Star Conqueror: An Epic Space Adventure

by J. A. Cipriano

  “The whole dragon thing helps a lot,” I admitted. “I can hide a platoon’s worth of power in a normal body, letting it out when we need it.”

  She nodded slowly. “Then I know what I need to do. While I didn’t have much in the way of power credits to spend, I do have enough to learn Radiant Light, a new way to channel my healing light to spread as an aura and mend multiple wounded allies at once. My ability to heal wounds magically is unique among us, so I should maximize that talent first and foremost.”

  “That’s how you do it!” Tulip chirped happily as she finally pulled away, springing lightly up to her feet. “I mean, obviously, make sure you know how to protect yourself, but from what I saw of those light shields and that death beam thing you did—”

  “Stellar Shields and Necrotic Shot,” Clara corrected as she followed suit, finally peeling herself off of me and standing. “Yes, I see what you mean. Fortunately, the Matriarchy ensured that I had at least enough credits and direction to have a core set of combat upgrades. Trust me, I won’t be a deadweight on the battlefield.”

  “I know you won’t.” I got to my feet and stretched. “Well, we’re just about ready to roll. Let’s just take a quick stock of weapons.” Following my own suggestion, I rattled off what I was currently loaded with. “I’ve got my Arclight Double, of course, but add to that two Banger Elite grenades, a Mandible Elite assault rifle, and a Swarmer shotgun pistol.”

  Clara nodded. “I have my Wander-Z, of course, and one of those nasty little Bangers myself.”

  “I’m getting a bit overloaded, honestly,” Tulip sighed. “I have my two Starshots, two Bangers, a Mandible, and a Stinger.” She rubbed her chin. “While I know I took the Stinger for helping with stealth shots, most of my Gunslinger abilities require actual firearms, slugthrowers. Beam weapons aren’t compatible with them, and obviously it makes my Nano-magazines upgrade worthless.”

  “Oh, that’s a nice one,” I remarked. “That refills your magazines for a small amount of suit power, right?”

  She smiled brightly. “Yep! So, thank Felinus, I haven’t needed to scavenge ammunition this whole time.”

  “Well, let me take a quick check on these, but I think I have an idea on how best to distribute our arsenal.” With that, I took up each weapon in turn, letting my HUD update with details on each. I didn’t bother with the Bangers, we all knew what they did and how strong they were, Clara’s Wander for obvious reasons, or Tulip’s Starshots as she was the only one of us trained to dual wield efficiently. Trust me, shooting two automatic pistols accurately is way harder than the movies make it out to be.

  * * *

  Mandible Elite Rifle

  Type: Slugthrower Rifle

  Item Level: 26

  Durability: 80,000/80,000

  Damage: 160

  Accuracy: 32

  Magazine Size: 120

  Enchantments: none

  Ability: Smart targeting link adds +10 Accuracy for 10 seconds, 2% suit power cost

  * * *

  Stinger Elite Rifle

  Type: Pulse Laser Rifle

  Item Level: 24

  Durability: 73,000/73,000

  Damage: 50 x 3 pulses

  Accuracy: 40

  Enchantments: none

  Ability: Overcharged pulse adds 10 damage per shot, 1000 Durability lost per overcharge

  * * *

  Swarmer Shotpistol

  Type: Spread Slugthrower Pistol

  Item Level: 30

  Durability: 62,000/62,000

  Damage: 10 x 20 pellets

  Accuracy: 20

  Shell Load: 1 per barrel

  Enchantments: Ammo Restore I (reloads 1 shell per 2 seconds)

  Ability: Tri-barrel shot fires all barrels, takes twice as long to reload

  * * *

  “Yep, not much different from the game,” I said with a nod.

  Clara only looked at me oddly for a second before nodding as well. “Oh yes, how you got here.”

  “So,” Tulip interjected, “you said you had an idea, David?”

  “Well, it’s probably what you would think yourself, Tulip.” I handed her one of the Mandibles. “You can make the most use of one of these if you do need to do long range shooting, and when it comes to stealth, well, I know how you’re practically invisible in dire panther form. You can get stealth kills with just claw and fang.”

