Chapter 3

Count Douchefuck of I'mAnAsshole was as true to his name as I expected. I tried to not let my distaste show on my face as we whisked above the landscape in his personalized scout-form until I remembered pretty much all of his psi talent was currently being used to keep us suspended telekinetically in the air.

Realizing that, I started sticking my tongue out at him.

"What does that expression mean?" Count Buttsniffer asked. He was 'seated' in the center of the oval of blue-white telekinetic force that was his scout-form. I say seated. Really, his legs were crossed under him and he glowed with tendrils of white light that thrust out of his spine and shoulders and into the skin of the ship itself. His hair stood on end and he floated in the middle of the air as he radiated with raw power. Doyen scout-forms were a trick we humans couldn't match. They were fast. Like, requiring human physicists to tear their theories apart and put them back together again in new ways fast. Like, we were going to reach the Doyen capital on Beta-3 in about fifteen more seconds.

And the Doyen capital was on the polar ice cap.

Such as it was on this hotbox of a planet.

Now, you may have noticed, I put quotation marks around Count Gerrymandering dialog. The reason why is simple: He was actually talking out loud. Using his lips. My palm rested against the skin of his ship and I sent a quick thought to Magnum Caliber, now that I could do so without being peeped on.

What exactly is our plan, Magnum?

Magnum was looking as serious and impassive as possible. Follow the Princess' lead.

That was easy, so far. Tzali was currently looking as if she was getting everything she deserved – well, actually, she looked like she was getting slightly less than she felt she was owed, and that tiny missing amount was provoking a look of utter sneering contempt. This contempt had set a fire in the Count, and he had been subtly adjusting the ship for the past few minutes to try and make Tzali at least give him a bigger smile. None of it – not the mood lightning, nor the seats, nor the faint music, seemed to do anything but increase contempt. I wondered how far she could push that line before it set our Count over the edge.

"Whoa..."

That was Opal Midnight. She was, like the rest of the 'slave' girls, sprawled near the nose of the oval scout-form. This meant that all the Count had to do was open his eyes to get a great view at three of the finest human asses in the galaxy. But the upside was each of them got a chance to look out the front. And Tycho Bright and Ebony Noon were both looking impressed too, though they hid it better. I ambled over to the front and found, for the first time in my life, it was easier to look out a window then down at three scantily clad girls.

But Abby! I can hear you cry. I thought you were surrounded by naked girls all day!

Yes. That's exactly it. Do you know the effect a golden bikini and loincloth has on someone's body? It makes nudity – which feels more normal and natural by the hour – into near nudity. Suddenly, someone has flicked on all the 'hey, this is sexy' switches online again. Not that they had even been off for that long. I was only barely out of high school, cut me some slack. But even high school hormones and the gorgeous bodies of Tycho, Ebony and Opal weren't enough to distract me from the Doyen capital.

The ice caps here on this planet did exist, despite the temperature. Don't ask me to explain the fluke of geology and climate that kept things cold enough up here to maintain an icy attitude. But the end result was that we had hundreds of kilometers of brilliant white snow and ice expanding below us, with the occasional sharp, obsidian tooth of a mountain thrusting up. And the front of the scout-form was where the telekinetic field got thinnest, so we had the best view. And there, right about fifty kilometers ahead of us, was the Doyen castle.

I'd been told that Doyen castles were made of telekinetic energy.

I just hadn't realized what that would look like until right about ... now...

Imagine a flower made of purest crystal, fanning outwards out of a pillar of fire almost five hundred meters tall. The fire roils and ripples outwards into snakes that loop and coil upwards through the air to press against the underside of the petals, providing support to shimmering, shining blades that looked big enough to hold entire apartment blocks on them. Now, start adding these details to your mind picture: Lightning strobes silently from the tips of of those flower petals, arcing upwards to the spire in the middle, which is made of a purple crystal that had been carved into an ornate, beautiful, Aztekish looking pyramid that rotates slowly in place.

That was just the main building.

Surrounding the pillar of flame were walls of fire and of lightning and of swirling tornadoes of ice and snow. Doyen Paladins in their glowing warforms strode atop those walls. Yes, atop. I saw them walking on tornadoes. Most of them were armed with large psi-bows. Which were exactly how they sounded: Recurved bows made of telekinetic energy, loaded with stone arrows that looked like they were nearly twenty meters long.

"I count ten Paladins in warform," Ebony murmured.

Tycho nodded. "This isn't as minor a world as we thought, was it?"

"Quite a fortification," Tzali said through a yawn.

"Well, all the better to protect you, my darling lady," Count Grumblefuck von Traitordick said. He managed to drag his attention away from his scout-form to reach out and take Tzali's hand, then drag it near his lips to kiss it.

