“Okay, Source of the Inner Fountains and Trailblazer of the Three Flames, you’ve got me,” I spat out, putting on my best snarl of defiance. If the idea was for me to be distracting, I certainly couldn’t let her think I was doing this as part of my master plan, no matter how crazy it was. “Spare Clara and Turner. I’ll submit myself to your demands.”
Ferria was about to shout something in protest, but Tulip slapped a hand over the crystal woman’s mouth, pulling her in close by the arm to whisper in her ear. While the other freedom fighters grumbled in discontent, Kritik and the other ex-Quibs glanced towards me with a look of pure sympathy. Guess they did have experience with being screwed over by the Matriarchy and then making a bad choice. At least I was going in there with a plan.
Xara’s lips upticked into a lopsided smirk. “Ah, submission is just the sort of thing that makes for a good test subject. As I said, you may discover that you find this agreeable.” The holographic head warped into a large golden arrow pointing at a section of wall that looked identical to the rest. “Walk over to where the arrow is indicated alone. If a single living or robotic soul interferes, the experiment will be considered contaminated, and our little agreement is null and void.”
I glanced around at the others, Ferria’s eyes lighting up with understanding after Tulip’s hurried whispers and nodded. “Wish me luck, and don’t give up. Concentrate on freeing the rest of the slaves.” I thumbed at the Royal Guard. “You’ve got a batch of some pretty sweet weapons and armor to do it with.”
To keep up with the show, both Tulip and Alyra rushed to me, Alyra hugging me fiercely about the waist and Tulip embracing me around the neck. Though it was meant to show their utter desperation at me leaving, it instead just made me more determined to make this thing work. Not to mention it felt damn good to have two of my loves close. Kissing them each in turn, I managed to pull myself lose after a moment.
Alyra flashed me a hidden nod of encouragement while Tulip winked. “Good luck, David Briggs,” she purred softly.
“And do not fear, my dragon,” Alyra added. “We know what we must do.”
I stepped away from them, nodding slowly. “I know. It’s all up to you now.” With that, I turned and jogged over to where the arrow indicated. The entire hologrammatic display dissipated, but nothing else seemed to happen for a moment, save for a distant sound of … hydraulics?
I was about to bitch to the management that my express ride into the enemy’s clutches was late when the metal wall grew seams. No, not grew. They were there, just so well-built as to be utterly invisible outside of an incredibly close inspection. The seams split into an iris-style doorway that opened in the blink of an eye, and before I could get a glimpse of what was beyond, the familiar whine of a gravitic engine kicked in, sucking me into the door with irresistible force.
26
When the sudden tug of gravity let me go, I managed to get my legs back under me before I crashed into a heap on the gleaming marble floor. I didn’t need to spin around to know that the iris door I had been sucked through had slipped shut just as quickly as it had opened, so I didn’t bother. Straightening up, I yanked the Scarab Plus off my back and up into ready position, snapping the sights around to quickly take in the inside of the laboratory.
While the exterior of the tower might have been more fantasy than science, this entry chamber was almost entirely composed of the bleeding-edge technology the Matriarchy was known for. In fact, I’d have been hard-pressed not to think I hadn’t been drawn into any of a dozen Matriarchy facilities I had been in, either in Star Conqueror or in real life. The swooping, white metal walls, the perfectly polished marble floor, with lighting provided by three strips exuding a golden glow, one on each wall and one at the apex of the ceiling. Airlock doors led out of the spacious chamber, including one in the ceiling.
But some very unique features definitely smelled of magic. An intricate circle was etched into the circular arch around the iris door, with sigils carved into the metal. The whole engraving was filled with solid gold, and an occasional flicker of energy played across the symbols. Past that, in the places where I expected to find sensor domes or decontamination units, there were instead bronze hemispheres split into circular sections, studded with rainbow-colored crystals. Every few seconds, the circles all spun and adjust with only the faint whispery sound of metal sliding against metal.
Of course, to no real surprise of mine, my mapping software and all my communication channels were blocked, producing only a ‘No Map Available’ message and static.
