"How did you even know to add the material there?" the livisk asked.

I pulled the molecular laminator out and looked at it. It was difficult to describe, but there'd been an aura around that conduit. Something I could see. Which I knew I couldn't describe to this guy since he clearly couldn't see it the same as I had.

"I just had an intuition," I said. "Something you get when you work on this stuff often enough."

Which was another lie. I hadn't been working on stuff like this all that often. Definitely not enough to have an intuition. He didn't know what I'd done or not done when I was working on ships back in Terran space, though.

"How were you going to figure it out?" I asked.

"I was going to use this scanner," he said, holding up a piece of livisk tech that had some squiggly lines on it. I could only assume that was what they used to detect thinning areas on plasma conduit.

Which was a problem even with the magnetic containment fields that kept the plasma in place. The conduit eventually wore down under the stress. It would eventually get to the point where it could be dangerous.

Sometimes explosively so.

"Problem is, the damned thing wasn't working the way it's supposed to," he said, smacking it a couple of times.

Sure enough, the screen flickered a couple of times as he smacked it. I grinned at him in the glow from the conduit I'd just repaired.

"We have stuff like that in the CCF as well," I said. "They're always making us use equipment that feels like it's been in service since the last time we had a full-on war with you assholes."

"You want to be careful about saying things like that," he said, winking at me.

"What? Calling you a bunch of assholes?" I asked.

"No. Giving up valuable intel about how your military operates."

I snorted. "If you need an intel puke to tell you a military is going to run on the cheapest shit possible then I'm afraid you've already lost whatever war you're trying to fight."

That had him laughing. He threw his head back, which slammed against a bit of piping that thankfully wasn't plasma conduit.

Though even if it had been plasma conduit he would've been fine. The stuff only really got brittle if it was at the point of failure, and that point of failure could only happen if it went entirely too long between patch jobs. Or if some asshole went in with their molecular laminator and deliberately weakened the conduit.

I looked up at the glowing tubing above me. At the strange striated purple and orange and yellow colors that moved through it in random patterns. I knew it was all being controlled by science and the forces of nature slamming against each other. That the livisk had mastered those forces the same as humanity.

Normally I felt a touch of pride looking at something like that. Thinking that humans had been able to master that technology and bring nature to heel. But when I saw the enemy doing it? I didn't feel quite so good about it.

"Damnation," he said, rubbing his head. "We need to get out of here before you make me laugh again."

I stared up at the conduit a final time. I thought about how easy it would be to use the laminator to weaken it just a bit. It'd been weakened to the point it was causing a load imbalance, which would mean the ship couldn't fly quite as efficiently as it was supposed to.

I could do a quick buzzing with the laminator, and that'd be all she wrote for whoever was the next person to fly this thing.

I thought about what that would actually accomplish. I'd kill livisk, sure, but I'd be killing Varis's people. People she cared about, and I realized I didn't want to kill people she cared about. For all that something seemed very wrong that I didn't want to kill people a livisk general cared about.

Instead I slid out from under the thing, wondering what was wrong with me. I told myself it's not like it was a huge deal anyway. If I did something stupid like sabotage a long range bomber I'd obviously been working on? That would draw down all sorts of the wrong kinds of suspicion on me.

Which could blow up any chance of rescuing my crew from that reclamation mine. It would go up like the smoke that was constantly belching out of the place.

So really, wasn't I doing the responsible thing by not sabotaging anything and everything I found? At least that's how I justified it in my mind in the moment.

"Okay, human," the livisk said once we were out.

He offered me a big meaty hand. He wasn't exactly one of the sculpted gods you saw from livisk warriors, but he definitely had some muscle on him. A little bit of a paunch as well, but I figured that was to be expected with somebody who worked with his hands and also had plenty of time to go out and enjoy himself in the tower.

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I clasped my arm with his, and then held it in a firm grip. Which had his eyes going wide. My eyes went wide as well, because it felt like he was gripping mine with some strength. The livisk were strong, but it didn't feel all that bad.

"Whoa," he finally said, his knees going weak as I held onto his arm. "No need to go overboard and break my arm. I need this thing to do my job."

I laughed, figuring he was humoring me.

"Yeah, whatever," I said. "The powerful human is bringing the livisk to his knees!"

"Something like that," he said, obviously making a show of shaking his hand out and looking like I'd actually given him some trouble.

"So what made you decide to come to the hangar anyway, Consort?"

"Consort?" I asked, frowning.

He glanced to the insignia on my shoulder. A big wide grin spread across his face. It also made his beard bristle just a little. Clearly he thought something was pretty damn funny here.

"Is there something I'm missing?" I asked.

"It's your insignia, is all," he said. "It's not a big thing. Just a little something about your rank."