Opal, helpfully, kicked me in the shins.

The scout-form darted down towards the flower. My brow furrowed slightly as something clicked: Where was the Doyen stargate? The observation flyby that had sent us here had spotted that thing in a village somewhere. As I thought that, the scout-form started to dissolve away. Once it was gone and the Count was standing again, I realized that standing on a Doyen castle's floors was ... trickier than I might have expected. It was a bit like putting your feet against a surface that badly wanted to be frictionless. I actually saw Tycho flinging out her arms and kicking her feet a bit before she managed to get the floor to behave. Cause the floor was psychic. I just had to convince it that it could hold my feet, and I could stand there just fine.

But that extra bit of effort distracted me from everything but my feet and Tzali's laugh as the Count said something. What? I tried to think back, but realized I hadn't heard a thing. She waved her hand to Magnum, her voice imperious as she offered her arm to the count as daintily as ... well, a Princess. Slave, I wish you to take my pleasure chattel to my room. Bodyguard, you will be with me. She nodded to me. Magnum shot me a look that I was pretty sure commanding officer type people had shot newbies like me since the first caveman picked up a rock to throw at another caveman's head under orders from a third, only tangentially related, caveman.

That look said: Don't fuck this up, kid.

I chose to ignore he was only a year older than me and nodded solemnly.

The interior of the castle was just as fantastical as the exterior. The corridors arched overhead and witchfire seemed to thrum along the walls in regular intervals, providing a brilliant illumination to the interior. The walls were opaque – more like Dr. Manhattan's butt than the stone, but I wasn't about to complain – and the other inhabitants were scarce. We walked past one another Doyen who was hurrying down another corridor and away from us, two mindless slaves who walked along in crystal slippers and swept up bits of detritus off the floor (very carefully, as every brush sent the dirt skidding for what seemed like miles on the frictionless surface) and that was it.

Tzali sniffed. Quite crowded ... she said.

Oh, yes, the Count said. My apologies for being so tight here, oh my lady. But ever since the attack that House Fenzor managed to pull off, everyone is tetchy.

Is that why you moved the capital here?

The tiny frisson of suspicion that flared across the Count's face was pretty fucking obvious. Like, if this had been a poker game, I'd have assumed that he had just drawn a straight red poker. Er, a full flush? I had never played poker. But I'd have assumed it would have been a bad hand. Or a hand that made him think that the other guy had had a better hand. Whatever. The upshot I'm going for here is that he was not a very good poker player. But I saw no 'aha' on Tzali's face. Was she a better poker player?

Well ... yes, he said. A polar orbit is more difficult. So, a polar base is harder to easily strike.

He didn't mention their stargate. Was it still in their old planetary capital?

The Count stopped beside a wall that seemed like every single other fucking bit of all in this maze of a place. But he gestured towards it and said: Your chambers, my dear.

Tzali inclined her head, waved her hand, and created a doorway in the shimmering corridor wall. We walked through, her and I, and she waved to shut the door in the Count's face. Booyah! And with that door shutting, Tzali dropped her rump into a bed that flowed itself up out of the floor and, with her rump, she dropped her whole 'I am Tzali, queen bitch of the multiverse' attitude and was simply Ali again. I knelt down before her and took her hands in mine, smiling at her. She smiled back, wanly, but her ears drooped.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Oh, that's clever," she said, grinning. "No one will be listening for vocal communication! Hah!" She leaned forward and she kissed me. Now, it had been a few hours since I had gotten snogged by Ali. And that was enough time to forget how total and complete a kiss from a Doyen princess is. Her tongue flooded into my mouth as her delicate fingers caressed my cheeks, her pseudo-claws teasing my skin as her tongue slithered down my throat. My eyes widened, then closed as I kissed her back. Pfft. Breathing was for people not currently kissing Ali. Her hands slipped from my cheeks to my neck, tugging me back onto the bed. I let myself slide against her, feeling her silky smooth skin, the faint bumps of her crystaline armor. Then the kiss broke, her tongue actually remaining in my mouth as she lolled her head backwards. Then the tongue popped free and my hands went to her crystal armor, yanking and tugging at it.

"Yes..." She whispered as her breasts bounced free. Her nipples were hard enough that I was surprised they hadn't cut her armor as I pulled it off. Then I had no time for surprise or anything else. I only had time to do what any good boyfriend should do at a time like this.

Worship.

Them.

Titty.

I sucked hard and drew my mouth back, making her breast stretch slightly against the pressure. This caused Ali to tossed her head to the side and kick one leg out spasmodically as she arched her spine. Her arousal was already glowing along her thighs, dripping onto the humming, blue-white floor. My finger found the place where her legs joined – or, as we Earthmen called it, her perfect pretty pussy – and slipped gently in. Thanks to previous experience, I found the part that made her squeak and then cry out in inarticulate joy.

