We were walking along in an uncomfortable silence. At least it was an uncomfortable silence for Tmors. I was rather comfortable.

I figured anything that made this asshole uncomfortable was the kind of thing that made me pretty damn comfortable. If he was worried about Olsen lurking out there…

No, correction. If he was worried about the Terran Fox lurking somewhere out there then I figured that meant I had reason to rejoice. That meant he thought Olsen was somehow dangerous enough that it was a danger to him taking any of us captive for any long period of time.

"You will tell me where…"

Tmors stopped. He seemed to rethink what he was about to say. He took a deep breath and held it for a long moment, and then he let it out.

It sounded like a snake hissing, or maybe a cat making its displeasure known. Only they were really dragging it out.

The point is, he sounded really unhappy about something, is what I was getting at.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

He glanced down to the plasma blaster on my right side and then to the plasma sword that was still attached to my left side. Both within easy grabbing distance if I wanted to, and I'd already made it clear that I could do some damage if I wanted to.

Maybe we'd all die if this descended into a free-for-all, but he'd be guaranteed to be the first to die.

"I apologize if my words were a bit brusque," he finally said. "I was wondering if you could please maybe tell me more information about where the Terran Fox is."

"I'm afraid I can't," I said.

He paused for a moment, seeming to think about that.

We'd made our way over to the other end of the building we'd been walking along. The one where they sprang the trap on us by coming up through some of the windows on the other side. We were making our way down along a ramp that was cleverly hidden amongst the wreckage and detritus of the destroyed buildings down here. It looked like we were going down at least one more level.

"You mean you won't tell me where the Fox is, or you can't tell me where the Fox is."

"Now that's an interesting linguistic distinction," I said, grinning at him. "And thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to practice my livisk language like this. Did you know that most people who learn your language in the Terran Navy spend most of their time learning how to say all the swear words to the exclusion of actually learning how to speak your language?"

A large blood vessel over at the corner of his temple started to throb, so I could tell I was irritating the shit out of him. It made me happy in a way I couldn't describe.

When you were as fucked as we were in the moment, I figured it was a good idea to take the small victories where you could. Plus, if I got lucky? Maybe I'd cause his blood pressure to rise to the point it ended up killing the bastard. I didn't think I was going to be that lucky, but it was always a happy possibility.

"Look," I said, reaching out and putting a hand on his shoulder. Which had him wincing as though he was expecting a blow to land on him at any moment.

The joke was on him. If I decided to land a blow on him then I was pretty sure I'd be able to do it before his neurons even caught up to the fact that I'd attacked him. That part of my battle pair twitch muscle seemed to be working at close range, at least.

"I understand this is a difficult position for you."

"You do?" he asked, blinking and looking utterly surprised.

We moved under a support beam. There were a lot of those sticking out of the cliff of wreckage to our left as we headed down the ramp. We were in a weird spot where it looked like part of the floor from the city on the level we'd been traveling through had collapsed down into the level down below.

I looked up at some of the spots above where I could see glowing gravity plates holding up the next level up. I couldn't see all the way to the top from where we were right now, there was at least another layer of ancient city in between us and what was going on up on the surface, but I figured with the shoddy design of those plates it was always a possibility a massive explosion might knock part of the city loose and it would collapse down into an older part of the city.

It was almost enough to make me wonder why they hadn't just given up and decided to rebuild from the ground level the last time everything was turned into an irradiated wasteland, but I hadn't been around to be part of the city planning the last time the maniacs blew it up, damn them. God damn them all to hell.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Though I figured there was a pretty good chance, increasing every day, that I might be here the next time the livisk decided to undertake an atomic urban renewal project.

"How could you possibly understand the pressure I'm under?" he said.

"I get it. Command can be lonely. Especially when you're thrust into a new position and you're not sure of yourself."

"That's very true," he said, ducking under a bit of jagged metal that stuck out of the wreckage.

"You just want to do what's best for your people, but you also want to do what's best for your boss. Because doing what's best for your people and your boss is always going to be doing what's best for you, right?"

"I mean, if I'm willing to admit it? Then yes, that is one reason why I want to do a good job."

I patted him on the back.

"See? There's no problem with being a little self-centered when it comes to wanting to do the right thing."

"There isn't?"

"We have a historical figure back on Earth, Lyndon Johnson. People called him LBJ."

