I stared at the blue sparkling alien in front of me. I looked at the intricate design that ran over her form fitting armor. Then to her beautiful face that I knew was covered by a shield that would keep her from taking damage if someone got in a head shot.

  It was one of the odd things about fighting the livisk. They always showed their face when they were fighting someone, so they used shields to make sure they were always showing their face.

  Which I’d always felt went against the spirit of “always show your face in battle,” but that was yet another example of them using modern technology to create a loophole that kept them alive where their ancestors would’ve had their brains pasted across the battlefield.

  I was more concerned with saving my bacon by bringing in a big, fat, juicy captive who’d help to keep management from being too upset at my current predicament.

  I shook my head and turned back to my captive.

  "So your brother is the prince consort," I said. "I'm assuming that means the same thing in livisk that it does in English."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

  "Oh, so you're going to play dumb now?" I said. I gestured with my weapon and she turned and kept moving.

  "Hands up where I can see them," I said.

  "Are you sure my hands need to be up where you can see them? Or are you more interested in getting a good look at my backside?"

  She turned and arched an eyebrow. It was a look that held all sorts of promise. The kind of eyebrow raise that made me understand why ancient women on Earth supposedly got all hot and bothered whenever the great Nimoy did that sort of thing with his eyebrow.

  "Keep moving," I said, "and tell me a little more about this brother of yours."

  "There isn't anything to say," she said. "He's nothing special."

  "Yeah, he's only banging the empress," I said. "So what does that make you? Auntie to the future emperor or empress?"

  "It would only ever be the future empress," she said, turning and hissing at me.

  "Oh, right," I said, "because you're a matriarchal society."

  "What does that mean?" she said. "I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that word either.”

  "It means the women control everything ."

  "Oh. Well, yes," she said. "Isn't that how it should be? It’s the natural order in the galaxy. At least it’s the natural order in the Ascendency.”

  She said that in a tone that said whatever the natural order was for the livisk was also what the natural order should be for the rest of the galaxy. She could give those assholes who fucked off to distant planets to party like it was 1999 because God told them to a run for their money when it came to misplaced confidence about the way the galaxy worked.

  “In human society it's mostly the people who manage to accumulate the most wealth who have all the power. Which was usually men for most of our history, though the ladies have come into their own in the last few hundred years.”

  "How odd," she said. "The people in power on our world accumulate wealth as a matter of course, but it's not the wealth that is the goal."

  "Keep moving," I said when she started to slow down. "I don't want you to get close enough to pull a fast one on me."

  "I'm insulted. You've taken me captive. I wouldn't dream of trying to escape.”

  "I'm sure you wouldn't," I said, my voice flat.

  We kept moving in silence, following the helpful lights. As we got closer to the outer hull, I could hear more and more sounds of battle. The occasional thud of something hitting our ship. The hum of our weapons firing back. It sounded like we were giving as good as we were getting, at least.

  I hoped the rest of the fleet was still doing a good job of holding them back. If the rest of the fleet got taken out then there was a good chance I’d be the one taken captive by the time this was all said and done, and this livisk would have the satisfaction of seeing me sold into one of the slave pits that supposedly existed all throughout their vaunted empire.

  "My brother can be impetuous," she finally said.

  "Excuse me."

  "You asked me about my brother, or were you not actually interested?"

  I licked my lips.

  "I was interested, yes."

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  We were getting closer to shuttle bay one. Our ship had a few shuttles for ferrying people back and forth. It would be nice if the transporter was a thing, but even hundreds of years into the future that was still one of those things that remained firmly in the land of science fiction. At least if you wanted to maintain the same consciousness locations.

  Otherwise, you were just killing somebody at one end and producing an exact copy in a Ship of Theseus situation that didn't make the original any less dead.

  "I think him being impetuous is what helped him to rise to power."

  "Why do I get the feeling you did a little bit of helping behind the scenes?"

  "What would give you that idea?" she asked, turning and hitting me with a smile.

  I paused. We'd stopped in front of a window that looked out on the battle.

  Most of the fighting was happening at a far enough distance that I couldn't get a good look at it. Flashes of light in the darkness. That was one of many things ancient humans got wrong when it came to space battles. It was something modern entertainment still got wrong about space battles, because it wasn't very fun depicting a ship-to-ship battle taking place at the mind-boggling distances usually involved in space combat.

  "Looks like your fleet is getting as good as they're giving," I said.

  "Bold words coming from somebody who attacked us unprovoked."

  "Bold words coming from somebody who decided to move on a colony world in human space. How are the people down on the surface doing?"

  "I imagine they're enjoying farming the same fields they were working before we took over the planet," she said. "They merely have new masters now."

  "They were their own masters before you came along."