What was a surprise was that no gun emplacements dropped down from the ceiling, no magical Quibs or even normal ones ran out of the airlock doors, and no unidentifiable tentacled horrors spawned from a rift to devour my soul. I almost let myself slip out of high alert with the relative peacefulness of the room, but I wasn’t that lazy or that stupid. When Xara’s voice seemed to come from everywhere around me, I didn’t startle. I had been expecting it.
“Well, well, I must admit that my calculations based on your previous reactions didn’t lead me to the conclusion that you would be, well, so reasonable about this,” she said as if this were just a normal day at the office. “Either you have a previously unaccounted for lust for scientific discovery, or you truly are desperate.”
“Look,” I began, shouldering the Scarab and setting my free hand on my hip. If I could keep the Matriarch talking for a bit, all the better. With my recently acquired upgrades, my dragon recharge time was down to four minutes. Just four minutes and I’d be ready to rock and roll and, most importantly, in a position to free Xara if I had the opening. “I’ll admit that I am curious about this place. If I take Alyra and Clara at face value, you’re the cause of the Matriarchy’s tremendous magical advancements. I mean, you have a monopoly on magitech in the galaxy, and you’re one of the reasons for that, I’m going to guess.”
“You flatter me.” Xara let out a surprisingly girlish giggle. “Well, we cannot tarry long. The High Priestess and the Mother of Chains have requested I put you through a rigorous testing process. Unlike your ambitious middle-manager or the arrogant poor girl, I intend to follow my directives to the letter.”
I sighed and cracked my neck. It was going to come any second now, my eyes flicking from the magitech domes to the doors and back, ready for shit to get real. “Fine, fine. So, how’s it going to go down? Mutant Quibs? Disintegration cannon? A Megadred with an organic brain and magic powers? What is it that’s going to kill me?”
The disembodied voice let out a put-upon sigh. “I didn’t say I was going to kill you … well, I did, but that was the past. Mother … reminded me most sternly of my orders, should you actually be in this position.” She clucked her tongue. “Actually, to be wholly honest, you might still die. That is the nature of experimentation, you understand? The oddest things can happen.”
I could hear her tone shift into one of clinical detachment, like a heartless scientist probing a lab rat. “No, dragon. For the moment, all I require is for you to disarm yourself, remove that filth, microbe-infested power suit, and submit to decontamination. You see, I need to personally observe your unique dragon-humanoid hybridization in stressful conditions, and all of that gear will simply muddy the results.”
This could be very bad, well, worse than it was before, but I needed to buy time. I had two minutes before dragon form, and more importantly, I needed to stretch this out for Tulip and Alyra to make their dramatic rescue. I had to play along, but without my Cestari, I would be without Soul Burn and Purifying Flames, either or both of which could make the difference if I got Xara in a position to unleash Dragon Will on her. I was about to go all the way to fuck it and start shooting the place up when I noticed out of the corner of my eye just how many power credits we had just racked up tearing through the Royal Guards out front.
Those crazy assholes had been worth a clean two-hundred-and-fifty a piece. The four that lived and the three that the freedom fighters had killed unfortunately didn’t
transfer any credits to me, but the six that I, Tulip, and Alyra had killed, well, that made me sit at one-thousand-five-hundred-some-odd power credits.
Best of all, Soul Dragon Rising implied that all it needed to work was Dragon Form and Flames of Freedom, no focus required, and it only cost two-hundred power credits.
“Well, dragon?” Xara prodded. “We are on a timetable here, need I remind you?”
I suppressed the grin that wanted to creep across my lips. “Right, I’m going.” I set the Scarab on the ground, kneeling to start unloading my small arsenal of weapons on the ground. All the while, I was mentally clicking through menus to Soul Dragon Rising. It hadn’t been the first time I had bought upgrades in a dangerous situation, so by the time I had added my Swarmed and Thorax to the neat pile of weapons, I had it purchased. Fortunately, the sparkle across my Cestari didn’t seem to attract her attention, so when nothing horrible happened, I stood up, sighed for effect, and dearmored my suit.
