"Okay, can we bring it in for a quick huddle here?" I said, looking to Varis and then to Olsen. I glanced over to Rachel and nodded for her to join us as well.

"Excuse me, but can I join in?" Jeraj said.

"Sure thing. Your sister can hop in if she wants to as well. The more the merrier."

Both of them blinked and looked surprised. They exchanged a glance with one another.

"Are you sure that's a good idea to bring in somebody who is still mentally linked to the empress?" Varis asked.

"Mentally linked?" Rachel asked. "Wait, so you mean this guy here is…"

"Exactly," I said. "But he's on our side now. And besides, it's not like the mental link is a two-way communications thing. It's more vibes than actually reading somebody's mind. At this distance she'd only get a vague idea what direction he's in, for that matter, and she'd have to get off her ass to come out here and use him to track us down."

"This is true," Jeraj said.

"Vibes and knowing where they are the closer you get, and being able to work in concert with somebody if you fight alongside them often enough," Varis said.

"Unfortunately, the empress is never interested in that sort of thing," Jeraj muttered. "She's only interested in a little bit of personal time once every few months. Unless it's with one of her favorites. But even then, she's been slacking in the exercise department in recent years."

"Did you just call the empress fat?" I asked.

"Maybe I did," he said. "But I wouldn't be interested in her either way."

"Yeah, we've already covered that," I said. "Normally I'd say it's not nice to body shame, but in this case I think I'll allow it. That's nicer than the Mr. Ed jokes back in Terran space.

"Wilbur, I can't find my invasion force," Rachel said in an obviously put-on voice as she bit her lip and started to giggle. "Wilbur, where are my nukes? Why do the humans keep defeating me, Wilbur?"

I chuckled and shook my head as well. That also earned a smile from Varis. I'd managed to get some ancient Earth television shows into the old tower so that we could watch them on date night, and she was up on some human pop culture stuff.

At least the stuff that involved making fun of the empress. Much like humans only being interested in learning the swear words in Livisk language classes, she was mostly interested in human pop culture that allowed her to understand when we were making fun of her sister-by-marriage.

"Okay, so these people out here. They're all outlaws, and they all work for the Spider, correct?" I said.

"I think so," Olsen said.

"You think so, or you know so?"

"I'm going off of stuff we learned from people we captured," he said with a shrug. "They all talked about that Konai lady like she worked directly for the Spider, but there are no guarantees in life."

"Yeah, that's something I've learned the hard way lately," I muttered. "Okay, so what brought these people down here to indulge in a life of crime living underneath livisk polite society?"

"I have no idea," Olsen said. "Like the people in the reclamation mine were clearly down here because they'd done something to piss off the empress. I don't know that all of them were necessarily lawbreakers in the sense we think of that word, but there were definitely lots of them down here who pissed off the empress in some way, and that's how they wound up in the reclamation mine."

"The same as us," Rachel muttered.

"But the outlaws?"

"A lot of people move down to the Undercity when they're unable to make it up above," Varis said.

"The empress doesn't have any sort of programs or anything to take care of people like that," I asked, my eyebrows going up.

"Why would she?" Varis asked.

"Oh, I don't know," I said. "People who aren't getting their bread and circuses are more likely to revolt."

"I don't think there was ever a critical mass of people moving into the Undercity to be able to actually threaten the empress," Varis said. "And they also don't have weapons in the sense we think of them. Not the kind of stuff that could be used to overthrow the empress, at least."

"Well, what if they ran into somebody who was able to give them the kind of weapons that would allow them to overthrow the empress?" I asked.

"I would say you're playing a dangerous game, but you've already been playing that dangerous game for a while now," Varis said with a shrug. "It's not like it's any more likely to get us killed than any of the other threats we've leveled at the empress."

"That's what I like to hear. Now I'm about to do something stupid."

"Have you been keeping count of how many stupid things you've done today?" Varis asked, arching an eyebrow at me.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"I lost count right around the time that fighter went critical and almost blew all of us up. Speaking of, did you manage to contain that, Arvie? Something like that should've been enough to send the entire reclamation mine up if it went totally destabilized."

"I was able to contain it to some degree," he said. "Clearly, they brought weapons down here to try and ambush us, but I was able to stop it from killing too many people."

"Good man," I said.

Arvie was hovering there as a matter of course. Like, there was no question that he was allowed in on the conversation, because of course he was.

"Okay, so I'm about to do something stupid again, and I would like you to back me up, Varis."

"I'll always back you up," she said, reaching out and giving my hand a squeeze.

"I know," I said, leaning in and hitting her with a kiss.

I was surprised when she pulled me in and wrapped her arm around me. That kiss went from being a quick peck on the cheeks to her giving me a quite thorough kiss. The kind of thing I didn't expect to happen in front of everyone, but I also wasn't going to complain if she wanted to make out.

When I pulled away, both of us were breathing heavily.

"What was that for?" I asked.

"Just because," she said, winking at me. "You never know when a moment might be our last."

"Now there's a happy thought," I said.

