It was hard to argue her points, and her concern made me smile. “Alright, Alyra.” I knelt low enough to give her a quick embrace before turning toward my cabin. “If anything weird happens, don’t hesitate to ping me, and at worst, make sure everyone’s up and ready thirty minutes before we come out of hyperspace.”
“Of course.” Alyra smiled softly as she turned her attention to the screens. “You can trust me, David Briggs.”
“I do,” I said with a final nod. “That’s something you can take to the bank.”
And I tried to get some shut-eye, I really did. I turned down the lights and crashed hard, even faded out a few times into brief naps, but it didn’t stick. With the mission imminent, my brain was going at light speed, trying to anticipate what was ahead and formulate contingency plan on top of contingency plan. As much as my rational mind tried to remind me that you simply can’t plan for every problem, my gut and heart knew what was on the line here. A whole planet of enslaved beings, a chance to push back hard against the Matriarchy, and maybe most importantly, the lives of the women I was growing to love and the man who was becoming my best friend in the galaxy.
It was heavy stuff. But it always was. I’d led squads of men and women into war before. Realizing that I’d only be able to relax and sleep if I did something productive, I got up out of bed, stretched, and slid back into my power suit. Even though I’d only be using the DVRX 1100 for a little over a month, the thing felt like a second skin, and it was strangely comforting to put it back on, especially as I tapped at the wrist controls to activate the armored mode.
The internal nanites kicked into high gear, constructing an outer shell of interlocking plates, hard as metal but light as plastic, the same purple-black color as the undersuit. Along with the base armor, the strange enchanted alien metal and crystal of my Cestari, the more punchy equivalent of the Wanders wielded by Clara, Alyra, and Matriarchs across the galaxy materialized around my hands with a burst of fiery magic. There was a pop and hiss as the transparent force dome that stood in for a helmet crackled into existence around my head, the suit’s HUD appearing before my eyes.
That’s exactly what I wanted. Glancing through the HUD’s UI, I mentally nudged through to the upgrade menus. We hadn’t had nearly as much action as I might have liked over the last month, not with the days of debriefing with Resistance command on Centaurus, then a solid week undergoing testing and suit recalibration with Dr. Ami Eldridge, the genius who invented Star Conqueror and this latest generation of power suit technology.
I never figured that Dr. Eldridge would be so young, so much like a mad scientist, and have four arms. You’d be surprised just how, uh, hands-on she wanted to be in updating my suit to best match my ‘unique physiology’ as she put it.
But still, we did see some action. There were some border raids and several supply escorts, distributing the resources we had swiped from Clara’s vault, especially in distributing the data drives with the cloaking device schematics to cells outside of the normal communication routes. It was enough to not only accumulate some power credits, the virtual currency that power suits accumulated from enemy suits and equipment but also lead to full integration of my Cestari into the suit’s upgrade system.
That meant a brand new upgrade tree, and now was the best time to review it and spend my accumulated credits. It would be productive, and it’d soothe my nerves enough to get some rest.
Yep, there it was, Dragonfire, alongside the trees I already had, Assault, Dragon Form, and Ascension. I felt a little trickle of a thrill, to be honest. This was new ground, exploring new abilities and powers that I didn’t previously have access to in the game. While I’d seen a fair few things beyond my game experience in other people and the enemy, this was the first truly new thing for me personally. The dragon spirit in me roared and swelled with pride as I nudged the menu open, taking in its description.
Unleash the power of dragonfire through a magitech focus. The Dragonfire tree allows the user to unleash a measure of his dragon’s magic, even when in human form, to incinerate your enemies, twist their souls, and bolster your allies.
That made me both excited and curious. I expected the bad-guy-melting aspect, of course, but the other things the description hinted at really caught my attention. Twisting souls? Well, considering that Dragon Will linked souls, it made some sense, but it also didn’t sound exactly … pleasant. Or moral. I’d have to actually look at the abilities, but the last thing, bolstering allies, was both more encouraging and really started to make me wonder.
