A whisper in my mind. The thought pulsing to my brain before she could say anything.

"We have incoming," we both said at the same time.

We turned and glanced at each other. Just for a moment. I grinned. She smiled right back at me.

"What kind of incoming are we talking about?" I asked, glancing up at the countermeasures screen. I didn't see the telltale sign of any missiles coming at us.

I breathed a small sigh of relief. Only a small sigh, though, because I could see the telltale sign of more fighters moving in on us, and they were moving in quickly.

Not as quickly as the fighter we were in right now, but fast enough that I was worried. Just a little.

"Weapons hot," Varis said. "Firing off missiles now."

I saw dots move away from our own ship and towards the other ships moving in on us. They were all targeting us, but none of them had fired yet.

That quickly changed as they realized we'd fired on them and the jig was up. Suddenly a volley of missiles was heading our way.

I bit back a couple of curses. I needed to be calm. I needed to be one with my ship. Letting emotion and adrenaline get in my way in the middle of combat would lead to mistakes, and mistakes would lead to death.

"Fear is the little death," I muttered under my breath.

"What was that?" Varis said.

"Just some advice from the ancients," I said, ducking and moving down low in between buildings.

I zipped in and out between the kind of thing that would've dwarfed skyscrapers on ancient Earth. Back when they thought they were pretty cool building everything so high that it blotted out the sunlight in Central Park. These things were impressive, but I was able to move in and out of them with little difficulty.

"William, I must advise you that it would be better if you would let me provide a little bit of assistance while you are doing this."

"What in the name of the empress are you doing?" Varis asked, reaching out to grab the console in front of her. Like she thought that would do her a damn bit of good if we had a sudden deceleration because of a good old-fashioned controlled flight into terrain.

Though, in this case, it would be more like a good old-fashioned controlled flight into a building.

"Getting away from the bad guys," I said.

"We can't do countermeasures down here," she said.

There was an explosion behind us, and a chunk of one of those glittering skyscrapers turned into a bloom of fire. The lights all around that fire went out, but stayed on in the rest of the building.

Down here it wasn't even twilight. No, there were enough lights from the buildings that I could almost see as good as I could during daytime. There was also a helpful low-light overlay that popped up that allowed me to see everything along with a readout that showed me how close I was getting to each building.

"God, this feels good," I screamed, allowing a moment of elation before I went back into the void. Before I went back to being totally calm and trying not to think about the fact that if I did one thing wrong, we'd become a smear against one of these buildings. Briefly illuminating the livisk night sky before we were forgotten.

Well, maybe not forgotten in recent memory. A general and high noble going up in an explosion while in a dogfight over Imperial Seat was the kind of thing that would get tongues wagging, and I'm sure at least a few people back in the CCF at home would remember me as a cautionary example.

But we would be forgotten eventually. Maybe within a lifetime or two. Someone else would take over for Varis in her building, and all her people would be under new management.

I suddenly found myself caring about that a lot more than I thought I would, which surprised me.

I did a quick turn around a cylindrical building. We were so close I thought if I looked over I might be able to see some livisk undressing and looking scandalized that somebody was looking in on them.

I didn't do that, of course. I needed to keep an eye firmly on where I was going and what I was doing, to quote some more wisdom of the ancients.

We came out of the dive, and another missile flew past. We'd safely avoided it by having the building mask us.

"How did you learn how to do that?" Varis asked, turning and staring at me in astonishment.

"Focus on that weapons console," I said.

We were moving straight at another building. There were more missiles following us. At least three of them. I kept heading straight for the building. I felt a twinge of regret for what I was about to do.

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"Do you happen to know what that building is?" I asked.

Varis looked at it for a moment, tapping at her controls.

"Please focus on the weapons, General." Arvie said. "I can tell you that is the home of the local tax authority for the 79th Ward of Imperial Seat."

"A bunch of tax collectors for the empress," I said, my regrets disappearing. "Good. This is going to be no great loss then."

"You're going to hit them, aren't you?" Varis asked.

"You bet your sexy blue sparkly ass I am."

There was only a moment of hesitation, then she nodded. Though I felt the trust flowing through the link before she said anything. It was an odd feeling, syncing up like that in the middle of combat.

"I trust you."

"I thought you might. Let's take some of those missiles and give them back to the empress."

I waited until the very last moment, and then I brought the ship up. Doing a vertical climb wasn't nearly the chore it would've been if we were in an old-fashioned fixed-wing aircraft that did all its flying thanks to liberal application of Bernoulli's principle. I'd flown some of that stuff when I was a young man wanting to get a feel for the real thing, and my granddad had been more than happy to take me up for a flight.