  She took the assault rifle from me, did a quick check of it, then slid the length of black death into a magnetic clamp across her back. “And I’m guessing you’ll take the Swarmer? It does the ‘shoot your whole load in one go’ trick that you liked about the Arclight Double.”

  “Right,” I nodded, “and we lucked out in that it already has an Ammo Restore enchant, so I can use it right after a big Arclight Double shot and it’ll be reloaded magically by the time I need it again.” I glanced at Clara. “Which means you should take the Stinger. I’m going to guess you have a lot of power restoration upgrades to help you with your magic, so an energy weapon is the perfect choice when you aren’t using your Wander. As for the extra Mandible, well, I have two back clamps and am still feeling light on my feet. I’ll carry it.”

  Clara beamed at me as she accepted the lightweight pulse laser. “I shall cherish this instrument of destruction dearly, darling.” She held it up in a shooter’s pose, looking down the iron sights for a moment before attaching it to her suit’s sole back clamp, positioned right between her wings. Her form wasn’t half-bad for someone who likely was trained primarily as a medic and spell wielder.

  “I’m glad I’m giving out all the best toys to the women in my life,” I grinned. “Speaking of gifts, you synchronized Clara’s communications, security, and HUD to the squad’s, right, Tulip?”

  She scoffed as she spun her pistols on her fingers. “Does Turner love Twinkies?”

  “Dare I ask what a … Twinkie is?” Clara said with an arched eyebrow. “I know I could plumb your memories, David, but something about that word makes me fear this thing.”

  “Oh,” I said with a laugh, “they’re only something to fear if you’re watching your weight. Anyway, you’ll find out when we introduce you to Turner, I’m sure.” Cracking my neck, I strode across Clara’s little hideaway and took a deep breath. “All right, ladies, let’s go steal us a cloaking device.”

  “Oh, no, darling,” Clara cooed, walking instead to the far wall of the room. “Not that way.” She pulled aside one of her colorful quilts to reveal an off-white panel, just barely differentiated by its color from the rest of the wall. “I have more than one secret to show you.”

  20

  Clara looked proud of herself as she tapped the wall panel with her Wander, a spark of gold emitting from the tip. With a click and a hiss, the entire panel slid back and off to one side, revealing a dimly lit tunnel beyond, running parallel to the back wall of her hideaway.

  “What?” she laughed. “Did you think I flew to this little place every time I snuck off? I would have been spotted and tracked down in mere moments by the flying drones!”

  Tulip shared that laugh and smiled as she poked her head through the open doorway. “Pretty smart, Clara! Looks like a maintenance tunnel. Where does it go?”

  As she stepped the rest of the way in, I was right behind her, Arclight Double at the ready, as Clara brought up the rear. “Well, darlings, it ties into the whole maintenance network for the structures outside of the main arcology. There are a couple of tunnels that link up to the main building, but we don’t want to go there. We want to see your Resistance friend.”

  Unlike the immaculate streets and buildings outside, this tunnel was dimly-lit, swelteringly hot, and constructed of discolored, unpainted steel. It was way more ‘dirty boiler room’ and far less ‘spotless hallways of heaven’ than anything the Matriarchy would normally accept, but this was purely meant for the slaves, the servants, and the people under the High Priestess’s heel.

  As Clara sealed the secret door behind us, I glanced back at her. “
Why wouldn’t we want to go straight to the main arcology? Better to cut through straight to the heart of the matter.” As she started to smirk, I stepped closer to her, Tulip practically pressing herself into my back to give Clara a look herself. “Okay, save me the trouble of trying to plumb all of your memories that are stuck in my head. What’s the secret you’re holding onto?”

  “Very well, but you’re stealing my fun. You must know how much I adore springing happy surprises on those I care for,” Clara replied as she turned towards us with a flourish of her Wander. “You know how I said that I always wondered why I kept my dear home-away-from-home? Well, I did more than that. Diverted certain … resources and the like to a private vault. A private vault only I and a few other Matriarchs know exist, but only I have the security codes for it.”

