I made sure to keep my hands up. I didn't want to give any of these trigger-happy assholes an excuse to suddenly have me doing my best impression of a bit of Swiss cheese.

I wondered if they had anything like Swiss cheese here on the livisk homeworld. I'd seen food that was pretty close to cheese, though I'd never inquired as to what kind of animal it came from or if it even came from an animal at all.

I'd been so busy with all of this end of the world overthrowing the empire bullshit that I hadn't had time to stop and smell the cheese. Literally.

"So there's a prince consort out there who wants a piece of me?" I asked, talking loudly.

Maybe I couldn't reach Varis with a comm, but I could talk loud enough that she could hear what was going on over here. Maybe she would overhear that and be able to stay nice and quiet up until the moment this latest prince consort showed up. And then she could get him to do his best impression of a hunk of bleeding blue Swiss cheese.

"Yes, there's a prince consort out here waiting for you," the woman said, sneering at me.

"I don't suppose you could just let me go and save his life?" I asked.

The woman stared at me. She had a scar running down one side of her face, almost to her cheek. Think a half-Joker sort of thing, if we were talking one of the interpretations that was aping the ancient and still unmatched performance Heath Ledger gave.

"Excuse me?" she said.

"Well, I was just giving you a chance. I figured if you wanted the prince consort to live, then you could just not let him know you found me and we could depart unlikely friends."

She looked at the other livisk all around her. They weren't wearing power armor. That seemed to be a thing livisk troops didn't care for unless they were going into a radiation zone. They just had the traditional livisk armor that covered up their hearts, and probably had a shielding unit that would pop up and cover their faces for glancing blows.

Though I'd already learned from the last prince consort I ran up against that there were limits to those shields. Maybe they'd stop somebody from getting their heads splattered all over the ground, but it wouldn't stop them from getting one sequel trilogy of a concussion from taking a hit while the shield was on.

She looked back at me, and she hesitated for a moment. I wondered if she was hesitating because she was thinking about where I was going with this threat, or if she was hesitating simply because she couldn't believe the audacity of me threatening her when she clearly had me dead to rights.

At least she thought she clearly had me dead to rights. A lot of livisk had been thinking that lately.

"What in the name of the empress are you talking about?" she asked, sounding incredulous.

"I get that a lot," I said with a shrug. "I figured I'd give you a chance to save the prince consort and yourself while you're at it."

"Save myself?" she said.

Again, she turned and hit the other livisk with an incredulous look. They all looked just as confused as she did. Clearly they had no idea what the sequel trilogy to do about me either.

"I figure the empress is going to be pretty upset when you come back to the imperial palace and you're down another prince consort. She's been losing a lot of them lately, and it seems to me she'd be upset about losing another one."

"You're threatening a prince consort?"

"Of course I'm threatening a prince consort," I said, rolling my eyes.

I pointedly didn't look at the slow and subtle movement coming from behind the gathered group. I also tried not to give any indication that I felt Varis coming closer through the link. Now all I had to do was keep talking and distract these assholes long enough for her to get down to business.

Thankfully, talking long enough to keep a bunch of livisk distracted seemed to be one of my superpowers I was developing. I wondered if that had anything to do with the mental link and the changes it had worked on my body that made the video my gym teacher showed back in fifth grade physical education seem quaint in comparison.

"I'm going to shoot you just because you won't shut up," the woman finally said.

"Oh, you could totally do that too," I said. "But then you're going to piss off my girlfriend."

"Your girlfriend?"

"Yes, General Veris T'thal. Sister-by-marriage to the empress. All those fancy titles you livisk seem to love tossing around."

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"And I should be afraid of her?"

"You should be afraid of her and you should be afraid of me," I said. "I don't want you to think I'm banking entirely on my girlfriend's reputation to get out of this. I do have a reputation of my own to cultivate, after all. Which includes threatening you via the prince consort."

"What makes you think you could kill a prince consort?" she asked,

"Well, I am sort of two for two when it comes to fighting those assholes," I said with a shrug. "So I figure if you bring one down here, I'm going to have to kill the asshole. Then you'll have to go back to the empress with another prince consort dead, and she doesn't seem like the kind of person who takes that kind of news rationally."

"The prince consort is going to be here any moment and you're going to seriously regret that mouth on you when he arrives," the woman said.

"What's your name?"

She blinked in obvious surprise.

"Atanel."

"Nice to meet you, Atanel," I said. "I'm Bill, Bill Stewart."

"I'm aware of who you are," she said, sounding supremely annoyed that she had to be aware of who I was.

