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

Sure enough, after only a few minutes of dizzying space flight, the missiles ran out of gas and started to drift in straight lines. That was good, but I was approaching the far edge of the planetoid, putting me hundreds of kilometers distant from Captain Theia and the Chaos Gate. My plan had not been to fly this far away, but here I was.

In my ring HUD radar, I saw the huge mass of black, red, and green X’s I recognized as the horde of space demons and CyberKnights I’d left behind. They were still chasing after me.

Worse, there was a batch of new red X’s coming up toward me from the surface of the red face of the planetoid, moving much slower than the medieval red cruise missiles. Presumably this new group consisted of more red space demons, or red CyberSoldiers (the slightly smaller, slightly less impressive cannon-fodder versions of the four very impressive CyberKnights), or who knew what.

My HUD wasn’t showing whether or not any additional black, white, or radiation green demons and soldiers were taking flight from their respective surfaces of the Space Pyramid because presumably, the planetoid itself was blocking any scanning signals my ring was sending out to track them.

But it was reasonable to conclude that the entirety of the four armies remaining on this planetoid had scrambled to take me out, and would soon be converging on me from four or more directions at once.

My only option now was pure speed.

I lengthened my POSITION vector to add more velocity, and curved it to take me around back of the planetoid. Hopefully going insanely fast, and changing course constantly would jam them up or confuse them. Of course, the thing with speed was, you could only change course so much and maintain your relative speed to your opponent. Or many opponents. But I could keep them guessing as much as possible with frequent course changes and feints.

It wasn’t long before I passed over the red edge of the planetoid and started to see to the back side. No surprise, it was glowing green. I didn’t have time to look closely because I knew radio contact with Captain Theia would soon be cut off. Once I was fully behind the d4 Space Pyramid, comms would remain dark until I emerged around the other side. That was a phrase I never thought I’d ever utter in my lifetime. Especially the part about a d4 Space Pyramid. Too bad I didn’t have time to marvel at it or submit it as an adventure idea to whoever owned the tabletop RPG version of Traveller these days.

“Crown to Theia!” I barked over comms. “Any luck?!”

“Theia to Crown! There’s a large projection device behind the Fold Gate, my king!”

“Behind it? Not on the space pyramid?!”

“No, my king! Behind the portal! I’ve never seen anything like it! It’s nothing like a traditional X-Drive! It doesn’t create a Dimensional Containment Sphere like we use on starcraft! It projects a conical beam!”

“So the device is what, a satellite of some kind? Floating behind the gate?!”

“An asteroid from the looks of it! A four-sided pyramid like the big one, but much smaller! It’s focusing a powerful energy beam on the back side of the Fold Gate! There must be a reactor somewhere inside the asteroid!”

“Sounds simple enough! If we destroy the asteroid and the reactor, we close the gate, right?!”

“That would be my guess, my king!”

“Can you set an explosive charge on the asteroid with a timer set to detonate after we cross back through the gate?”

“I could if I had a charge, and if it wasn’t heavily guarded! It’s swarming with soldiers!”

“Space demons?”

“Hundreds of them! I can’t handle that many on my own!”

“It’s never easy, is it?!” I sighed rhetorically.

“No it’s not, my king!”

“Don’t worry, I’m coming around the planetoid! Comms will go down for a bit while I’m behind it, but I should be arriving at your position in a few minutes to help!”

“Word of caution, my king?!”

“Yeah?!”

“The CyberKnights — sksss! — horde have — sksss! — course!” Theia’s voice was starting to break up over comms. Obviously, the planetoid was starting to interfere with our comm signal waves.

“What?!” I called out. “Course what?!”

“Course! — sksss! — course!”

“Say again?!”

“Sksss! — reverse — sksss! — course!”

“Reverse course?!”

“Yes, my — sksss! — they’re circling around to — sksss! — you!”

“Got it! They’re on an intercept path! I’ll keep an eye out for them!”

“Be safe, my — sksss!”

“You too! In other words, go back to Zalaxia, Captain! That’s an order!”

“Sksssss!”

Shortly after, I curved around the planetoid enough to fully see the radiation-green backside. Like the other three faces, everything on it was monochromatic green, except it was glowing in the darkness. Only then did I realize there must have been a distant sun illuminating the black, red, and white faces of the planetoid. I had no idea if the space pyramid had a rotational spin that would bring the green side from nightside to dayside or not. Not that it mattered. Anything here on the triangular green face could see well enough by the light of the radiation glow.

I didn’t see any castles or settlements down on the green side, but that might be due to the fact I was crossing high over the middle of the tetrahedron’s long edges. Thus far, it seemed the castles and their inhabitants clustered toward the 4 points of the 4-sided Space Pyramid. Hopefully any green demons skulking down on the surface wouldn’t notice me and fire more gargoyle-faced SAMs until I was out of range.

Of course they noticed.

Down on the toxic green surface, tiny green lights signaled missiles firing.

Again, I relied on speed to outrun and outmaneuver the green gargoyle-faced medieval cruise missiles. I discovered an interesting advantage. With the POSITION vectors applied to myself creating no noticeable G-load on me, I could change direction dramatically or decelerate incredibly fast. I couldn’t quite whip