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

Collection Disc had that mystical miniature vibe I always loved when flying at low altitudes, whether flying over rainforest jungles here on Zalaxia or concrete jungles back home on Earth.

I did a slow loop around the Disc. It was massive. 10 kilometers in diameter, if I had to guess. The surprise was, it wasn’t a solid dish of metal or poured concrete resting on the plateau. It was a big grid of wire strips forming a repeating pattern of adjoining hexagons attached to a frame resting on a series of support posts that held the entire “disc” about 2 meters above the ground.

Attached to it were a series of relay cable towers carrying long, drooping electrical lines running from the Collection Disc and down the sides of the mountain plateau to a ring of small buildings at the bottom.

“What are those buildings?” I asked.

Mira said, “Collection Stations.”

“Do you know what they do?”

“I believe they transfer power from the disc and send it to base or back to the Royal Kingdom. If you ask a tech, they’ll know the details.”

“Awesome. Thanks.”

The Collection Stations were small hexagonal buildings. Those fed more power lines to the Main Relay Station. I recognized the MRS from that surveillance video shot from ground-level by Hydra, the same late night video that showed a spy snooping around, the spy that Lieutenant Dyna claimed was Corporal Syx.

That debacle aside, the MRS reminded me of electrical substations back on Earth, but with hexagonal buildings. Otherwise, the MRS had the same familiar elements that were part of any power grid substation: incoming lines, lightning and surge arresters, air and oil breaker switches, step-down transformers, voltage regulators, switchgear, cutout switches, outgoing distribution lines, the works. Nothing looked identical to what I knew from Earth, but everything was close enough to be recognizable.

Satisfied with my bird’s eye tour, I flew the Dragonwing back to the outpost at a leisurely pace. When our airspeed dropped low enough, I transformed back to mech configuration and flew the mech in standing position, hovering over the red dirt clearing outside the perimeter walls, and over to the landing deck where I aimed to touch down in the landing area.

“Do you want me to land, my king?” Mira asked.

“I can probably do it. With VTOL, it’s ten times easier than sticking a rolling landing on a runway.”

“As you wish.”

“Wait, am I missing something? Is it harder than I realize?”

“Not with autopilot. I’m sure you’ll manage.”

The landing zone was marked off with a painted yellow hexagon with an X in the center, and covered with scorch marks.

Someone from the ground crew stood just outside the landing area, waving their arms and marshalling me in.

“Do you know the Zalaxian hand signals?” Mira asked.

“No.”

“They’re fairly obvious. You’ll figure it out.”

She was right. With my 360 view, I could see the X directly beneath my mech’s feet. The marshaller waving me in was almost unnecessary. When the TX-37 touched down gently on the exact center, and settled onto its mechanized joints, I felt a combination of exhilaration and euphoria.

The marshaller waved me over to the side.

“What do I do now?” I asked.

Mira said, “She wants you to follow her signals and walk to a parking space.”

“Got it.”

I walked the Dragonwing to stand beside a bunch of other parked mechs and powered down its reactor core. The turbines whined down. My smile grew wider and wider in direct proportion to the drop in turbine pitch.

“That was fun,” I grinned over my shoulder. After two hours of flying with Mira offering pointers, I’d nearly forgotten about getting trapped inside the D8 Death Die. If not for that deadly side quest, I would’ve called this the best day ever. As it was, flying a supersonic fighter jet while getting pointers from a hot blonde flight instructor like Mira wasn’t the worst way to spend a few hours.

“It was fun,” Mira said. “But not half as fun as if I’d won our bet.” She bit her lower lip and arched a seductive eyebrow.

“Tell me about it,” I chortled, feeling somewhat disappointed about the outcome myself.

Hopefully nobody would try to kill me in the next ten days, not until after I’d had sex one last time with Oia, then Venus, and maybe Mira here. If I was lucky.

Ha!

No, seriously. Ha.

Because Lady Luck and I were no longer on speaking terms, and I wasn’t counting on making it another ten days. I was hoping, but not counting.

And don’t you say a damn thing, Bill Shakespeare.

—: Chapter 92 :—

Crackfang the flying Terrorsaur was murderously furious.

He’d been raging since those hume-ants had slaughtered half his family during their dinner hunt a few moons ago. One hume-ant in particular would not stop biting at Crackfang’s thoughts.

The male.

Crackfang had never smelled a male hume-ant before.

But he understood the scent immediately.

Crackfang’s kind tolerated the female hume-ants, but a male meant trouble. The male must be killed.

“Gu-Gu-Gu-Gu-GOOOOCK!” he squawked his pent up wrath as he beat his blue-black wings inside the nestcave where the remainder of his family lived. “Gu-GOOOOOCK!”

His family was still asleep.

It was night and time to hunt.

They must wake.

“Gock! Gock! Goooooock!” Crackfang charged his younger brothers, beating his wings and whipping up leftover bone debris from long dead prey.

“Gack, gack, gack!” his youngest brother screeched sleepily, eyes closed. Then he buried his wedge-shaped Terrorsaur head beneath a wing to sleep more.

“Gock GOOOOCK!” Crackfang pecked relentlessly at his youngest brother and his other brothers until they all flapped awake and screamed their resentment. Crackfang pecked them awake, chasing them around the nestcave, hopping over big rocks and small, jumping from rockspikes on the rocky floor to rockspikes hanging from the cavesky, flapping his mighty wings until every hunting male was awake. Then he woke his hunting sisters the same way.

The elders and hatchlings he left alone.

Crackfang came to rest in the center of the nestcave.

His siblings circled around him, furious from being woken and ready to tear him apart for food.

Crackfang stretched to his full height, beating his wings so