61: Troop Disposition
"You also promised I might get to see the Terran Fox," she finally said.
"I did imply all of those things, didn't I?" I said, cocking my head to the side and grinning at her. "And you're learning a valuable lesson right about now.”
All around us, Varis's troops moved onto the rooftop. Though I suppose they were my troops in addition to being Varis's troops. It was both more difficult and less difficult to sneak them across the city when we were up above.
More difficult because they were out in the open where it was possible for an errant scan to figure out that a troop transport had been disguised as a regular transport. For all that the city was lousy with transports and it's not like we had to worry all that much about them getting found out.
Less difficult because there wasn't a rabbit warren of twisted buildings that had collapsed in on one another and then collapsed in on lower levels. Which meant there were entire chunks of the Undercity that were utterly impassable, for all that we'd been making our way through a part of the Undercity that was a little more navigable than other areas.
"Sir," one of the troops said, coming up and saluting first Varis and then me, though the "sir" was for me alone I noted. Which earned a slight frown from Varis, but not enough of a frown that the soldier seemed to pick up on it.
"Well met, Captain," I said, looking at his bars.
It wasn't quite the same as a captain in the ground pounders, but it was the equivalent rank, so that's how I thought of it even as I used the livisk word. There was some bullshit about the Imperium and their ranking system based on the number system that depended on intonation and knowing a bunch of different counting systems.
The livisk could give the Japanese a run for their money when it came to having different words for counting different things, rather than just using good old fashioned “one, one thing, ah, ah, ah!” like the good Count taught everybody back on Earth.
"Thank you for coming on such short notice," I said, nodding to him.
He hesitated for a moment. He glanced over to Varis and then back to me.
"I can assure you that he's quite serious in thanking you," Varis said.
"It was nothing," he said after another moment of hesitation. Like he wasn't quite sure what to make of somebody thanking him for showing up and doing his job.
"How is the troop positioning?” I asked.
I didn't need to ask him. I had the big board in the simulation that Arvie was showing me. So I could see various transports that had been disguised as regular transports carrying heavy gases and ore from various mines. They'd been covered up and painted over and marked so the armor simply looked like it was bits of industrial detritus hanging off the things. Who knew it would be easy to disguise a bunch of troop transports as the local equivalent of a fuel hauler or a dump truck?
We’d figured that would be useful to have, so we’d started working on it after the empress dropped a nuke on us and made it clear our little cold war was heating up.
"We have the building surrounded, and we are awaiting your orders," the captain said.
"What's your name, Captain?" I asked.
"You don't need to ask their name," Varis said in a hiss that was low enough that only I would be able to hear it.
"Maybe I don't need to know their name," I whispered back at her. "But I want to know his name. It's a good thing to get to know the people who are doing stuff for you."
She stared at me for a long moment. One of those moments where it looked like she didn't believe me, but she was going to go along with it because so far I'd been right about just about everything else since coming to this world.
It was one of those things where she was very much a livisk high noble and a livisk general. They tended to be so top-down about how they arranged everything on this damn dirt ball planet that it never occurred to her that it might be a good idea to get to know some of the people who were doing work for her. And not in the sense that she gave orders to people who gave orders to people who gave orders to other people, until it eventually trickled down to the grunts who did the real work in any military.
I wasn't going to make that mistake even if she did, and I hoped I could teach her a lesson about that.
"So your name, Captain."
"It's Ardol," he said, nodding.
"Ardol," I said, clapping him on the shoulder, which had him wincing. Which made me feel pretty good about myself that I had a big, strapping livisk warrior wincing as I slapped my hand against his shoulder.
It really showed how much strength I'd gained with this whole battle pair thing.
"Ardol, it's going to be a pleasure working with you."
"I'm only in charge of the troops in this area," he said. "If you want to talk about the person handling everything overall, then you'll need to have a chat with Colonel Nelsath.”
"Colonel Nelsath, you say?" I said, arching an eyebrow.
"Yes, sir," he said, again glancing to Varis and looking unsure about all of this.
Which was another one of those things I was going to have to keep in mind. Varis wasn't the only one who had to get used to the idea of getting to know the people who were doing the dirty work. The people who actually did the real work were also going to have to get used to the idea of me taking an interest in their lives. And the way he kept glancing to Varis like he wasn't sure what to make of all this was a stark reminder of that fact.
