"We've taken an accounting of our losses in that fight," Olsen said. "It looks like we lost Jefferson."

"The Cook's Mate?" I said, arching an eyebrow. "What was he doing in the middle of a fight?"

"Everybody has to fight," Olsen said with a shrug. "And everybody is trained to fight. We're all former Terran Navy and Combined Corporate Fleets."

"Yeah, but if he was a Cook's Mate on a picket ship, then he was probably close to retirement," I said with a sigh.

I remembered a friendly older man with a bright white beard who always had a smile when I came down to get a bit of food. He always seemed to be willing to sneak me a cookie as well.

I felt terrible that he died in that fight especially. I wasn't sure it was a fight he even needed to get involved with. Not when there was a good chance Varis and I would've been able to take care of everything anyway.

"I don't suppose you've heard anything about the livisk troops who were with us when the ship went up?" I asked.

"I'm afraid not," Olsen said, frowning and turning to look towards the reclamation mine.

There was a lot of noise coming from over there now. It was an industrial sound, but it was the sound of industrial death. Weapons going off. Plasma blasts echoing. And over it all was the steady hum of troop transports and other ships moving down into the giant hole in Imperial Seat.

No doubt looking for me and Varis. No doubt pissed off that they hadn't been able to capture us yet. No doubt getting ready to come in here so they could rectify that situation with more troops.

I looked around at everybody who was with us and sighed.

"We're not going to be able to stand up to another attack like that."

"I told you we needed to get you out of here," Olsen said, shaking his head. "Besides, she wants to meet with you."

I blinked and stared at him.

"She wants to meet with me?"

"Yes," he said.

"And who is she?" I asked.

His eyes darted over to Varis, and then back to me.

"I can assure you that anything you want to tell me, you can also tell her," I said, standing a little straighter.

"Sorry," he said. "I just wasn't sure if we should talk freely in front of the livisk."

"She has my absolute trust," I said.

"That's right," Varis said, standing a little straighter and moving to stand next to me. Though I also felt something odd through the link. It seemed almost like gratitude.

I was surprised she'd be grateful that I was showing confidence in her abilities in front of my Terran crew of all people, but I'd take it.

"Very well," he said, glancing nervously over towards the reclamation mine. "There's a whole ecosystem of people who live down here in the Undercity. People who make their entire lives down here."

I grinned at the sudden nervous look.

"Why do I get the feeling a lot of these people are maybe not operating above board?"

"You would be correct," Olsen said with a sigh.

"So why are you so nervous about the idea of people who are operating outside livisk law? It's not like we're operating within livisk law."

"I wasn't sure what you would think about it, sir. We've only had preliminary meetings with her. Plus you are associated with a powerful noble and general which is somewhat inside the law."

"I think the lines are blurring there just a bit," I said.

"Very blurred," Varis said.

"Does this lady have a name?" I asked.

Though I felt something odd through the link. An almost guarded sensation. Then Varis looked at me and frowned.

"He's probably talking about the Spider," she said.

I frowned. It wasn't exactly a one-to-one translation. Spider was just the closest thing to the livisk word she was talking about.

It turns out an unholy evolutionary abomination with eight legs that spits venom at its victims was a pretty common form creatures took on multiple planets, much to the horror of arachnophobes all throughout humanity when we finally started going out to the stars and realized those fuckers were everywhere out there.

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It was sort of like carcinization and how everything ended up looking like a crab or something, given sufficient time. Only arachnization was a wider terrifying galactic evolutionary trend.

The things on the livisk home world didn't use webs or anything like that. No, they just let out a god-awful shriek and engaged you in single combat like everything else on this damned planet. Which made me wonder if that was part of the reason why the livisk were so big on the whole combat thing considering they were constantly having to fight everything on their planet.

Then again, the concept of a death world was hardly a new one, even in Earth culture. Earth itself was considered something of a death world considering everything was trying to kill everything else constantly.

The first time I'd seen one of those shrieking fuckers coming at me in the shower, I'd fallen over and nearly broke my tailbone from slamming to the floor.

Luckily, I'd run into a small one that didn't have enough venom to actually be dangerous to a human. Though it'd been touch and go for a few minutes after the thing stuck me right in the ass cheek, thank you very much, where we had to determine if the dosage was enough to harm Terran physiology.

I pushed those unpleasant thoughts away. I'd never been an arachnophobe back on Earth, but that experience had definitely been enough to almost convert me here on Livisqa.

The point was, when they said I was going to see the Spider, it conjured images of a giant livisk-sized version of one of those shrieking motherfuckers, and it wasn't a pleasant mental image. For all that it was probably some livisk working the underworld who'd taken on that name in an effort to intimidate people.

