"Okay everybody," I said, raising my voice loud enough that everybody would hopefully be able to hear me.

Everybody turned their attention on me.

"I hate to break up what's turning into a pretty fun little garden party down here with the livisk, but I've got intel that there's incoming, and it's going to be incoming with extreme prejudice."

Everybody continued staring at me.

"So let's get ready to get the sequel trilogy out of here," I said, yelling in my best command voice.

That got everybody to jump and start moving again. I looked at my crew, or my former crew, or maybe they were my current crew.

I wasn't sure where their loyalties were right now, but Olsen seemed to have some of them in fighting shape, and the rest of them were streaming along.

"Olsen, I need you to make sure everybody is as close to ready to go as we can get. Try to get an accounting of the crew and make sure everybody who can possibly carry a weapon has a weapon."

"Got it, Captain," he said, nodding along.

I almost wanted to shake my head, but I didn't. I wondered who this man was and what he'd done with the surly communications officer who'd been with us on the Early Warning 72. I almost asked him, but I didn't want to upset him or give him a crisis of confidence. Not when he was doing such a good job.

One of the things a good commander did was recognize when somebody else was doing a good job. It was time to delegate.

I turned to Rachel.

"What are your orders, Captain?" she asked.

"I don't think we're going to be able to take any of the livisk with us," I said, looking at the wounded stretched out all around. I frowned. "So much for all that tak about wanting to do better."

"We can't realistically take them with us," she said.

I thought about it for a moment, and then I came to a decision.

"Well, it's all well and good to have some highfalutin morals, but at the end of the day we're at war with these assholes. They're the ones who decided to take up arms against us. Fuck 'em."

"As you say, sir," Rachel said, a twinkle in her eye.

I turned to Varis, and then to Jeraj.

"Either one of you have any problem with that?"

Jeraj shrugged. "Honestly, they'd probably prefer to die an honorable death than worry about being taken captive by a human."

"The last livisk I killed after I said I was going to let her go didn't seem to feel that way," I said, shaking my head at the memory.

I'd felt a little bad about that one, but I felt a little less bad about it now. I figured she was going to the same oblivion that waited for all of us when the synapses stopped firing, but at least she might've been happy before the lights went out.

"Rachel," I said, turning to her.

"Yes, Captain."

"You're in charge of going around and requisitioning as many advanced weapons as you can from the livisk we killed. I saw more than a few people who picked up plasma weapons and used them in the fight, but I want you to gather as many as you can and give them out to people who you feel you can trust."

"Yes, sir," she said, nodding.

"Note that I want to make sure these are people we can trust in a fight, but I also want people I can trust to not turn one of those weapons on any of the livisk who are still with us," I said.

She stared at me for a long moment. It was an awkward moment where I knew I was asking her to go against every bit of training she'd ever had leading up to this moment. But I also wasn't going to run the risk that anybody out there might decide to turn their gift of a plasma blaster into a fragging incident with Varis.

"Understood, sir," she said.

I breathed out a sigh of relief. I still hadn't seen her husband anywhere around here. I was given to understand he wasn't very happy about our current circumstances and blamed me for it.

"Good," I said. "Get to it."

She went to it. The area was a bustle of activity. People suddenly had a purpose again.

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I wondered what it had been like for them down here. Forced to do slave labor for an old enemy, then being freed because I came down here and killed the old overseer. It was probably its own special brand of hell for some of them, sitting around marking time in the bottom of a livisk reclamation mine. Always wondering if today was going to be the day the other shoe dropped and the empress decided to kill them.

I was going to have to make it up to them somehow, but that would involve getting them back to the tower so I could start to make it up to them.

I turned back to Arvie.

"So what do we know about what the empress is bringing in here?" I said.

"I don't know a lot," he said. "Only what I overheard on the sensors when I brought a couple of fighters in here to try and run suppressing fire for the troops who were still in the reclamation mine."

"Shit," I said, rubbing at the bridge of my nose and shaking my head. "We still have people in there. Selii and her crew. Do we have eyes on them? What about Satomi? She was still up top. Any idea what's happened with her?"

"I saw some of the empress's forces taking your friend who you met at the top of the reclamation mine into captivity. I'm not sure what they were doing with her, but I imagine they were taking her back to the imperial palace at the very least."

"That's not good," I muttered. "I don't suppose you could get any eyes on the troop transport they loaded her into?"

"I've already done that," Arviee said.

"Fine. Then I need you to do whatever you need to do to break her out of there."

