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

“That’s what I do,” Syx shrugged.

Captain Theia said, “She’s right, my king. It isn’t safe for you to go alone.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ve got my rings.”

“That won’t help you if those pirates use their weapon again.”

“I know. But you have to trust me. This time, they won’t know I’m coming. I’ll stay low to the ground. That’ll give me the element of surprise. Not them.”

“Is your plan to rely on your thermal camouflage, my king?”

“Wait,” I chuckled. “You’re telling me our armor has thermal camouflage built in?”

“Yes. But it’s not infallible. And their armor will have it too.”

“I thought so,” I snorted. “Look, I really appreciate your concern, Captain. But I’ll be fine. I’ll use my rings to make up the difference on my end, and I can scan for them in ways they can’t avoid, camouflaged or not. They’ll never know what hit them.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” I wasn’t 100% sure, but I wasn’t telling Theia that.

“I don’t like this, my king, but if you insist…”

“I do.”

Theia responded with a concerned frown. She had never looked more beautiful.

Resisting the urge to kiss her in front of the others, I turned to everyone and said, “Alright, ladies. I’ll be back shortly.”

“I—” Theia sighed and stopped herself, then said reluctantly, “Good luck, my king. And stay safe.”

“Thanks. I will. Don’t worry. I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.” I gave her hands a final squeeze with both of mine before starting into the jungle alone.

—: Chapter 113 :—

Activate thermal camo, I thought while walking.

The HUD in my power armor’s helmet visor flickered and a small transparent window appeared off to the side. It said:

THERMAL CAMO ON

ARMOR COOLING TO AMBIENT AIR TEMPERATURE…

COOLING…

COOLING…

Within three minutes, it had compensated for my body heat to the point my armor’s exterior closely matched the external air temperature, which was the usual jungle warm. My armor plates also took on a random pattern that emulated the visible colors and shapes of the surrounding plant life as illuminated by the purple moonlight. It was unlikely any pirates would spot me now, especially if I stayed low and kept quiet. Easy to do when your feet didn’t touch the ground and you POSITION-vectored yourself floating along only centimeters above the ground, and lying in a crawling position.

Using this approach, I hover-snaked my way through the jungle toward the pirates and their secret weapon.

I couldn’t think of a way for my rings to improve on thermal camouflage, so instead I instructed their ENERGY function to alert me to any energy waves heading in my direction. The point was to monitor the electromagnetic spectrum in my vicinity. Outside of magic, EM waves were the most effective way to detect anything at a distance. Whether you used low-frequency radio or micro waves, visible light, or high-frequency X-ray and gamma waves, you had to shoot a beam of electromagnetic energy at something, wait for it to bounce back to your position, and interpret the results.

For that reason, I instructed my rings to make all EM waves visible as a transparent overlay in my HUD. Despite this being a jungle, there were plenty of wave pulses emanating from overhead. None from the sun because it was night (unless you counted the sunlight bouncing off the moon), but plenty from what I assumed were Zalaxian Star Defense satellites or communication satellites.

The key for me was watching for regular, sweeping arcs traveling parallel to the ground and toward me from the position where I knew the pirates were situated. Such wave patterns would suggest the pirates were actively scanning the area with radar or lidar or some other form of EM scanning. In case they were, I turned on my Sphere of Absorption to swallow any incoming scanner waves. Between that and the movement of jungle beasts, bushes, and trees, and my low-down sneaky-snaking motion, it seemed unlikely the pirates would pick me out from the other signal noise. Presumably, the dense jungle would scatter most EM waves anyway, making detection difficult if not impossible.

On the off chance the pirates were using some form of artificial echo location, I had my rings make incoming sound waves visible in my HUD as well. This would warn me if pirates were sonically scanning and if any jungle denizens like Slasher Bats were aiming to eat me.

While I made my way toward the pirates, any carnivorous plants that tried to grab me or insects that tried to bite, burrow or sting me met an untimely end in the form of MASS extraction that I kept going in a tight 10 centimeter perimeter around my body. It added negligible fuel to my rings but kept the pests at bay.

After snaking a couple hundred meters through the dense jungle underbrush, I vectored myself up an increasingly steep hill, floating only centimeters above the terrain until I reached the relatively flat summit where the dense trees hid the pirates’ secret weapon from view.

I got a visual of four pirates standing guard and holding bolt rifles similar to the ones carried by Mace, Qrudge the Quadron, and Skok the Hyenok.

These four looked bored.

One of them was a space gorilla wearing heavier power armor than the others and holding a really big bolt rifle. I knew how dangerous space gorillas were. Another pirate was a man like Mace, also power armored. The third was a snaketaur: body of a snake with humanoid arms, but with scaly skin covering every square inch from his wedge-shaped rattlesnake head to the tips of his fingered hands and the rattle on his tail. The snaketaur was man-sized, larger if you factored in the long coiled tail on which he kept himself upright. I remembered Sirius once mentioning Serpentors. Was this a Serpentor? Who knew. The fourth pirate was some kind of humanoid dragon with what I could only describe as sapphire skin, like his skin was made of raw, uncut sapphire stones jammed together, or maybe like someone had cut open a blue geode