"So can you maybe explain why we have a bunch of assholes firing actual bullets at us?" I asked as we ran.

I suppose the only saving grace of our current situation was the bullets didn't seem to be coming rapid fire or anything. They definitely didn't have any assault rifles or full auto stuff in whatever armory they were drawing from.

One of the bullets landed down by my foot and shot up with a ping. Then another one skipped a couple of times and came to a halt a few feet away from me. I looked down and saw a ball that had been crudely fashioned. The kind of thing you'd see in a museum dedicated to the first American Civil War.

"Those don't even look like proper bullets," I said.

"They aren't," Rachel said. "Now come on. We can explain everything to you when we get to safety."

Okay, so we had two things going for us. It seemed the weapons had a terrible rate of fire, and it also seemed like they didn't have the best aim. Which might have something to do with firing what looked like chunks of metal our assailants repurposed into bullets.

I threw my head back and laughed, excitement coursing through me. Not the response I would've had a few months ago, but a lot had changed since I came to Livisqa.

"I fail to see what's so exciting about getting shot at," Rachel growled.

"Hold on a minute," I said, pulling her close to me and nodding to Varis. Varis hit me with a look as I pulled Rachel closer, but she also nodded. Both of us hit a button and our shields activated in a bubble that reinforced each other.

We had small fusion generators built into our belts. The kind of thing that had been miniaturized by a mad genius on Earth back in the early 21st century, and then it took other scientists a couple of centuries to figure out how she'd done it. That was how ahead of her time that beautiful mad woman had been.

The livisk seemed to have some sort of technology where the shields could combine and reinforce one another. Which wasn't something humanity had ever been able to figure out. If I ever got back to human space I might try to sell that one to the eggheads.

Then again, maybe not. If I was back in human space then that meant something bad had probably happened to me, and I wouldn't put it past them to try and dissect me to figure out how the whole livisk link thing worked before I had a chance to sell them anything else useful.

Not that I had any intention of going back to human space.

I'd first noticed that multiplicative property of livisk shielding when Arvie picked up Sera using the mech and her shield had immediately glowed a bright sparkling purple as it was reinforced by the much larger and far more powerful reactor on the mech he was tooling around in.

"Wait, you could've done that all this time?" Rachel asked, staring at me. Glaring at me is more like it.

"Yes," I said. "The shields would've kicked up if any of the bullets came close to hitting us. They were already running at a low level, but they're designed to ramp up as soon as something actually hits. Something about saving power or some nonsense like that."

"Then why didn't you just do that in the first place?" she asked, throwing her arms up in obvious frustration.

There was a ping on the shield. It glowed a sparkling purple as something hit. I turned and looked at the spot. There was a little wave of shield energy that moved out from the place where the bullet hit.

"We should probably move just a little," I said. "They don't seem to be very good shots with whatever they're using, but that doesn't mean they're not going to get a hit if we stand still and provide a nice turkey shoot for them."

"Good idea," Rachel said. "Part of the reason they're not very good shots is the bullets just aren't all that accurate with the technology we have down here."

"This is amazing," I said, shaking my head and chuckling.

"I don't see how having a bunch of jealous livisk who want to take everything we have down here away from us is amazing," Rachel said with a sniff.

"Like this is the cyberpunk dream, isn't it?" I said, grinning at her as we started to walk. The shield bubble around us sparkled. Occasionally there was a sizzle as one of the makeshift bullets slammed into us, but for the most part they were still going very wide with their shots. "Like we have the city up above and then we have the burnt-out irradiated ruins of the city down below."

"The ruins aren't actually irradiated down here," Varis said. "Radiation goes away very quickly after an atomic weapon has been dropped, even if it's a city-destroying weapon."

"Yeah, I know all of that," I said, waving a hand. "I've read all the studies, but still. We have people using primitive weapons they've fashioned from the shit that's available down here. That's great."

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"It's not great," Rachel said. "We have to worry about these assholes taking potshots at us whenever we want to leave our complex. It's gotten to the point that we've had to stay hunkered down in our bunker most of the time. The only people who actually go out are Olsen and his crew."

I nearly missed a step.

"Olsen and his crew," I said, turning and staring at her.

"Yes," she said. The faintest hint of a smile started to play across her face. "There's a lot you missed while you were up there banging your alien girlfriend and we were stuck down here in the mines trying to pretend we were being tortured and put to work."

I stopped. I turned to look all around us. The skeletal remains of skyscrapers from previous incarnations of this city loomed over us. They reached out like fingers grasping for us.

"I'm truly sorry that had to happen," I said. "I'm truly sorry I left all of you in here for so long."

"I figured you were doing what you could," she said with a shrug.

