizing slash, blood spilling from a defensive wound in the arm. As if my blood fed her frenzy, she let out a half-mad laugh and charged, lowering the knife to try to plunge it right into my chest. I sidestepped as I bit down on my pain and engulfed her hands in my massive dragon mitts.

  Before she could let out another wave of force, Clara’s pain-etched voice rang out across the shattered gallery. “Anesthetic Blast!” Her Wander spit out a golden ball of starlight that streaked across the room and even though Alyra tried a last-ditch effort to pull free from me, I clamped down with all my draconic might, even though that caused the dragon slayer to cut into the side of my hand.