  "And the humans in your society you mentioned who accumulate wealth for the sake of accumulating wealth that own that world?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.

  I found myself lost for a moment in those green eyes as she stared at me. Bright orange hair framed those eyes. Like, we're talking a color of orange that wouldn't ever be found in humanity, that was pulled up so it wouldn't get in her way in combat. And shimmered because apparently they shielded their hair in combat too.

  Wouldn’t want to catch a stray shot and suddenly have a bad hair day in the middle of a fight.

  "You know what? Let's not talk about politics or bullshit like that."

  "Always a good thing, though isn't battle talking about politics via different means?”

  "I suppose you're right," I said. “Though we do the whole election thing on Earth."

  "An election that is as foretold as when a new empress takes the throne," she said.

  I glanced to the ship all around me. I didn't think potentially seditious talk about the my corporate overlords was the kind of thing that would come up in my eventual ass chewing for almost losing the ship, but I couldn't be totally certain. I didn't need any more marks in the negative column.

  "Let's go," I said, motioning for her to move down the corridor to a lift that would take us to shuttle bay one. Assuming the lifts were even working.

  "Gods above," she said, looking over her shoulder.

  "I'm not going to fall for that," I said, rolling my eyes.

  But then she turned and started running.

  "Hey, stop or I’ll…”

  I risked a glance over my shoulder, and then I turned and started running as well. Because there was a bright and shiny point of light that was getting brighter and shinier, which meant it was headed directly for us.

  Probably the sort of thing the dinosaurs saw in the sky before they got taken out, only this was way smaller. Probably a mass driver or a charged energy weapon, and it didn’t matter if it was smaller since it’d been fired at…

  I was thrown off my feet as the whole world erupted around me. The livisk dove and did a roll. The floor moved up as though we were in an earthquake in the middle of space. Bits of bulkhead came down and metal shrieked and twisted all around me. I heard rending and tearing, and then I heard the sound that no starfarer ever wants to hear.

  The sound of oxygen rushing out of the ship.

  "Damn it," I muttered.

  Something slammed into my legs hard. A bit of support structure from up above that was no longer supporting the ship above me.

  Miraculously I still had my helmet in my other hand. I hadn’t put it back on because… Well I don’t know why. I was talking with the livisk and it didn’t occur to me. Weird. The atmosphere inside normalized, but then I caught a flash of blue, gold, and orange flying towards me.

  Her arms flailed. She’d been knocked off her feet by the combination of the blast and the force of the air being vented all at once.

  I reached for her hand and grasped her wrist. Thanks to the haptic feedback I could feel her skin as though I was touching her with my hand and not through armor.

  It was soft. Warm. Not at all what I’d expect from an alien species with sparkling blue skin tough enough to take our regular rounds and keep fighting.

  I stared up at her as she kept going, and then jerked suddenly.

  She cried out in pain, a sound loud enough that I could hear it even over the atmosphere venting out the hole that’d just been created in the side of the ship. I heard the clang of a bulkhead door going down off in the distance, and then another in the opposite direction.

  A safety precaution in case the atmosphere shields didn't go up.

  She was obviously in pain, but she held on. It looked like she might've dislocated something in that grab, but she held on. I stared into her eyes, she stared into mine.

  And she was grinning. Like she was enjoying this. Having a good time rather than being terrified at the possibility of being vented out into the cold vacuum of space.

  Damn, these livisk really were terrifying. I counted myself lucky I'd been in power armor when I ran into this one.

  Even as I had the idle thought that it would be far more interesting to run into this one when we were wearing a whole lot less.

  There was a shimmer as the atmospheric shield snapped into place, and the loud maelstrom of venting atmosphere sound disappeared. My readouts told me the oxygen level wasn't great, but it was still enough to survive on. Though it wouldn’t be comfortable.

  "Here," I said, tapping at a belt at my side and holding up an emergency atmo chip. "This should be about the right size. Livisk anatomy is about the same."

  She looked at the little square in my hand in obvious confusion, then arched an eyebrow again.

  "It's a mask," I said, pantomiming putting it up to my face to show her what to do. "To help you with breathing."

  She held the small square up to her face. She didn't flinch as the mask telescoped out of the thing and formed to her face, complete with a small oxygen supply rated to last for an hour. Give or take considering she was rocking some alien anatomy.

  Very pleasing alien anatomy, I might add.

  "Thank you," she said, holding it to her face. "And with that, I must bid you farewell."

  "Now wait a damn minute," I said, trying to grab her as she took a couple of steps back.

  Only as I tried to grab her I realized I had a problem. I looked down to where that support had landed on my thigh. It had me wedged in nice and good, and there wasn't a chance I was going to be able to get out from under it before she’d escaped.

  Son of a bitch!