I smiled slightly as I sank down into the hot tub, and then everything went a little woozy around me.

I suddenly felt something that those whack jobs in the Jedi Temple, like the actual one that'd been founded and gained status as a religion even though everybody knew their faith hadn't been a thing before a certain movie that came out nearly a thousand years ago, in the year of our Lord 1977, would've said was a disturbance in the Force.

As though there were tens or maybe even dozens of voices that were clamoring for an explanation as to exactly what was going on with this whole link thing.

I liked to imagine I was hearing the spirit of all the science nerds back on Earth. For all that it seemed like the Fleet had been doing their best to cover up anything and everything they could find about the link between livisk and humans. It had certainly come as a surprise to me, for all that there was an obvious whisper campaign amongst the ground-pounders and crayon eaters about what was going on.

It just went to show. Sometimes you didn't know shit unless you were in the very lowest or the very highest ranks in a given organization.

I took a deep breath and let it out in a contented sigh. I might be about to have a very serious conversation with Varis about whatever was going on with the link, but that didn't mean I couldn't enjoy myself.

I was in a hot tub that was set to a perfect temperature to be comfortable for livisk and human. I was sitting across from a beautiful alien babe who was madly in love with me. There was no question about that. I could feel how she felt through the link.

And I'd just defeated the biggest antagonist humanity had known since we first started reaching out to the stars and we realized there were some big players out there in the wider galaxy. That the biggest player in our vicinity was a group of supermodels with an honor complex that that would have Klingons telling them they really needed to dial it back who were hellbent on trying to conquer us.

I opened my eyes and looked at her.

"So we have this link thing going, right?"

"Right," Varis said.

"And we have this battle pair thing going. You've admitted that much. Like, if we were to follow through on one of the summons from the empress, then we'd be taken to some sort of arena where we're expected to do the Kirk and Spock and fight each other to death."

She blinked and frowned.

"What would give you the idea we were supposed to fight each other to death?"

"Well, you said she was going to put us in an arena where we were going to fight, and you seem reluctant to do the fighting."

"Oh, Bill," she said, chuckling and shaking her head. "We're not going to have to fight each other at all, let alone to death."

"We won't?"

"No, you idiot," she said. "We're going to have to face down a situation like what I've been putting us up against in the practice room. We're going to have to test our mettle against forces the empress has at the ready to test anyone who is in a battle pair."

"Oh," I said, blinking a couple of times. "I guess I really misunderstood what you meant there."

I tried to think back to the conversation where she admitted the whole reason she'd been going a little crazy with all the training was because she was worried about the empress putting us in the middle of an arena to fight. I guess I'd assumed that meant there was a chance we were going to have to fight each other, and we'd have to be good enough to not kill each other while also putting on a show.

But it made a whole sequel trilogy of a lot more sense that we'd be fighting somebody else to test whether or not we were any good.

And knowing the empress? I figured there was also one sequel trilogy of a chance that anything she threw at us would be cheating. Like she'd be more than happy to put her finger on the scales to try and kill us.

"Whatever," I said. "So we have this battle pair thing going, and it seems like the empress has a harem of men she keeps around as multiple battle pairs. Which feels like cheating, like both cheating on the whole monogamy thing by having a harem and cheating against people she's fighting, but whatever. It's her empire and she can do what she wants."

"That's true," Varis said. "Both about the battle pair and her doing what she wants."

"We also have other weird things. Like I've been able to hold my own in fights with livisk warriors even though that shouldn't be possible without me wearing power armor of some sort."

"That's also true," she said.

She smiled at me. It was a mischievous smile. The kind of smile that said she was enjoying this moment.

"So why don't you just come out and tell me what you know about the whole battle pair thing," I said. "Because it seems like I'm getting this right for the most part, but you keep just telling me that's true and nodding along with it instead of elaborating."

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Varis took a moment to sink down into the hot tub. She let out a deep sigh as her nose was just barely above the water. Which precluded her talking to me about anything for the moment, but I figured I'd let her have that moment.

"The battle pair is a thing that happens with livisk," she finally said, moving back up out of the water.

"Okay," I said.

"Look around at how livisk society is structured," she said, gesturing vaguely at everything.

I looked around, but there was only the locker room around us. I didn't have a fantastic view out of a set of impressive windows that looked down over Imperial Seat. It actually felt a little odd to not have a view out an impressive set of windows that gave us an incredible view of everything happening in Imperial Seat.

I'd only been here for a couple of weeks and already I was starting to get used to some of the creature comforts that came along with banging a member of the nobility and a general in her own right complete with her own army she could throw around at anybody she didn't like.

Though admittedly, the view this time around wouldn't be quite as nice if I was looking out one of those windows. There was a giant irradiated hole in the ground over on one side of the tower, after all. For all that there were already cleanup crews doing their best to try and fix everything.