"Ahhgyes!"

Mostly inarticulate.

Ali got her elbows under herself and shoved herself up so she could watch my fingers sliding into her sex. Glowing juices frothed along my fingers and puddled onto my palm as she grew wetter and wetter. Her eyes started to flash as she bucked her hips, the bed moving with her own thoughts to rock her hips against my hand. Meanwhile, my mouth was kissing from her breast to her belly button, leaving my own shining trial of spittle along her evening shaded skin. My tongue circled her belly button, teasing her as my thumb found one of her clits and started to tease her.

"Abbyyyyy!" She whined.

I grinned at her. "Come on..." I purred, before kissing one of her astounding girl abs. All girl abs are, by definition, ten thousand times sexier than boy abs. For proof, refer to my ten page competitive essay between the Legend of Korra and The Last Airbender. "Use my call-sign."

"It's dumb!" Ali managed to gasp out between her pants.

If this were a sitcom, I'd have stopped fingerbanging her. Maybe gone: Excuse me? And there'd be a funny bit where we argued about names being dumb or not dumb. But she was right, Pirate Mask was a lame ass call-sign. I could have been Magnum Caliber, for god's sake! However, being right didn't also preclude the fact that ... we were on mission. And call-signs didn't just exist to make us sound cooler. They were an extra level of defenses, a psychological trick to keep our minds focused and to ensure that the Doyen had fewer rooms to enter the brain. Despite not having an official sign, Ali had her persona as Tzali to fall back on.

But me?

Thinking of myself as Pirate Mask was part of how I kept my defenses up. And considering we were in a nest of vipers...

Ali did manage to look somewhat chagrined between the mini-orgasms that made her face scrunch up in that adorable way that only the really good porn stars can fake. Because, like, dude, I wasn't going to stop fingerbanging Ali. I'd need to have my hand removed by a psi-sword to do that!

Please don't let that be foreshadowing.

Ali's breath went from short, shallow, gasps to full on hyperventilating as she started to let out the quiet mantra of 'ohfuckohfuckohfuck' that presaged the truly epic eruptiont that I had been stoking. I ducked my head forward, losing myself in the musky heat between her thighs. This movement set off her 'clench' reflexes and as I pressed my mouth to her sex and slid my tongue in while my fingers spreading her nice and wide, her knees clamped down on my head and I was pretty sure that my head was going to explode. But the sound she made was totally worth my imminent death.

"Piiiiiiiiiraaaaaaaaaate!"

Her juices exploded in my mouth, as delicious and as shockingly alien as she had been the first time I had eaten her out. My throat worked as I drank and drank and drank, actually slipping a hand under her rump. I lifted her up like a cup, just so I could drink her juices down more greedily. By the time she was done, I felt like my head was spinning and Ali had sprawled back onto the bed in a boneless limpness that only came from death or world shattering orgasmic pleasure. Needless to say, I preferred the latter method of bringing this kind of sprawl about.

I managed to work my head free – easier now that her legs had slumped open – and looked down at her blissed out face. Girlcum dripped from my chin as I grinned.

"So, how was that?"

Ali burbled quietly.

I crawled onto the bed next to her. Now, I was hard as a rock, and very much wanted to slide right into her cunt and literally nail her to the bed so hard it'd take a crowbar and five stout men to get her out of it again. But I was also a gentleman. Gentlemen only screwed their girls so hard that they couldn't walk after asking permission. Or if an agreed upon safe word was in effect. I slipped my arm under her spine, then drew her to my chest, cuddling her. My hand brushed through her crystalline hair as she breathed slower and slower, her eyes half closed.

"I'm scared, Pirate," Ali whispered in my ear, her breath a warm, moist burr that set my spine shivering. But her words brought a furrowed brow, not an eager moan of desperate lust.

"Why?" I asked. "Do you think the others are in trouble?"

She shook her head lazily. "No. They're my slaves, no one will hurt them. It's Count Gatzlon Xon Chur of the House Chur." She brought out his full name with an aristocratic lilt that made her almost sound as posh as Squaddie Amelia could. I tried to not giggle. Then I tried to not picture Ali and Amelia sharing a little but of lesbian fun times. No. Bad Pirate Mask. No mentally imagining cheating. Cause Squaddie Amelia had a girlfriend. Liuentenant Natasha had to stay on Earth – the longing the two girls felt for each other was what powered the stargate.

Yes, we had a stargate powered by lesbian angst. It wasn't even the fourth weirdest thing in my life right now.