  Tulip’s hands squeezed around my arms in anxious anticipation. “And the cloaking device schematics are there, or a copy at least!” As if it were possible, she pressed herself even closer to me, her voice filling with that familiar fervor. “David, this is all divine providence, the will of the dragons! Clara, don’t you see? This was fate! You were meant to find us, and David was meant to free you, so that you could help not only us, but the entire galaxy!”

  While I was hard-pressed to disagree with her beliefs, I wasn’t quite sure it was good for my ego totally buy into this chosen one narrative. All the same, I did smile as Clara’s eyes widened from Tulip’s words. “Whether you want to call it something miraculous, I will say that while the Matriarchy thinks it’s got a total lockdown on those it has enslaved, freedom finds a way. You can’t chain people’s minds and hearts forever. However you did it, I’m sure that it was something important inside you fighting back.”

  “Yes,” Clara murmured softly, her smile growing. “Yes, you are right. I dare say that Tulip is right too. The return of the dragon is not just a tale told by the Resistance. It’s a tale told by the High Priestess as well, though the Matriarch’s version is a bit more of a horror story.” She puffed up a little. “Well, then, let us not tarry! I’m feeding these tunnel schematics into your HUDs and you will see how these tunnels will lead us straight to the coordinates Tulip has already provided.”

  “And we cut right past the main security network,” Tulip enthused, finally peeling herself off of me, not that I minded her that close one bit. “I’m guessing the underground transit system is linked to your hidden vault?”

  “Precisely, my dear,” Clara cooed. “If your contact can get us a ride, we should be home free.”

  “Considering our contact is supposed to be a worker on the transit system,” I noted as I oriented myself based on the new map information Clara shared with our suits, “he or she probably can. Going through these tunnels will get us there in ten minutes or less and right past most of the security.”

  “Just in case, I’ll run a Static Field,” Tulip added, tapping at her tablet to fire up the interference field. “Lead the way, David.”

  We made our way through the steamy maintenance tunnels, starting off at ground level before going down a ladder set in an open hatch when we hit what the maps indicated one of the channels intersected our path. Now below the compound, the coast was still clear and the tunnels a bit cooler, not that I could tell outside of my suit’s temperature gauge.

  “What’s this large area we’re going to go through on the map, Clara?” I asked as we approached a closed door, one that reminded me of an old-fashioned submarine door, complete with the wheel lock set in the center of it.

  “Megadred assembly line,” she said with a faint frown. “The Ar’abi certainly won’t report us, so it shouldn’t be a danger to cross through.”

  I nodded as I worked the wheel. Megadreds were a whole range of humanoid combat robots employed by the Matriarchy, and if there was an assembly line for them here, well, we’d inevitably run into them. As for the line itself, Clara was right, there wouldn’t be a danger from the Ar’abi, but at the same time, the thought of literally having to walk through a line of slaves and do nothing galled me.

  Reminding myself that the mission had to trump doing anything foolish to endanger it, I pulled the hatch open once the wheel finished spinning. Though there was plenty of rust from the moist air, it opened easily on well-greased hinges. The moment the door cracked, an increasingly loud cacophony of grinding mechanisms, sparking welders, and constant murmured speech assaulted our senses.

  The assembly line itself was, at first blush, no different from any heavy industry factory I had seen. A main line ran down the center of the long rectangular chamber, running parallel to the street above, judging from my HUD. Fortunately, there were a few breaks in the actual conveyor bringing parts from an opening in one end of the rectangle to allow us to pass through, where industrial winches pulled pieces off the line for fine work before moving them onto the next conveyor.

  Across the room, a dozen or so red-skinned Ar’abi, men and women alike, busied themselves with the mechanisms rolling down the line, massive robotic arms fit for something twelve feet tall if it followed human proportions. Dressed in the same shoddy brown jumpsuits we had seen on the workers above, they looked awful, tired, and badly overworked. Several nursed injuries, a few of which looked pretty damned serious, but kept diligently working anyway even though OSHA would shut this place down in an instant with the stiflingly hot and unsafe working conditions.

