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

In my HUD, a 3D diagram appeared. Each articulated segment, and the blinking metal rhombus device, had an arrangement of prongs that sank about 20 cm — 8 inches — into Titano’s thick, red-purple hide. It wasn’t deep enough to reach bone or any major blood vessels. Well, at Titano’s size, a capillary was bigger around than most people’s femoral arteries, but the metal prongs fell well short of his capillaries.

Using my ring’s POSITION function, I vectored the metal rhombus slowly up and out of Titano’s hide. It didn’t make any movie sound effects of crunching cabbage heads or slimy farting noises. It did make some snagging noises, and some clicking metal noises as the rhombus detached from the spine, but nothing overly dramatic.

The dramatic thing the rhombus did do upon removal was suddenly shrink in size from 4 or 5 meters in diameter to the size of a small dinner plate.

That startled me and Kane.

“You ever see anything shrink like that, Sergeant?” I asked.

“Never,” Kane said.

When it didn’t explode, I vectored it to my hands and grabbed it, flipping it over, turning it this way and that.

“I wonder what it is?” I asked, holding it up. I noticed the rhombus rotated independent of the circular base. “You ever see something like this, Sergeant? It almost seems like a com—”

“Get that the skruck away from me!” Sergeant Kane barked over comms, pointing her big blaster rifle at my face while rocketing backward a few meters, but keeping a steady bead on me.

Captain Theia screamed over comms, “Stand down, Sergeant! Lower your weapon or we will open fire!”

I looked over my shoulder to see a hemisphere of 51 Shock Knights behind and above me, their wrist blasters trained on Kane. They didn’t have ABR-17’s from the armory because we had returned ours hours ago, after we’d come back from the Terrorsaur attack. But 51 pairs of wrist blasters to Kane’s single rifle were not good odds for Sergeant Kane.

At that moment, I didn’t care who won this firefight. I was pissed at everybody and snarled, “Do you always have to jam your hand up my ass, Captain Theia? I’ve known you, what, half a day? And every time I turn around, it’s like you’ve got me on a leash like I’m a mindless child or your fucking flesh puppet!” Oddly, I was suddenly furious.

“My king,” Theia said carefully, “we’re here to protect you, nothing more.”

“I get it!” I shouted over comms. “But it’s like you’re my overprotective mom all of a sudden and you’re crying buckets because you’re worried I’ll skin my knee! Back off already! And you too, Kane! Get that gun out of my face before I make you eat it!”

Kane bristled over comms, “I’d like to see you try, you worthless skrucking slave!” She pulled her big rifle tighter into her shoulder and racked some kind of bolt. The barrel tip instantly glowed with bright light and whined like it was charging for a big blast. “How about I blow a hole in your chest? That’ll take the wind right out your sails!”

“SERGEANT!” Captain Theia screamed over comms. “STAND DOWN OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE!”

What the heck was happening? I never got this mad at people, certainly not after we’d fought a battle together. Kane was on my side. Why was I so damn angry all of a sudden?

My gaze dropped to the blinking metal rhombus device in my hands.

“It’s this!” I shouted over comms. “Some kind of emotional agitator! Stand back!” I vectored it flying into the red dirt a good 50 meters away from me, Kane, and Titano.

My rage quickly faded. “Sergeant Kane, what’s your status? Are you still angry?”

“Less pissed,” she snorted over comms and relaxed her rifle slightly. She manually disengaged the bolt, causing the barrel’s glow and whine to die down slowly. “Was that thing making us crazy?”

“Sure seems like it,” I said. “Captain Theia, I think you can relax.”

“Not until the sergeant lowers her weapon, my king,” Theia said.

“Kane,” I said, “lower your rifle.”

“You got it, my king,” Kane said amiably, and pointed the barrel downward to the side.

I said, “Is that better, Captain?”

Captain Theia replied, “We’ll keep our eyes on her for now, my king.”

Her and the Shock Knights kept their wrist blasters trained on Sergeant Kane, but the barrels went from starring with energy to dark.

“Perfect. Hey, Kane. We need to take that agitator thing back to the lab. But we should disarm it first. So it doesn’t cause a riot. I hate to think what would happen if this thing was in the center of a crowded room.”

“A free-for-all brawl,” Kane chortled.

“Probably,” I chuckled. “Do we have anyone around here who can disarm this thing without breaking it?”

“A technician, maybe? But if it makes us mad, won’t it make them mad?”

“Good point. Maybe I should disarm it. Give me a second. Oh, hey, Captain Theia?”

“Yes, my king?” Theia said promptly.

“Sorry about blowing up at you, Captain,” I said. “What I said was completely out of line. It was this agitator thingamajig.”

“Same here,” Kane cut in, speaking to me. “Me too. Sorry and stuff. My king.”

I snickered to myself about at her bare-minimum of an apology, then returned my focus to Theia. “Captain, I didn’t mean to shout at you. You were doing an excellent job. Thank you.”

Theia said, “You don’t need to thank me, my king. Or apologize. I will always protect you, no matter how angry you may be. It’s my duty.”

“Thanks, Theia. I mean it. But I like to think my duty is to treat you with the respect you deserve at all times.”

“Yes, my king,” she said coldly, her face stern and professional in the comms window.

“The same respect you show me,” I added.

“That isn’t necessary, my king.”

“Yeah it is,” I said firmly but gently. “Respect given earns respect in return. I mean, that’s how a good man would behave, right?”

“Yes, my king.” Theia offered a warm smile that wiped away her restrained