“I guess I won’t get to keep any dignity on this one, eh?” I gestured at my skintight undersuit. “I promise I won’t armor up.”
“The words of a tyrant dragon such as yourself mean little,” Xara shot back. “Don’t worry. If testing goes as per expected variables, I will be happy to return all your equipment at the conclusion of our experiment.”
Yeah, and I was an Ar’abi gravtruck salesman. “Fine. Do I at least get a ticket for all this?” As I smarted off, I pressed the depressurization stud inside my collar, the purple-black suit going loose around me with a hiss of escaping air. As I began to shrug the suit off, I took one last glance at my wrist screen, burning the one-hundred-and-fifty-six-second cooldown timer for dragon form into my brain.
“A ticket?” Xara seemed genuinely confused for a moment. “Oh. I see where your Bolderian gets his sparkling sense of humor from. It must be an Earth thing. I shall add that to my notes.”
Shaking my head, I undid the front seal and let the power suit fall to the floor, revealing my lucky platypus boxers and my chiseled physique. All this live action had done wonders to get me back into fighting shape, but the boxers, well, I was glad I wore them for this mission. Damn straight I needed a drop of luck at this point, especially looking at the nasty bruising just starting to turn a nice, nasty color across my abdomen.
As I stepped away from the pile of gear, a concealed hatch opened in the wall to my right, and a small janitorial droid, complete with a broom and dustpan attachment, scooted out, scooped up my gear, and disappeared from where it came. Before I could say a word, the bronze domes popped open along the circular sections, the crystals pulsed brightly for a split-second, and I felt … clean. Like, the cleanest I ever had in my life. Every speck of dirt, every bit of sweat and blood, the faintest-off odor was gone, just like that.
“There, decontamination procedures complete,” Xara rattled off as if she were following a checklist, which she probably was. “You will now proceed through the airlock that will open directly in front of you. The chamber beyond is a hermetically sealed chamber. Once it seals, you will wait in that chamber until it opens. Do you understand your instructions, test subject D-876?”
It took every bit of willpower to not ball up my fists. Dehumanizing, er, well, desentientizing?, someone was a tactic to not only break their self-esteem but allow someone else to more easily sanction abuse. What does it matter if they are a number instead of a human being? The Prisoner was dead on about that.
“Understood,” I managed to get out without revealing the depth of my anger or how much I was going to love watching this whole mess fall down around the Matriarchs. “Let’s get this done, okay?”
“Eagerness is almost as good of a trait as submissiveness,” Xara added as whatever she was using to communicate went silent, the airlock opening ahead of me.
What made this all palatable, I reminded myself as I walked through the airlock, was that it was all part of the plan, crazy as it was. And there was something else too that I realized as I stepped through and waited for the airlock to cycle, and that was the reason for the whole ‘timetable’ thing. It was more a hunch, but an educated one.
I simply had to assume that Xara had access to every scrap of information the Matriarchy had about me personally, my observed powers, weapons, and capabilities. The Royal Guard had been the real clue about that. Their foreknowledge that plasma wouldn’t hurt me, the shielding tailored to counter my dragonfire, and their tactics centered around surrounding me and harassing my allies, all things that would disrupt my normal combat approach, that information came from somewhere. Xara was the clear choice.
And that meant she had, through observation and combat logs, some idea of how long I could both stay in dragon form and how long it took before I could use it again. She was ushering me along at just fast enough of a clip to prevent me from being in dragon form before her ‘timetable’ ran out … previously.
Xara was working on old information, and that put the ball squarely into my court. She didn’t know that I had only a few hours before increased my power, binding the dragon spirit closer to me. I’d be ready to go a full minute before she expected me to. I thought once again about how the power suits worked, how the natural powers they unlocked stayed without the suit, and I was never happier to have an ancient dragon bonded to me.
One day, I’d find out how the Resistance pulled that off … or if they were even ultimately responsible.
