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

“Hydra’s mom?”

“Tiamat is Hydra’s mother?” Theia said uncertainly.

“Tiamat?” I snorted. “That’s her name?”

“Yes. Is she Hydra’s parent system?”

“That’s what Hydra said.”

“I can’t speak to the intricacies of mainbrain engineering and development, my king. But I can speak to handling Hydra. I’ll worry about her. You have enough to worry about with finding your missing friend.” She meant Violet. “I hope we find her tonight.”

“Me too,” I sighed.

“I understand why you keep her a secret from the other guardswomen, my king. But you might be surprised by how the women would react if they knew you never gave up on your friend, and continue to risk your life for her sake.”

“Even though she’s a Xeno Jungle Rat?” I said sourly.

“Even then.”

“What about the Normals?”

“Who?” Theia frowned.

“That’s what I’m calling the Zalaxian women who aren’t Xenos, the Conks or whatever they’re called,” I said equally sourly because I didn’t like the terms Xeno or Conk, but they were the ones everyone knew. I realized the term Normals was a reasonable replacement for Conk, but I wasn’t about to suggest we call women like Syx “Monsters” because that hardly sounded reasonable. It sounded degrading. Didn’t matter I liked Monster babes on general principles. That was why I didn’t explain my private terminology to Theia. And, Syx was flying fairly close. I didn’t want to accidentally offend her. The Normals treated her badly enough already.

Syx overheard anyway and snorted, “Normals? That’s too nice a word for Conks.”

A random Shock Knight said, “Permission to speak freely, my king?”

“Go for it,” I said.

“I’m a Conk,” she said, directing her comment toward Syx.

“So am I,” said another Shock Knight, sounding slightly surly and also tossing her comment in Syx’s direction.

“Well, I’m not,” Syx snarled, sounding slightly jealous. “And proud of it,” she added, sounding slightly defensive.

That started several Shock Knights grumbling, but not all.

“Ladies,” Theia warned sternly.

“Captain Theia is right,” I said loud enough for everyone to hear. “Help me out here, ladies. Aren’t there more polite terms than Xenos and Conks?”

Nobody offered an answer.

The reason was obvious. Once you started drawing social distinctions that implied a status hierarchy, there would always be bitterness between those on top and those on the bottom, and the insulting labels were inevitable but infinitely flexible. Even if I outlawed the terms Xeno and Conk, new ones would pop up to replace them.

“My king!” hollered a random Shock Knight, startling everyone. “I see nine bipedal lifeforms up ahead!”

“Zalaxian women?”

“Difficult to say at this range! They’re moving beneath the canopy!”

“Are you sure?!” I gasped in happy surprise, immediately imagining Violet and her tribe of Jungle Babes jogging through the dark foliage below, their lithe limbs moving effortlessly as they parkoured their way gymnastically and gracefully through the unforgiving jungle terrain.

“Yes! They’re—!”

VWEEEEEEEEE!

The loudest, most piercing sound I’d ever heard hit me and apparently every other guardswoman at the same time. We all recoiled in pain, slapping our gauntlets over our ears despite the automatic gain limiters and padded insulation in our helmets. The sound was so loud, it cut right through our helmet material.

Next came a powerful pulse of red energy rippling around us in a long, brightly flickering red tunnel.

Suddenly, my visor HUD and my ring HUD both went dark, as did my power armor thrusters. Then, my armor retracted into my ring, leaving me naked. The same thing happened to the Shock Knights. With slow horror, every single one of us dropped naked from the night sky. Arms and legs pinwheeling in a frantic attempt to prevent the inevitable, we nonetheless plummeted toward the dark purple jungle below.

My last thought before I crashed into it?

I hoped it was softer than it looked.

—: Chapter 100 :—

While the excruciatingly loud sound—

VWEEEEEEEEE!

—scrambled my thoughts and pierced my eardrums, I couldn’t think clearly enough to activate my ring’s POSITION vector. Like everyone else, down I went, crashing through branches, banging, bouncing and breaking them off along the way.

When I finally hit the ground, I hit hard.

OOF!

I lay there feeling like I’d broken my entire body. Been there, done that. I moved my legs experimentally. They worked. So did my arms. Neck worked too. In my book, that made this crash landing a win. I had suffered much worse when the Artemis had hit Zalaxia several days ago, and the ship had gone tumbling down the side of a mountain before I was thrown clear and left paralyzed from the waist down.

This was nothing.

I stood up slowly, half-expecting my legs to give out.

They didn’t.

They were sore, so was the rest of me, but I could move.

In the near distance, a few female moans of pain were audible. Some of the Shock Knights were hurt. I wanted to check in with everyone on comms, but my armor was gone. Leaving me freaking naked and without comms or anything else. I considered shouting, but I knew there were nine bipedal lifeforms out there who had most likely shot us out of the sky with some kind of sonic weapon or whatever that was. Not that it mattered.

As for who had shot it?

For all I knew, it could be Violet’s tribe.

They might easily view me and my Shock Knights as enemy intruders in their jungle. Although Violet and I had established a powerful emotional and sexual connection, it was possible she had never made it back to her tribe to regale them with stories about how fantastic I was. Her tribeswomen might not know I wasn’t the bad guy, wasn’t the old King Sekton. For all I knew, every Jungle Babe on Zalaxia still thought I was the asshole king who had preceded me, and they wanted me dead, the sooner the better.

“My king!” Theia hissed in the purple darkness from a short distance away.

“Where are you?!” I hissed back, unable to see anything.

Something brushed past my ankles in the darkness and it wasn’t Captain Theia.

My imagination said it was a black boa constrictor with six evil eyes, it