"I can assure you, General, at no point was I going to give him access to any of the weapons in the tower."

"So you're admitting there are weapons in the tower that could be turned against you if somebody figured out how to do it?"

"I am admitting nothing," Arvie said.

"Sure you aren't," I said.

Some tension seemed to drain from Varis at that. Like for a moment she thought the computer was actually close to giving me the kind of access that would allow me to take out all the aliens in this tower. Another thing to put away for later.

If she was worried about that happening? That meant it was a possibility.

There were always possibilities, a wise, pointy-eared scientist had once said. And if those possibilities involved killing every blue sparkly bastard in this place?

I glanced over to Varis. Okay, maybe I wasn't in the mood to kill every blue sparkly bastard in this place, but all of them but Varis would make a point.

We stepped through the door and down yet another hallway. This one had a long floor-to-ceiling window that ran along one end with the dark motif on the other side. The gold and silver inlay seemed to be far more intricate on this wall. As I looked at it, I realized it was done up in the shape of livisk pictograms I couldn't really read because I'd never spent much time learning the written language.

Seriously. It made learning something like kanji seem like a walk in the park. There were all sorts of things you had to memorize, and whether the brushstroke went this way or that completely changed the meaning of a sentence.

But I wasn't looking at the silver script that sort of made up livisk pictograms. No, I was far more interested in the view through the window.

The entire tower looked to be done up like a cylinder, and I was looking out across the interior to the other side. The entire thing was hollow on the inside, or at least it was hollow in this part.

But it still had to be absolutely massive. We'd been walking for a while, and it looked like we'd only been going through part of the tower.

"Damn," I breathed, looking down. "Is that a..."

I trailed off as I saw a second clear cylinder that ran up through the center of the building. A cylinder filled with water and all kinds of exotic aquatic life. Big aquatic life. We're talking the kind of stuff that would've been the subject of horror movies back on Earth in ancient times. The kind of stuff that made a megalodon look like nothing in comparison.

"I like aquatic creatures," Varis said, stepping up next to me.

I felt her fingers brushing against mine, and I took her hand without thinking about it. I turned to stare at her, but she was staring out into the middle with her mouth hanging open.

Like she was really enjoying the view. I was enjoying the view as well, but it had nothing to do with looking at her oversized fish tank.

"Watch," she said, and her face lit up. Which was surprising to see on somebody who was a general of one of the most deadly star empires to be in the same neighborhood as humanity.

I'm sure there were worse star empires out there somewhere, infinite conquerability in infinite combinations seemed to be the rule for the wider galaxy, but the livisk were up there on the list of local troublemakers.

I turned to follow where she was pointing, and I looked just in time to see something that looked like a shark. Only it had an elongated snout filled with razor-sharp teeth. And the thing looked like it was truly massive. It would be bigger than the largest whale back on Earth.

Whether we're talking the blue whale that had bounced back from near extinction in the twenty-first, or the humpback whale that had only bounced back from extinction when an intrepid group of time travelers went back from the twenty-third century to rescue some from the twentieth.

"What is that thing?" I asked.

At the other end of the creature was something that looked like tentacles. Like it was an octoshark or something. Only as I looked closer I realized it was actually a bunch of fins moving rapidly to propel it through the water at a pace that seemed impossibly fast.

"It's one of the most dangerous predators on our planet," she said.

"You didn't hunt all of those to extinction?"

"Why in the world would we hunt our predators to extinction?" she asked, turning to me and frowning slightly. "They're magnificent creatures to be respected for their deadly grace and power."

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"That's what we did on Earth. If it ate us or competed for food then we pretty much hunted it to extinction using sticks and rocks."

"What about the aquatic creatures on your world? You're not aquatic," she said.

"We mostly used sticks and spears sailing around on wooden ships, though we didn't have anything that evolved on our planet at some time as us that looked nearly as dangerous as that motherfucker over there."

It opened its mouth, and another creature that looked like it had to be the size of a killer whale back on Earth was devoured in a messy cloud of blood and guts.

"That has to be expensive, having it eat your display pieces like that," I said.

She shrugged. "There's a breeding population we maintain in tanks in other parts of the tower. I have entire teams of scientists and biologists tasked with keeping everything stocked and researching the creatures we keep in the display tank."

Now it was my turn to stare in wonder, my own mouth hanging open. Sequel trilogy, my eyes were probably doing a little bit of twinkling as I looked at her.

She seemed to finally realize I was staring at her. She turned and looked at me, and there was obvious discomfort there.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked.

"You're full of fun new things to discover," I said, shaking my head.