I'd fallen in love then. I felt that same exhilaration now, for all that I was on an alien world using antigrav in a starfighter that belonged to the enemy. Who I also happened to be banging. And it was antigrav moving me through the air. Not a propeller or a jet engine or anything old-fashioned and quaint like that.

We moved up and up. Two of the missiles slammed into the building below us, and the explosion was big enough that it rocked our ship as it traveled up.

"Damn. What did they put in those things?" I asked. "You don't think they're flinging tactical nukes at us, do you?"

"Not tactical nukes, but a sufficiently high-yield that they don't seem to care about collateral damage."

"That's worrying," Varis said.

"Worrying that they're firing missiles at us, or is there something deeper here I'm not understanding?" I asked through clenched teeth.

"We don't have time for another conversation about the intricacies of livisk politics right now," Varis said, also through clenched teeth. "But suffice it to say, if somebody is causing damage like that? It's a dangerous thing."

"Got it," I said, feeling the worry coming through the link.

I wasn't sure what to make of that, but she was right. The middle of a battle wasn't the time to have a conversation about the intricacies of livisk politics and why missiles hitting a building was worse than the missiles being fired at us in the first place.

But I was definitely going to ask her all about this later. Assuming we survived.

"Coming up and around," I said, doing a quick 90-degree flip, and then we were flying upside down with the buildings above us. Or it looked like they were above us, even though they were below us.

Which was disorienting, but I had my eye on my instruments as I flew straight at the other ships coming right for us. They weren't bothering with stealth or subtlety or subterfuge or even trying to cloak themselves anymore. No point in that.

I could also see other points of light rising from other parts of the city all around us, which I figured couldn't be good.

Several of the closer ships started firing at us. Plasma cannons, if the hot green light was anything to go on. I ducked down in between the buildings again, flipping the fighter so we were right side up.

Which meant those plasma blasts hit the buildings, but I was beyond caring about civilian casualties. I just needed to make it through this fight.

"Doesn't look like they plan on leaving us alone," Varis said. "But they're also not willing to come down here between the buildings."

"Yeah, we're going to use that against them," I said.

"I'm not going to be able to track them as easily down here in between the buildings as up in the open air, William," Arvie said, sounding very worried.

I brought the ship straight up again, and one of those things flew right over us. I depressed the plasma cannons on my stick, and green blasts of energy went flying out and slammed into the bottom. The first couple of hits slammed into their shielding, glowing pink in the semi-twilight in between the buildings as it flew over them, and then the whole thing blew up. It slammed into yet another building with a massive explosion.

"We're really giving the insurance companies a run for their bottom line tonight," I said.

"What are you talking about?" Varis asked.

"Let me guess, you don't have insurance? If a building gets hit in combat, then it's brought dishonor on its owner or something."

"Well, yes," she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "If somebody's stupid enough to allow their building to get hit because they didn't put proper countermeasures in place then that's their own fault. Why would somebody else have to pay for it?"

"Fucking blue sparklies," I said, chuckling as we dipped back down amongst the buildings again.

"How did you do that, William?" Arvie said. "I wasn't able to track them."

"Yeah, how did you do that?" Varis asked, confusion and intrigue coming through the link.

"I just kept track of where the ship was based on where it'd been and where I saw it going," I said, shrugging it off like it was no big thing.

It didn't seem like a big thing to me, but from their tone? They clearly thought it was a big deal.

"We're going to talk about this later. Clearly you need to have a better training regimen for people flying your fighters. Yourself included. What's the point of having something like this if you never use it?"

"I use it," Varis said with a sniff.

I came to a stop under a bridge between two buildings. I could see people moving back and forth on it. That had me feeling a little bad about hanging out here, but not bad enough that I was going to give up my survival chances.

Another one of those ships moved by, though it was going a little slower skimming over the tops of the buildings. Not quite getting down into the artificial canyons with me, but it was still moving at a pretty good clip over the top. Like it was looking for me.

"That one's braver than most," I muttered. "Missiles up."

Varis was already moving before I said it. She tapped a couple of buttons. I felt the way things were moving back and forth between the two of us. The way the link had us almost thinking the things we were supposed to do before we did them.

"Fire," I said, but she'd already done it.

She depressed the button, sending a missile straight up. It slammed into the ship, causing it to explode in a fountain of debris as I pushed the throttle up and was on the move again, ducking low under a series of bridges so we were nice and deep in the trenches. Keeping away from the bastards who seemed to be too afraid to come down here and fight me.

And through it all, I felt Varis pulsing in my mind. Pulsing in a way she never had before, as though combat was bringing that link into sharp relief. As though it was heightening my own senses and making me feel more alive than I'd ever felt before.

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