There was a pause. Again, the drone dipped up and down for a moment, only this time I got the impression it was because Arvie was suddenly unsure of something.

"Are you certain of that, William?" he asked. "Do you have any idea exactly what it is you're asking me to do?"

I looked up and locked eyes with the drone, and then I looked over to Varis. I waited for some hint through the link that she wasn't happy about what I was asking Arviee to do.

The livisk seemed to be real sticklers about not letting their Combat Intelligences do any combat. Or taking advantage of their intelligence, for that matter. Which had always left me wondering why they bothered inventing the things in the first place.

Maybe it was an emergent thing and now they were stuck with them. Whatever, if there was a Combat Intelligence here, then I was going to use that intelligence for some combat.

And my girlfriend wasn't telling me no.

"I want you to do whatever needs to be done to break her free, Arvie. Am I understood?"

"You are understood, William," he said. "I will need to requisition several things from the hangar."

I glanced over to Varis. She nodded.

"I'm sure Harath will be able to get you everything you need," she said.

I breathed another relieved sigh. I hadn't realized how nervous I was about this until she gave her assent for the operation to move ahead. I was well aware that as a general consort I had a lot of authority, but the buck stopped as soon as I started doing something Varis didn't care for.

"Good," I said. "And what about Selii and her troops?"

"I'm not certain of their location at the moment, William," Arvie said. "The last eyes I had on them, they were surrounded by the empress's troops, but they were also very much in the middle of trying to get out by digging an escape hole through some of the debris behind them."

"But you didn't actually have eyes on them escaping that debris?" I said.

"I'm afraid not, William. I'm sorry. It was a rather difficult environment to maintain a long-term feed from one of the fighter craft. They were being destroyed almost as quickly as I could fly them in there."

"That's going to be expensive," Varis muttered.

I grinned and then reached up to smack the drone on the side.

"It doesn't matter, Arvie. You managed to get yourself down here in a small drone so you could get us information. That's worth a whole sequel trilogy of a lot."

"Thank you, William," he said, and he sounded satisfied at the praise.

I looked out across the field of battle one final time, then I looked out over the Undercity all around us.

There were giant piles of debris and destruction all around us. The kind of destruction that made it difficult to see very far like I'd been able to earlier walking through that debris and destruction with Varis. I thought about those lights I'd seen off in the distance.

I wondered if that had anything to do with this Spider lady we were going to meet. I wondered if I was going to like what I found when we ran into the Spider.

"We're ready to go, for what it's worth," Jeraj said, standing next to his sister. Who still was missing the front part of her arm. At least the thing had been cauterized thanks to the plasma blade.

"I really am sorry about chopping that off," I said.

"You need to stop apologizing for doing what needs to be done when you're fighting an enemy, human," she said, grimacing at me. I wasn't sure if that grimace was for the phantom pain she was no doubt feeling as a result of losing her arm, or if she was grimacing because it was an honor faux pas for me to apologize to somebody after I'd bested them in combat.

"Right. I'm more sorry you're not going to be at one hundred percent for what's coming. Something tells me we're going to need all the help we can get before we're done rescuing my crew."

Her grimace turned to a grin. It was a predatory grin. The kind of grin that was a reminder that a big, toothy smile was considered a threat display for a lot of hominids out there in the galaxy.

"That's more like it," she said, that grin practically splitting her face. "This human might have some hope for him yet."

"This human has killed several prince consorts and taken one captive," Varis said.

"Technically, I allowed you to take me captive," Jeraj said, and then he grinned. "But of course I'm more than happy to allow you to consider this one a win if it gets me away from the empress."

I grinned as I stared back and forth between all of them.

"Of course, you know, this does mean there's a big problem I'm going to have to deal with now that we've taken you captive."

All eyes suddenly turned on me. I ignored the hustle and bustle of people gathering weapons all around us. Of everybody trying their best to get ready to get the sequel trilogy out of here before the empress had a chance to bring the hammer down on us.

"What problem could possibly be any greater than pissing off the empress by taking one of her prince consorts captive?" Varis asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Come on, babe," I said, hitting her with a grin in return. "You of all people should know I'm not worried about pissing off the empress at this point. I've done that plenty."

"Then what are you worried about?" Jeraj asked.

"I'm going to bother the graphic design people to figure out a new design to put on my power armor for when I capture one of you assholes instead of killing you."

Varis rolled her eyes, but I could feel the pleasure rolling through the link in waves.

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