Star Conqueror: An Epic Space Adventure

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Cleaner of Litter Boxes,” Tulip said as she narrowed her eyes. “We get it.”

  “Be warned, Null-K,” Clara snarled, “that while I have the utmost respect for your skills, I will still flay the fur from your hide for your impertinence!”

  I raised my voice. “Now, now, ladies, I’m not done yet.” Tulip’s hackles softened, and Clara glanced back at me with those faintly glowing eyes. “Option two, well, the dragon comes out and I kill you all. Trust me, I don’t care what magic you’ve got, I’ll tear you apart.”

  The d-word cut the snickers from the Quibs immediately. Tulip’s people weren’t the only ones that knew the old legends, it seemed. Even Clara’s imperious attitude seemed to sober as her eyes narrowed. “I think you put too much importance in the tales of yore, ‘dragon’, for even with those scaly beasts doing their worst, the Matriarchy rules the galaxy now.”

  “That was then, this is now.” I grinned, putting on my best war face. “This dragon has got a huge gun pointed at your head.”

  As if on instinct, the glow in her eyes suffused her entire form, like some short of defensive shield. My Star Conqueror brain kicked in, aided by her rather extensive list of titles. The Star Callers as a whole manipulated natural forces, and that glow was definitely some sort of support ability. Anchorites as a title were low-level admins, as I thought, but more importantly, were part of the actual church put up around the Matriarchy. Kind of falling into fantasy stereotypes, most of the clergy had magical powers in line with traditional MMO priests. Healers, buffers, some death-related abilities, that kind of thing.

  With how accurately most things had been translated into the game, I was more than willing to bet she was a healer/support type fighter.

  “Well, then, before I make my choice,” – Clara still let out a derisive snort at that – “you had most certainly give me my third option, darling.”

  “You surrender, or even better, you join us,” I said, wondering more than ever if she did have an ulterior motive to be here.

  With the obvious fear the Quibs had, it didn’t seem likely that the reason she came at us with only three Elites was because she was so much more powerful than us. And despite her grandiose, arrogant attitude, I could tell there were gears turning, a higher intelligence beyond the platinum blonde bimbo one might hear in her ‘darling’-laden words.

  As my words struck her, I pressed on. “Look, Clara, there’s a reason you’re here with only your little squad of Quibs. You’re either arrogant and stupid, which I doubt, or you’ve got something else going on, some other reason you’re here.”

  Clara’s eyebrows raised and wavered for a moment, even as her Elites aimed their rifles, apparently expecting the shooting to start any moment. There was something going on behind those golden eyes, an internal war, as the fingers of her free hand shot up to probe her temples. Whatever that war was, though, it didn’t freeze her entirely.

  “I came because …” What came next couldn’t have been the whole truth, not with the quaver in her voice and the sheer lunacy of it. “Because the only way I will advance closer to the Left Hand is to bring in your corpses,” she managed to snarl through pursed lips, a flicker of indecision in her tone, “and I don’t want to share the credit.” Her eyes flared bright, but the flash wasn’t gold this time, it was a sickly green. “So, in the Left Hand’s name, die!”

  She didn’t get to ‘die’ before Tulip and I started to fire. Guess we were going to have to do this the hard way.

  16

  The Arclight Double kicked in my hands as the big barrel roared to life, a triple-sized bolt of charged particles burning a trail through the air, hitting the center-most Elite dead on in the chest. His chestplate buckled but, to my surprise, it didn’t cave in as the Quib slid back on his boots a good six inches and almost bumped into Clara. I swore I saw a shimmer of gold as the blast hit. If my guess was on about Clara’s magic, she could have fortified them in some way, making the Quibs tougher than they should be.

  Accompanying the heavy percussion of my overcharged blast, Tulip played counterpoint with a steady rhythm of pulse laser bursts, squeezing off a nicely armed barrage into all three of Clara’s meat shields. Whatever was messing with the Matriarch’s head, it wasn’t enough to keep her from ducking down below her guards, letting them take the full brunt of the lasers. Each pulse that struck home diffused off the armor, scorching paint and dinging metal, and I caught it for sure then, the sparks of gold in reaction to the hits.