Until now, my dragon’s flames struck me more like something biological, from the glands in my snout that produced the sticky, napalm-like dragon oil to the super-heated air my draconic lungs seemed to generate that ignited it as I blew outward. I guess that was a little short-sighted. Not that it wasn’t a biological process, but when you’re turning into a magical creature, even natural things you do could very well be supernatural. From what the Dragonfire description said, it was blatantly obvious that those flames had far more properties and uses than pure burnination.
Well, the only thing to do from there was to see what it could do. I mentally clicked past the description to the upgrade tree proper, so I could see what I could spend my two-hundred-and-twelve power credits on. There were three glowing green nodes, with the rest of the tree beyond shrouded in grey. Strangely enough, one of the three had a line that went off the upgrade tree, denoting it had a fulfilled prerequisite in another tree. Even stranger, that tree was the Ascension tree.
I started with the first two, unconnected upgrades.
* * *
Dragon Bolt
Cost: 80 power credits
Requires equipped Focus
Unleash a bolt of dragonfire from your foci. This bolt copies all passive statistics and upgrades that affect your normal dragonfire, but at 75% normal strength.
Power Cost: 5% of maximum
Cooldown: 6 seconds
* * *
Soul Burn
Cost: 80 power credits
Requires equipped Focus
Conjure spiritual flames from within an opponent’s soul. If unresisted, the flames inflict psychic damage over time equal to 50% of normal dragonfire damage and weaken the opponent’s will and resistance to mental magic.
WARNING: May cause spiritual backlash, may not effective against more powerful beings.
Power Cost: 10% of maximum
Cooldown: 10 seconds
* * *
They were both interesting, and I immediately noted they also cost quite a bit more than most starting tree abilities. Considering Dragonfire was basically a side tree, branching off of Dragon Form, it made some degree of sense. More intriguing was the extra notes on Soul Burn. If I understood the information properly, it would make using Dragon Will to free bound Matriarchs easier, but the warning was both similar and distinctly different than Dragon Will’s. Mental strain wasn’t the same thing as spiritual backlash, that was for sure.
With that rattling around in my head, I turned my attention to the one attached to the Ascension tree.
* * *
Through the Fire and Flames
Cost: 100 power credits
Strengthens the spiritual connection between you and designated squadmates, extending part of your draconic spirit to your squad for 1 minute. While active, the effects of an already active Breath of the Wilds are shared with all squadmates.
Power Cost: 4% of maximum
Cooldown: 3 minutes
Special: You can spend double the activation cost to reset the cooldown of this ability.
* * *
On the surface, that seemed wholly underwhelming. Though Breath of the Wilds had provided useful protection from temperature extremes and especially lasers, it was a big cost for something of situational usefulness for the whole squad. The environmental protections could mostly be covered by a full sealed power suit, and your average Quibs, the Matriarchy’s foot soldiers, were as likely to have slugthrow
ers as laser weapons. At least it didn’t carry the double-whammy cost of having to activate Breath first then this ability, thanks to my Ascension passive.
I was about to ignore it entirely when something Tulip had told me down in the sewers of Balarian came back to me. The power suit upgrade system not only unlocked abilities integral to the suit but helped to unlock abilities and powers of the wearer itself. Those powers didn’t need the suit to operate, something I knew for sure as the dragon was inside me, suit or no suit. On top of that, Through the Fire and Flames didn’t require a focus like the Cestari to use. Clara had said that she could use some of her healing magic without a Wander, so that too made sense.
In my mind’s eye, I could see a situation where we would be stuck in the cold vacuum of space, our suits breeched, a truly fatal situation save for me and the power of the dragon. This ability could save the lives of our entire squad, letting us survive as long as I could maintain the magic. Or what if we ran into a custom Megadred battle bot loaded with Gatling lasers, or … well, the possibilities were endless.
Without a second thought, I picked Through the Fire and Flames. I didn’t have to cash in yet, not until I had settled on my choices, but I already knew I wasn’t going to change my mind, especially when the next upgrade behind it also had a line leading off to the Ascension tree.
