The first thing that occurred to me as I sprinted across the greasy ground was what a monumentally bad idea it was for me to sprint at a group of livisk like this.

The second thing that occurred to me was my leg seemed to be doing much better. Like it'd been broken just a half hour ago when Varis was nice enough to set it for me, and then I'd been walking and putting my full weight on it with the occasional twinge, and now here I was running into combat.

The leg had definitely been broken. I'm sure if somebody was reading this story after the fact there'd be a bunch of skeptics coming out to say it was just sprained or something, and I didn't realize it and we were making shit up. But that leg had definitely been snapped at an unnatural angle, Varis had to put it back in place, and I didn't need a splint.

Thank you, battle pair.

The third thing that occurred to me as I brought my sword around and sliced into the side of one of the assholes who was helping Atanel was we were a fucking battle pair. Something that was terrifying to most livisk. Something so powerful it was almost the unique purview of a bunch of nobility and the empress who apparently kept a harem of princes around so she could send them out as errand boys.

I wondered why the intel weenies had never told any of us about that as I sliced the plasma blade through the dude. Maybe they didn't know about it. Maybe it was one of those things they totally knew about, but it was a need to know basis sort of thing and I'd never been in a situation where I needed to know. Up until the incident over that colony world I'd never been in a situation where I'd run into a prince consort.

Oh well. A mystery for the ages I was never going to solve. Instead I focused on the battle in front of me. I let out a bellowing roar as I yanked on my plasma sword a couple of times.

I know I kept talking about how plasma swords in reality were different from plasma swords in the movies, but it was something that needed to be discussed. So many people had a very wrong idea about how plasma swords worked.

Take slicing through somebody, for example. A plasma sword would cauterize the wound as it was being made, sure, but all the movies and stuff that showed somebody effortlessly slicing through a person because superheated plasma was so much bullshit.

The wire that was superheating that plasma got caught on stuff on the inside. Sure, it was a little easier to slice through a person, but it wasn't like a hot knife going through butter or anything like that.

I screamed again and jerked the blade. The other thing I had working for me was the odd strength that had been added as a result of the battle pair, and so I was able to slice through the guy where I probably wouldn't have before. He hit me with an indignant look. Like he wasn't even mad at me. No, he seemed more upset with himself that he didn't avail himself of the opportunity to get the sequel trilogy out of here while I was threatening them.

And then the plasma blade was through him. I let out a scream as blue blood went fountaining off to the side and I brought my plasma blade around and stabbed it into the asshole who'd been coming up behind me.

I knew about that thanks to a warning coming through the link from Varis. I didn't even have to stop and think about what I was doing anymore. We'd spent so much time sparring and going through the constantly shifting funhouse near the top of her spire that we knew what the other was thinking and I could sense everything that was happening in the battle space all around us without thinking about what I was doing or whether that sensory information was coming from me or her.

I raised my sword in salute to her, and then I yelled and ran at somebody who was coming up behind her.

Varis stepped forward to deal with another of the soldiers who totally weren't working for the empress even though we both knew they were totally working for the empress. Varis knew she didn't have to worry about the person coming up behind her.

I brought my sword down and around and stabbed into one of their hearts, then I pulled my sword out and hit them with a kick that sent them flying.

I paused for a moment, blinking, as I stared at that body going flying. They slammed into some of the debris and ruins, and a big chunk of a building that had been sitting there for who knew how long came tumbling down on top of them. I could see bits of the building stabbing into their body before they were crushed and I winced.

"That's not pleasant," I muttered.

Not that I had time to think about it. I dove and did a roll and came up with my plasma blaster in my other hand. I started firing at the livisk who were starting to break and run.

"We can't let any of them escape," Varis said.

"Already on it," I said.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Did I feel a little bad about shooting some of these assholes in the back as they were running away from us? I interrogated how I felt. I reached deep down inside me and really thought about it.

And I realized that no. I didn't give a damn. We were in the middle of a war here. It was a civil war for the livisk, but it was very much a continuation of a war I'd been fighting since the very early days of my life.

Like I'd been playing games where we had to kill livisk since I was a little kid. They'd long since become the replacement bad guys for Nazis or people working for the Eastern Coalition in humanity's pop culture.

It wasn't that I was desensitized to violence to them. Not exactly. It was just that this was war, and sometimes war sucked. And if that meant shooting some asshole in the back because they'd been trying to kill me and if they managed to get away they were going to send more assholes out to try and kill me?

Well, I wasn't going to shed a tear for them.