  Definitely some buffage. Still, the damage was mounting. If we focus-fired on one of the guards, we could break down the defensive line and get to Clara, assuming we survived the return fire. The center Quib was clutching at what was likely a cracked sternum, but the other two kept close ranks and unloaded on us with their Mandible Elites. Despite their growing fear, the Elites were made of stern stuff, keeping their fire in tight, controlled bursts.

  I broke right and Tulip broke left to give them some moving targets. While I was pretty fast, she was much faster, dancing with feline agility away from her attacker’s bullets before using the springy flooring to bounce up to one of the alley’s walls. She backflipped off of it as the Quib tried to keep up. He didn’t even come close. Sparks flew as his shots ricocheted off rubber and metal. Tulip ditched the Stinger in mid-flip, drawing her pistols as she landed and opened fire.

  I didn’t quite have that kind of super-agility, so I had to rely on the tried-and-true technique of minimizing body profile, going against the wall as best I could with the weird curved streets, and trusting on my heavy armor and suit shielding. As the Arclight Double recharged, bursts of fire tore up the wall around me and drilled into my armor, the reinforcing force shielding glowing brightly as it deflected damage and stored up energy through Recompense.

  So far so good, but what worried me was the building damage reports. My suit power was already starting to dip below 70%, and with all the defenses I had brought to bear, I should have been in far better shape than I was.

  Worse, Clara decided to give us a glimpse of what she could truly do.

  Her Wander-Z pistol crested over the tight wall of Elites, golden light blazing from the tip. “Mending Light,” she called out, all indecision gone now that the bullets were flying, and the golden aura around her flared out from the Wander’s tip. The glow rushed over her three Quibs, and where it flowed, armor popped back into place, chips in plates filled, and a sickening crack of bones echoed as the center Quib’s sternum fixed itself.

  She was a support all right, and that could turn this into a slog of a fight we didn’t have time for. I didn’t know how long Tulip could keep their communications hacked, and despite Clara’s internal conflict, there was no way to be sure she wouldn’t call in the real heavy guns the moment her comms were clear. As much as I knew I could kick ass as a dragon, we couldn’t fight the entire arcology, not all at once. Without a support unit of our own, there was even a chance Clara could take us through sheer attrition and fatigue.

  Well, that sure as hell couldn’t be allowed to happen. I had hoped to clear out the Quibs without resorting to dragon power. I really had no idea how much time it would take to use Dragon Will on Clara, something her strange behavior made me want to do even more, but it was time to find out.

  As the Arclight Double let out a happy ding, letting me know it had recharged, I took aim and grunted into the comms. “I’m about to make a big opening, Tulip. Bounce behind, see if you can weaken Clara with a Magic Bullet.” I pushed away from the wall as I unloaded a wide spray of blasts, the red surge of Recompense flowing from my suit’s shielding into the rifle. “But don’t kill her!”

  Even though it was against every one of Tulip’s instincts, her reply was swift as she shifted into her low, sleek panther form.

  “Affirmative,” she growled as she charged forward, staying low to the ground as the Quibs tried to keep formation under my withering assault.

  Unfortunately for them, my first sweep of blasts was backed
by extra force that obliterated Clara’s defensive magic, and after that, the two-stripes’ armor couldn’t take the normal burst fire of the Arclight.

  Of course, killing them with my rifle wasn’t likely, but it sure kept their attention purely focused on me. Even Clara, taking a step further back from her meatshields, was fixated on me and the damage I was doing, which made sense because she probably had little to no offensive ability of her own. As she began to point her Wander in sequence at each of her Quibs, wrapping them in a steady golden shield, much as she had conjured around herself, Tulip tore a trail across the ground, her claws tearing into the softer flooring to make a sudden shift to the right.

  She disappeared from sight, her black fur seeming to meld right into the shadows cast by the soaring architecture, as I kept shooting. Clara’s glowing shields ate every one of the small blasts like a fat man at Thanksgiving dinner. It was a little funny because as the Quibs bullets tore into my armor, they charged up my own shots, allowing me to fire back volleys that shattered Clara’s shields, causing her to have to recast them again.

