We stepped into the fighter. I looked around at the controls. I looked up to the green light that told me Arvie was still in here with us monitoring everything. Then I looked over to Varis, who looked like she was very pissed off.

She reached out and jammed her finger into a button, and suddenly the canopy all around turned dark. Followed by a slight beep.

"We are now covered from all tracking and listening devices, and nobody should be able to see in," Arvie said. "At least for now. The longer we sit here, the more likely it is somebody figures out a way to get through countermeasures or, more likely, the likelier it is somebody simply decides to blow the ship up."

"Activate the low level shielding," Varis said, looking up and around to several readouts that looked very similar to the incoming missile readout and other countermeasure stuff in a Terran craft.

Then she turned to me, and her face split into a wide grin. She surprised me by practically hopping over the center console in between us and straddling me. The seat started to recline, and she peppered my face with kisses.

Well, okay then. Not what I'd expected after she looked so pissed off, but I'd take it. Especially when she pressed her lips against mine, and suddenly our tongues were snaking together. My hands ran up and down her body.

My favorite piece of anatomy also started to make itself known, and I wondered if we were going to have another interlude like what happened back in my luxury cell.

She definitely seemed happy about something I'd done. I wondered if I was going to get laid like this every time I killed a livisk on her behalf.

If so then I was going to become the next best thing to her hatchet man, because this felt great!

She pulled away. She blushed. Some of her hair was out of place. She reached up to try and put an orange strand back where it'd been.

"You were amazing," she said, sitting on my lap and staring down at me, both of her hands on my chest.

"Um, thank you," I said, though I'm not sure what was so amazing about what I just did.

Sure it felt good to blast that overseer. To send a message to the bastards who were keeping my crew hostage. I just hoped the message was received loud and clear.

"It's very simple," she said. "But first, we need to get out of here. Arvie is right. There's a good chance somebody is going to try and take a shot at us from the reclamation mine. There will be people who were loyal to the old overseer even if the new overseer is probably going to work to consolidate power quickly."

"How can you be sure the new overseer wasn't a friend of the old overseer?" I asked.

I also wasn't sure how much good I'd actually done there by shooting that woman. If there was a new boss, the same as the old boss, then didn't that mean my people were fucked no matter what?

"We just sent a message, Bill," she said, turning and smiling at me. "The old overseer thought she was free from my wrath simply because she had the empress's favor."

"Let me guess, it's not that easy?" I said.

"You're exactly right," she said. "It's a difficult position to be in. I don't envy that woman, but at the same time? She did decide to defy me right to my face."

She put a hand on the controls, and a moment later the entire ship sprang to life as we lifted off.

Again, it wasn't like in a human ship. There was always a slight tell, a little bit of a pull against your body to let you know you were moving in a human ship. A little reminder that the laws of physics were out there waiting. That there were inertial dampeners and structural integrity fields and shielding and all sorts of things telling the laws of physics to go fuck themselves because otherwise a human wouldn't be able to pilot a craft at the speeds and velocities and G-forces involved in spaceflight.

It was a design philosophy more than anything, leaving in a subtle reminder that the laws of physics were still out there waiting for someone who fucked up. That's how humans had piloted for centuries, and the people designing the craft figured using the old inner ear and a pilot's intuition was still a good idea.

Clearly the livisk didn't believe in that design philosophy. Which I could understand. There were times when the disconnect between what somebody felt and what the instruments were telling them had deadly results. Tale as old as people piloting ships faster than any species had any business moving.

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"So do you want to tell me what that was all about?" I asked. "Like isn't one of the number one rules in a slave society that you don't want the slaves attacking the slavers?"

Varis did something odd. She started piloting us up towards one of the lines of traffic moving in a steady procession across the Imperial Seat skies. They moved like twinkling chains of light, criss-crossing the city this way and that. Going from building to building, or occasionally descending down below.

We moved up along a path that was clearly meant to pull us into a regular line of traffic.

I wondered what she was doing, but I was more concerned with the question of a slave daring to shoot a slaver. Because again, that wasn't the kind of thing slave societies tended to smile upon.

Granted, I'd always been the kind to fall asleep when it came to history lessons. Unless it was a history lesson delivered via the various bits of science fiction that showed people going into space and fighting aliens over the last millennia. Those had always been a favorite of mine.