So, not only would that be cheating and thus bad...

(Even if a tiny part of my brain purred about just how incredibly fucking hot the idea was)

... but it'd also possibly strand us hundreds of lightyears from Earth without a supply line.

This was, in the officer's school that trained the best and brightest of the PsiCom into leaders and strategic thinkers, referred to as a cock-up of the highest degree. As that thought spiraled through my brain, Ali started to caress my chest. I wasn't a hairy guy, all things considered. But what little chest fluff that did grow on my coffee-brown skin was something that Ali found endlessly fascinating. It had kinda hurt a few times when she had first tested to see how much she could tug on before I stopped her. Now, she settled into her normal pattern of tugging, tugging a bit harder, tugging ever so slightly harder, then petting until it stopped stinging and shooting a shy smile at me.

What me? That smile said. I have no idea how you hu-man hair is supposed to work.

Then right back to tug tug tug.

"The thing is," she said on her second tug. "I can't read the Count at all."

"Huh?" I asked.

"I am ... was ... a Prime," she said. "I was trained to read the patterns of thought of anyone who might be a political enemy. Or ally. Or bystander. But the Count is a perfect crystal. He only shows what facet he wants."

I blinked. "Are ... are you kidding?" I asked. "Dude was totally fucking shocked that you knew the capital was moved. He looked like you had gotten a full bridge in the opening bridge and just slapped it down on the table and got all the bridges."

Ali's brow furrowed.

"I don't know how to play bridge," I said, grinning.

Ali leaned forward and chomped on my nipple. That jerked me half-upright, gasping. "Ah ow weird boner, weird boner!" I cried out as my cock slapped her thigh. She kissed my aching nipple a moment later, then grumbled.

"You humans and your dead things are bad enough, now you're showing me up! Me!" She sounded quite cross. Hurt, even. Like if Usain Bolt had met a paraplegic that had just run the four minute mile in three.

I shook my head. "Ali, I didn't see through his telepathic facade. I didn't even try. I was watching his face. He has a shitty poker face."

"I thought it was bridge..." She furrowed her brow, her ears perking up. "Wait, can you see my face right now?"

I nodded.

She squeaked and looked like she was trying to school her expression. But she couldn't hide the slow, wicked grin that was spreading across her lips. "You can read faces. You can read faces! You can read faces!"

" ... yeah?" I asked.

She grabbed onto my shoulders, dragged herself up, and kissed me. Hard. Her tongue and mine met and sparred and I lost and oh, oh, oh how I loved to lose. When she drew her mouth back and slurped her tongue out of my head, I let my head loll back on a limp-noodle of a neck, my head spinning with love. And oxygen deprivation. But mostly love.

"You will be my nek'tak'atah!" She purred.

I blinked slowly.

"M-my, uh, psionic blade hidden between the folds of my sex," she clarified.

I jerked my head up. "Jesusfucking What, you have a name for that!?"

"It's a common tool in-"

I clapped my hands over my ears. I didn't want to hear it.

My feeling of smug superiority lasted until Magnum nodded and said: "Good. Opal, Ebony, Tycho, you three use this talent and..." He sighed. "Get ready to cheat, if you need to." He tossed me one of our obsidian chip-wood swords. I caught it by the handle, dropped it, tried to grab for it, and ended up having to scramble to not get my palms sliced open on the edges. Once I was holding it, I shook my head and blinked at Magnum, who was starting to slide armor on.

The pleasure chattel were all stored in a big communal stable made of roaring flames. The pleasure chattel of the other Doyen nobles were all beautiful in their own exotic way. I saw lizardwomen with breasts the size my head, four armed snake-boys (or should I say bois) who were as sleek and exotic as I could imagine. There were women with flames for hair and skin the color of space. There was a shimmering cloud of nebula contained within a blue telekinetic field, who was dressed in gauzy silks and thrusting out what I thought was an ass provocatively. And all of them looked at us with the curious skepticism of prisoners eying the new fish.

"Why do I need a sword? Aren't we going to the gala?" I asked. Ali was, as we spoke, performing her role as Tzali in the opening of the gala that the local Doyen were throwing for her visiting. I had gone to tell the others about humanity's latest way to cheat.

"Oh, we're going," Magnum said. "The Count told us that he was going to throw a bit of an entertainment. He was quite evocative in his description of the wildlife he had found in the equatorial regions. The choice words included implanted eggs, thirst for ocular jelly, claws as tough as crystal, tree-ripping strength, a 'member that would make even the spider-queens of Orchan balnch', a-"

"I get it!" I said, then looked down at my sword. "He's trying to kill us?"

"You, honey, he's trying to kill you," Opal said, shaking her head. "He can tell you and Ali are butt buddies. He wants to get his Doyen dick in the Princess."