The buzzing from the shield all around us started to pick up again. More and more of them were starting to draw a bead on us and allow for the inaccuracy of their weapons as we stood still and presented a nice target. But I didn't care. It didn't look like the shielding was in any danger of going down anytime soon. I just hoped these assholes didn't decide to come after us more directly. That would start to get a little awkward if we had to get into a melee fight.

I wasn't worried about a melee fight all that much. I was worried about Rachel popping outside our shield bubble and being vulnerable to primitive bullets while me and Varis were in the middle of a melee fight.

"I did do what I could," I said.

"I know you came down and killed an overseer. News about that traveled down to even the lower levels of the reclamation mine. There were more than a few livisk who decided to give us a wide berth after they realized what you'd done and what they thought we were capable of."

"Well, it sounds like Olsen was capable of something," I said. "Like, has he gone full Mad Max on me and I didn't know it?"

"Something like that," she said. "He actually really took to all this. At first he was catatonic for a couple of days, but then when he heard about you coming down and killing that livisk overseer? It was like something snapped inside him, and suddenly he was organizing raiding parties and going out and bringing the fight to the livisk rather than staying in the bunker."

"Fascinating," I said.

We started walking again. I noted we were heading towards two giant metal support beams that were leaning against one another. It looked like the things would fall over if somebody so much as sneezed on them, creating a catastrophe for anybody who was under them at the time. But as I stared at them I realized they were pockmarked and covered in rust and decay and a layer of dust.

Okay then. Maybe those things had been sitting there for far longer than I thought. Maybe there were forces more powerful than anything the average human mind could conceive of until they'd been involved in combat where atomic weapons were thrown around that had caused those things to be fused together right there for time immemorial.

Or at least until somebody came down here and decided to try and recycle some of the metal.

But for now, it marked an entrance into a tunnel that led into the debris of the ancient city all around us. I mean ancient city as in an old city, not ancient city as in it was an actual city that had been put together by the Ancients once upon a time millions of years ago. Back before their interstellar civilization fell and left a bunch of different hominid offshoots to develop on their own for a few million years resulting in a diaspora where there were a bunch of alien-looking motherfuckers out there who looked an awful lot like us as a result.

"So have these pricks been taking shots at you often?" I asked.

"More than I'd like," Rachel said. "I know you're probably only here for a visit. It was stupid and dangerous for you to come here, by the way. But it would be nice if you could send us something to do something about this situation."

"So Olsen going after them isn't helping."

There was a sudden scream from off in one direction. A moment later, a primitive-looking rifle that was really nothing more than a tube attached to a grip went clattering down the debris. It vaguely resembled ancient rifles from wars before they invented all of the conveniences in modern firearms. We're talking the kind of stuff where you had to actually explode the powder to send a ball flying across a battlefield.

"Amazing," I said, shaking my head as I admired the modern museum piece.

Suddenly, someone popped up from a bit of debris that was far up and above the landing pad.

"Get out of here, you fucking blue sparklies!" the person shouted.

Their face was wrapped in a bandana, and they wore a uniform that looked an awful lot like a Combined Corporate Fleet uniform. Only it'd been torn and patched in places.

There was another cry from another direction. This time, a livisk went flying out from the mountain of rubble that looked down on the landing pad. Even the landing pad itself looked like it'd been the side of a building once upon a time that had fallen and come to rest here, and nobody had ever bothered to move it because having a spot to land those skiffs was probably damn convenient.

"I said get the fuck out of here, blue sparklies!" another human shouted.

"You Terrans need to get out of our territory. That's ours, fair and square!" another voice shouted.

"You'll have to kill us first," a decidedly human voice said.

"That can be arranged."

"Okay, so Olsen definitely isn't bringing an end to this conflict," I muttered.

"He's tried, but there's only so much we can do with the supplies and weapons we have down here," Rachel said. "Not to mention we're outnumbered by livisk in this mine by at least four to one."

There was a sudden cry, and the rate of fire picked up. Okay, maybe they did have rifles that could fire a little faster than the single-shot tubes I'd seen so far, or maybe they just had a lot of those things and they were picking up the pace now. Either way, it was really starting to annoy the shit out of me.

So I tapped my comm.

"Arvie, would it be possible for you to bring the fighter down here and give us an assist?"

"Of course, William," he said. "It's getting really boring up here."

"It's anything but boring down here," I said with a grin.

"I look forward to it!"

I raised my voice just a bit as I looked up and around.

"Okay, this is the last chance for any livisk out there who are firing on us. If you don't stop, I'm going to kill all of you."

There was a pause in the firing, and then one of them started to laugh. Which seemed to be all the answer I was going to get as they started firing all over again.

"Well, I tried to warn them," I said with a shrug, as a loud roaring noise filled the landing platform all around us. I grinned.

"What the hell is that?" Rachel asked.

"That's my friend Arvie coming to play with our new friends."

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