Shifty Reads Gladiatrix of the Galaxy, Chapters 5-6

Jegra fanned her glistening chest and reached across the smooth sheets that were made from the finest silk of the Angorian weaving spider which populates Dagon Prime. They also infest the darker regions of the catacombs beneath the arena, but although they were a pretty, iridescent teal, to her they were just ordinary spiders.

Welcome back to Gladiatrix of the Galaxy.

Last time, we witnessed the death of our heroine's enemy-turned-lover Abethca and the sudden, extremely suspicious proposal of Emperor Dakroth. If you were expecting the subsequent engagement dinner to be a double helping of fat blue sausage, if you catch my drift... well, you're half right.

Chapter 5

We open on Jegra and Emperor Dakroth immediately post-coitus. So exhausting was their lovemaking that Jegra, clearly delirious from dehydration, starts free-associating about spiders, as shown in that opening quote.

She comes to her senses quickly enough, though, and makes herself a space cocktail - 'Tragellion ale' mixed with some green raspberry tequila. By the time she's downed it (in one gulp) and made another, Dakroth is asleep, so she starts shouting at the ceiling, assuming that Cassera must be listening in and asking her for a booty call.

We get a quick glimpse at Jegra's engagement ring, which is made from korridium, the same space-metal as Abethca's knives earlier on. I can only assume this is more romantic than a wedding band made of, say, tungsten carbide. (Incidentally, while writing this piece, I came across this incredible article from a wedding ring storefront which asserts that stainless steel is a good material for a wedding band because 'all the other metals such as gold, silver and white gold are not strong enough to provide satisfaction to the masculinity of a man'. Maybe Jegra's lust for battle demands a similarly hardcore ring.)

But Jegra is interrupted in her contemplation:

To her pleasant surprise, Cassera stood in the entrance, tottering on a pair of long sexy blue legs that ran up the length of her short, oriental styled nightgown, and almost seemed to go on forever after disappearing inside.

Apparently Vick was so busy waxing lyrical about retractable penises that he forgot to mention Dagons are about 95% leg by body mass. (Asia Reference Count: 4.)

Cassera explains that watching Dakroth and Jegra going at it made her 'wetter than a Brilaxian eel', although

"I'll take your word for it," Jegra laughed. She had no clue what a Brilaxian eel was.

Cassera proceeds to help herself to the contents of the minibar, pull off her dress, and push Jegra down for some more lovin'... but, wouldn't you know it, she falls asleep as Jegra is 'just starting to get turned on'. The Vice-Admiral is a lightweight compared to our heroine, it seems. Jegra's lusts remain unslaked, but she does get to doze off between them, at least a little buoyed by 'an ounce of affection from a woman she wanted desperately to impress'. Wait, what? I thought she just wanted Cassera to leave her and Dakroth to bang in peace, and maybe to go down on her once in a while. Was impressing her ever part of the equation until now?

Whatever. Jegra wakes to chattering around her, and encounters Dakroth's wives, who seem to be in full cattiness mode aside from a couple of voices of reason. Chief among them is Lady Jennica Dakroth, who gives Jegra the tour and reminds her that she's probably just flavour of the month, and shouldn't think of herself as special. She warns her, also, that the emperor's harem is full of scheming and politics and power plays and etcetera etcetera oh shit Dakroth's here!

About half the women squealed with glee, ran up to him, and immediately began stroking him and rubbing their hands all over him like a bunch of sex-starved nymphs.

Stroking him and rubbing their hands all over him - that's how you know they're really desperate.

But Dakroth isn't here to fuck. He has an announcement to make: he needs to choose one wife to become Imperatrix and thus his actual dynastic second in command, and he's going to make that choice by having them all fight to the death. He then leaves. One of the wives, Gaela, immediately kills another with a vase, and Wife Bowl 20XX begins.

Gaela makes a beeline for Jegra, but her signature weapon, the trusty vase, just shatters on the Gladiatrix's chin (which can deflect gardenwares in the same way her breasts deflect arrows), and she's immediately cut in half by Jennica's laser beams. Jegra takes cover in the fountain... wait, we're still in this room? Okay. Jennica is clearly the biggest threat, so Jegra chucks the statue at her.

The marble shot through the floor like a battle cruiser's missile tearing into the hull of an enemy ship and then impacted against the back wall.

 Ooh, weapons-grade marble! This somehow does not kill Jennica, who emerges from the rubble and shoots Jegra with her laser fingers, wounding her in the shoulder. Her 'healing factor' (yes, he really does just call it that) kicks in, but Jennica has her cornered, and surely there's no way she can escape...