"Goodie," I said. "So, us killing the xenomorph's little cousin is going to be the side show, while the Doyen plot and conspire, and our three lovely ladies will be playing the part of Leia Organa?"

"I did say that I wanted to strangle someone to death with my chains when we started this mission," Opal said, cheerfully.

"The Doyen don't use physical chains," Ebony said, her voice dry.

"Then I'll improvise!"

Magnum chuckled. "We'll do our best to not need the chains. But if we're in trouble, do not hesitate to cheat." He nodded to the three ladies. Tycho grinned.

"I already have a plan," she said. And I had to admit ... I really liked the mildly psychotic light in her eye. It was good to see that kind of creative maliciousness put to a good and noble purpose defending the United States of America (and the rest of the planet, I guess) against evil psychic aliens. I twirled my obsidian sword, rolled my shoulders, then nodded to Magnum. Together, we headed off. As I walked past one of the snake-bois waved to get my attention.

He stuck his tongue out at me, hissed and said: "Do not get yourself ruined, oh beautiful one!"

I blushed. Waved. Smiled. And wondered if it was gay if it was an alien snake-boi. Cause, uh, holy shit, he was fantastically pretty in a way that was normally reserved for young Leonardo DiCaprio. Like, I had heard he was a lady's man from before I was born, but it wasn't until I had seen the Titanic movie on Netflix that I realized just how true that was.

But then all thoughts about (honestly, all things considered, pretty damn good) James Cameron movies were brushed out of my brain as Magnum and I strode through a corridor that twisted itself before us like a snake. I was sure some Doyen was guiding us along. I tried to keep my nerves under control. But I was catastrophically bad at that...

And that was what saved our lives.

Ab-

Those two letters, cut off at the last second, made me tense. Magnum had reached the doorway that led to the arena itself. The arena was darkened, with only a dim blue luminescence shining from the walls. It wasn't enough to show anything but vague shapes, but the tiny warning I had was enough for me to cry out to Magnum. "Mag!" He flung himself to the side before an arrow the length of a fucking mac-truck smashed into the psionic ground where he had stood. As he rolled away, I threw up my arms and my own telekinetic shield. Debris pattered off said shield as the ground rocked under my feet. When the smoke had cleared, the arrow was already sinking through the floor. Behind it, I could see five Doyen Paladins in their warform.

In the center of them was a warform that was clearly the Count. He held a psi-bow and was already knocking another huge arrow.

Behind him, I could see Ali, surrounded by bands of telekinetic force. Next to her stood an older Doyen male – he had a crystaline beard. And next to that bearded fellow stood a figure in a thick shrouded robe, who might as well have fired off a flare into the ceiling that exploded into the words: I am the real villain of the story.

"Humans," the Count said, his voice a sneering boom. "To think you so willingly stepped into our den. Only two of you, too! It was-"

"Tycho!" Magnum boomed, running forward. I sprinted forward to join him, already forcing myself to expand into my warform. Telekinetic energy lifted me up and for a few moments, I was a fifty foot version of myself. My mind was my muscle, and my wrath was my sinews. But despite the fury I felt at seeing Ali in chains, despite the fear of suddenly being made, I was nothing next to the Paladins. But, as I had already proved...

Humans.

Cheat.

And apparently, even if Count Gonnadie recognized human males, no one had mentioned our sexual dimorphism.

Tycho, ignored as a mere pleasure chattle, snapped her fingers.

A warp opened between the capital and the distant jungle where we had landed. We hadn't landed with shitty swords and leather armor. We had dropped with a full arming kit. And without the engineers on the HQ ship, we had taken a few painstaking hours to gently put our mecha together, then shrink down to normal size and leave them. Standing there. Fifty foot tall statues, waiting for their moment. And their moment was now. So, between one step and the next, the warp shimmered around me, and then I was armored, just in time for the Count's psi-sword to smash into my shoulder.

His blade cut into almost two feet of steel, sending dribbling molten metal rivuleting along my armored arm.

I grinned behind the imposing facemask of my armor, then shouted through loud-speakers hooked to an internal microphone: "You flirted with the wrong girlfriend, fuckface!"

And I grabbed onto his wrist and flung him as hard as I could in a twisting arc. His war-form flew in the graceful, slow motion arc of truly large objects, then crashed into the bowman to Magnum's right. Magnum, meanwhile, was thrusting his metal fist up through a warp. He tugged back the main gun on an A-10 Warthog. Thankfully, said gun had a bitching rad name: The GAU-8/A Avenger. A 30mm hydraulically driven seven barreled Gatling gun loaded with depleted uranium slugs. It could fire forty two hundred rounds in a minute, and had enough kickback to almost stop a Warthog in its tracks.