I walked over and now it was my turn to go and stand on the little mound of rubble and look at all the livisk captives who were staring down at us. All their weapons had been dropped to the ground, but none of them had kicked them to the side or anything dramatic like that.

We'd talked about giving that to some of the people in the crew, but I had something else I wanted to try first.

"Hello, everybody," I said, holding my hands out. No theatrics. No calling them pirate scum, or outlaws, or anything like that. "I'm Bill Stewart. You might have heard of me."

They all exchanged blank looks. I frowned.

"Okay, maybe you haven't heard of me, but I promise that line would've gone much better up top where they've seen some of my antics."

Again, they turned to exchange glances. Finally, a livisk man with broad shoulders and some armor that looked like something straight out of one of the numerous Mad Max rehashes, rereleases, VR reimaginings, and other such things stepped forward. He even had ridiculous giant shoulder pads.

"What is the point of all this, human?" he said.

"The point is very simple," I said, grinning at all of them. "How many of you like living down here in the Undercity with all the debris and bullshit?"

A couple of them raised their hands. Most of them simply stood there staring down at me, frowning. I wasn't sure if they were staring down at me and frowning because they weren't fans of living down here in the Undercity, or if they simply weren't in the mood to answer my question because I'd beat them fair and square.

Or, rather, Olsen had beat them fair and square. It was always a good idea to give credit where credit was due after all.

"I understand some of you probably got a bad deal that led you down here. Maybe a business didn't work out for you. Maybe you lost a job and now you find yourselves stuck down here. Maybe you lost the house in the divorce and somebody stole your pickup truck and mama got run over by a train while you were going to pick her up after she got out of prison."

Again, everybody stared at me. Again, I grinned and shook my head.

"Another one that would have killed back on Earth."

"That wouldn't have killed back on Earth, Bill," Rachel called out.

"I don't need any commentary, thank you very much," I said, turning back to the livisk. "Okay. I very much need some help down here. I have a whole tower full of people who are fiercely loyal to my girlfriend right here. She's pretty, isn't she?"

A couple of the gentlemen all around us nodded in agreement. A couple of them grinned and leered at her. A couple of the women also seemed to be nodding along. Huh.

"So yeah," I said, "We're kind of separated from a lot of those forces right now, but I can promise all of you that you're going to have a new life if you help us out."

"What kind of new life?" the dude with the broad shoulders and the Mad Max armor asked.

"That's simple," I said. "You're going to come work for me."

That was finally enough to get all the livisk muttering. I guess I'd gotten their attention.

"Oh, come on," I said, "It's not like going to work for a human is that bad. I can promise you I'm going to be a whole hell of a lot better as a boss than this Spider lady ever was."

"It might not be a good idea to try and recruit the Spider's people out from under her before we've even met her," Olsen said.

"Trust me," I said. "There's a method to my madness."

I reached out to that part of my mind that was connected to Arvie, wherever he was.

"How are we going on everything?"

"Well enough," he said.

"Well enough like everything is in process?"

"Well enough like it would probably be a good idea for you to build up some forces down here just in case," he said.

"Noted," I said, bringing my attention back to the real world.

"So I can promise if you come to work for us, we'll work through whatever it was that put you down here in the first place. If you've found you like living down here in the Undercity, I can promise you there are going to be opportunities for you to continue your life down here as well."

"What is he talking about?" Olsen asked.

"Just wait and go with it," Rachel said. "I've found that's the best way to do things."

"I've also found this is the best way to do things," Varis said. "Let him work and see what he comes up with."

"I also must regrettably admit this is true," Arvie said.

I grinned and then I looked up and around to all of the livisk gathered all around us. They were staring down at us, incredulous.

"As a gesture of goodwill, I'm even going to let you have your weapons back if you swear allegiance to Varis here. I think I know enough about livisk honor to know you're not going back on that once you've sworn the oath."

I turned and looked at her to make sure that was right. She nodded, so I figured we were good to go with plan "I pledge allegiance to the hottie general."

I hit her with a wink. I figured they'd have an easier time swearing allegiance to another livisk. On top of that, she was the one who was in charge of everything. I was just the crazy Terran who was out here disrupting the ever-loving shit out of everything.

"And if we don't go along with you?" the one with the broad shoulder pads said.

I shrugged. "That's your business. I'm going to take your weapon and give it to somebody in my crew, and then you're going to be left alone here without a weapon. I'm sure the empress will be coming along soon enough with her troops to clear out this area. She's going to want to make sure we were actually killed as a result of her little romp in the reclamation mine after all. I'm sure all of you would be more than happy to have a reunion with imperial forces."

That definitely got their attention. Whatever was going on down here, they didn't want a reunion with any imperials. I waited for a long moment, holding my breath and wondering if this was going to blow up in my face.

Finally, the big one nodded. "I'll swear to General t'Thal. I've heard she's an honorable commander."

And that seemed to be the break in the dam that had the floodwaters moving. Others moved their hands up in the livisk salute and did a deep bow, and suddenly, they were all moving down towards Varis, every single last damn one of them.

"Well holy shit," I muttered.

"See, what I said about his crazy plans usually working out even when I caution him not to do it?" Arvie muttered.

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