And it sure as shit was working on me in this case.

"The Spider," I said, not bothering to hide my curiosity.

Olsen cleared his throat. He suddenly looked nervous. Like the level of nerves I expected to see on him back when I'd first discovered him doing a bunch of day trading when he was supposed to be on duty at his comms station.

Though I wasn't sure if it could even be called day trading considering it had very little relation to day or night back on Earth. Not to mention the day-night cycle had sort of lost all meaning once we became an interstellar civilization, but whatever.

"Oh, you can just go ahead and tell him," Rachel said, rolling her eyes.

He looked at her, and then back to me.

"Seriously," I said. "We don't have a lot of time here."

"Well, it's just that we knew there might come a time when we needed to get out of the reclamation mine, and we might need to get out fast, you know?"

"Which totally makes sense," I said.

"And I started ranging out farther and farther from the mine with my small raiding crew. I had some idea that we might be able to find a way over to the tower you were living in. At least that was the hope."

"Only it turns out there's a lot of space between here and your tower," Rachel said, "Especially for a bunch of humans trying to make their way through the Undercity with a bunch of primitive weapons we stole from the other livisk down here who want to kill us. Doubly so when it turns out the criminal underworld down here has actual weapons and we'd probably just find ourselves enslaved again, but without the implied threat of you coming down and killing everyone who treated us poorly."

"Understandable," I said.

"But I also made contacts with some of the criminal elements down here," Olsen said. "And locally that means dealing with the Spider."

"And the Spider is..."

"One of many local criminal bosses who operates out of the Undercity and manages to keep from getting captured precisely because the empress can't be bothered to come down here and exert her will. Not to mention having criminals down here as a threat keeps regular people from coming down here to launch pesky things like revolutions," Varis said.

"I see," I said, shaking my head at yet another wrinkle of livisk society I'd never been aware of.

That was something I was going to have to ask Arvie about the next time I went into the man cave and had a conversation with his shard, though he probably thought the criminal element working in the Undercity wasn't even worth mentioning.

That was the problem with working with a Combat Intelligence who was working with all the same basic assumptions that any livisk noble would have. I didn't know what I didn't know, and so I didn't know what to ask him about because he didn't think it was important.

"I really wish that Arvie was here right now. He would be able to…"

"Get down!" Olsen shouted. "Drone."

I hit the deck. Rachel came down as well, but Olsen had brought his weapon around. He already had it primed and ready to go, and he fired off a quick shot. There was a ping followed by the bright purple of a shield activating.

There was a pause. Olsen stared up into the air, his chest heaving.

"Did you hit it?" I asked, looking up at him.

"I did," he said.

"Did it do a damn bit of good?" I asked, figuring we were probably one breath away from getting killed by a drone sent down here by the empress.

"I don't think so," Olsen said.

I looked up. Sure enough, there was a drone hovering right there. It had a single plasma cannon attached to it, but it wasn't glowing, and it definitely wasn't humming. There was just a steady hum from the antigrav unit keeping the drone up.

The drone looked at Olsen for a moment, then it turned to me.

"So if I'm not mistaken, William, this looks like that Olsen chap you were telling me about. The one who was always spending his time playing video games rather than actually doing his job on your old ship."

I blinked. "Arvie?"

"None other than," he said, the drone dipping for a moment in something that looked an awful lot like a bow. "Would you like me to take care of this one? If he's causing you trouble then a simple blast would be enough to rid you of your insubordination problem once and for all."

Olsen's eyes went wide as the plasma cannon on Arvie's drone did start to glow, and an ominous hum definitely filled the area all around us.

I stood quickly, waving my hands at the drone.

"No, there's no need for any of that, Arvie," I said, putting myself in between Olsen and the drone.

I was glad to see the bucket of bolts, sure, but I didn't want him accidentally killing anybody.

Again, the drone seemed to dip for a moment. Almost like Arvie was disappointed he wasn't going to get a chance to use his blasters on Olsen.

"I see," he said, sounding almost disappointed.

"It's good to see you, Arvie," I said. "How did you get down here anyway?"

"It's good to see you as well, William, but I'm afraid we don't have time to chat. The empress is preparing to blow up the reclamation mine and the surrounding area."

All I could do was shake my head and laugh.

"Of fucking course."

"William, are you quite well?" Arvie asked. "Has the stress finally led to you having a break? I'm afraid we don't have time for that."

"No, I'm okay, Arvie," I said, shaking my head and continuing to laugh. "Of fucking course the empress is getting ready to blow all of this up now that we've finally managed to have a moment to catch our breath."

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