Varis continued her work as I picked them off with my plasma blaster. Finally it was mostly quiet. I turned around to see Varis standing there with her hand on Atanel's arm. She'd put her in an arm lock, and the woman stood there breathing heavily. Meanwhile, Varis had cocked her head to the side and was grinning at me.

"God, I love you, babe," I said, smiling at her and walking over to the two women.

I took a moment to survey the death and destruction all around us. It really was a sight to behold. There were livisk dead all around. Some of them with cauterized wounds from the plasma blades we'd been throwing around, and others with smoldering holes in their backs from the plasma blaster.

The superheated stuff was really nasty. They also moved slower than the speed of light, which was both an advantage and a disadvantage over laser weapons.

The big disadvantage of laser weapons being you couldn't actually see the lasers as they were being fired. Unless you were surrounded by a bunch of fog. Which would seem like an advantage in a fight, but it was a huge pain in the ass to fight on a battlefield where you had to constantly worry about stepping into an invisible line of fire from some asshole behind you, never mind the invisible death coming from the assholes in front of you.

Plus it was a pain in the ass to try aiming invisible death if you didn't have a targeting system. And harder to cool. And a whole lot of other reasons why most militaries had abandoned laser weapons as quickly as Gene Roddenberry back in the ancient days when some science advisor told him how impractical they were.

I pushed those thoughts away as I stepped up to Atanel.

"So I guess your buddy the prince consort decided he wasn't going to show up."

Her chest was heaving. She stared at me, her eyes wide. I wasn't sure if that was because she was terrified of what I was about to do, or if she was excited because she was about to get a chance to go off to whatever the livisk equivalent of Sto'Vo'Kor was.

I'd been so busy learning everything I could about the political structure of livisk society so I could try and find a way to undermine it, but I hadn't spent a lot of time looking into their religious practices. Add that to the large number of things about livisk society I needed to figure out at some point, but at some point wasn't going to be today.

She simply stood there, not answering me. I nodded to Varis and she twisted the woman's arm. Atanel moved up on her tiptoes, letting out a cry of pain.

"At the risk of sounding like a cliche, we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way," I said. "So do you want to tell me a little bit about this prince consort who came down here with you? Because right now it's looking like he isn't doing a very good job of keeping up with his people."

She glared at me. "He is the worst prince consort. I never should've taken a job with him, but the potential pay day was too great to pass up."

"Yeah, I'm kind of getting the impression he isn't very on top of things that aren't the empress," I said. "Her Worship is sending the B-team down here."

"Not even the B-team," she said with a growl. "He was supposed to be down here to kill you, and he can't even be bothered to come when you're found. I should have killed you when I had the chance."

I shrugged. "You're probably right about that. You totally should've killed me when you had the chance. And you can't say I didn't warn you."

"No, I can't say you didn't warn me," she said.

"Is there anything else you want to tell me about what's going on here? Are you working for the empress directly, or is this some weird thing where you've been hired so you can say you don't work for the empress with a clean sense of honor when someone asks you?"

"I'm not going to tell you anything, human," she said.

"Are you sure about that?" I asked, nodding to Varis.

There was a crack this time as she pulled on Atanel's arm. Something had obviously snapped or popped, or maybe even broken back there. Atanel let out another cry of pain.

Again I found myself interrogating my feelings about this. I probably should've felt bad about breaking somebody's arm while we were in the middle of interrogating her. But again, I was in the middle of a life or death situation and I very much wanted to be the one who came out of it alive.

So once more I found myself out of fucks to give. I wondered if that was a result of the link with Varis, or if there was some other change coming over me the longer I stayed on Livisqa.

"So you're sure there's nothing else you want to tell me? There's not anything you can tell me about this prince consort who's so terrible at his job?"

She grinned. Her teeth were blue. I blinked, and then I realized that was because she was bleeding. She must have taken a hit to the mouth at some point.

"I'm going to enjoy watching the empress torture you until you beg for death, human."

I looked to Varis one last time. She grinned at me. She could feel what was coming through the link.

"Yeah, well, I'm all for people following their dreams, but there's one big problem with this dream," I said.

Varis kicked Atanel in the back of her knee. She fell to the ground. There was another snap because Varis kept hold of her arm as gravity asserted itself, which resulted in a loud crack.

Okay, that had definitely only been a pop or a sprain or something before, but that loud crack had to be her bones breaking this time. She let out a wail of pain as I stared down at her. Then I brought my plasma pistol up and pointed it to her forehead.

She suddenly went very quiet as her skin turned a pale blue. Her eyes crossed as she looked up at the glowing tip that was letting out an ominous hum.

"You said you wouldn't kill me," she said.

"I lied."

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