"It's a little more complicated than that," she said after a moment, breathing a sigh of relief when we settled in behind an air car that looked more like an air car back on Earth and less like the sleek fighter craft we flew in.

I could only wonder what the livisk in front of us and behind us thought of that. I also noted that the one in front of us sped up a little bit, but they quickly slowed down because the vehicle in front of them was still in the same spot.

"You are technically property. My property."

She looked over at me with an unreadable expression. This lady would have had a pretty good poker face, but there was the link that allowed me to cheat and understand what she was feeling. Even if I couldn't see what she felt.

"It's okay," I finally said. "I totally understand the fucked-up situation I'm in. That doesn't mean I hold it against you that I'm in that fucked-up situation."

Okay, maybe I held it against her just a little bit. She was the one who came to the edge of the Sol system to do a smash and grab just for me. She smiled and shook her head as those thoughts and emotions ran through my head.

"You forget the link is a two-way thing. I can feel how you feel about this, and I know you're not happy about it," she said.

"I'm not happy about it, but I'm also here with you. For some reason that feels right. Right in a way I haven't felt over the past year."

I reached out and took her hand. It was easy because she didn't have it on the flight controls.

"So you are technically property, and that means that you have a monetary value. As a captain in the Terran Navy…"

"Captain of the Combined Corporate Fleets," I said.

"Which is a distinction that isn't made when people are brought into our slave registries," she said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world that they'd have slave registries. And of course I was the unfortunate bastard who was on that registry.

I shook my head. This was crazy.

"You see, you have value, and you're my property. There is a certain allowance made for subject species, particularly former Terran military. Especially slaves owned by nobility."

"Or generals?"

"Or generals. The practical upshot is…"

"What she's trying to say is you're far too valuable to be killed even if you kill a livisk. Provided the livisk you kill is far enough below your owner's rank and station. Especially when you're owned by a noble and a general with a sizable military of her own," Arvie said. "There's quite a lot of room between Varis's rank and station and anyone who isn't the empress."

"Yes," she said with a sigh. "I suppose it isn't all that complicated after all."

"So it's sort of like with the empress," I said, frowning as I thought through the implications. "Me killing a livisk is technically a crime, but because you own me and you're very powerful nobody is going to complain because I killed a low-ranking overseer in a reclamation mine.

Again, she smiled at me. "I fear that you are getting an odd idea of exactly what station somebody has in life based on the heights you're in when you're around me. Overseer of a reclamation mine is considered a very prestigious and profitable posting. Somebody can even buy a ticket into the minor nobility if they do well enough with a posting like that."

"And so the new guy is going to try his best to avoid doing something to mess that up," I said, chuckling and shaking my head. "That's what that was all about. You were using me as your attack dog because you knew you could... How did you phrase it? Pay restitution? So you pay a fine every time I kill somebody and that's that?"

"Something like that," she said.

"So what's to stop livisk from using their slaves as attack dogs on the regular?"

"Nothing," she said with a shrug. "There are people who do that sort of thing with their slaves all the time. That loophole occurred to me as that overseer annoyed me. She was so sure I couldn't touch her. You were standing right there. I could feel how angry you were. I figured why not make use of it?"

I sat back in my seat. All sorts of interesting things were swimming through my head. All sorts of possibilities for things that I could do since I was in some fucked up grey area in livisk law.

"Damn," I said. "So, what I'm basically hearing is I have a lot more freedom than your typical livisk, or your typical slave."

"In a way, yes, and in a way, no," she said. "If you ever get captured and I'm not there to protect you? You could find your life ending very quickly, or you could find your life ending very slowly. The empress is very good at keeping people alive as long as she wants them to suffer."

"That's comforting," I muttered.

"But there are many who would want to kill you regardless because you're close to me whether or not you try to kill them. Something to keep in mind," she said.

"Livisk politics are a lot more hands on and potentially deadly than how you Terrans handle things," Arvie said with a sniff.

"Nice safety tip," I said, my eyes scanning the displays in front of us more out of habit than anything. I frowned as I looked at the ECM display, because I saw a familiar notification flashing there.

"Um, maybe I'm wrong about this, but it looks like somebody just fired a missile at us."

Varis turned and her eyes went wide. Okay. Maybe that display was exactly what it looked like.

Shit.

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