How I Helped My Smokin' Hot Alien Girlfriend Conquer the Empire

2-14: Battle Pair Benefits


Varis was a sparkling blue blur as she moved in between the assholes who'd been doing their best to either capture or kill me just a moment ago.

She was beautiful. She was dangerous. She was deadly.

She brought to mind a bunch of flowery language I'd read over the years about moving with a catlike grace into danger. Only she was way hotter than any cat I'd ever seen.

Even that weird species of humanoids that had evolved from the Ancients to have some catlike properties. There were some weird corners of the galactic internet where people talked about how much they loved those poor bastards, and there was an entire CCF interdiction fee set up around the planet since they hadn't gotten to the point of developing bronze tools, let alone figuring out how to go out into the wider galaxy with FTL tech.

Her plasma blade was bright and white. That was another thing where real plasma blades differed in composition from the plasma blades everybody was used to seeing on the big screen. People who saw plasma blades on the big screen were usually expecting different colors coded based on what they were used for. Green for killing bad guys. Red for killing good guys. Blue for killing children. Purple for killing motherfuckers. That sort of thing.

Actual plasma blades were usually just a bright white color thanks to the plasma that was arcing in between the metallic prods that made all the science shit work.

All of the science, I don't understand. It was just my job five days a week.

Varis stepped forward and slammed her plasma blade right through the first heart on the guy that had been taunting me. Then she moved it to the side just so.

That was another thing that was a little different about the livisk. They had the two hearts. It was possible for them to keep going with just the one heart if the other one was taken out, which was kind of funny considering it strangely made them more resilient for all the punching them over the chest was also usually enough to knock them out.

Varis held her sword there for a moment. Then she twisted it back and forth, first one way and then the other, and then she was pulling back and forth again before she yanked it out with a fountain of blood and guts following.

I could only stare at what she was doing in wide-eyed astonishment. All the other Livisk who were still alive, and honestly there weren't a lot of them still alive after what she just pulled, quickly faded into the darkness all around us. Apparently they'd decided discretion was the better part of valor, and I couldn't blame them.

I wasn't sure whether I should be terrified or turned on at that display. Damn.

Blue blood pooled on the ground. I looked down at it, and then up to her. Some of it was trickling close enough to me that it was starting to touch my boots.

"Gross," I muttered.

She turned her attention to me. She almost seemed to glow with the sparkling on her skin. Her chest heaved, and she looked like an avenging warrior goddess straight out of some mythology.

It wasn't any mythology I recognized from any stories from back on Old Earth, but I figured the avenging hominid warrior woman stereotype was widespread enough that it could apply to a beautiful alien hominid lady as much as it could apply to anyone back on earth.

"Is something wrong?" she finally asked, cocking her head to the side.

"Holy shit," I said.

"What?" she said, looking down and all around. She started patting her body like she was checking for something. "Do I have an injury and I haven't realized it? Did I get blood on my uniform? I'm going to be very annoyed if I got blood on my uniform. I'm going to track down who sent these people out here, and I'm going to send the cleaning bill to them."

I barked out a laugh. I couldn't help myself. Everything she just said was so ridiculous.

"What?" she asked, and this time she was blushing. That bright sparkling that was always there but seemed to be more sedate under most circumstances was starting to die down just a little.

"You have your own people who presumably have their own cleaning businesses. I imagine it wouldn't cost you anything to send that stuff to them."

"It would cost me credits," she said with a sniff, as she started walking towards me, her hips swaying this way and that and creating a seductive look that made me wish I was watching her from the other end so I could get a good look at her incredibly tight ass doing that same walk in those same tight uniform pants. "I'm not going to just not pay people for doing work for me."

"Really?" I said, genuinely surprised at that.

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"You sound surprised," she said.

"I've just read about other livisk nobles who don't seem to think they have to pay the people who they give room and board to, and protection, and all that stuff. It seems to be a very big mob mentality sort of thing."

"Yes, there are some assholes who treat their people like that, but I'm not one of them," she said.

"Because you have such big hearts?" I asked, arching an eyebrow.

She'd finally reached me. She looked down at the blood pooling around my boots with a bit of distaste. No doubt thinking about not wanting to get any of that on her uniform. She didn't have any blood on her so far, for all that she'd been worried about getting blood on her uniform.

She got down to her knees, but not before moving slightly to the side so there was no risk of her putting her knees in that blood and messing up her uniform.

"Because it's the right thing to do," she said.

I stared at her. I maintained that stare for a long moment. She stared right back at me, and it was a pretty neutral stare that did absolutely nothing for her, because...

Finally, she sighed.

