"Are you sure you can't let me have just a little bit of fun at the controls?" I asked

The pilot was a woman with blue hair that had purple streaks running through it. Which was a choice that worked for her. She looked older and grizzled, but like she'd done thousands of drops just like this. Maybe tens of thousands of drops just like this.

The livisk had a lot of opportunity to do military bullshit in a live combat situation considering all the time they spent fighting each other. And us. And supposedly some other alien civilizations at the other ends of their empire humanity hadn't come into contact with.

I'd asked Arvie about those, and he told me to wait until Varis told me. Which was frustrating, but about what I expected from the smartass CI.

"Why in the name of the empress would I want to let a human I don't know take control in a situation like this?" she asked, turning a glare on me.

It was made all the more intimidating because she was only hitting me with that glare with one eye. She had an eyepatch over the other eye and a couple of scars around it. Like somebody, or something, had sliced the ever-loving fuck out of her eye once upon a time and now I was looking at the results.

We're talking the eyepatch was bolted into her skull. Definitely a permanent feature.

"Oh, no reason," I said very pointedly, pulling my hands away from the yoke in front of me.

"Good," she growled. "Now keep your hands off my damn control surface and sit there. I let you be in the co-pilot seat because I want you to tell me where to put down. Not because I thought you'd add anything to piloting my ship."

"I'm actually quite an accomplished pilot, you know."

"Like I give a fuck," she said.

"Point taken," I said.

I decided not to get into Varis letting me pilot her own fighter. I didn't know this woman other than knowing she worked for Varis, but I was starting to learn that somebody working for Varis and swearing loyalty to her wasn't quite the same as somebody deciding they wanted to work with yours truly.

Not something I wanted to bring up in the moment. Especially when I wasn't sure how many of these people working for Varis were actually working for her. Clearly some of them deciding to sell us out to the empress was a possibility.

It turns out livisk loyalties were complicated as fuck.

Instead, I pulled up a display that showed me eddies and currents moving through the firestorm all around us. There was a steady purple haze from the shielding being put out by the troop ship. There was also a steady purple haze in a humanoid shape in front of us from Arvie in the mech unit he'd taken over. He was doing the Superman flight pose with one arm up in front of him as he moved through the firestorm.

Even going over the lip of the shield cylinder had been one sequel trilogy of a nail biter. We're talking my muscles clenched so hard I probably got a better glute workout than I ever did in the gym.

I continued looking through the canopy as I scanned for lifeforms. Skeletal ghost shapes of building supports, or even a large chunk of a building that had been knocked down into the conflagration, appeared out of the smoke and flames all around us.

I couldn't actually see much out in front with my Mark I eyeball. It was mostly sensors telling us what was going on around us, with those ghostly shapes appearing in and out of the smoky burning mist and disappearing just as quickly.

"You're coming up on a massive support beam that looks like it's the central column for the main building that was destroyed in the explosion," Arvie said.

"Got it," Eyepatch said. She hadn't given me her name, but that was fine. I didn't need to know her name as long as I could be confident she knew what the sequel trilogy she was doing here.

"You'll want to follow the coordinates I'm patching through to your system now."

"I know how to fly my empress-damned ship without a computer telling me how to do it," Eyepatch said, grinding her teeth together.

"I never doubted that you know how to fly your ship without the assistance of a Combat Intelligence," Arvie said. "But I thought it might be nice for you to have that assistance."

"It wasn't asked for, and I don't want it," Eyepatch growled.

"As you say," Arvie said.

Maybe it was my imagination, maybe I was anthropomorphizing the sapient intelligence, but wasn't anthropomorphizing a sapient intelligence the whole fucking point of having a sapient intelligence?

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

The point was, I thought he sounded just a little hurt that Eyepatch was responding to him like that.

Though, of course, I wouldn't be anthropomorphizing him, would I? I wasn't sure what the livisk equivalent of that word was. I'd have to ask later. If we survived.

The ship suddenly pitched wildly to the side. I barely managed to avoid crying out and putting a hand up against one of the panels.

I was safely locked out of everything over on this side of the cockpit. Which was built like every other livisk cockpit. I was on what would be the pilot's side of things in a human craft, which was even more disorienting. Because I felt like I should be able to just reach out and take control of the damn thing.

I looked up to a display and saw we'd been hit by a gust from the firestorm that was powerful enough it overrode the inertial dampeners. Which was impressive on a livisk ship. Their design philosophy with inertial dampeners was to eliminate any feedback at all.

I shook my head.

"Getting a little touch and go out there, isn't it?" I asked, trying to sound casual.

