As though in time with that thought, there was a sudden and massive explosion that went off somewhere behind us.

"Any idea what that was, Arvie?" I asked.

"I'm not entirely sure," he said, his tone absolutely dry. "But if I had to hazard a guess, I would say it was probably some of the empress's troops coming closer to us."

"I was worried you were going to say something like that," I muttered.

I turned and looked back the way we'd come from. I wondered how quickly they could realistically move through all that clutter and debris we'd been sneaking our way through. Then I looked over to Arvie and the giant mech he was still sitting in, and wondered what he could possibly do.

I took a deep breath. I really hated doing heroic shit like this, but it needed to be done.

"Arvie..."

"Yes, William?"

"Is there any chance you could get the sequel trilogy out of here and maybe take Sera to safety?"

He paused for a moment. I wondered what he was thinking. I wasn't a fan of the pause this time around since it was a pause that probably meant my untimely doom was coming soon.

"Yes," he finally said. "But there is sufficient traffic from the empress's forces that there is a very good chance I would be shot down in this ship just the same as the other mechs I tried to pilot to this location were shot down."

"Right. And is there any chance you deciding to fight it out would get through?"

"There is a very good possibility that I would be able to make it through now that I have been unchained from my combat restrictions," he said. "But I cannot guarantee it with 100% certainty that the girl will make it through alive."

I let out a deflated sigh. My whole body might have deflated under that news, but I was in the power armor which propped me up.

"Fine," I said, "Then we keep going."

There was another massive explosion from behind us. We were working on a big enough scale here that I knew the explosions were probably happening pretty far away.

But then there was a loud cracking noise. I turned and looked in the opposite direction. There was a small mushroom cloud blooming up behind us, and one of the massive structures that had sort of been supporting itself was falling to the ground.

"Shit," I muttered. "It looks like they're a whole sequel trilogy of a lot closer than I imagined."

"It would appear so, William," Arvie said.

"Then let's get a move on," I said. "Any chance I could hitch a ride?"

"You could," Arvie said, "But you would be an obvious target and I'm currently putting most of my shielding towards my cockpit, while you have a personal shielding device on your own power armor."

"Damn it," I said.

As much as my mind called out to me that I should be a coward and let Arvie try and protect me, I wasn't going to do it as long as Sera was in danger.

Was it a stupid thing to do? Probably. Was there a chance I was going to get myself killed because of a little girl? Very possibly. Was there a chance I wasn't going to do the right thing and try to protect her?

Not at all. I was going to make sure she was okay. Damn it.

"I thought you might say something like that," Arvie said.

"Yeah, stupid me being all heroic and shit," I muttered.

"I don't think it's stupid at all," Arvie said, "If anything, it's admirable."

He started moving again. His massive legs were able to take great strides in front of me.

"So we have to hope somebody is going to be able to bust through the shielding when we get there?" I asked. "The same as the rescue workers who were able to get through the shielding in that bomb shelter?"

"Yes," Arvie said, "Though there is the added complication that the shielding on the bomb shelter wasn't nearly as powerful as the shielding that is currently keeping the firestorm localized to the destroyed building."

"Great," I said, rolling my eyes.

"I simply try to keep you informed," Arvie said.

"I know," I said. "So keep right on informing me."

Another pause. Another moment where I didn't like that pause even as I tallied it on the scoreboard in my head.

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"Arvie, what are you not telling me?"

"What would make you think I'm not telling you anything right now?" Arvie asked.

"Because you paused."

"Did I?"

"Come on, Arvie. You only pause like that when there's something you don't want to tell me, or when you're thinking through something."

"That is odd. I've never noticed that tell before," Arvie said. "But you are right. I was processing whether or not it would be a good idea to tell you something."

"Just tell me, Arvie,"

"I'm afraid our conversation has now gone on long enough that we've gone from me revealing something unpleasant to you in a friendly manner, to me revealing something to you in what you humans would describe as a dramatically appropriate moment."

A chill ran down my spine at his words. "A dramatically appropriate moment."

It was something people talked about in the Fleet. Everybody grew up watching movies about Fleet engagements. Everybody joked about how cool it would be to have another fleet come in and save you at the last moment, or to be the fleet that came in and saved somebody at the last moment.

It had actually happened like that a few times. Though more often than not, it was just somebody getting curb stomped rather than a ride of the Rohirrim type thing where the horns blew and the cock crowed at just the right moment.

And as I stepped around another support structure and saw a long row of hovering tanks floating in front of the massive shield wall with a bunch of troops arrayed in a semicircle around a single figure in power armor with a long flowing cape, I realized what Arvie was going on about.