"Okay, Atanel," I said. "So let's think this through just a little. Really walk through everything that's about to happen. The prince consort is going to come down here, then I'm going to get into a fight with him. I'm going to have to kill most of you, but I promise I'm going to leave you alive."

She chuckled. "You promise you're going to leave me alive? What have I done to earn this largesse?"

Meanwhile, the other livisk standing all around her were glancing back and forth nervously. Like maybe they'd heard some of the stories about my exploits and they were thinking it was a very real possibility I was going to be able to follow through on the threats I was making here.

"I'm going to leave you alive because I want you to go back to the empress in your failure. I want you to have to explain to her exactly what it is you've done. Exactly how much you've failed her."

"That's not going to happen, human," she said. "The prince consort is going to be here any moment now, and he's going to take you into custody and then take you back to the imperial palace where you're going to suffer far more than any human who has ever been blessed by being allowed access to the imperial palace."

"No, I'm afraid that's not going to happen," I said.

That movement was getting closer and closer, but Varis was clearly taking her time. I wondered if she was doing that because she enjoyed listening to my back and forth with this woman as I tried to distract her, she'd told me this banter amused her, or if she was doing that simply because it was the only way to be sure she wasn't going to knock something loose and warn these assholes she was moving in on them.

"Yeah, the only time I'm going to be in the imperial palace is when I'm personally delivering a nuke to take care of the place. Like, even if I manage to overthrow your government, I'm totally going to blow that place to smithereens."

"You dare speak treason against the empress. So..."

"Yeah, I know she's going to torture me for all of eternity and make me regret the day my mother ever looked at my dad and gave him a wink and allowed him to go for a ride in the back seat of their hover car."

Atanel seemed thoroughly confused now.

"What are you…"

Time to interrupt her again. I needed to keep them off balance for just a little longer.

"So where is this prince consort asshole anyway?" I asked, looking up and around and making a production of checking all of our surroundings. "Because he doesn't seem to be showing up in a timely manner."

A sound drifted across the ruins. I realized it was her teeth grinding together. Oh, yes, I'd hit a sensitive spot, and I was going to go right on hitting that sensitive spot. Just like I'd gone right on hitting that spot on Varis when we were coming down from our sparring session last night, and…

Okay, better not to think about that in front of the aliens who were threatening me. The last thing I needed was to pop a chubby in front of them. Mostly because I didn't want her to think I was doing it because of some weird "being taken captive by a livisk" role play thing we were doing here.

"You know, I ran into another bunch of livisk assholes who told me there was somebody who wanted to talk to me," I said. They ended up spending just a little too long trying to threaten and intimidate me. The same mistake you're making.

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

"What I'm talking about is I'm giving you a final chance to live. You disappear into the ruins. Maybe go back to the reclamation mine with the rest of the empress's forces."

"We're not working for the empress," she said.

"Sure you aren't working for the empress," I said, rolling my eyes. "Say, do you mind if I lower my hands just a little? It's getting a bit uncomfortable holding them up like this."

"And give you access to some secret weapon you have on you?" she asked.

"I promise I'm not going to fire a gun at you or anything. I'm just getting tired holding my hands up like this."

"Then you can keep right on being tired. So much for the vaunted human who is the terror of the empress. I don't see how you managed to kill a prince consort in single combat, even though they say you did."

"Well, apparently this prince consort who's down here with all of you is trying to kill me with boredom," I said, glaring at her.

She stared at me. I stared right back at her. She was the one who blinked first and looked away. She leaned in close to one of the gentlemen standing beside her.

"Where is he?"

"They said he said he'd get here when he gets here," the guy said.

"Having some trouble with your superior not taking this moment as seriously as you are?" I asked. "That can always be annoying. There was an admiral I had to work under who actually had to cover up an entire livisk expeditionary force making it into human space because he was busy getting a blow job from his aide and he thought focusing on that was more important than actually answering communications and giving orders. And everybody who worked under him was so terrified of getting fired for crossing him because he was such a raging asshole that... Oh, thank the Picard. You're here."

A sword appeared out of the chest of one of the guards standing next to the livisk woman with the gruff voice. She turned and stared in wide-eyed astonishment.

All the other livisk stared at the plasma sword that was sticking out of their buddy's hearts. Though it would be more accurate to say the plasma sword was sticking in between the hearts, but it didn't matter because Varis very quickly moved her plasma sword from side to side and scrambled both hearts before the asshole had a chance to try and pull himself off of the thing.

Not that I liked his odds even before she started swirling her sword around his critical organs.

"I tried to warn you," I said with a shrug, and I ran at them as I reached for my own plasma sword.

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