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

situation disastrous. We were effectively flanked. It would take everything we had just to stop Titano. But if we did that, the pirates hidden in the jungle would slaughter us. No matter which front we fought in this two-front war, we were screwed.

Unless I vectored Titano upward and out of play. That would take him off the field of battle. I had to try. It was the fastest solution.

I shouted over comms, “I’ll handle the trax! Everyone else get the pirates! Crown is on the trax! Everyone else fight pirates!”

Both my rings immediately heated to burning on my ring fingers. Power surged through my body and whipped invisibly out toward Titano. I was going to lift him off the ground even if the energy transfer killed me. Yes, it hurt. Like burning gasoline in my veins. Transferring this much energy through my body always did.

I grunted.

I growled.

I hissed in agony.

I watched to see if Titano was lifting upward as he lumbered toward the outpost. Horror hit me when I realized I now needed to lift Titano not just 30 meters for his talons to clear the ground, but an additional 30 meters for them to clear the roofs of every outpost building. Some of them were quite tall.

Double the distance!

Impossible.

We were fucked now.

I didn’t have time to calculate or even guesstimate whether or not a horizontal vector arrow — instead of the vertical lifting arrow — would push Titano off course and away from the outpost, or if it would merely send him tripping and stumbling onto the outpost. A deflection was too risky.

Up was the only option.

Impossible or not, this was on me.

Make or break time.

I grunted inside my helmet, imagining the fattest upward vector arrow I’d ever created, and centered it on Titano’s torso.

A whirlwind of energy daggered painfully through my body.

“LIIIIFT!” I roared, trying to push away the slicing pain.

Slowly, Titano started to rise.

Too bad my energy level in my HUD’s dual fuel gauge started to drop alarmingly fast.

Straining with all my might, I focused on MASS in my HUD until it flickered alight.

Ring! Put Titano’s mass into his upward vector!

Back when I had applied a huge lifting force to the crashing Artemis, I’d been siphoning mass directly from its hull to use for fuel. A the time, I’d been touching the hull. Meaning, fast energy transfer from hull mass to ring fuel to lifting vector. As distant as I was from Titano now, the rate of mass/energy transfer from him to me would likely be much slower.

I needed to get closer, no matter how risky.

Using my power armor thrusters, I flew to hovering 10 meters above Titano’s back as his two powerful legs clawed at the ground and propelled him forward in a half-float, half-run.

“Don’t go any closer, my king!” Captain Theia shouted helplessly over comms. “It’s too risky!”

I was focusing too hard and suffering too much pain to reply.

Titano’s huge head came whipping up toward me, gigantic jaws wide.

“My king!” Theia shrieked, too distant to help.

Looking down was like staring into hell, an infinite chasm of red death and giant fangs. Only by pure luck did my power armor thrusters send me shooting upward and out of reach as Titano lunged and his jaws slammed shut.

KLOOM!

The wind hit me, buffeting me backward. Again I used my armor thrusters to recover and rocket behind and above his head where he couldn’t reach me or see me.

Titano lost interest in me and continued blundering forward like a red landslide, still half-floating and half-clawing at the ground to propel himself forward.

“The trax is over the perimeter wall!” someone shouted over comms.

That put him within striking distance of the nearest buildings.

KRAIII-OOOOONGK!

Titano kicked down with a gigantic foot and tore away a long section of the 10 meter-tall metal perimeter wall and an attached guard tower that was occupied by three guardswomen. Both the wall and tower crumpled and tore like they were made of tinfoil. But it didn’t sound like tinfoil. As Titano ripped things apart, the bladed and rusty red metal of the walls — it had surely been corroded by the jungle’s red rains over time — screeched and shrieked in terrified agony. The streaks of red rust only enhanced the sense that Titano was goring the outpost open like an unfortunate prey animal falling victim to his massive, ripping talons. Fortunately for the three guardswomen in the falling and twisted guard tower, they had seen Titano’s wild strike coming and had jumped out and jetted safely away, igniting their armor thrusters microseconds before impact.

“He’s going to hit the outpost!” someone else shouted.

“Control to base! Evacuate, evacuate! Control to base! Everyone evacuate!”

Inside my helmet, I was only vaguely aware of the chaos on comms because I was shouting at Titano at the tops of my lungs, forcing every burning joule of energy into the lifting process that I could manage:

“LIIIIIIIIFT! LIFT, YOU GODFORSAKEN GODZILLA CLONE! LIIIIIFT!”

Below Titano, I saw on the ground that guardswomen and technicians were pouring out of a hexagonal outpost hatch — a small hatch attached to a side building — and they were racing out onto the thin strip of red dirt between the buildings and the wall, looking up in awe or horror or both while running for their lives.

KRAIII-OOOOONGK!

Titano thrashed downward with one gigantic leg.

Kra-BOOM!

He tore off a piece of roof and powdered a section of concrete building wall, sending up a dusty gray cloud. The wall caved inward as easily as a toddler kicking building blocks. Hopefully there were no guardswomen caught in the cave=in.

“LIIIIIIIIFT!” I shouted inside my helmet, my heart hammering in my ears, liquid fire from my rings coursing through my veins.

KRAIII-OOOOONGK!

At the exact moment I thought my skull would burst, someone shouted, “He’s clear! The trax has cleared the roof line!”

Titano had taken to the air and was drifting like a dinosaur blimp.

Meanwhile, I was sweating 50-caliber bullets inside my armor. Keeping Titano aloft was going to kill me. I couldn’t hold him up forever. A