Star Conqueror: Recompense
Star Conqueror Book 2
J. A. Cipriano
Edited by
J. B. Garner
Copyright © 2018 by DDCO Publishing, LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Want to get this FREE?
Also by J.A. Cipriano
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Thank You for reading!
Want to get this FREE?
Sign up here. If you do, I'll send you my short story, Alone in the Dark, for free.
Visit me on Facebook or on the web at JACipriano.com for all the latest updates.
Also by J.A. Cipriano
The Pen is Mightier
The Pen is Mightier: Company Ink
The Pen is Mightier: To Vegas… with Love
Star Conqueror
Star Conqueror: Recompense
Star Conqueror: Legion
Super Human
United We Stand
King of the Gods
Falcon Punch
World of Ruul
Soulstone: Awakening
Soulstone: The Skeleton King
Soulstone: Oblivion
Bug Wars
Doomed Infinity Marine
Doomed Infinity Marine 2
The Legendary Builder
The Builder’s Sword
The Builder’s Greed
The Builder’s Pride
The Builder’s Wrath
The Builder’s Throne
The Builder’s Conquest
The FBI Dragon Chronicles
A Ritual of Fire
A Ritual of Death
Elements of Wrath Online
Ring of Promise
The Vale of Three Wolves
Crystalfire Keep
Kingdom of Heaven
The Skull Throne
Escape From Hell
The Thrice Cursed Mage
Cursed
Marked
Burned
Seized
Claimed
Hellbound
The Half-Demon Warlock
Pound of Flesh
Flesh and Blood
Blood and Treasure
The Lillim Callina Chronicles
Wardbreaker
Kill it with Magic
The Hatter is Mad
Fairy Tale
Pursuit
Hardboiled
Mind Games
Fatal Ties
Clans of Shadow
Heart of Gold
Feet of Clay
Fists of Iron
The Spellslinger Chronicles
Throne to the Wolves
Prince of Blood and Thunder
Found Magic
May Contain Magic
The Magic Within
Magic for Hire
Witching on a Starship
Maverick
Planet Breaker
Starcrossed Dragons
Riding Lightning
Grinding Frost
Swallowing Fire
Pounding Earth
The Goddess Harem
The Tiger’s Offer
The Wolf’s Hunt
The Dragon’s War
Justice Squad
Miracle’s Touch
Her Angels
Heaven’s Embrace
Heaven’s A Beach
Ghosts and Grudges
1
“Brace yourselves!” I called out from the captain’s station of the Orion, as the Hunter-class patrol vessel burst through the vibrational barrier between hyperspace and real space. “We’re going in hot!”
The front viewscreens resolved from the strange, stretched-out sights of hyperspace, each pinprick of starlight a string along the void, to a more normal starfield. Well, it could have been, if the Orion didn’t jump straight into a sprawling firefight. Dead ahead of us was the blocky, mile-long hull of the Blue Skies, a Hauler-class Resistance transport vessel and source of the distress call we were responding too, and she wasn’t doing so well.
Long, blackened gouges from concentrated laser fire ran down her hull, showing that her primary shielding had already failed, and one of her four primary thrusters was cold as the surrounding space. It was only a matter of time before the Blue Skies was going to be dead in space. Spiraling around it, rapidly getting picked off by the onrush of Matriarchy ships, were a few Darts, short-range escort fighters launched from the Skies.
The little things were barely larger than a luxury car, all swept back angles that did actually look a bit like an actual dart, with enough room for a pilot, a big ass engine, and dual particle cannons in the nose. If the odds had been even, they would have stood a good chance at defending the Hauler, but with the swarm of needle-like Zultar-class remote fighters on them, well, let’s just say the odds definitely weren’t even.
While we would have come calling to any Resistance distress signal, the fact that the Blue Skies was loaded with rescued girls from the Denara girls’ camps brought us even faster. Those nasty places were where the High Priestess and the Mother of Chains culled magically-talented young women to brainwash and turn into the Matriarchs that held their collective heels to the Milky Way’s throats. Not that you’d know about it if you were on Earth, especially if you didn’t play Star Conqueror, the most popular VRMMO shooter on the planet.
On Earth, this would all be considered a game, but here, it was real, and it had been real for me for about a month now. Ever since I beat the game, found myself attuned to an ancient dragon spirit, and met what I now considered my surrogate family, the very crew surrounding me on the bridge of the Orion.
“Hoorah, David Briggs! We will fight with honor today!” Turner, Earth action movie buff and barrel-shaped demo expert, shouted from the engineer’s station just to my right as a light show of particle bursts, rail gun streaks, and guided missiles burst around us. “Reactor at maximum efficiency. We’re as hot as we can get unless you want me to light the outer shields up with plasma …?”