"My rank?" I asked, looking at the insignia on my shoulder.

Consort. I knew what that meant, of course. That I was the general's side piece. Not her husband or even her boyfriend.

I wasn't sure what I thought of that.

"So do your people have a word for boyfriend?"

I had to talk around that because I wasn't sure what word to use. Which was one of the big pains in the ass when you were talking to someone in a different language and trying to figure out if they had a word for a concept without knowing what that word was.

"A boy who is your friend? What are you talking about? Of course we have friends who are male," he said.

"I guess it's a turn of phrase from humanity," I said, shrugging. "Someone you're interested in romantically. Like you're exclusive, but you haven't married."

He threw his head back and laughed, then wagged a finger at me.

"I see what you're going for, Consort. I'm aware of what happened with you and the general. You must've done something very interesting if you caught her attention to the point she inadvertently linked with a human. But I've never heard of a livisk actually having a relationship with a human. At least nothing that was ever made official, if that's what you're asking."

"Oh," I said.

"Then again, most who link with a human have the good grace to go off and hide in the far reaches of space where they can't bring dishonor on their families, so what do I know?" he said with a shrug of his broad shoulders.

That was a lot to think about. Why was I disappointed that my alien girlfriend wasn't actually my alien girlfriend? Or was she?

But this was only my second day here. Sure, we'd been through a lot in the two days I'd been here, but it's not like we'd known each other for all that long.

For all that I'd had her lurking in the back of my head for a year. For all that I'd felt her emotions. For all that the feeling of her nestled in the back of my mind was a steady comfort as I went through the day.

"If you ever want to come back here and help me work on any of these then you're more than welcome to," he said, holding his hand out again. Only this time he wasn't trying to clasp my arm and get into a dick-measuring contest based on how hard either of our grips were. No, he just shook my hand. A nice firm handshake.

"I'm Hathar," he said, his voice a low growl. "I'm in charge of the general's fleet."

My eyes went wide at that. Hadn't Varis mentioned him before I left? That was interesting.

"Like you're in command of the fleet?"

"No."

He threw his head back and laughed again, though not before wincing. Like he remembered hitting his head against the bulkhead and was worried there would be one waiting for him here.

"No. Nothing like that," he said, chuckling and shaking his head. "I'm in charge of maintaining the fleet."

"And you're up here working on one of the ships?" I asked, hardly believing it.

"Is there something wrong with working on one of the ships in my fleet?"

I noted the way he took ownership. His fleet. I grinned.

"I think it would be fun to come back here and do some more work on these ships. It's nice to work with someone who's willing to get their hands dirty."

I wanted the livisk to get used to the idea of me being around these ships. I wasn't sure what I could do with that, but I knew I could do something. There were vague plans forming in the back of my mind. Plans I wasn't sure I could pull off, but I needed to lay some groundwork.

"That it is," he said, smiling like he was pleased with my response.

I chatted with him for a few more minutes, but he seemed more distant when we weren't working on a ship together. Which was fair. He was just meeting me, after all. I was just a human, for all that I was a human who was banging his boss.

Or maybe he was distant because he knew I was a human who was banging his boss. I'd been in situations like that before. It was never fun.

Finally we wrapped it up and he moved off to work on something else. I looked up and around, and my eyes fell on the sky out beyond the hangar door. The whole building was massive. Even this one part of the hangar dwarfed some of the internal bays at Central Station.

Which made sense. They could build this in atmosphere which meant there weren't some of the constraints on space you had on a station. Even something as massive as Central Station.

I also realized I had no way of figuring out where Varis was so I could meet her for lunch. There was the link and I had a vague idea of what direction she was in through that, but it was a big building. That vague idea wasn't going to translate into actually being able to find her in the maze that was this tower.

Instead I walked back over to the elevator and took it up to our private quarters atop the building. I looked at the view of Imperial Seat laid out before me and thought about how much fun it would be to fly one of those long range bombers at the palace. Loaded with the kind of munitions that would let me teach the livisk the dangers of allowing a human into their capital city with access to weapons.

But again, there was that warring desire telling me I shouldn't do that.

The place was empty when I got to my quarters. My eyes fell on the clock. Even with the thirty hour day on the livisk home planet, I could tell it was past lunch time.

Oops. Guess I got a little distracted with those repairs.

"Arvie, I don't suppose you know where Varis is?"

"She left a message that she is occupied and won't be able to make it back for lunch. But of course that's probably not going to be a problem since it's well into the afternoon."

"Damn," I muttered, letting out a sigh.

Then a new worry wormed its way through my mind. She talked about meeting for lunch. This was only day two, and already it seemed like she was blowing me off for work.

What did that mean, and why did that worry me more than the regret of not having a nuke on me that I could lob at the imperial palace?

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