"I know you can feel it through the link."

"Yup. You're lying through your teeth," I said, grinning at her.

"Okay, so I pay my people because I think it's the right thing to do, but also because you want people to have something to work for. You want them to have a little bit of drive, and compensating them for doing the things you expect them to do because you're their liege is the kind of thing that creates a motivated populous."

"Well isn't that interesting?" I said. "You've discovered the value of actually giving people a good life in exchange for their hard work."

She shrugged, "It's better than having them getting so upset over their lot in life that they decide to go revolutionary and kill me in my sleep."

I arched an eyebrow, "Is that the kind of thing that happens to livisk nobles a lot?"

"A lot?" she said. "I wouldn't say that, but it happens often enough that it's definitely something to keep in mind. Not to mention it means that my people are usually better motivated than somebody who's merely conscripted and expected to do what their noble tells them."

"If only they figured that out in human space," I muttered.

"What are you talking about?" she asked as her hands moved up and down my body. Which caused shooting pain to go through my body as she did her exploration.

"Ouch! What's the big idea?" I asked.

"You've been injured in your multiple falls. That shield is the only thing that kept you alive. We should've brought the power armor."

"Oh, come on," I said, grinning up at her. "Don't we have the full battle pair thing going for us? Doesn't that make me faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound?"

"It allows you to do some things," she said, frowning as she looked me over. "And if you're making another reference to pop culture on Earth, I'm not picking up on it."

"Tough crowd," I said.

"Like I said, we should've worn the power armor to go into a reclamation mine where there was the possibility we might come under attack."

"I wanted to send a message," I said.

"Well, I think you received a message loud and clear," she said, moving her hands down to my leg.

The one that was twisted at an unnatural angle. Surprisingly, I didn't feel a lot of pain. That was interesting. Maybe I was in shock and I didn't realize it.

"You had to get in an I told you so, didn't you?" I said.

I was trying to start an argument, but there was a method to the madness. I figured an argument would distract me from the pain as she felt up my busted leg.

"I did nothing of the sort," she said, looking up at me with the faintest ghost of a smile coming across her face. She knew what I was doing. "I just said we should've brought the power armor."

She harped about that again and again while we were getting ready for this expedition, and again and again I said we didn't need it. That we'd look far more impressive and intimidating if we showed up without power armor and demonstrated that we didn't give a damn about the forces in the reclamation mine.

I figured after taking on a prince consort and the empress? I didn't have to worry about a bunch of third-tier glorified security guards who were the equivalent of a mall cop on a backwater station who sat on their asses watching holoporn on the clock.

Hoisted by my own petard.

"So you say they need to learn a lesson on earth?" she said.

"Do we?" I asked, rolling my eyes as her hands moved to either side of the odd angle on my leg. I winced, because I knew what was about to happen. Now she was the one trying to distract me.

She knew I loved to rant about the assholes running things in Terran space. She was trying to get me on a tear now. And it was working.

"You have a bunch of assholes who've been hoarding all the wealth for generations. Like supposedly that was a thing that used to go in cycles, but it seems like it's just a bunch of assholes who have been constantly taking more and more for themselves for the last thousand years."

"Oh, really?" she said, still moving her hands around the obvious break that didn't feel like a break because it didn't hurt. "You might want to look away for a moment."

There was calm confidence there. Like she expected me to do what she said. Like she fully intended to do this whether I wanted her to or not. Not that I had a lot of choice.

"Yeah, there are a bunch of assholes in human space who seem to have forgotten they're always the first with their backs against the wall when the revolution comes, and we invented fun things like unions and representative democracy as an alternative method of transferring power that doesn't involve beheading the assholes currently running… Son of a bitch!"

I heard a loud crack that echoed off of everything all around us. Pain finally bloomed in my leg. I looked down and saw that it was straight again.

"We're going to have to do something about that," she said, frowning. "I don't know if you're going to be able to walk on it."

Though surprisingly the pain seemed to be going away almost as quickly as it had appeared.

"Varis. I have a question for you, and it might be an odd one."

"What's that?" she asked, looking up from my leg and arching an eyebrow.

"The battle pairs you know about. Have you ever heard about any of them having some weird healing factor?"

"Healing factor?" she asked, looking utterly confused. "What in the name of the... What is a healing factor?"

She caught herself at the last moment there. Good. She wasn't swearing by the empress nearly as much these days.

"I was afraid you were going to say something like that," I said as I tried to move my leg. Surprisingly it didn't hurt nearly as much as it should have considering she'd just set the thing.

I think I'd just discovered another benefit of being in a battle pair.

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