  There was just one problem though. They had a healer. But that was okay because this was all part of the plan. As my HUD flashed red and the words “Warning: suit power at 25%!” appeared in my vision, I knew I could have unleashed the dragon right then, but I held on just a moment longer, to lull the Quibs and their Matriarch into a false sense of security.

  Even as my suit’s shielding began to fail, bullets starting to gouge into the hard plating and kinetic-absorbing undersuit, I grinned. Behind all our attackers, Tulip’s feline form burst from the shadows, shifting in mid-leap back to her normal humanoid shape. Her pistols hummed as the barrels exploded with golden light, the Magic Bullet discharging into two unerring shots that zigged and zagged to blast the unsuspecting Matriarch right in the back.

  The empowered bullets shattered through Clara’s golden shield and burrowed right into her power suit’s shielding. Now, advanced Matriarchy technology or not, the paper-thin suit that Clara wore wasn’t built for defense, no doubt designed to enhance her specialized magics like her Wander. It was only by the grace of that magic’s shield that Clara lived through the sneak attack.

  Still, she let out a shriek of surprise and pain as Tulip’s empowered shot plowed into the back section of the Matriarch’s breastplate, throwing her forward into her guards. To compound their troubles, that was the signal for me to throw the mental switch, to call upon the raging dragon inside of me.

  There wasn’t a hint of pain this time. It felt more like embracing the return of an old friend as opposed to an outside force twisting my body. Shining black scales erupted through my skin, turning the pain of the Mandible shots piercing my armor into mere bee stings, as my gauntlets retracted to let loose my golden talons. Dragon oil filled my mouth as my face shifted and stretched into a dragon’s snout, teeth elongating and sharpening inside.

  As fire and smoke poured out of my nostrils, I reared back and let out a roar that seemed to shake the entire alley. The alley wasn’t the only thing that was shaking. The Elites, even though they were a whole rank above the last ones that had faced my draconic wrath, took an immediate step back, rifles shaking in their fearful grips, which was in direct opposition to Clara’s deep desire to avoid the gunslinging catwoman pressing from the rear.

  “Triangle formation,” Clara shouted, a strange mix of fear and anticipation rising in her voice, even as she raised her Wander high and dark red blood seeped from the crack in her armor. “Mending Light!”

  Still managing to hold onto their morale, the Elites changed their positions from a solid wall in front of Clara to a more balanced spread. Two still stayed forward while one spun to Clara’s back to try to ward off Tulip. I couldn’t be sure, but I swore the one that swiveled to fight Tulip looked relieved at that prospect. Clara’s wound healed as I stalked forward, letting fire and smoke pour out of my mouth.

  The blazing fire inside me stoked hotter as a half-hearted barrage of bullets sparked off my armor and scales. “All right, Anchorite, you still have a choice,” I growled, the echoing rumble issuing out with the weight of a godly proclamation. “You can lay down your arms and surrender, or you can be burned to ash, something your magic can’t bring you back from.”

  Though the Elites were obviously spooked, they still didn’t break. They sure as hell had more guts than those one-stripe Elites, probably because they had confidence in the Matriarch’s power. Clara, though, that was a different story. Her golden eyes darted forward, widening in some existential horror at the sight of my draconic fury.

  “No!” she cried, her angelic voice twisting with hysteria. “No! I won’t give in without a fight, just like I didn’t to the Mother of Chains!” With a shaking hand, she swept her Wander at me and pulled the trigger. “Necrotic Shot!”

  My eyes widened. That had been unexpected. In the game, support Matriarchs like Clara focused purely on healing, shielding, and buffing her guards, only directly attacking when she had no choice. This turn was both good and bad.

  The good was that, without Clara reinforcing their shielding and concentrating on maintaining her reinforcing buffs on them, the Elites were suddenly very vulnerable. The one guarding Clara’s rear let out a shriek as Tulip’s pistols kept up a rhythm of deadly fire, his body jerking in a jittering dance to the beat, and the two in front of me paled as I lunged forward.

