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

90-degree turns like Light Cycles in the first Tron movie (or console arcade game), but I could make incredibly sharp turns the medieval missiles couldn’t match.

For the next several minutes, while making insanely evasive maneuvers, I tried to ignore the fact I was floating somewhere in unknown space, and Theia was cutoff from comms, leaving me completely alone. My ring fuel was holding strong, still above 12 on the top of the fuel clock, which meant more than half a tank remained. The down side to my insane maneuvering was it did consume large amounts of ring fuel.

Better than being dead.

That said, the idea of being stuck out here permanently without Captain Theia — or anybody else — to keep me company sounded miserable. Never seeing my Bombshells again — Oia, Venus, Cygna, and Sirius — sounded twice as miserable. And to think, I had left a perfectly good life on Earth specifically to live mine out with them on Zalaxia. Yet here I was without them, dodging medieval missiles shot from a Space Pyramid, and impossibly far from anything I could rightly call home.

Bubbling up from my imagination were a series of historical stories about explorers who got lost in the Arctic, lost in the Himalayas, lost on the Oregon Trail, lost in the Panamanian jungle, lost in the Yukon, or lost in the Sahara desert, never to return because they succumbed to the elements or other unexpected dangers, dying miserably, starving and alone.

Fun stuff.

Thinking about it, for all I knew, that Chaos Gate had already been shut down by the CyberKnights, trapping me here for eternity. And for all I knew, they didn’t give a damn about the white CyberKnight, and he didn’t have a Chaos Key, or whatever device he needed to open the Chaos Gate from the Zalaxian side.

With me potentially trapped here forever, and in possession of the True Ring of Zalaxia — the prize they sought — they’d wear me down until I had no energy left to fight. Then they could pluck both rings from my frozen fingers while my corpsicle floated through space. Of course, the white polar bear demon with the plasma circ saw would be pissing on my Red Dawn bumper sticker while the other demons stripped both rings from my ice cube fingers. Then they’d reopen the Chaos Gate at their convenience, and go claim the Zalaxian throne for themselves.

Stupid me.

I should’ve made a plan.

Focus, Tim.

Eyes on the prize, good buddy.

Don’t be your own worst enemy.

Be like Bear Grylls on Man vs. Wild. Or John Rambo in First Blood. Stay tough. No matter what happens, you’ll get through this. Who needs a survival knife when you can make freaking food and water with your ring? Or make a freaking survival knife? Or a gun? Or power armor?

Plenty of mass down on the Space Pyramid to convert to ring fuel as needed.

You’ll be fine.

Easy to say, tougher to do when the crushing isolation of infinite space surrounded you like an eternal abyss and these strange constellations offered no comfort.

Still dodging green gargoyle missiles, I pushed my unproductive thoughts away and continued adjusting my POSITION vectors to circle me around the Space Pyramid.

Focus on that marvel.

With the pyramid planetoid’s irregular mass, establishing a smooth orbit based on gravitational pull wasn’t happening. I was constantly powering my turn, which was fine. It meant I had to stay focused. So did the green X’s in my ring HUD radar showing clusters of green space demons — and an army of green CyberSoldiers, presumably — slowly rising up from the glowing green surface.

Their arrival meant I had been right: every denizen of the 4-Color Space Pyramid was mobilizing to come get me. My strategy going forward was obvious. Stay one step ahead of them, get to the asteroid Theia mentioned, the one that held the Chaos Gate projector, set a time bomb (which I didn’t have), and do it without anyone noticing — ha! — then get my ass through the gate before it closed. No problem, right?

This was doable, right?

I chuckled to myself.

It would be if I had a semi-trailer full of C-4 — heck, I’d take fertilizer — and a timed detonator. But I didn’t have anything except my power armor and rings.

What was that famous Shakespeare saying from Richard III?

“A bomb, a bomb, my kingdom for a bomb.”

Or something like that.

Question was, could I build an IED using my rings alone?

I was going to try.

—: Chapter 39 :—

Let’s see…

How to make a bomb…

With no ingredients…

And no tools…

While floating in space.

I knew I could convert ring fuel into tangible mass and shape it however I wanted. That was half the battle right there, Lightfoot. For those not in the know, Lightfoot was G.I. JOE’s first explosives expert.

I also knew the chemical formula for nitroglycerin by heart. It consisted of only carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. I could build the chemical model with my eyes closed. I could draw the atomic nuclei of each element and their electron configurations in my sleep. In fact, instead of counting sheep to put myself to sleep some nights, I would instead model molecules in my imagination. I knew them so well, I usually started sawing logs before I got to the third row of the periodic table.

Problem was, pure nitro was incredibly sensitive. If you so much as looked at it the wrong way, it was liable to explode in your face. Ask Lightfoot.

For safe handling, nitro needed stabilization and/or desensitization.

Best way to do that?

Mix it with stabilizing materials.

Or cool it to zero degrees Celsius.

Space was colder than that, 2.7 Kelvin on average. Floating out here orbiting the Space Pyramid, I had plenty of spare space to go around.

The real problem was the timed detonator.

Although I could easily imagine the circuit diagram necessary to construct a timed detonator, I didn’t have the necessary microchips memorized, or the chemical makeup of the resistors, or the capacitors, etc. Not even close. I’d be better off with a