"I wouldn't know what you're talking about," Eyepatch said through gritted teeth.

"That's why I sent you a path that went around that area," Arvie said.

"Shut up, you bucket of bolts," Eyepatch growled.

"We have Combat Intelligences like this on our ships," I said. "I've found it's a good idea to listen to them. Trust but verify, y'know?"

"I know, that's why your piloting abilities are inferior," Eyepatch said.

I turned my attention back to the display in front of me rather than take that delicious bait she was dangling in front of me. More particularly to where I was scanning for life signs, which was the only panel I could manipulate right now. I didn't see how it was possible for anybody to have a life sign with the destruction all around us, but Varis had said it was a possibility.

There are always possibilities, to quote a bit of wisdom of the ancients. So I was going to keep searching, even though I didn't see anything. Yet.

I stewed about that pilots remark. I'd outflown a bunch of livisk over this very damn city recently, after all.

Varis still didn't want that getting out. Something about how it would get all kinds of the wrong sort of attention from the wrong kinds of people. Though if we were already getting nuked, I wasn't sure how we'd have a problem with getting the wrong kind of attention from the wrong sort of people at this point.

You couldn't get more bad attention than a nuke being dropped on your head.

"Arvie, could you do me a favor and take over the scan for life forms? I can't find anything in this mess."

"You're not going to find anything in this mess," Eyepatch growled, which seemed to be a thing with her. "I doubt anybody would be able to survive a direct hit from a nuke."

"Well, we have to try."

"Whatever you say, human," she said.

Her attitude was grating on me. That bait was too shiny and fat. It was all too much. I couldn't help myself.

"So our pilots are inferior to yours?" I asked, unable to resist the urge to tweak her just a little. She had one of those bubbly and winning personalities that just made me want to irritate her. Even if I knew it was a bad idea to irritate the person who was currently flying the ship I was riding in.

"Of course," she said. "The livisk have the best pilots in the galaxy."

"I see. That would explain why humanity lost all the wars we fought against you."

I trailed off for a moment. She turned and hit me with a baleful glare from her good eye. I could see her seeing where I was going with this from a parsec away.

"Oh, that's right," I said with a grin. "We won those wars. Though you do occasionally gain territory in some of the border conflicts that are too small for us to bother sending a response in force. I guess I'll give you that."

"Whatever, human," she said.

"If I might make a suggestion, William," Arvie said.

"Make a suggestion away, Arvie. I love to hear your suggestions."

Another pause, the third time since all this started.

"I was thinking that it's going to be difficult to find typical life signs with all the heat and chaos and destruction going on all around us."

"I concur," I said, shooting a glance to Eyepatch, who was still flying around randomly as we ran scans.

"It probably would've been a better idea for us to just go in with a single ship and try to find people. Have somebody bird dog this so we found the life signs and people in need of rescue before we actually had everybody come in and put them in danger."

But that wasn't the livisk way of doing things. I knew the moment I suggested something like that? Not only would I be shouted down by the livisk I was leading into the rescue, but they would probably also think less of me for even suggesting it in the first place.

Suggesting caution would get me a commendation for good thinking and watching out for my people in human space. It would get me nothing but grief with the livisk, so I didn't even bother to bring it up.

"I was thinking it might be a better idea if we search for shield signatures instead," Arvie said. "I'm having no trouble picking up the shielding signatures from the ships, and I believe we would be able to pick up a similar shielding signatures from anybody who was stuck in a room that was hardened against this sort of attack if we turn up the sensors on the shielding band."

I stared at the display in front of me for a long moment. Long enough that I guess even Arvie decided there might be something wrong.

"Is there something wrong with the plan I've proposed, William?" he finally asked.

I grinned as I looked at the small display in the corner that represented the machine intelligence, though he was way more than a machine intelligence in that moment.

"Arvie, I could kiss you."

"Have you lost your mind?" Eyepatch said, looking at me incredulously.

"If you keep saying things like that then the general might be justified in her worry," Arvie said.

"Y'know what? Let's go ahead and try to find those shield signatures. You can apologize to Varis for that kiss I'm going to plant on your robot chassis after it gets scrubbed for radiation later."

"You are an odd sapient being, William Stewart," Arvie said. "But I'm working on it now."

"Now hold on a damn minute," Eyepatch said. "That CI doesn't get to take control of the resources on my ship unless I..."

But it was too late. The heads-up display in the canopy in front of us lit up like a Christmas tree with all sorts of signatures showing all sorts of shields being generated in the maelstrom all around us.

"Arvie, you magnificent bucket of bolts, you did it!" I said, whooping for joy.

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