I don't know if you know, but a Warthog is a fucking jet.

The carrying handle slapped into Magnum's other hand and he swung around to face another Doyen Paladin whose feet stomped on the floor, psi-spear shimmering as he charged forward so fast that jets of psychokinetic flame were bursting from his back like wings.

The roar of the Avenger filled the room and the Doyen Paladin did the chaingun cha-cha in gigantic, twitching and shuddering backwards, the bullets hitting so fast and so hard that he couldn't even fall. He skidded and smashed into the wall, cracking the psionic building and sending a shuddering through the building. Then he brought up an arm and bellowed above the sound – a telepathic bellow, really – and created a shield. Bullets started to tear into the shield, sending off chips of psychic force.

Meanwhile, the Count and the other Bowman were getting to their feet, and the other two Paladins were finished dropping their bows and getting out their swords. The Doyen Court was fleeing, Ali screaming obscenities. Tycho, Opal and Ebony were running after, their psi-swords crackling. Once they got Ali free, I was sure they'd join the fun.

Until then...

I focused and created a psi-sword in one hand and a psi-dagger in the other. My sword was formed like a rapier, and my dagger had the wide cross-bar of a main gauche. Cause I didn't just want to beat the Count. I wanted to beat him at his own fucking game.

"Lets dance," I snarled as Magnum slapped in a new ten thousand drum magazine. The Doyen he had been hammering was nothing more than a blueish splat against the wall, his war-form fizzling away now that the mind that had created it was deader than disco.

The Count charged with a psychic bellow.

The three Paladins at his back followed, forming into a V behind him. Each one lifted up their right hands and, with their powers combined, created a cow-catcher style telekinetic field. Magnum didn't even bother shooting into it. Instead, he used his own telekinetic control to launch himself upwards into the ceiling. He burst through the roof with a spray of dust. I did likewise, and the cow-catcher smashed into the weakened wall behind us. The whole castle shuddered, flashing and crumbling. I felt a moment of worry for the poor chattel.

Then all I could focus on was not dying. The Count shot towards me, his back flaring with energy. He wasn't bothering with a rapier. Instead, he had created a psi-flail. A chain of crackling red energy that terminated in a black sphere of what had to be the physical manifestation of his blue-ass ball. He swung it and it came at me so fast that I barely had time to react. I lifted my main-gauche and the two psionic weapons crackled as chain wrapped around blade and then flail smashed into the armor plate of my forearm. Armor buckled, but I felt nothing more than a faint ache as I jerked on my arm, trying to drag him into my rapier.

The Count let me drag him in – then dissolved his psi-weapon. He twisted so that my rapier skimmed past his belly, then brought his elbow smashing into the glacis plate on my armor. That glacis plate was modeled after the front armor of an M1-Abrams. It was angled to deflect away damage, multi-layered and fused with ceramics and a bunch of other complicated shit. So, it did its job very well in keeping me from getting crushed into a pulp under the telekinetic force of a pissed off Doyen Paladin.

However, it did nothing to stop me from flying backwards, out of control. My back clipped one of the flickering petals of the castle and went into a wild spin. I saw that I was hurtling towards the snow pack and ice. But I managed to get my back facing and triggered the jets with a tiny telekinetic jab. The armor on my back had a few heavy duty thrusters built into it. They flared and I slowed just enough that I could grab a hold of myself and send myself shooting back upwards.

The Count moved to intercept me. Behind him, I saw a stream of tracers flying out, and a Doyen Paladin flew into so many pieces as his warform was chewed apart by a gun made to rip apart tanks like they were skittles. But I saw the Count's mistake. He was moving to the angle he predicted I'd hit ... using telekenisis. Well, fuck you douche-bag.

I let my TK drop.

He reacted – adjusting his course downward.

I hit my thrusters with a whoop. He dropped down and I flew past up, then arced downwards by firing my retro-thrusters and delivered the universe's first and finest flying missile dropkick. It struck the head of his warform with a sound not unlike two mountains being smashed together and the impact radiated along my leg armor and into my warform. My head ached, but despite it all, I screamed; "DEATH FROM ABOVE, MOTHERFUCKAAAAAAAA!"

The Count's head shattered and he flipped end over headless end, trailing a string of glowing psi-crystals. Much as I wanted to celebrate, I knew he wasn't dead. Not by a long shot. But I had disabled a big chunk of his war-form, and he'd feel a tiny fraction of the damage I had delivered to his psionic body. A tiny fraction of a flying missile dropkick from a sixty ton assault mech was enough to give anyone a fucking headache.

"Pirate Mask, behind you!"

