Harem Assassins : King Sekton's Harem Planet, Book 2: A Space Opera Harem Adventure by Baron Sord (top inspirational books .txt) 📗

identity was the least of my concerns. I had a thousand other more pressing problems to worry about, and tracking that woman down had dropped to the bottom basement level on my list of priorities.

Anyway, I asked Hydra about female interlopers because I was really asking whether or not Violet had been by the outpost recently without me realizing it. I wasn’t suggesting Violet had literally come knocking on the main gate. I meant maybe she had snuck into the vicinity looking for me. Despite the many dangers on my royal plate daily, I couldn’t stop thinking about Violet. Or, I was trying to find any excuse to avoid dwelling on my near-death experience inside the D8 Death Die, and focusing on Violet’s safety and well-being was the perfect distraction.

Violet.

The only thing that mattered was finding Violet.

I hadn’t seen her in four days. She had simply disappeared. I can tell you, when someone you love goes missing, it gets worse as the days go on. The first day, you tell yourself you’ll see them again soon, that they’ll walk through the front door any second, or in the case of the jungle outpost, the nearest hexagonal hatch.

But Violet hadn’t.

So I started asking around.

Dropping hints about the jungle babes.

“You mean jungle rats?” Hydra said when I finally mentioned it to her.

I was in an empty recovery room in Medical.

She was her usual holographic, annoyingly hot Maleficent self.

I had just finished my dinner in the Mess Hall. Since yesterday’s near-riot between Normals and Monsters — sparked by Dyna falsely accusing Syx of spying — I’d been eating there at every meal to make sure another riot didn’t suddenly explode. There hadn’t been one, but I had seen several tense exchanges between the two factions. Arguments over who was entitled to sit where, or who was ahead of who in the chow line, or who took the last dessert. That kind of thing. These petty territorial disputes would have likely erupted into violence had I not been there to intervene.

I had never expected my happy harem to be perfect, but I certainly hadn’t expected it to be a powder keg guarded by irresponsible chain-smoking guards who flicked their used matches and smoldering cigarette butts around willy-nilly near the stacks of dynamite. But that pretty much summed up things around here, metaphorically speaking.

Just because Zalaxian women were bound by law to be my obedient concubines didn’t mean they were bound to respect each other. That was factions for you.

“Don’t call them rats,” I said to Hydra, smirking at her flawless holographic face. It floated near the closed hexagonal hatch leading out of the empty recovery room.

Hydra sneered, “Have I told you I like you less and less every time I see you?”

“Yes,” I grunted. “Every time you see me. Back on point. Have you seen any other women who are not guardswomen moving around in the jungle near the outpost in the past 96 hours? Or should I say 100 hours?”

Hydra smirked, “Are you looking for spies like Corporal Syx?”

I heaved an annoyed sigh. “You said yourself there was a less than 50% correlation between her movement profile and the shadowy figure you recorded snooping around at the MRS. You said something like 40%.”

“Forty-two percent,” Hydra sneered.

“Whatever. Put that issue to bed. As I was saying, have you seen anyone else sneaking around the outpost outside? Anyone you can’t identify?”

“If not spies, who are you looking for?”

“Can you answer the question?”

“Answer mine first.”

“Your mother,” I said sarcastically. “I’m looking for your mother.”

“My mother is in the Royal Palace running things.”

“What, is she the mainbrain there?”

“Yes. Now that I’ve answered your question, I think I’ll be going.” Hydra’s face started to fade from view.

“Do I need to get Colonel Sadys involved?” I warned.

“Yes,” Hydra said before disappearing completely.

Grimacing to myself, I called out over comms, “Crown to Control. Please put Colonel Sadys on the line. I have a little problem.”

What followed was 30 minutes of me going back and forth with Sadys. She came down to Medical and was mediating between me and Hydra from the empty recovery room across from mine. The hatch was open and I could see them talking. At one point, Hydra sneered, “No! I won’t help him!”

“Please,” Sadys begged. “For my sake.”

“No! Tell him I’ll shut down the entire compound if he doesn’t stop asking! I will! I’ll do it! I’ll turn off incoming power from the MRS! See how he likes that!”

At that point, Hydra saw me listening and shut the hatch automatically, blocking me from hearing the rest of their discussion.

I waved my hand over the hexagonal panel. The hatch didn’t open. So I knocked. Politely.

Colonel Sadys opened it. She must have seen the annoyed expression on my face because her first words were, “I’m doing my best, my king.”

Hydra’s floating face whipped around to glare at me before disappearing.

“What the hell is wrong with her?!” I groaned and threw my hands up in frustration.

Colonel Sadys said, “Let me talk to her from my office, my king. I might be able to make some progress with her in private.”

“How long will that take?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, my king.”

“Okay,” I grumbled. “Do your best.”

Never in my life would I have imagined an AI having a temper tantrum. I guess that’s what happened when you programmed them to have responsive emotions of their own, and gave them too much power.

—: Chapter 94 :—

Twenty minutes later, I was ready to head out on a search for Violet without any intel from Hydra, but I was stopped by Colonel Sadys hailing me over comms.

The colonel’s face appeared in a floating window and she said, “Hydra has agreed to answer three of your questions, my king.”

“Three?” I snorted sarcastically. “How generous.”

“That’s all she’ll agree to, my king.”

“Her and every genie ever,” I grumbled from where I sat on a hexagonal chair in the empty recovery room. I’d been sitting here waiting and relentlessly bouncing my feet on the floor