I was pretty sure he meant that as a joke, but I wasn’t going to question him. With the Bolderian’s knack for both explosives and starship engineering, he might very well be able to turn us into a phoenix streaking across space. “No, just blowing up those Zultar fighters will do for now. I’ll take the stick.” As I said that, my fingers danced across my captain’s console, something I’d gotten very familiar with over the last few weeks, pulling up primary navigation. “Tulip, try to get some countermeasures up for the Blue Skies
. If that freighter gets hammered by those missiles—”
From the navigation station directly opposite of Turner, Tulip, Fertish shapeshifter, catwoman, and the galaxy’s greatest hacker (something more than she had said, so you know it’s not just ego), flashed her Cheshire grin at me, winking with one feline eye as she cracked her fingers. “Consider it done, David! By Felinus’ whiskers, those girls are going to be safe, even if I have to hack every guidance system one at a time!”
If anyone could do that, Tulip could. Drop-dead gorgeous, an ace markswoman, and so much more, she was a legend among the Resistance. I returned the wink, grinning wildly myself as I took the Orion in a broad arc. If we hit hard, we might even save a Dart or two, but where the hell had all these short-range Matriarchy fighters come from?
“Alyra, fire at will. I’m taking us right through the center of this little scrum.” As the inertial dampeners on the ship whined to compensate for the tight maneuver I pulled us through, the large, boxy shape of the Hauler filling the viewscreens, I show a momentary glance to the two ex-Matriarchs ahead of me. “Clara, try to find the cluster ship that brought these guys. There’s got to be one, there’s no hyperdrive on these little bastards.”
It was the fact that both of these beautiful, winged aliens now fought on our side that gave me hope that we’d kick the Matriarchy’s ass in the end. See, the dragon bonded to me let me take its form, a giant, near-invulnerable dragon man. That alone was badass, but the really crucial thing was the magic that I could summon through it, a magic that could slice the chains on the Matriarchs I encountered and bring them back to the people they were before.
“Of course, darling,” Clara cooed over her shoulder at me, the blonde-haired healer and former low-level administrator’s wings fidgeting a little from the science station. “I’ll feed them through to your screens as soon as I get a read on them.”
Alyra, the former Left Hand of the High Priestess and tenth in the Matriarchy hierarchy (though I wasn’t even sure of that anymore from what I had seen), didn’t look back, the polished marble skin of her face only visible in the reflection of the tactical station’s viewscreen. Her coppery curls did bob, though, as she nodded, her voice cool and rigidly controlled. “I’ll destroy them all for you, my dragon. Railguns online, anti-missile systems primed, and main particle cannon charging.”
She was putting words into action already, the four ball turrets arrayed across the forward arc of our wedge-shaped vessel already unloading magnetically propelled bursts of heavy metal into the swarms of attacking fighters. The moment she started firing, our stolen cloaking device cut out, revealing us in all our righteous glory. Clara’s first scan threw up a baker’s dozen of red targets across the three-dimensional map of the battlespace as I sped us forward, diving towards the freighter and its precious cargo.
Two Zultars exploded in the first volley, and suddenly, the Orion became the most popular girl at prom, nine silver-white javelin-shaped craft suddenly reorienting on us. That was good. We could take some heat. In response, I cut starboard and threw us into a spin. Zultars had one big weakness, and that was the fact all their weaponry was on forward fixed mounts, much like the Darts. Now, for maneuverable fighters, that wasn’t a huge weakness, but against a scout ship like the Orion, they would never be able to mass their firepower.
As streaks of red laser light lanced out at our twisting vessel, a few grazing shots raking across our shields, the missiles that had been hurtling towards the Hauler summarily exploded a good hundred meters out. While the blast waves rocked the limping freighter, it was a million times better than what would have happened if they had hit.
“Shields holding like a boss,” Turner called out with a massive grin. “That’s who the kids on Earth say it these days, right?” More seriously, he focused on his read-outs. “The bad news, David, is that the Blue Skies got hit with a full volley of vibrational tethers. Which means—”
“We have to take all these assholes out for them to be safe,” I finished for him, as I worked in tandem with the tactical read-outs from Alyra’s station, sweeping the ship from side to side to let each arc of turrets unload with deadly efficiency. “Good job on hacking those missiles, Tulip, by the way.”
