Harem Assassins : King Sekton's Harem Planet, Book 2: A Space Opera Harem Adventure Baron Sord (good books to read for adults .txt) 📖

You see, if you played modern realistic flight simulators like X-Plane or Microsoft Flight Simulator — or knew how to fly an actual plane — you knew your way around an instrument panel. After a while, you took the location of every dial and knob for granted. But if you think back to the very first time you looked at, say, the ten million dials, knobs, and gauges on a Boeing 737 flight deck, you’ll remember how confusing it all seemed. Information overload and a learning curve steeper than the Eiffel Tower.

Looking at the nearly infinite array of unfamiliar instruments that were the holographic control panel of this Dragonfire, I was reliving that exact experience.

Translation: I had no freaking idea what I was looking at.

Or where to look.

Or when.

These details mattered when you were flying. Flying was not like driving your car to and from work half-asleep first thing in the morning or after a long, stressful day when you could make the journey without any conscious thought, half asleep, and with one eye closed. Not even close. Flying a freaking fighter jet for a blackout bet required total focus and a thorough knowledge of not just maneuvering your machine, but your machine’s instruments. Wanna do an inside loop at low altitude without punching a hole in the ground? Damn well better keep one eye on your altimeter through the entire loop. Otherwise, Ka-BOOM! Someone call the Aircraft Rescue trucks.

I shook my head in anger, frustration, and nauseous fear.

How was I supposed to learn to fly this freaking thing in the next 10 minutes?

Not walk around the landing deck.

Fly.

Without crashing and burning.

Mira had mentioned an autopilot the other day, so I meant crashing and burning figuratively, not literally. No need for the fire trucks. Hopefully.

But still.

There was no conceivable way I could win my blackout bet with Mira.

Agreeing to it had been dumb, dumb, dumb.

Say it with me: So! Stupid!

Even stupider was the fact I’d completely forgotten about assassins.

That was what happened when your dick made a bet with a dangerous babe like First Lieutenant Mira.

—: Chapter 68 :—

“Boss!” shouted Kroach enthusiastically from the circular workstation pit on Hade’s warship. Kroach was a Gluglon from the swamp planet Gluglgh. Gluglons were a demonic, bloated, slimy, toad-like race that stank worse than they looked. Kroach wore studded black leather bestrewn with chains and ceramic armor plates, much of it glistening with slime. His bulbous, orange eyes blinked dramatically as he swallowed and called out in a bubbling voice, “Hey, Boss!”

“WHAT?!” Hade bellowed in irritation, his plasma tail sizzling and slashing the air behind his cybernoid rump. Until Kroach’s interruption, Hade had been heatedly discussing siege strategies with Vok Nyfe, in preparation for the upcoming attack on the Zalaxian jungle outpost.

Kroach croaked, “The king is on the roof!”

“He’s no king,” Hade grumbled.

“Uhhh…” Kroach hesitated a moment before saying, “Our spy reports he’s outside on their landing deck! Just climbed into a rig!”

“What kind of rig?”

“A Dragonfire. YX-37.”

“What is he doing with it?”

“Not a whole lot.”

“Then why are you telling me, you putrid pustule?!”

“Seems like he doesn’t know how to pilot it. Can’t even move the skrucking thing.”

“What?!” Hade said, perking up.

“He’s just standing there. Doing nothing.”

“Nothing, you say?”

“Yeah. Nothing.”

Hade knew his assassin was already in position at the outpost, secreted inside the jungle fortress like a cleverly-disguised Aught warrior seeking to sabotage the Naught army’s Cube Core while everyone else was looking the other way. Hade firmly believed there was little glory in such an underhanded attack — certainly no personal glory for Hade — but as his creator had said, the ultimate glory lay in victory by any means necessary.

“Kroach!” Hade barked. “Contact our assassin immediately!”

“Yes, Boss!” Kroach gurgled. “What should I tell them?”

“Tell them to…”

—: Chapter 69 :—

“Crown to Mira,” I grumbled over comms. “How do I know when my plasma swords are online? Out.”

“Mira to Crown, You won’t need them today. Out.”

“Oh, I will. I’m going to cut your mech in half before we do our bet. Out.”

Mira laughed in the comms window and looked sexy as hell doing it.

“Not funny,” I chuckled, trying to keep a positive frame of mind about my inability to figure out something as basic as turning on the rig’s reactor core without her having told me first.

“Did you want to pull out, my king?” She meant the bet, but she also meant the innuendo.

“Never,” I smirked with determination, meaning both the bet and the innuendo. “Let me run around for a few minutes on the deck, then we’ll bang out our bet.” And yes, I meant the innuendo.

“We don’t need a bet for that,” she teased.

“If you want to be my first, you do. Crown out.”

Having no idea what I was doing, I thought about walking.

Amazingly, the Dragonfire obeyed. One foot in front of the other, transitioning from step to step, moving smoothly forward like I’d been walking around in a YX-37 Dragonfire for 10,000 hours. No, my entire life. It felt that natural, that effortless. Thing was, I could feel it. It felt like I was walking on my own legs, not the mech’s legs. Mine.

“I’m walking!” I chuckled. “I can’t believe I’m walking!”

“Neither can I,” Mira snickered.

“No, I mean I can feel my legs moving and my feet touching the ground!” Curious, I retracted my visor and looked down at my own legs. They were stationary in a sitting position in the cockpit seat. But something was telling my brain I was standing and walking.

It was incredibly confusing.

Without warning, my mech suddenly stumbled and fell to its hands and knees on the landing deck. Inside the cockpit, my body weighed painfully against my harness straps because my seat was now facing straight down. Gravity pulled my hanging body hard against the straps. They cut sharply into my chest, shoulders, and waist. Realizing my legs were strapped in, I did my best to engage my legs, but that only partially removed the pressure on my chest. I grunted through