Harem Assassins : King Sekton's Harem Planet, Book 2: A Space Opera Harem Adventure by Baron Sord (mobi ebook reader .TXT) 📕

“I’m in the other trainer behind yours.”

I twisted in my seat and leaned over the armrest to look behind me. Sure enough, in the cockpit’s View Globe, another TX-37 was visible. I said, “Hey, Mira. Can you make our mech wave at Captain Theia?”

“I can, my king.”

I didn’t notice anything happening inside our mech, but Theia’s mech waved back a moment later.

I turned back to the comms window.

Captain Theia’s kryptonite green eyes shone with emotion. “I’m so glad you’re safe, my king.”

“I’m fine,” I smiled encouragingly. “Now, anyway.”

“We were so worried about you.”

“I was too,” I chuckled. “Any idea what happened? What was up with that Death Sphere?”

“Death Sphere?”

“It wasn’t a sphere?”

“We didn’t see any sphere,” Theia said. “Whatever it was that caged your Dragonfire started out as a double-ended pyramid, then it turned into a moving tube.”

“A tube?”

“Yes, my king. It followed you everywhere you went.”

“I’m not surprised,” I said grimly. “That matches up with what I saw when I was inside it. Wait, how did you see it? Was there video or something?”

“Yes, my king,” Theia said. “Video feed from the Star Defense satellites. Would you like to see it?”

“Yeah,” I said, curious. “That would be great.”

“I’ll have Control feed it to your mech. Theia to Control, please run video of the king’s capture to First Lieutenant Mira’s Dragonfire.”

Behind me, Mira said, “I’ll put it on a window for you.”

“Thanks,” I nodded.

The video showed my mech flying through space. It was rather small in the frame, presumably shot from a distant satellite camera. A few seconds into the video, a flash of colorful light whited out the screen. When the exposure had compensated for the brightness, I saw what looked like a mechanical octahedron, or eight-sided die, a d8 for you tabletop gamers. It was gigantic in relation to my missing mech. The surface of it was in a constant state of motion and transformation, much like the interior had been. It was clearly moving through space, and appeared to have matched my velocity. I had been going 11,000 m/s or thereabouts when it had trapped me. That it had appeared out of nowhere to surround me and match my velocity vector was downright astounding. Of course, I had learned days if not weeks ago that many things in this wide, wide universe often were.

“Can I fast-forward this?” I asked, glancing back at Mira. “Speed it up?”

“There should be a speed control in the corner of the window.”

“Thanks. I see it.” I increased the playback speed 4x.

It wasn’t long before a tube extended outward from the Deadly D8. That was me using my POSITION vector to attempt an escape. As the video progressed, my escape tube got longer and longer as I traveled through it. Eventually, the mass of the octahedral portion shrank and poured down the tube to chase after me. It wasn’t long before the d8 shape caught up with my position in its tube and expanded back to its original size: huge. No matter where I went in space thereafter, the octahedral mass surrounded me.

When I sped up the video to 15x, I got to the portion where I tried doing a MASS extraction with my rings. At that point, a small sphere of metal ballooned out from one triangular facet of the Deadly D8. The little bulge was barely noticeable, but it reminded me of the scale. The Death Die — there’s an unintentionally redundant name for you — was pretty damn gigantic. No wonder it had taken so long for me to burn away all its mass as helium gas. This Death Die could give the Death Star a run for its money.

As the video progressed, the size of the Death Die got smaller and smaller in the frame as I prodded it zig-zagging farther and farther away from Zalaxia and the Star Defense satellite cameras. I figured out the zoom control on the video window, but the Death Die became increasingly pixelated with distance. Too bad. I would’ve liked to see the final moments more clearly when the last of its mass was finally transformed into helium gas.

I’d have to imagine it.

Toward the end, when I’d still been trapped inside the Death Die, I hadn’t been paying much attention to what was going on outside my Steel Cocoon escape pod.

I sat back and sighed.

“Did you see it?” Captain Theia asked from her comms window.

“Yup.”

“I’m sorry you had to endure that alone, my king.”

“It’s fine,” I said dismissively. It wasn’t. I had no doubt the PTSD nightmares would be waiting for me when I climbed into bed tonight. Trapped in a deadly Death Die. Fun stuff.

“I should have been there with you, my king,” Theia said apologetically.

“It’s best you weren’t,” I grumbled. “Then both of us would’ve been trapped inside.”

“I could have protected you.”

“Maybe so, but that thing was…” Terrifying, I thought. “It’s best you weren’t there.”

She nodded solemnly.

“Hey, any idea where that thing came from?” I asked. “Who or what might have trapped me?”

“My sincerest apologies, my king. We do not. Control attempted to trace back to an origin point, but they found nothing.”

“Does anybody know what it was?”

“No, my king.”

“It wasn’t from the CyberKnights, was it?”

“Someone suggested that, but we don’t know.”

“That’s annoying,” I snorted.

“It’s more than annoying,” Theia said seriously. “It’s a global security threat to the throne and your safety.”

“Tell me about it,” I smirked rhetorically.

“Wouldn’t you rather take your mind off things for now? You’ve been through a lot.”

“It was an expression. Don’t you ladies say tell me about it?”

“We do,” Theia said, “but when the King of Zalaxia says tell him about it, we don’t question it. We tell him.”

“Right,” I sighed. “Sorry. I keep forgetting things were different around here before I came along. It’s been a long day. Anyway, you’re right. Moving on to a less stressful topic, how come you aren’t piloting your own Dragonfire?”

“I’m not a trained pilot, my king. My sincerest apologies. If I was, I could have—”

“No. Trust me.