Even in the heat of the moment, the catwoman reached out and stroked my arm, sending soothing warmth through my body. Sure, it was a Fertish thing, but Tulip and I had done a lot closer touching than that, and the thought made me grin. “My pleasure! And if I’m reading the sensor reports from Clara right—”
“Which you are, Tulip dear,” Clara chirped, even as the Orion’s shields rippled from another volley of laser pulses.
Tulip flashed a smile down at the ex-Matriarch and continued. “Yeah, I’m highlighting their command ship now! They must still be cloaked, but with the information we swiped from Balarian, they’re easier to detect than a catnip mouse. We can’t get a weapons lock, but we know where in general they are.”
Clara nodded. “But that also means they can’t send an active control signal to give new orders to the Zultars without giving us a signal we can lock on to.”
While the Matriarchy had no qualms about using disposable grunt cannon fodder, they also loved their technology, especially in space battles. Guess the average Quib wouldn’t really make it through starship training very well, so they tended towards drone ships for their little stuff. It also made the Zultars nastier than they should be. No pilot means no life support, no crew compartment, and no need to worry about organic frailties.
It also made them as predictable as the enemy AI in Star Conqueror. And that gave me a brilliant idea.
Alyra let out a grunt of annoyance. “It’s definitely a Hive-class controller, David Briggs. Our particle cannon is charged, and I need no petty weapons lock to hit it. Can I please obliterate them from the face of the galaxy so that we may continue our more vital mission?” There was an edge to her normally harmonious voice, and I didn’t quite buy her stated reason. Not that it mattered, because blowing the Hive was the ultimate plan, but not quite like that.
“If you can make a blind shot on a cloaked Hive,” Turner chuckled, “I’d acknowledge you as the greatest shot in the galaxy and give you my last box of Twinkies.”
I shook my head as I took us on another evasive twist, sweeping past the Blue Skies and towards the marked signal Tulip and Clara had found. The last two Darts still flying fell into formation, coming up behind the swarm of Matriarchy fighters that were trying to light up our backside. “Hold your shot, Alyra,” I ordered. “Turner, try to pump any spare power into the particle cannon, and please, don’t tempt her. You know she’ll take any stupid bet if her pride’s on the line!”
“But I could destroy it right—” she tried to argue, glancing over her shoulder with those piercing blue eyes of hers, but I stared right back.
The ship rocked as our rear shields buckled, a few laser bursts raking across our hull. “I said hold that shot! Taking out the Hive is great and all, but the Zultars will still be on AI control until they run out of fuel, and every second they’re live, the Hauler’s in trouble.” I cracked my neck, ignoring the damage reports and trusting Turner would keep us together long enough. “Nope, we’re going to exploit the hell out of this, take them all out at once.” I glanced from Alyra, properly chastised, to Clara. “Tell the Darts to ignore the Zultars and get ready to sweep past and take out the Hive. They’ll see it in just a moment.”
Technically, what I was about to try was a gamble, but it was a gamble from an educated guess. While Star Conqueror didn’t have the cloaking technology that the real Matriarchy had, I had been in enough space battles to see how the Zultar AI reacted when they had sensor damage, fought in a nebula, or otherwise had their sensors clouded. They fired at what targets they could still detect, without care for friendly targets they couldn’t see.
All that meant that I was about to give the Hive’s captain a simple choice. They either would have to decloak to keep their own fighters from shooting them
or get torn apart anyway by all the lasers that weren’t hitting us from the swarm of Zultars.
Assuming I was right. If I was wrong … well, I was just going to assume I was right and worry about the consequences later.
“Less than two kilometers out,” Tulip warned. “David, we need to—”
“Trust me, Tulip.” I flashed her a reassuring nod. “Alyra, I’m about to pull some serious G’s, but get ready to fire right down the line of Zultars. Give them the business.”
Turner leaned forward in his seat. “I’ve given her all the power we have, but our shields are failing.” He laughed heartily. “But who wants to live forever?”
Clara raised a finger. “Actually, darling, that doesn’t sound sooooo—” Her angelic voice stretched out into a scream of excitement as, at the moment our shields cracked, I spun and twisted the Orion in a tight arc.
The inertial dampeners threatened to cut out entirely as we were pressed into our acceleration chairs. We slipped through the Zultars’ barrage, most of their beams not slashing across our hull but slicing through empty space … and the shields of the Hive ship that was uncloaking behind us. On cue, the Darts hit their afterburners, rocketing around and past us, the void of space lighting up white lightning from their fully-charged particle cannons. Even as the Hive’s hull was shredded by the blasts of charged particles, the Orion jerked to a halt as I hit the maneuvering thrusters hard, our front end pointing right at the onrushing stream of silvery fighters.