"Was this man a great leader of yours?"

I shrugged and made a wiggling motion with my hands.

"So-so. I don't know that I'd call him a great leader, but he was definitely an okay leader. He was a real son of a bitch who only cared about himself and power and making money."

"That does sound like the empress," the livisk said. "Though I'm not sure I'd call her a great leader."

"Yeah. He also had a habit of whipping out his dick, supposedly the thing was massive, and showing it to people to intimidate them."

"Okay, maybe he was a somewhat great leader," Tmors said.

"Is that the kind of thing livisk do?" I asked. I turned to Varis for confirmation. She shook her head back and forth to let me know that definitely wasn't the kind of thing the livisk got up to.

"Anyway," I said. "The guy was a son of a bitch, and his record was sort of marred because he got into a war nobody liked back then. That's the only reason I know about the dude."

"What kind of people would ever be upset with one of their leaders who led them into glorious battle?"

"Well, he kind of led an ancient warrior society who liked to pretend they weren't a warrior society into a protracted losing battle," I said.

"I see," Tmors said. "That'll do it."

"The point is, the guy was a bastard and a son of a bitch, but he tended to do the right thing, at least as far as the historical record goes, most of the time because he figured that would get him more power and money in the long run."

"Even though he lost this war."

"Well, technically he left it to the next guy to lose the war."

"The next guy? Did someone assassinate this LBJ?"

"Anyway," I said, not wanting to get into the vagaries of electoral politics and republican democracy and how that had led us to our current situation where we had massive corporations headed by wealthy people who actually ran things while they pretended the elected representatives they paid off were the ones who were running things. "The point is, you can do the right thing for selfish reasons. There's nothing wrong with that."

"Yes, there's nothing wrong with it," Tmors said, standing a little taller. "Thank you, Bill Stewart of Earth."

"Don't mention it," I said, smacking him on the back.

That smack coincided with somebody letting out a scream somewhere off in the distance, coupled with the distinct sound of plasma blasts going off.

Tmors squeezed his eyes shut and muttered a couple of curse words that I added to my own personal vocabulary. That definitely wasn't the kind of thing they'd covered in any of the Fleet Linguistics courses, and it certainly wasn't something I'd learned since I got to Livisqa.

"Son of a… You come with me," Tmors said.

I glanced over to Varis. She quietly put an arm around my waist and helped to lift me as we followed him. I felt like my legs were moving fairly well right about now. At least as long as I was moving at a relatively slow pace. But I also didn't trust them not to give out under me at the wrong moment and let on to the livisk all around us that I was having trouble.

"Why were you talking to him like that?" Varis muttered under her breath.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"You were talking to him like the two of you were best friends who came up in one of the war academies together."

"Yeah, well, I figure it's always good to get in the good graces of some of the minions."

"The last time you tried to do that, we ended up getting betrayed by a bunch of honorless g'ther beasts who found a loophole in their personal honor by allowing themselves to be killed the instant they betrayed that honor so that their leader could capture us."

"Yeah, but I was threatening them that time around," I said. "I've found that threatening someone doesn't really work as well as trying to see things from their side and act like you're on their side, but you never let them know who you're for and who you're against."

"What are you talking about?" she said.

"Another lesson I learned when I read up on old LBJ."

"The leader who threw his dick around and passed off a losing war to his successor?"

"None other than," I said, winking at her. "I figure if I'm going to be a son of a bitch then I might as well learn from the best."

"Well, at least you have one thing in common with this leader," she said, her eyes darting down with a smile. "And it doesn't have anything to do with losing."

"I mean, I seem to be losing right now," I said.

"And yet somebody is under attack," she said.

There were more plasma blasts. I could see green reflections off the wreckage looming over us. Somebody was definitely fighting up ahead. And then a moment later there was more screaming from behind, and more plasma blasts and reflected green light from the opposite direction.

Though I wasn't concerned with that as much as I was concerned with the way that glowing green light made it very clear the drop to our right was a drop that fell down into a yawning chasm of darkness that even those plasma blasts weren't enough to puncture.

"I wonder how the Fox is doing it," I muttered, sending out positive vibes their way in the hopes it would help them in harassing the livisk.

Because clearly Olsen wasn't the only one who got away, and as long as there was somebody out there on the loose blasting livisk I figured we still had a fighting chance.

Maybe.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.