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

Now we had to stop him.

I shouted over comms, “Stop everybody! That’s enough! Switch sides and stop him if you can! Everybody around to the rear!”

Laughter and joking refusals from several guardswomen chattering over comms.

“Listen!” I shouted. “We need to stop him! If he hits any Boom-Boom trees, he’ll go crazy! Stop him so I can lower him gently!”

“To the ass end, ladies!” Sergeant Kane shouted.

Hundreds of guardswomen and the Air Guard mechs arced slowly away from Titano’s chest and forward-facing surfaces to circle around to his backside and put themselves into position.

“Fire afterburners, ladies!” Kane shouted.

Again, the Lilliputian battalion brought this giant dinosaur blimp drifting to a halt over the red dirt, stopping just shy of the purple line of jungle trees.

“Everybody clear out!” I shouted. “I’m lowering Titano! Clear out!” I watched as they flew away using thrusters. “Anybody underneath? Sergeant Kane! Check the undercarriage!”

I watched one power-armored form — presumably Kane — go flying slowly under Titano from end to end, including between his gigantic legs. She emerged from under his drooping tail and hovered high above to give me a thumbs up.

“Kane to Crown!” she called over comms. “All clear! You are clear to drop!”

“Okay! Lowering now!” I was gritting my teeth and sweating it, counting the seconds until Titano touched down. His tail tip touched first. Then his mighty talons. His legs bent as his weight settled. His nose touched next and his head lolled to the side as the weight was taken off his long neck. Finally, the underside of his ribcage settled heavily onto the red dirt.

The second it did, I quickly reduced my upward vector to zero and Titano was resting solidly on the ground.

KRONK? he snorted sleepily, his eyes opening.

I redoubled my focus on the Calming Sphere in my HUD and muttered, “Easy, buddy. Go back to sleep. Nothing to worry about.”

KROFF, he huffed and his angry orange eyes fluttered closed.

Over comms, the ladies erupted with victorious cheers and whistles of approval.

I was about to lower myself to the ground when I noticed something blinking on top of Titano’s dark red-purple skull. A metal device of some kind with a prominent rhombus shape of brighter metal layered on top of several larger, darker, thin metal discs sandwiched together. I also noticed a long strip of intricately segmented metal plates that ran the entire length of Titano’s body, from the top of his snout to the tip of his tail. The segmented plates reminded me of a metallic spinal column, except they continued past the topmost cervical vertebrae (the one at the base of the skull), and terminated at the metal rhombus device. Form there, another strip of metal segments continued to the end of his nose. I couldn’t imagine Titano had vertebrae in the top of his skull like the metal segments might suggest.

Anyway, the purple-anodized metal of the segments blended into Titano’s dark red-purple topside pigmentation well enough they were nearly invisible if you weren’t looking too closely.

What was that about?

Some kind of cyborg dinosaur?

Was that even a thing?

One way to find out.

I hovered over in my armor to investigate, going slowly so as not to disturb Titano’s slumber. Only then did I realize Captain Theia and her Shock Knights had been shadowing me this entire time, always remaining circled in a hemisphere behind me.

“Crown to Captain Theia, can you pull back? I don’t want to wake Titano while I check that thing on his neck.”

“Yes, my king.” She and her Shock Knights hovered back and up at a 45 degree angle until they hovered 20 or 30 meters distant.

“Do you have any idea what it is, Captain? Those segmented metal plates?”

“No, my king,” Theia replied.

“Hey, Kane? I mean, Crown to Sergeant Kane? Can you come up to my position for a second? By yourself? And fly quietly?”

“You got it. My king. Kane out.” She hovered up from the red dirt and over to me, stopping a meter away.

I pointed at the metal segments. “What is that?”

“No idea, my king.”

“Do Titanosaurs normally have metal spines? Or metal rhombuses stuck to their heads?”

“Not that I’ve ever seen. My king.” She shook her power armor helmet.

“Interesting. Tell me something, Sergeant. How often do Titanosaurs come waltzing around the outpost?”

“They don’t usually get this close. Air Guard fires a few warning shots and they stay clear. This is the first time one has outright attacked and charged our base. My king. And they’re never this big. This is the biggest I’ve ever seen by a long shot.”

“You don’t say,” I grumbled rhetorically.

I hovered down until I was only a meter above the metal rhombus device. I saw now it was thin layers of flat metal stacked on top of each other. The total thickness of the assembly was 5 or 6 centimeters. The overall design had notches, grooves, beads, repeating patterns, and blinking white lights too small to see from a distance in Zalaxia’s lavender daylight. The segmented metal plates were similarly complex in design and articulation, but clearly separate from the rhombus device.

My first thought?

I said, “Hey, Kane?”

“Yes, my king?”

“Do you know what a cyborg is?”

“Never heard the word. My king.”

“A cyber-organism?”

“Nope,” she shook her head. “My king,” she added as an afterthought.

“Um, like a creature that’s half biological, half mechanical. You know, with like Servus-bot parts mixed with flesh and blood?”

“Okay,” she said, nodding uncertainly, not sure where I was going with it.

“But you get the concept, right?”

“Sure. Half Serv, half person. Sounds like a cybernoid. Heard of them. They got a whole planet of ’em on Pandemon. Never seen one though.”

“So, uh, are cyborg, I mean cybernoid dinosaurs normal around here?”

“Uh uh,” she snorted a sharp laugh and shook her helmeted head. “This is the first I’ve seen. Ever. My king.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Ring, I thought, show me how this metal spine is attached to Titano’s head. I want to see skin and muscle tissue in dark blue, bone in white, blood vessels and capillaries in red. Make the