I turned and groaned.

There had been ten Doyen Paladins on the walls. I had kinda hoped that five of them had gone inside for the planned ambush slash torture party. Nope. The ten of them outside were still outside, and they had scrambled. Now, four of them were arcing up towards me. I looked around and saw Ali and the rest of the still foot mobile group. The Doyen King and his robed motherfucker were nowhere to be seen, but I could see Ali with her feet planted against the back of some huge dude made of rock, one of her telekinetic bands wrapped a round his neck. Tycho was sparring with another Doyen, her psi-blade crackling and flashing distantly as their swords met and danced and the palace crumbled. I could see Ebony and Opal both working together to lead chattel onto the snow, Ebony waving her hand and sending out telepathic signals even I could hear.

Then Tycho managed to get her sword under the Doyen's guard. Her blade burst from his heart and I shouted: "Tycho!"

Tycho looked up, saw the sitch, and thrust out her palm. A glowing warp appeared above me. I reached up and closed my mecha's hand around the first thing I could feel. I yanked it down and saw that I was now holding a SWAT riot shield, but blown up huge and made of metal so thick that even my warform could feel the strain of it. And it seemed not a moment too soon. The instant I got it before me, the first arrow smashed home. Stone shattered and rebounded away and I slewed backwards. A warp opened to my left. I reached out with my free hand.

The shotgun was one of the simplest guns that humanity had ever made. Making it really really really really big had proved to be just as easy. It snapped into the shield as I flew to the left and the Doyen continued to fill the air with arrows. I worked the chamber and hoped we had loaded it with something good before we had left.

I pulled the trigger.

A slug nearly as thick around as my mecha's fist punched into the shoulder of a Doyen warform. Psychic crystal went flying and the Doyen went flipping and spinning backwards. His shoulder and chest hit the snow and sent up a spray as he furrowed the ice for almost five hundred meters. I worked the chamber by shoving the handle forward and working it back, the shield providing the brace. I fired again. This time, the slug caused the tornado wall to explode in a flurry of wind and snow.

The Doyen, though, were realizing that they had gotten into a contest that they could not win. Shotgun versus bow and arrow was not a great one. So, they tossed their psi-bows aside and formed swords, lances, axes. All three of the surviving ones rushed at me. I jerked my shotgun free from the shield, detached the shield with a twist of my wrist, and hurled it awkwardly at one of the leaders. He had lifted his ax up while screaming a war-cry that made my brain ache. The shield caught him in the gut and the folded around the shield, whose weight dragged him down to the ice and pinned him between the fire wall and the energy wall.

My sixth sense and Ali screamed at the same time.

Pirate!

I turned.

But it was too late.

The Count, having recovered far faster than I had imagined, shot towards me. He held a rapier in his hand, the blade resting along one fore arm, providing a way for him to aim right for my real body. He shot forward, and his voice boomed in my mind. Prepare to die, human scum!

I swung my shotgun around, desperately.

A blur shot past me. I could feel the wind through tiny chinks in the armor. My whole mech shuddered in that breeze. And the Count went flying backwards, crying out in shock as the massive chunk of castle shattered into psionic haze. Then Ali was soaring upwards, her warform glowing with a blazing red energy, like she was a star or flare. Before she had even cleared half the distance, Tycho had worked her magic and she was fully armored and armed.

Psi-sword in one hand.

Super-sized desert eagle in the other.

Was it possible to be any more aroused?

"Get the fuck away from my boyfriend!" She shouted, her voice booming from her armor mounted loud-speakers. Her blade and the Count's blade met – then met and met and met and met. The two danced above the crumbling palace as the Count desperately parried blow after blow after blow. Ali had been raised in Doyen fighting styles. But she took to human cheating the way the H'san took to cheese. If you didn't get that, Tanya Huff. Google her and thank me later.

Ali attacked without a care for her defense, and let her armor melt and bubble and hiss as the Count got strike after strike on her.

Why won't you die, traitor? The Count snarled.

"Funny, I was asking the same question!" Ali smashed her shoulder into his chest, the weight of her armor and a bust from her thrusters sending him skidding backwards and into the rotating pyramid. As the Count tried to get his warform back under control, Ali darted backwards and lifted her deagle and put round after round into his chest The Count, though, had clearly figured out what humans were about. He didn't try and stop the bullets. Instead, he twisted and shifted his real body around in the chest, so that every time Ali put a round into his warform, it zipped through a part of his warform where his real body wasn't.

"Ali!" I shouted.

She looked at me.