For a moment I thought this was one of those moments. Then I got a good look at the troops and realized they weren't here for me.

Or the problem was they were here for me, but not in the way I wanted.

"Okay," I said, letting out a sigh and trying not to let my frustration show. "We really need to work on you delivering need-to-know information when I need to know it, and not a few minutes after I need to know it."

"My apologies, William," Arvie said. "I was only able to see them when we came around this latest bit of debris."

"No, it's okay," I said, staring at the semicircle of troops and tanks in front of us.

I wondered what was up with the livisk in the middle. They were in power armor, and it was power armor that was a bright crimson color. Like it looked like the sort of thing that would've been sold at a garage sale at Lucasfilm back in the mid to late 1980s, when there was a brief decade or so that the whole world collectively didn't give a shit about Star Wars.

Which seemed odd considering humanity had been obsessed with those movies for the thousand years since.

The dude even had a cape billowing out behind him, and there was plenty of superheated wind to make that cape billow. I wondered what it was made of that the cloth wasn't being destroyed in the superheated air.

"Any idea what's going on here?" I asked Arvie.

"Normally I would tell you, but you need to learn these things yourself," he said.

I opened my mouth to tell him what I thought of that, but he continued on.

"Given the circumstances and that I'm supposed to be providing an advisory role to you, however, I can tell you that looks like one of the princes consort who has come down to personally lead an attack against this building."

"A prince consort?" I said, looking at the dude in his billowing cape and his crimson power armor.

It wasn't covered in graffiti like so much of the other livisk armor I'd seen. No, it was just the one color, except for an insignia that was right over his chest plate. An insignia I recognized well enough, because I'd seen it plenty of times on all the fighters and bombers that had been trying their best to get our attention over the past few weeks.

That was the imperial sigil right there. The one bit of livisk script, aside from the consort symbol and Varis's own personal house symbol, and some of the swear words, if I'm being perfectly honest, that I could recognize.

"Okay, so what's a prince consort doing down here, and how do we kill him?" I asked.

"Are you sure that killing a prince consort is advisable?" Arvie asked. "That would be an escalation."

"Are you a livisk or are you a Combat Intelligence?" I asked. "You're supposed to be telling me how to defeat my enemies here."

"I agree with you," Arvie said, "It's just that this would be an escalation."

"And sending a prince consort down here with his own personal army after nuking us isn't an escalation?" I asked.

I looked beyond the semicircle of livisk troops. It was hard to get a bead on how many there were, but then my heads-up display helpfully told me there were at least a hundred infantry troops. All of them loaded for bear.

Or loaded for human.

"Thanks for the information," I muttered.

"No problem," Arvie said.

I looked beyond them. I could see through the shielding, sort of. It was a little hazy, and there was a lot of smoke that was being pumped out all around us from the fires that were still raging. The shielding was also sparkling a bright purple color in a bunch of places, looking like static on a visual display where the signal wasn't coming through quite right.

"How many of those things do you think you could take out?" I asked Arvie.

"Excuse me?" he said.

"You were talking about your combat capabilities in that mech. How many of them could you realistically take out if we fight them?"

There was a brief pause. I think that brought me up to eight. I was going to have to go back and review the footage and make sure.

"I think I could take out at least the tanks and some of the infantry. Though we would still have to deal with most of the infantry afterwards, and there's always the chance I won't be able to protect Sera."

"Yeah, we're kinda past the point of trying to protect her," I said.

"William," Arvie said, the question obvious in his voice.

"I mean, we're going to try and protect her if we can," I said. "But we're also at the point where they've managed to get in between us and where we need to go, and we might not be able to get there without dusting it up with them."

I wondered if Varis was over there on the other side of that shielding. I wondered if she could see what was going on. There were a few ships that had taken off, and they were hovering around the edge of the shielding. But none of them were trying to press through.

I wondered if that was because they didn't have the capacity to push through the shielding at this location, or if it was that they also didn't want to risk an escalation with a prince consort here.

Something told me it would go a whole sequel trilogy of a lot differently if they killed a prince consort on the livisk home world rather than killing one orbiting a colony world out in the middle of nowhere. Plus, I'd technically been part of a belligerent power when I did that.

"Keep your targeting ready, Arvie," I said.

"William?" he said, clearly confused.

I felt at the link. I tried to send love through it. Varis was clearly worried about something, a worry that was bordering on a panicked fear as more and more fighters started to take off and something started to move towards the shielding.

But I couldn't rely on waiting them to get in here. If we were going to be saved? Then we had to save ourselves.

"Keep that targeting up," I said. "I'm going to go have a chat. Consort to consort."

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