Chapter 6

Cut to Dakroth staring out of the window, waiting for news of the victor. That's right, he engineered a 'sick and twisted little game of "last wife standing"' and he's not even going to watch it, the fiend.

Cassera shows up with important news of another matter, though: having sex with Jegra (which she's done, apparently? I thought she was too wasted?) has partially rewritten her DNA.

"This isn't some simple interplanetary transspecies pansexual disease we're talking about here. This is a full rewiring of what constitutes Dagon DNA."

Oh, the pansexual disease! I think my partner has that.

What this means in practical terms is that Dakroth can only fuck Jegra a few more times before succumbing to the DNA rewriting process. He asks Cassera to study this phenomenon more if Jegra survives, in the hope of weaponizing it - no, I'm not sure how you'd go about weaponizing sexually transmitted DNA corruption on a galactic scale either, but I'm sure all will be revealed at some point.

This whole time, they've apparently been walking back to Dakroth's quarters, where Jegra is, indeed the last woman standing. She's badly injured and 'soaked head to toe in fresh blood', and, understandably, very angry. How did she beat Jennica? Wouldn't you like to know? That's twice in as many chapters that we've just skipped over the most exciting bits of the tale - first Dakroth and Jegra having sex, and now this. Maybe they were both just really, really dull.

Jegra clocks Dakroth in the jaw, sending him through the wall (I like to imagine he leaves a perfect Dakroth-shaped hole in it), and gets tased by Cassera for her troubles. When she comes around, she's back in her quarters at the arena with Dakroth and Cassera, and Dakroth has 'a slight bruise' from the punch that sent him flying through multiple military-grade interior battlecruiser walls. Cassera explains that they're here to announce the wedding and celebrate by having Jegra fight a Nogrossian Razor Boar.

"Are those the big ones with actual razors or the tiny ones with the hard, spiny shells and poison-tipped quill darts that give you temporary paralysis?"

Jegra's a regular David Attenborough when it comes to animal fights.

"The big kind, I believe. Why do you ask?"

"I was sort of hoping it was the small ones, because I was going to take a handful of those pointy little needles, make a special bouquet for you, and then shove it where the sun doesn't shine."

"Charming."

Skip ahead a bit, though, and Cassera's changed her tune.

"Listen," she said, glancing side to side. "I don't actually hate you, Jegra. It's all a ruse. But the walls have ears, and I have to put on a good show."

'Kay then. Apparently she's hopeful that they'll be able to make friends when they live together aboard Dakroth's battlecruiser. Jegra's curious about this sudden change of tack.

Smiling at Cassera, she teased, "Admit it. You like me."

Didn't she do that just now? Unless she means that Cassera must like like her. Careful, Jegra, she might have cooties. Or the pansexual disease.

They head on out into the ring, where Dakroth makes the announcement and then immediately gets beamed back up, leaving Jegra to fight the boar - though she won't be alone. Cassera has been ordered to stay at her side, and that extends even to this fight.

The boar is a pretty scary prospect, twice the size of an elephant, and

Also, to make things interesting, they had real razors all along their backs, right to the ends of their tails, similar to the extinct stegosaurus.

Stegosaurus plates weren't... they weren't weapons. The tail spikes, sure, those were weapons, but you weren't going to see a stegosaur sawing anyone in half with its back. Calling the blades "real razors" also just makes me think of a giant boar with various real-world branded razors, handles and all, sticking out of its back at regular intervals, which would, in fairness, be pretty scary.

Jegra grabs the boar by one tusk and it just stops moving. She tells Cassera to kill it with her finger lasers, but, damn and blast, she doesn't have finger lasers, only forcefields. So, new plan, Jegra tosses the boar aside, Cassera deflects its charge and then gives Jegra some platforms to leap up on so she can power-bomb the creature's head. Given that we've already seen Jegra leap into the sky completely unaided back in chapter 2, I'm not sure why this was necessary, but okay. They kill the boar, but

Jegra felt a lacerating pain and looked down in alarm. The spiked end of the beast's tail had penetrated her torso and a large spine was protruding from the middle of her chest.

Impressive reach, given that she came down on the creature's head. Boar tails aren't very long or very flexible, so this comes as a surprise, but there probably wasn't enough of the detail budget left over to mention the tail thing after all that intense spidersilk action last chapter.

For the second time this chapter, Jegra passes out, and the curtain drops on chapter 6. Plenty more violence in these two, and I'm keen on seeing Jegra's response to Dakroth forcing her to fight sixteen other women to the death. That's going to leave a long-term mark on their relationship, right?

Right?

Next time: War! Huh! Good god, y'all, what is it good for? Fish-out-of-water comedy!