  None of the tools, which could all be repurposed as weapons with some work, were set loose. All of them were mounted on actuator arms that limited their movement to work on the line. Even the hand tools, wrenches and hammers and the like, were attached to the line by stiflingly short metal cables.

  A few of the Ar’abi looked up as we walked in, but the moment they set eyes on Clara, they shivered in fear and went right back to work. The murmurs got louder, and the work became more frenzied. Taking in the room, Clara shivered beside me, her jaw setting as unshed tears quivered in her eyes.

  “Clara,” I said just loud enough to be heard over the constant sounds of work, “I can’t imagine how hard this is for you to have to face these people considering …” I frowned a bit, not having to say the rest, that even though she was under the mental binding of the Matriarchy, she had still been the instrument of these people’s suffering. “But what defines us is how we deal with situations like this, how we make up for the wrongs we’ve done.”

  “We make things right,” Tulip added. “And the best way we can do that is to do the mission and help the Resistance free this world and so many others.”

  Clara took in a deep, shuddering breath and held her head up high. “You’re right, dears. We must make things right.” She led the way across the factory floor and we followed in single file to minimize any chance of being caught in an industrial mishap.

  I didn’t speak to any of the Ar’abi as we passed. I wanted to help them, and in the long run, I would. As Tulip had reminded Clara, we could do these people the most good by completing the mission. A few more looked up at us when we passed, and gossip flowed up and down the line. What it was, I couldn’t be sure, not over the constant hisses and clanging of the work.

  Once we made it past the assembly line to another hatch-like door, Clara paused, bit her lip, then turned on her heel. “I understand we cannot do something so crass as freeing the workers here or destroying the assembly line, but … there is something I can do for these people.” She looked to me. “Our souls are bound, David Briggs, and if you wish me to go on without doing this, I will, but …”

  “How about saying what it is?” I answered with a grin. “I don’t think we can decide anything without that.”

  “Some of them are injured, the price for being too slow on the line or an effect of the crude conditions here.” Clara pulled her Wander from her hip. “Let me at least heal their wounds.”

  Tulip rubbed her ear indecisively. “I don’t think that will alert anyone, but …”

  “Do it.” I didn’t have to think twice about it. To give thes
e people some small relief would not only do them good, but it would raise Clara’s morale quite a bit. It was a win-win in my eyes.

  The ex-Matriarch’s face lit up as she nodded, golden light building at the tip of her Wander as she stepped past us. In a regal voice, evoking some of the majesty of her initial appearance without the twisted arrogance, she shouted, “I can do little for you, the people I have hurt beyond measure, but this much is within my power.”

  Raising the slender weapon over her head, she cried, “Radiant Light!” The golden starlight burst outward from the Wander, bathing the chamber in its light. For a moment, the oppressive pall over the room abated as the workers filled with healing light. Cuts mended, burns cooled, sprains soothed, and broken bones put right

  As Clara’s magical light faded, the Ar’abi all looked at us with strange reverence. Before they could ask more or cause a disruption by leaving the line untended, we made our exit, the tears in Clara’s eyes now soothed by the good she had sown in her wake.

  Wordlessly, we pressed on through the maintenance tunnels, only a few hundred meters from our contact’s location now. As we moved, I found myself wondering about the best way to truly win the war. Sure, putting the High Priestess’s head on a pike might work wonders, but there was more to it than that. The fact of the matter was that the people of the galaxy could probably throw off the Matriarchy through strength of numbers, if they only had the coordination and hope of victory.

  That, above everything else, was something we could provide. Maybe that was what the whole dragon prophecy could really do, I mean, beyond giving me badass dragon powers. We could bring hope to those without it and inspire the galaxy to rise up united against the High Priestess. Even the smallest of gestures like what Clara had just done could ignite the fire of hope and freedom in the people here.

  Tulip broke me out of my thoughts. “We’re close.” Her form shifted to let her grow a few inches, her face pressing against smudgy porthole windows that graced this particular stretch of hallway. “Guys, you have to take a look at this.”