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

my armor and repair any wiring necessary, or attempt to simply project light photons from my rings using the ENERGY function — hadn’t ever tried that, didn’t know if it would work or not — the Air Guard mechs angled directly toward me. They must have seen me on scanners.

What a freaking relief.

Seeing a bunch of YX-37 Dragonfires coming to save my ass was both awe inspiring and slightly terrifying. Nearly forty of them surrounded me, their menacing mech heads glaring at me stoically, all of them holding their 30mm Kurkullan RG66 Destroyer rifles at the ready.

“Guys?” I said for my own benefit. “It’s me. Tim. Tim Pittwell. The acting king?”

They didn’t reply with their loudspeakers because, space.

If they used comms, I couldn’t hear them because, dead power armor.

One larger mech hovered toward me. It resembled a Dragonfire, but the chest was larger and it was taller than the others.

I readied myself for anything because I didn’t know who was piloting these mechs. Assassins? Likely. It had become a morbid running joke that half the universe wanted me dead, and the other half was rooting them on. Here in deep space was the perfect place to assassinate someone without attracting attention. And because space was inherently dangerous. All it would take was for this big mech to skewer me with its plasma sword and cook me like a kebab. Or light up the 30mm Destroyer. A few rounds from that and there’d be nothing left of me but space debris.

I swallowed the baseball-sized wad of cotton clogging my throat.

In complete silence, the six chest-hatch segments of the big mech slowly opened, revealing a larger cockpit than I expected. It had two seats. The power-armored person in the rear seat floated over it, weightless. Based on the armor’s feminine contours it was clearly a woman.

Friend or foe was still unknown.

She pushed out and sailed gracefully across the short distance between me and her mech. After she closed the gap, her power armor thrusters lit up silently in short, controlled puffs that slowed her to a stop in front of me.

Her face was hidden behind the badass visor of her power armor. I couldn’t tell who it was. She extended a gauntleted hand, fingers splayed.

I was supposed to grab it. I reached out for it and hesitated. After the day I’d had, I had every right to be reluctant.

She extended her other hand and tapped her helmet with her index finger, pointed at my helmet with a tapping motion, then tapped her helmet again.

I got it. Touch helmets to conduct sound.

She extended both hands again.

I nodded and reached out for hers. Her gauntlets closed around mine and pulled me slowly closer to her until we were able to gently place our helmets together.

CLACK!

I winced in anticipation of the crack of glass followed by explosive decompression, but not to worry. I didn’t have a fishbowl visor like an astronaut. I had rugged power armor.

Muffled and barely audible, I heard her say loudly, “My king! It’s Lieutenant Mira! Are you injured?!”

“No!” I hollered.

“Good! Let’s get you inside my rig!”

“Yeah!”

“Wait until I tell you the cockpit pressurizes before you take your helmet off! Do you understand?!”

“Yeah!” I squeezed her gauntlets. “Copy that! Wait until you signal pressurization is complete!”

Our hands still clasped, she used her armor thrusters to pull me back into the big mech. I could’ve used my ring POSITION vectoring to do it, but this worked too. Mira went in first, pulling herself floating through the open hatch. I followed and situated myself by hand. Maneuvering in zero G’s was an amusing experience no matter what the occasion.

Once we were both in our seats, the six sections of hatch closed. At first, the spherical walls of the cockpit were blank, then the view outside the mech flickered on. I could see the other mechs and the distant stars.

After about two minutes, I felt a tap on my shoulder and saw Mira’s un-visored face peering at me, her helmet still on.

“We’re pressurized,” she said, her voice muffled, likely because my power armor’s external mics and internal speakers were dead. But I heard her.

I mentally retracted my helmet. No surprise, it didn’t retract. Presumably there was a manual method to remove a power armor helmet when its battery was dead, but I did a MASS extraction of the visor instead. “I just realized something.”

“Is something wrong?” Mira gasped.

“Oh, sorry. No. Everything’s fine. It’s good to see you, Lieutenant.”

Her expression warmed, “It’s good to see you too, my king. We should get you back to base.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Mira busied herself behind me and said, “Mira to Control. Crown is secure. I repeat, Crown is secure. We’re heading back now.”

I heard our reactor core wind up, and felt the mech start to move and saw the other mechs gather around ours in a protective spherical phalanx.

I said, “Hey, Mira. What kind of mech is this?”

“TX-37 Dragonwing. It’s a trainer.”

“Nice. Wait,” I snorted. “A trainer?! Are you saying I could’ve learned to fly in a trainer instead of jumping straight into a Dragonfire by myself?”

“What fun would that be?” Mira quipped.

I glared at her over my shoulder.

She smiled back, winked shamelessly, and said, “Baby birds learn to fly without trainers. They get pushed from the nest.”

“Baby birds have wings. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t.”

“With your rings you do.”

“Not the same thing,” I smirked.

She smiled. Focused on her holographic windows. Said, “My king?”

“Yeah?” I grumbled. “Are you going to apologize for not training me on a trainer before making a blackout bet with me? Which you lost, by the way?”

“Captain Theia wants to talk to you.”

“Oh. How do we do that?”

“I’ll put her on for you.”

A holographic comms window appeared floating in front of my face. Captain Theia’s full-size face was visible. It almost looked like she was right in front of me, the resolution was so high and the colors so vibrant.

“My king!” Theia gasped gratefully. “You’re safe!”

“Safe enough,” I chuckled, happy to see her.