But for the moment, I stepped through the airlock when it reopened, right into what seemed like a featureless steel orb. The circular door to it slid into place with a swish and a hiss of pressurized air, plunging me into near darkness before the entire thing rose up swiftly if I trusted the lurch of my stomach.
By the time the thing stopped abruptly, forcing me to steady myself against one curved wall to prevent myself from being bowled over, I guessed I had just a little over a minute to go before I could shift, which meant Xara felt she had a good two minutes. The door slid open with a whoosh, bright light flooding in and nearly blinding me.
“Out, D-876, now!” Xara’s voice, not projected and sounding very close and real, rattled in my ears as my eyes adjusted. “Our time is almost up, and you wouldn’t want your friends to be harmed, would you?”
I hid the grin of defiance as I pushed myself out into the blinding light. Someone’s time was indeed almost up, and the Matriarchy wasn’t going to like it when it happened.
27
“Onto the table now,” Xara’s voice insisted, not two meters ahead of me, and I shook my head to get my eyes working.
They adjusted in seconds, showing off a rectangular chamber that looked like the ultimate research laboratory. I don’t mean that merely in size, though the room was big, but in its cross-disciplinary glory. Each of the sections of the room was dedicated to a different kind of research. A robo-fac like the one I had seen on Exo and tools for robotics and electronics were in one corner while carefully organized shelves of ancient tomes and arcane crystals were in another. From weapons to power armor to medicine, it was a monument to science and academia, all with the signature gleaming whites and golds of the Matriarchy.
All that was secondary at the moment, my focus drawn to two things in particular. The first was the bronze-fitted examination table that dominated the center of the room. The flat metallic top of it was the only raw, unpainted surface in the room, and the whole assembly was supported by an intricate series of cylinders and mechanical struts. Overhead, dangling like a murderous chandelier was an array of robotic arms loaded with surgical tools, wicked-looking syringes, and thin-fingered manipulator hands. A small tray table next to it had its own array of scalpels and tools, all of which had the distinct, sparkling edge of crystal I had come to associate with dragon-slayers.
The most important thing, though, was the Matriarch herself. It was the first time I had seen Xara Lilana in her full glory. One ranting transmission and the misty holograms didn’t do her justice, didn’t compare to seeing her face-to-face. Her emer
ald green skin was flawless, the features of her face looking as if they were carved by a Renaissance master. She was tall too, taller than Tulip, standing just about my height. Her cold grey eyes stared at me sharply through her pince-nez glasses, her black raven wings tucked tight against her back.
Hers was a physique only attained by years of dedicated training, a perfect display of physical fitness blended with smoking hot femininity. From the swell of her breasts to the chiseled abs, down the flare of her hips and on past muscular legs, it was a sight to behold. All of that physical perfection was encased in the filmy bronze of her power suit. As with other Matriarch’s suits, the armor over the undersuit was remarkably thin, amounting to little more than golden metal molded over vital areas before extending into a skirt split dangerously high on both hips, emerald crystals adorning the shoulders to give them an exaggerated look.
Of special note was the Cestari on her hands, smaller and more elegant in design than mine, it was matched by crystal-studded boots, the kicking surfaces obviously reinforced with bronze plates along the shin and the top of the foot. It all combined together to the effect of staring at a combination of Chun-Li and She-Hulk, and I could only guess those cold eyes were calculating two-hundred-and-seventy-six ways to kick my head off.
“You don’t want to go through with this,” I said as I straightened up, trying to look confident despite my state of undress. It wasn’t hard, because I actually was confident, in myself and the ladies working hard on the outside. “You’re obviously brilliant. Surely you can see through—”
“I am,” she intoned flatly, as she practically blurred through the space between us, getting right up in my face in the blink of an eye. “Which means that I know what you are about to try to do. I have contemplated your every possible action since you stepped before my research center and know that you are about to try to convince me of the righteousness of your actions while stalling for one minute and … twenty-two seconds on this mark.”
Star Conqueror: Recompense: An Epic Space Harem Adventure Page 20
