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

of a jet like this YX-37 was unreal. Flying through space in power armor was one thing. I’d done that twice already. But it was nothing compared to this. I literally had a rocket under my ass. Technically two if you counted both engines. I glanced at the altimeter again.

88,200 meters.

That was a whopping 289,370 feet.

Past the mesosphere and into the thermosphere.

The bucking turbulence was entirely gone, but the engines hadn’t stopped kicking behind my back like rodeo bulls.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Zalaxia still massive behind me. That was to be expected with my mech less than 100 km above the surface. Even so, the planet’s horizon was breathtakingly beautiful and curved around me in every direction. There was an intensely vibrant band of purple circling the planet between it and the edge of space.

Amazing.

And I was still gaining altitude.

At the rate I was going, I’d hit the exosphere in no time.

Next stop, space.

I had to smile.

What was not to love about space?

It wasn’t all space pirates all the time. That was statistically impossible.

Even I knew that.

—: Chapter 78 :—

“You always say Technomancy, Nyfe,” grumbled a very exasperated Hade. “Can you be more specific? Please? For the sake of my cybernetic sanity?”

Before Vok Nyfe could reply, Qwayk the chief gunner blurted, “Boss! The king left Zalaxia’s thermosphere and he’s entering the exosphere! He’s out there all alone!”

“This may be our best chance!” Hade’s eyes sizzled with white hot hope and hatred. They followed the golden blip representing Tim Pittwell’s YX-37 on the holographic window floating above Hade’s dais. Tim’s blip hurtled away from Zalaxia at high speed. “The Zalaxian True Ring is almost in my grasp!” Hade clutched one armored gauntlet into an emphatic fist. His Killhounds barked approvingly without knowing why they were barking. Hade silenced them with violent yanks on their chains and said excitedly, “What say you, Nyfe? How do you propose we capture the royal ring from here?”

“By projecting a Technomantic Labyrinth around the Dragonfire,” Nyfe replied.

“A Technomantic Labyrinth?” Hade wondered, hiding his ignorance because he had never heard of such a thing.

Vok Nyfe tipped a slight nod.

Hade knew he wouldn’t get a better explanation from the ever-cryptic Nyfe, so he asked, “Do you have a Technomantic Labyrinth readily available?”

Vok Nyfe nodded again.

“Here on this warship?”

Another nod.

“Then show us, Nyfe. Show me this Technomantic Labyrinth of yours and show me what it can do. Quickly. Before time runs out.”

—: Chapter 79 :—

“Mira to Crown,” she called out over comms. “You win.”

“Wait, what?” I chuckled. “I didn’t realize the bet had started.”

“Are you joking?” she snorted.

“No. Where are you? Did I pass you?”

“Yes. You left me behind at 10,000 meters.” Mira sounded sick and looked even worse in her comms window.

“Have you cut your engines yet?”

“Yes. When I hit 20,000 meters. I couldn’t take any more G’s than that.”

“20,000 meters? That’s it?”

“What do you mean, that’s it?” she scowled nauseously. “I did 10 G’s for almost 20 seconds. My vision was tunneling and I almost blacked out before I eased off the throttle.”

“Wait, how fast have I been accelerating? I still haven’t found the gauge.”

“20 G’s for over 30 seconds. And you’re still going.”

“Twenty G’s?” I snorted in disbelief.

“Yes, twenty.”

“Only 30 seconds?”

“Only,” she laughed sourly.

“It seemed a lot longer than that.”

“I feel the same way,” she said sickly.

“Wow.” I knew that Blue Angels pilots frequently sustained multiple 3-5 second bursts of 10 G acrobatics during a single air show performance. Mira had done quite well for herself pulling 10 G’s for 20 continuous seconds.

But me doing 30 seconds at twenty freaking G’s? No Earth pilot had ever done that outside of a centrifuge fitted with an acceleration couch — a bed mounted transverse to the axis of acceleration — and probably never would. It was too dangerous… without a king’s ring or two.

Just to put it into perspective, the fastest vertical climb rate of any supersonic fifth-generation fighter jet back on Earth — there’s ongoing debate about whose jet is fastest — is in the range of 65,000 feet per minute. Feet. Not meters. Feet.

If I continued at 20 G’s for an entire minute, I’d crack past 1,150,000 feet. Over seventeen times faster than a Eurofighter Typhoon or any other fifth-gen jet on Earth when I’d left.

17x.

Seventeen times faster.

Whispered so quiet you can barely hear it: seventeen.

“Wow,” I snickered to myself. “Freaking wow. Are you telling me I’ve been accelerating twice as fast as you this entire time?”

“Yes,” Mira grumbled. “You can stop showing off. I said you win.”

“Win?” I chuckled. “I’m still trying to get my bearings. I haven’t even—” I stopped short when I saw myself passing a freaking satellite in the distance. It twinkled against the blackness of space, sun rays lancing off it in bright diamond beams.

When I glanced at my altitude?

415,000 meters and climbing.

Over 1,360,000 feet.

You read that right. The thing about acceleration was, like accrued interest on financial investments with a high ROI, your distance travelled compounded crazy fast as time went on.

I thought, okay, better slow down. Cut afterburners and throttle back engines.

The cannon-barrage of afterburners at my back starting fading.

I hadn’t come up here to go racing blindly into the infinite unknown.

Who was I kidding?

That was exactly why I came up here!

Space was the perfect place to fly the shit out of this YX-37 Dragonfire without ramming it into the ground. In fact, I couldn’t think of a safer place to learn the limits of this badass bird.

—: Chapter 80 :—

A million kilometers distant from Zalaxia, in the middle of empty space, a green beam of light suddenly appeared, pouring out from nowhere.

Hade’s shifted warship was invisible to the naked eye, but the interior of the ship’s hangar bay was not. As the bay door whirred open, anyone looking could have seen Vok Nyfe’s personal Interceptor starcraft lowering from the hangar.

The liquid metal hull of the long, blade-shaped Interceptor was in a constant state of transformation, much like Vok Nyfe’s Technomantic staff.

Hade was crammed