"Is that a bad thing?"

"No, it's a very good thing," I said, looking down to where our fingers were crossed together.

"Follow me," she said, the ghost of a smile playing across her lips as she pulled me along.

There were glass doors at the end of the hallway. They opened silently and we stepped into a wide area enclosed on all sides by glass. Like a bubble all around us with no supports.

"Please take us on the tour," Varis said, looking up at the glass.

"On it, General," Arvie said.

There was no obvious sign the thing was moving. The surroundings outside simply started moving, and then we were out and over that wide open area circling around the central fish tank. I stared with my mouth open.

"Damn," I whispered, looking at the tower sparkling all around us. "So this is where you live."

"It is where I live," she said, smiling at me. "And it's where you live now."

"It's a damn sight better than any of the ships I've ever stayed on," I said. "Way more space than the cramped quarters on a ship."

"That is an advantage of being planetside," she said, chuckling and shaking her head. "Arvie isn't going to let you in all parts of the tower, but you'll have a run of a lot of it. The areas that are open to non-warriors, at the very least."

I frowned slightly, and she seemed to pick up on that frown.

"What's wrong?"

"Sorry," I said, shaking my head. "I was just thinking about my crew. Thinking about how they're not getting anything like this."

She gave my hand a squeeze. We'd never stopped that contact between the two of us.

"I promised you on my honor that we would do something to rescue them, and that means we will find a way to rescue them. That's what we're doing right now."

"Are you sure about that?" I asked, still looking around at the tower interior with my mouth hanging open. The place was like a miniature city with everything you would expect from a massive urban center. Like an orbital habitat, almost. "Because it looks a whole lot like you're trying to impress me with your power right now."

"I am trying to impress you with my power," she said. "But we're going on a tour with a purpose. We're heading for the hangar, after all."

"Right. I'm going to shut up now and let you do the tour guide thing."

"That would be very helpful, thank you," she said, and there wasn't a hint of irony as she said it. No, she was very literally telling me it would be helpful if I shut up.

Which almost made me want to do the opposite of shutting up, but I pushed down on that urge.

We were far from the only thing moving through the place, though ours was unique. Like there were things that looked like air cars moving in lines in a microcosm of the traffic control in the wider city. They had metal bodies and glass tops that allowed me to see the livisk inside.

Ours was more like a great glass elevator. That brought a smile to my face thinking about that ancient Earth classic.

Some of the livisk in those flying vehicles looked like the warriors I'd come to expect, but then I saw something else in those air cars that was a surprise.

"They look like normal people," I said.

"Well, yes," Varis said. "There are going to be normal people in my tower, right? Not everybody can be a warrior."

There was something to that, but I was so busy looking at everything happening all around us that I didn't think about what it meant that she was making a distinction between "normal" livisk and the warriors.

It was odd how it always seemed like the livisk we ran into were perfect specimens. They were either muscled men who could give the great governator himself a run back in his prime, or they were runaway models with impossible strength and an equally impossible desire to kill humans.

"How many people live in this tower?" I asked, thinking about the implication of non-warriors moving about their day to day business.

I could see vast open areas. Constructs that spiraled around the interior. There were reverse cones that allowed a terrace sort of look where I could see livisk out and about. I could see houses, running water, gardens, and green space. There were platforms that would stick out with one or a few houses.

And then there were windows all up and down the interior walls. Like there was more dense housing in those walls.

"Wait, this whole thing. It's almost like an arcology."

"An arcology?" she asked, frowning. "I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that term."

"A massive building that's a city unto itself," I said. "A place where people can live and work and go about their whole lives without leaving the building."

"Oh, well, yes," she said. "You don"t have those on Earth?"

"We do, but whether or not that's a good thing depends on who you're talking to."

"Everybody who is loyal to my family, everybody who is loyal to me, lives in this tower. There are others who live in other parts of the world, but this is the seat of House t'Thal."

I glanced at her.

"That sounds almost like you're one of those nobles you've been talking about. The ones who keep their seat of power in the city where they can always be close to the empress."

She took a deep breath and let it out.

"Would that change how you thought about me if I told you that's exactly what I was?"

I took a deep breath of my own, then smiled as I gave her hands a squeeze and looked at the wonder that was an entire city enclosed within a building inside a city. All of this was hers. All these livisk were loyal to her.

"If anything, it would only leave me more impressed," I finally said as all the possibilities of being connected to somebody who had this many livisk loyal to her and only her swam through my head.

The problem being that none of them would be interested in following a lowly human, but I could work with this.

Maybe.

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