And I tossed her what happened when some PsiCom engineers were locked alone in a warhouse full of wasted taxpayer money. Someone had gotten the bright idea to take the old Chinese artillery shells they had stockpiled before their war-goals had shifted from "victory via overwhelming numbers" to "capitalism, but with red flags" and turn them into grenades. Ali caught the casing, which looked bumpy and lumpy and crude. But some helpful engineer had scrawled a yellow smiley face with Xs for eyes on it and the words: Up Yours, Die on the side.

One downside about shifting around your body inside of your warform?

It really gave you whiplash.

The Count was still trying to get his head to stop spinning when Ali grabbed his throat, forced the war-form's mouth open with her fingers, and then jammed the grenade so far down his psionic throat that the shell casing almost bumped his real head. Then she jerked back, holding the pin in one finger. She twirled it insolently.

"Thanks for the dance. Count." Ali said, purring as the pin caught the sunlight and glinted.

The Count grabbed at his throat, his eyes bugging.

Boom.

"It was a trap," Magnum said, arms crossed over his chest as we looked at the divot in the town center. I wasn't exactly happy to be back in the sweltering hotbox. But we had needed to get the now freed chattel spread out among as much of the population as possible. I hadn't been sure that that had been a good idea, but Ali had explained it pretty simply.

"The fief-lord of this place cut and run. That means that he officially gave up the claim. This planet is now up for grabs. That means that every Doyen House that wants it will put up stakes, pit warriors into it. But since they removed the gate..." She nodded to the divot that we were all glowering at. "They'll need to get here via scout-form. Fast as they are, that still takes time. And no one wants to get to a claim without guaranteeing it first, or else every other House in the Empire will team up to destroy the claim-jumper. This colony has at least ten years before a Doyen rules it again."

"I still want to know how they knew we were coming," Tycho said, frowning as she knelt down. Her finger brushed the divot. "This wasn't something they threw together at the last second. They had to have waited until they knew that we knew the gate was here and thought investigating was a good idea..." Her brow furrowed.

"Maybe they had a precog warn them?" I suggested. "I have some precognative talent."

"No," Magnum said, shaking his head. "All our missions have randomizers worked into them."

"Zugawha?" I asked.

"Quantum computers that crunch our random values," Opal said, cheerfully. "The numbers are meaningless, and we assign them to minor details of the mission. Which box of hundred thousand rounds we bring for the Avenger. Which grenade cache we pick. What color we paint the armor. But because the computers do a few million fuzzy, randomized choices on the mission, it creates so much minor chaos that precogs just get headaches."

"Really?" I looked at Ali.

"That ... explains a great deal of the frustration from the Court of Seers. Not that they ever explained why they had such trouble..." Ali scowled. "You know, I am glad of it now that I am fighting against them, but I'm retroactively QUITE annoyed at the Doyen Empire's institutionalized secrecy!"

Magnum chuckled.

"So, somehow, they knew that we were coming to investigate Event Horizon," Tycho said, rubbing her chin. "They removed the gate, to ensure we couldn't take advantage of it, acted like they thought we were normal infiltrators, then tried to kill us. Who wants to bet the shady motherfucker in the robes was behind it."

Everyone raised their hands.

"Did any of you get a good look at him?" Magnum asked, in the tone of voice where it was clear he already knew the answer. Ebony, Opal and Tycho all shook their heads. But then Opal bit her lip, reaching up to brush her hands through her hair. She, and the rest of the girls, had abandoned their slave girl attire. Which was only a good thing and was not bad in any way. Honest. Really! I meant that.

"I did get a sense of him," she said. "And he felt..." She paused. "Wrong."

"Define wrong, if possible." Magnum crossed his arms over his bare chest. Yeah, we were all naked now. The villages who we had freed (for the short term) were giving us space while they got together foodstuffs for a great big celebratory bash. I hoped against hope they weren't celebrating prematurely.

Opal sighed. "When I use my empathy on someone, it feels a bit like sliding my fingers along a bowl. I can feel the bumps, the contours, the forms of the bowl. Magnum feels like a clay bowl that's been smoothed out by its use ... but its always warm." Magnum inclined his head, slightly. "And Pirate feels like one of those red plastic bowls from Walmart."

"Oi!" I cried out.

Opal laughed. "The bowl's only half of it, Pirate. The other half is what's in the bowl. That's the emotions that I feel." She sighed. Her face fell. "This mind? It felt like ... like..."

"Plastic too?" I asked, still feeling a bit cross.

"A garbage disposal," Opal said.

We exchanged looks.

"I think I know where we can learn more," Ali said, quietly. "But it will require a few hoops to jump through."

"Oh?" Magnum asked.

Ali nodded. "I believe we'll need to go on a trip ... to the Archives of the Abyss and speak to the Stygexians."

"Sounds fun," I said, cheerfully.

"It's not."