One thing at a time though.
"Well, I'm sure that Colonel Nelsath has everything well in hand, Ardol," I said. "But right now, I'd like you to give me an update on how things are going."
"Excuse me, but are you just going to ignore me?" the Spider said. "And does anyone else think it’s getting warm here?”
I turned to look at her. I glanced up and down, but she didn't seem to be any worse for the wear, so I shrugged.
"I'm kind of busy right now. I promise I'll be back to deal with you as soon as I'm able."
"But…”
I turned back to Ardol.
"Are you ready for when they come out?"
He paused for a moment, staring at me, then he looked up to the probe floating above us.
"The Combat Intelligence briefed us on your plan, but are you sure they're going to do that?"
I moved into the simulation for a moment, glancing at Arvie. "Are you sure that they're actually going to do what we think they're going to do, Arvie?"
"I have no reason to think they won't do what we think they're going to do," he said both in the simulation and through the probe so Ardol could hear him. "It's standard Imperial practice that the moment it appears a high value target is in danger of being compromised, they will do their best to get that target out of there as quickly as possible."
"Excellent," I said, clapping my hands back in the real world. “If Arvie says everything is going to plan then everything is going to plan.”
I turned back to him in the simulation again. "Do you actually have any confirmation they're going to bring Selii and her people out?"
"I don't have any confirmation, no," he said. "But I'm certain they will do it. The Imperials are nothing if not predictable."
"Well, let's hope that predictability keeps up,” I muttered, staring at the large utilitarian block in front of us.
The place really did look like the worst hits of Eastern Europe from back in the bad old days when Uncle Joe had taken over half the world, and the allies back then seemed to be perfectly fine with it. Not that I could blame them entirely. The world had been weary of war back then, and it was hardly out of the ordinary for the Russians to go on a little bit of an imperialist spree.
Though that had been the high tide of their pretensions to try and take over the world. There were cartoon mice who'd done a better job at that sort of thing compared to some of the laughable attempts Mother Russia had made before everything was consolidated into a single world government. Even then, they still went on about how everything was somehow originally made in Russia even as humanity reached for the stars.
The livisk made the Russians and their imperialist ambitions that were couched in language that made it seem like anything but imperialism seem tame in comparison. The livisk were out and out honest about wanting to try and take over the galaxy. Or at least our corner of the galaxy.
"Get your men ready, Captain Ardol," I said, clapping him on the shoulder again. "I promise that when the time comes, we're going to rescue our people.”
He stood a little straighter at that, and he suddenly looked like every bit the badass soldier I knew him to be.
"Yes, sir. We're going to give those Imperial motherfuckers hell."
"Hell yes, we are," I said, clenching my fists.
"I feel weird," the Spider said. "Like, why do I keep seeing this strange vision in front of me?"
I turned to look at her. Oddly, she wasn't looking at the livisk attacking the detention facility. There were plasma blasts slamming into the giant cube, and they were doing pretty much nothing. I turned away from the Spider, distracted by something I could fix.
"Arvie, why don't we go ahead and send in a few more antigrav missiles so they won't be able to track the trail on the incoming?” I said out loud to the probe.
"They might be able to track the antigrav signal,” he said, picking up that I wanted to talk in realtime where Varis could hear.
"I doubt they're going to be looking for that. What do you think?"
"I agree," he said.
"I'm really wanting to get one of those implants," Varis said. "I don't like being left out of whatever planning the two of you are doing if this is the kind of thing you talk about out loud.”
“All in good time, Babe,” I said, wrapping an arm around her and hitting her with a kiss as the antigrav missiles went off. Which she couldn’t see because we were trying to be stealthy, but I could see with my attention divided between feeling her pulled against me in the real world and the big board in the simulation.
There was another explosion, and I hit the ground, pulling Varis down with me. The soldiers all around us stood watching as another giant hole was blasted in the side of the building right where some of the Spider’s people had been concentrating their fire.
With a little luck, the Imperials would think the Spider’s people had some sort of weaponry that was giving them an unfair advantage, and from there they’d default to imperial protocol like the good little stooges they were. Which meant trying to evacuate Selii and her people.
Right in time for us to spring our trap. Though I didn't want to refer to it as a Spider lying in wait in its web considering our present company.