* * *
Revolution Rising
Cost: 175 power credits
Further strengthens the spiritual connection with your squad. When using Through the Fire and Flames, you also share the effects of an active Dragon’s Revolt ability with your squadmates. This lasts as long as Through the Fire and Flames is active.
Passive Upgrade
* * *
A smile spread across my lips. While I couldn’t look further in the tree, I just didn’t have the credits, the pattern was already obvious. This was a way to extend the amazing god mode powers of my Ascension build with the entire squad. Sure, it’d be super costly over time, but it could make all the difference in a big fight once I had all the upgrades. It was well worth my time to invest in … but not to the exclusion of everything.
Despite wanting to save the one-hundred-and-twelve credits after accounting for Fire and Flames to put towards Revolution, I knew I wanted one of the active offensive powers. I could only afford one, though, and that was the rub. Dragon Bolt would be deadlier, that much was obvious, as it would not only cause more upfront damage but still burn like napalm over time. However, if it worked like Star Conqueror, Soul Burn’s psychic damage would flat-out ignore many kinds of armor and protection, though it would also be worthless against most robots and mechanical enemies. It also had that amazing synergy with Dragon Will, assuming I was interpreting it right.
But something else made me pause. That spiritual backlash bit weighed on me, as well as the concept of literally burning someone’s soul, and I wanted to research that more before I made a hard choice there. I now had copies of not only the Matriarchy’s religious texts but a copy of the Book of Draconis, the holy text that Tulip said contained the prophecies that the Resistance believed in about the return of the dragon.
Besides, there was only one Matriarch we know of on Leonis, and I was pretty sure I’d earn more than enough power credits leading a slave rebellion to have Soul Burn ready for when we met her. I went ahead and clicked on Dragon Bolt, listened to the tinkling of power credits fade away, and then hit Accept.
The shudder of power ran through my body, the familiar rush of endorphins that came with accepting new upgrades, and a draconic growl rumbled in the back of my throat. The crystals on the knuckles of my Cestari flared up with burning orange light. Staring at them a moment, feeling the newfound magic inside, I flexed my fists and grinned.
The Matriarchy would never know what hit them!
6
The comfort of powering up actually did help me drift off for a couple of hours after that. While a part of me considered the fact that I might have slept easier with, say, Tulip or Clara curled up next to me, there was a good fifty-fifty chance neither of us would have slept a wink. I would simply have to make due with the sleep I could get on my own.
It wouldn’t help anyone if we didn’t get any sleep at all, no matter how good of a time it would have been.
Still, it felt like my head had barely hit the pillow when the soft but steadily growing chimes of the alarm I had set on the cabin’s terminal began echoing in my ear. If the sound hadn’t woken me, the fact that the cabin lights flared to maximum power a few seconds later would have definitely done the job. Despite my overall lack of sleep, I found myself snapping awake with surprising vim and vigor. It was the spark of anticipation, the knowledge that battle was near, and though I wasn’t a violent guy by nature, I still found myself savoring that feeling as I slid out of bed to suit up.
Taking a quick trip to the armory to finish loading up, I grabbed my old faithful Arclight Double blaster rifle alongside the enchanted Swarmer pistol shotgun and a pair of Arcwell electrical grenades, fun little things that overloaded suit shielding in seconds. My rifle snapped into place over my shoulder, held firm by the magnetic clamps on the back of my suit, the Swarmer and grenades on my leg plates. With a deep, steadying breath, I made my way to the bridge, where the rest of the team was waiting.
Everyone was already at their posts, all eyes on me as the bridge door opened before me. Fully suited up, armored and armed, I had nothing but confidence going ahead. I just made sure to keep in mind to keep confidence from turning into arrogance. We might be the best of the best that the Resistance had, but we were still only five against an empire.