"You might have also noticed that you haven't heard anything about a battle pair in human space."

I sat up at that. I blinked as I looked at her.

"Now that I think about it, you're absolutely right. I don't think I've ever heard anything about that before. Not from the Marines. Not from an intel briefing."

Livisk were already strangely powerful. They already had the ability to easily kill a soldier when they weren't wearing power armor. Like the regular infantry had some serious issues if they had to engage them up close and personal. There were entire cavalry regiments that were trained to fight off the livisk in power armor or a mech.

But not once had I ever heard about a member of the imperial family coming down to do a little bit of that dirty work on behalf of the empress. Not once had I heard of anything like a prince consort. Never had I heard of somebody with a long flowing cape that made them look like the villain in a cheesy anime come down from on high and start swinging a sword around, giving a bunch of troops the Sephiroth treatment.

Which is a long way of saying I figured I would've heard about something like a battle pair if it was a thing humanity had encountered. There were the whispers about the mental link with the livisk that I'd only discovered after I fell victim to the damn thing, but nothing about a pair of male and female livisk wading through their enemies leaving a trail of blood behind them.

"Okay, so I've never heard about it before I actually came to your planet and it started happening to me," I said. "So what's going on with that?"

She took a deep breath. Her eyes were closed. She let it out in a long sigh. For a moment, the only sound was the bubbling of the hot tub all around us and the slight hum from the rad chambers which were still powering down over on the other side of the room.

I imagined it got pretty loud in here when there were more than just the two chambers in use. Not that I thought there was much of a use for more than just the two chambers, considering it was just me and Varis now.

"The battle pair is something that is used by the nobility and by the empress," she said. "Nobility can have a single battle pair, but even then it's somewhat of a rarity."

"Why's that?" I asked.

"There are a couple of reasons," she said. "The first is that it's considered a privilege, and not all nobles are in favor to the point they can safely form a battle pair."

"Yet you did it even though you're not in favor," I pointed out.

"Yes, and we just got nuked," she said, her voice deadpan.

"Fair enough."

"The second is that the ability to form a link and then develop it into a battle pair is something that usually takes time and a lot of hard work, and a lot of nobles are inherently lazy."

"It didn't seem to take a lot of time and hard work in our case," I said, arching an eyebrow. "In fact, it seemed to come pretty darn easily to both of us."

She smiled, and again there was a strange sense of… well, it was hard to say exactly what that jumble of emotions was. Satisfaction, love, a little bit of amusement.

"Yes, well, it would seem that you and I have the sort of bond that bards sing stories about."

"Oh, yeah. People telling a story about the human and livisk instantly falling in love is the kind of thing that would be tearing up the pop charts over on this planet," I said, rolling my eyes at the ridiculousness of the idea.

"Something like that," she said. "The point is, you and I having all of this come so easily is a function of our compatibility."

"I get it," I said. "So the more compatible two people are, the easier it is for them to form that link."

"At least that's what the researchers say," she said with a shrug. "Admittedly, there's a lot of things that simply aren't known about how the link works."

"Seriously?" I said.

"You sound surprised," she said.

"I'm a little surprised," I said. "Like you've presumably had this thing going on with your species for a long time now, right?"

"Exactly," she said.

"So why wouldn't your science types know a lot more about it?"

She took a deep breath and let it out. This time she didn't close her eyes. I enjoyed watching her taking that deep breath though, because it brought certain bits of her anatomy up above the water.

Only for a moment, but even a moment was an eternity as far as I was concerned. A glimpse at paradise.

"I've already told you that it's something that is mostly exclusive to the nobility and the empress, correct?" she said.

"Well, yeah," I said.

"There are some who form battle pairs at a minimal level so that they can go fight in other parts of the Ascendancy."

"Fight what?" I asked.

"That's not important right now," she said.

"I mean, it could be kind of important," I said. "As far as I'm aware, humanity is the only species fighting the livisk right now."

"Of course you would only know about fighting us. The Livisk Ascendancy is large. Far larger than even the rapidly expanding human space, but we're getting distracted from what's truly important here."

It was a worthy distraction though. That almost sounded like there was something else lurking out there in the stars fighting them. Which was something the intel types had speculated on a couple of occasions, but it wasn't something the eggheads had ever been able to actually prove.

"The main reason is simply that anything beyond the basic battle pair that gives them an advantage in combat is something that's been a closely guarded secret for any noble family or empress who has ever gone down that path. So there isn't a lot for the researchers to know because…"

"It's a big secret," I said, shaking my head. "All this time you couldn't tell me much of anything because you truly didn't know much of anything. Son of a bitch."

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.