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

some sort of reactor core that fed power to the gate projector and whatever power demands this place had.

“What do you see, my king?” Theia asked.

“A complete map of the keep. Better than blue prints.”

“Blue prints, my king?”

“Architectural designs. Very precise. The trick for us is working our way toward the center of the structure without once leaving the safety of the walls. I think I see a potential path. If we move quickly, they won’t have time to break through and reach us. Let’s go.”

Hey ring, I thought, start a timer so I know how long it takes us to reach the center of the asteroid.

0:00

0:01

0:02

I turned to the side and started extracting a walkway through the fill gravel. Our tunnel was 2 meters tall and a meter wide. As before, I kept an arched POSITION vector array running above us to support the dirt overhead. I was able to extract the fill gravel so fast, it was faster than Minecraft or the old arcade classic Dig Dug. Unlike the latter, I backfilled the gravel I consumed, sealing us in as we went. In essence, it was like having our own little bubble around us that floated through the gravel as easily as air floated through water.

“This is unbelievable,” Theia laughed softly as we walked along at a leisurely pace. “How do you come up with these ideas of yours, my king?”

“A lifetime of gaming and engineering,” I smiled over my shoulder even though I had my visor down. Our bubble was actually a vacuum because I’d never bothered to fill it with air. We didn’t need it with our power armor.

I wondered if the space demons had the ability to track our position inside the walls from their position outside, using some sort of electromagnetic scanning device. Even a 5 meter-thick stone castle wall wouldn’t stop strong EM waves, from radio to gamma. You needed something denser.

Lead worked.

From that point forward, I surrounded our Walking Bubble with a 5 centimeter skin of lead, and back-filled our Bubble Tunnel with solid lead to support the weight of the fill gravel. They might be able to find our tunnel through the castle walls, but they wouldn’t be able to find our exact position. The lead fill required an extra expenditure of ring energy — lead was denser than fill gravel — but I had ring fuel to spare, especially if it meant Theia and I not dying and getting back through the Chaos Gate before it closed.

Eventually, I angled our path of travel downward toward the center of the asteroid.

It wasn’t long before we reached the edge of the reactor room. My ring HUD showed it wasn’t currently occupied by any space demons. Just in case, rather than open an exit hole, I merely opened a small viewing slot the size of a horizontal harmonica. Green light beamed into our wall bubble.

The tetrahedral space beyond — it was shaped like the inside of a d4 — revealed a glowing reactor mechanism. There was nothing medieval about it. It was pure tech, but it resembled clunky, early-20th century tech. Scattered across its surface and protruding parts were various glowing gauges, grills, vacuum tubes, and heat-sinks.

Suspended in the center of it was a writhing, floating Fold Core, similar to what I’d seen back on the Artemis before the Fold had breached the electromagnetic Dimensional Containment Sphere. Like that Fold Core, this one was a paradox of constant complexification and simultaneous simplification, a geometrical oddity that defied description and challenged the limits of human perception, but there it was, triangles of existence folding relentlessly into and out of one another.

Unlike on the Artemis, this DCS wasn’t a containment sphere. It was a teardrop, with the point of the teardrop touching some sort of device mounted on one corner of the pyramidal room. My guess, it was sending the Fold Field — or whatever the heck it was called — out through some sort of barrel that connected to the projection nozzle outside, and from their created the Chaos Fold Gate.

Once again, the creation of a seemingly magical effect — a Fold Gate — was powered by an insanely complex technological contraption.

Amazing.

“We’re clear on radiation,” I said over comms after checking my armor helmet visor HUD, which had a radiation gauge. “Take a look.” I made room for Theia to peer through the horizontal slot.

“This is clearly the Fold Core,” Theia said after pressing her visor up to look. “But I’ve never seen a core like this.”

“Me neither.”

She turned to me and laughed over comms, “You have truly worked a miracle getting us here so easily, my king.”

“Nah,” I grinned. “It’s just applied science and engineering,” I grinned and glanced at the timer ticking up in the corner of my ring HUD. “It took us just under eight minutes to get here. I say we set the bomb timer for ten minutes. That’ll give us eight minutes to retrace our steps, and one or two minutes to get from the asteroid to the Chaos Gate. Once we get to Zalaxia, I can plug the gate or block it somehow while we wait for the bomb to blow. We can fight the demon horde back for a minute or so, right?”

“I believe so, my king,” Theia nodded. “When I went through, the Royal Guard and Air Guard had things mostly under control.”

“What about the white CyberKnight? Is he still trapped in the osmium ball where I left him?”

“Yes,” Theia said.

“What about the white demon women he made from our guardswomen?”

“I believe First Lieutenant Mira and Delta Wing rounded them up and Sergeant Kane’s squad secured them.”

“Excellent,” I smiled. “That Mira is an ace, isn’t she?”

“Ace?”

“A great pilot.”

“Yes, I believe she is, based on what I saw today.”

“You know, you’re an ace too, Captain Theia,” I winked.

“Thank you, my king.” Theia was visibly smiling in the floating comms window inside my visor.

“Okay, let’s plant this bomb and get the hell out of here.”

—: Chapter 42 :—