Turner was all smiles at his engineering station, encased in his Kelly green heavy armor, even more of a tank than me, while Tulip gave me a nod full of determination, her sleek blue-and-silver armor fitting her agile fighting style. From their side-by-side stations, Clara and Alyra both nodded to me, the healer’s soft lips curled into a tender smile while my Wing had her game face back on, blue eyes level and focused on her tactical screen.
Each winged woman’s power suits were similar at first glance but drastically different. Both were almost obscenely thin, Clara’s white with glowing gold trim and Alyra’s in molten gold, but their armored modes were night and day. Light, shell-like plates protected Clara’s vital points alongside gold gauntlets and boots, while Alyra’s armor was literally glowing, translucent force.
I returned the nods and slipped into the captain’s station, bringing up navigation, sensor, and tactical windows with a few presses. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen, are we ready for showtime?”
“I took our load of Gamma bombs and jury-rigged some thrusters and guidance systems out of my stock of Annihilator ammo,” Turner reported as his smile seemed to grow twice as impossible wide. “If Tulip brings us out of hyperspace along the logical approach line from Leonis, I’ll dump these beauties out before we dive into the depot’s defenses. When the ships from the mine come, KABOOM! Whatever they send will be blown apart or crippled. It’s no Death Blossom, but it’ll do.”
For the big man to use the ammunition from his bellowed chainsaw-death cannons was just another sign of his total commitment to the cause. I nodded firmly and glanced at Tulip. “And I don’t even have to ask if you’re already bringing us to that approach, do I?”
“Of course not, David.” Tulip grinned, her eyes bright as she tapped on her screen. “We’ll leave hyperspace at the standard jump point to Leonis, but dropping those bombs will almost certainly give away our position, cloak or not.”
“Oh, sister, we won’t want to do that anyway,” Clara added, letting out a musical laugh. “If we wish to present the greatest threat possible, draw the largest response from Leonis, we should cause as much of a … how do you say it? … ruckus as possible.”
She tilted her head slightly as if listening to the comm chatter. Interstellar communications had to rely on hyperspace transmission, naturally, which also meant that it was easy, if you had the tools, to interc
ept uncoded messages. “I am definitely starting to pick up the usual unclassified chatter from the Exo depot, so I could easily transmit a message when we break out of hyperspace.”
“I believe you should, my dragon.” Alyra’s eyes were cold and dangerous. “Send them a message of your triumphant arrival, put the fear of your majesty in them, and they will send an entire fleet to try to capture or kill you.”
“Perfect.” Sure, there was a small risk of bringing too much heat down on us, but as Turner would say, who wanted to live forever? “The more of the Leonis fleet we can peel away from the mines, the better.” I cleared my throat, priming up my best commander’s voice. “Be ready to open up on all channels. The moment Turner starts dropping the bombs, we’ll transmit. Seeing my handsome mug might help keep them from noticing his little packages of joy.” Cracking my neck, I focused on the streaking lights of hyperspace ahead. “How long until we’re there?”
“Nine minutes, give or take,” Tulip reported, her hand instinctively stretching out to stroke my arm lovingly. “I’m just going to go ahead and get a full program of evasive maneuvers queued up. While Exo isn’t heavily defended, there are some defenses, and it’ll make us look like amateurs if we let them hurt us before the real fleet arrives.”
“Fear not, zadavio,” Alyra said, lips pressed into a tight smile. “Between your piloting and my weapons, they shall not lay a single shell upon us.”
Turner laughed as he queued up the bombs. “See, that’s the kind of talk I love!” He nodded towards me. “My babies are primed and pre-loaded.”
I nodded, took a deep breath, and waited. Silence fell over the crew as we all focused on what was about to happen. It wasn’t nerves. It was pure dedication to pull this off without a hitch. For me, it also was a quiet moment to marvel once more at the streaking stars rushing around us in hyperspace. Even though I had seen it plenty this past month, the sheer wonder of watching the cosmos race by at faster than light speeds never got old.
Star Conqueror: Recompense: An Epic Space Harem Adventure Page 5