  The bad was that I had no choice but to take the crackling blast of sickly green energy from Clara’s Wander straight in the chest, dodging impossible with my half-a-ton of mass already moving forward. The magically enhanced bolt slipped right through my shielding, passed through my armor, and melted right into my ebony scales, sending wracking pain through my nerves and muscles, my amped-up senses feeling scales crack, muscles tear, and blood vessels pop at the cellular level. Clara wasn’t just a healer, she was a full-on biokinetic, holding the power to kill as well, and even through my immense draconic stamina, I could feel the crackling necrotic energy sweep through me.

  Not enough to stop me though.

  Even as my HUD reported, “12% cellular damage! Overall bodily health 73%,” I crashed into the first of her front guards, bringing my right hand downward in a glittering arc, talons tearing through thick armor and the meat of his left shoulder. Superhuman strength and terrible injury brought him to his knees, so I helped him stand by throwing my left fist upward in a terrific uppercut to his face. The Elite’s helmet shattered to fragments under the force of the punch, his head caving in as his body was launched upward.

  Enemy power suit disabled, life signs flatlined. Remote transfer initiated!

  Power credits added up with a tinkling in my ears and I felt a renewed rush of energy through my suit. As my power levels crept up, both the suit’s nanomachines and my own draconic regenerative powers went to work, fighting back against bullet damage and the lingering necrotic energy in my system.

  “It can’t be,” Clara gasped as she vainly cast forth her golden light on her guard’s corpse as it hit the ground. “Reedus! Why won’t you heal?”

  She actually seemed to care about her guards, another first in Matriarch history as I knew it. The draconic instincts in me read everything about Clara’s attitude, her scent, her trembling features, her rapidly-beating heart. There was something deep inside that yearned for freedom, something I knew I could unleash even as I turned and spewed a concentrated ball of napalm from my snout at her other guard, touching it off with the blazing fire in my body as I did so.

  As the rear guard dropped to his knees, bleeding from a dozen wounds torn through him by Tulip’s skillful gunplay, the last Elite froze in terror, as if he knew his fate was sealed. The pervasive dragon oil burst on impact with his chest, sticking to the metal as it ignited into white-hot flames and seeped through cracks and access ports. He dropped his Mandible rifle, hands tearing ineffectually at the blaze that melted through his chest. His thrashing only served to spread the fiery fluid onto his arms and hands, a
nd with a terrible wail, he fell backward, a concave hole melted through his chest.

  Credits and suit power flowed through the remote transfer, not just to me but Tulip, and we spun as one to surround Clara. She slumped to her shapely knees, tears rolling down her cheeks as fear, rage, and a strange look of excitement warred across her features.

  “Is this the power of the dragons? How could they have ever lost to us …?” Her perfect features looked up at me for answers. “And what will you do to me now …?”

  Tulip trained her guns on the beaten Matriarch, eyes flicking over at me, some of that fervor I had seen the last time I was a dragon returning. “I don’t know, lady … but whatever it is you are going to do, David, you need to do it fast. Both my Judas Hack and Stutter Virus are going to get overwritten in ten seconds!”

  I closed my reptilian eyes and instincts took over, alien ones to the human half of me. When I opened my eyes again, a fiery orange aura had erupted around my form, coming off my body like wisps of plasma.

  “I will work the Will of the Dragon, Tulip,” I rumbled, the dragon and I speaking as one, as I loomed over Clara, opening my clawed hands to her, not to grab or strike her, but to raise her up to her feet. “And that will is to help set you free, Clara Danton.”

  17

  Clara’s eyes quivered, filling with fresh tears as she took my massive scaled hands and let me pull her up, letting her Wander fall to the ground with a rubbery bounce. My fiery aura ran across her lithe form and redoubled in strength, and that was when things got … weird. Well, weirder than the whole ‘beat-a-video-game-and-get-sucked-into-an-intergalactic-war’ thing.

  Time seemed to slow to a virtual halt around Clara and me. The war between scrubbers and spiders froze in mid-scrap, Tulip’s eyes seemed to slow and stop in mid-blink, and the heavy beats of her heart, easily audible to my dragon ears, came to a grinding halt. The smoke, dust, and debris from the gunfight seemed to hang suspended in the air.