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

I let out a bellow of my own as I tensed my legs and then shot up into the sky. It was easy enough for me to figure out exactly which trajectory to take, how much force to apply, where to move so that my power armor went straight for the transport floating in the sky.

All that time pretending I was a goat jumping from various bits of wreckage sticking out of that cliff face had been pretty damn useful, it turns out. And so I went in an arc that would have me landing directly on the transport ship holding Selii and her people.

Assuming that transport didn't suddenly move in an unexpected way. It was jerking this way and that. As I got closer, I could hear the telltale sign of antigrav that was working overtime trying to free the thing from the grappling hooks that held it in place. I could see where those hooks had dug into the armor and were holding it in place.

For now. I was also well aware it wasn't going to last terribly long. They must’ve put some seriously overpowered engines on this thing.

"Okay, so here's the plan," I said to Varis.

"You're going to land on top of that thing, use your plasma sword to cut away anything that tries to take a shot at you, and try to cut open a circle in the thing. Probably where the pilots are so you can drop in and kill all of them and then turn off the antigrav that's struggling against our towing units we brought in," Varis said.

I blinked and stared at the heads-up display inside my power armor mask. I looked at some of the readouts for a moment. Mostly because I needed a distraction after she just went through my entire master plan I'd come up with in an instant.

"So is that because I'm really that predictable?" I asked. "Or is it because my plan is really that predictable given our limited options?”

"Probably a little bit of all of the above," Varis said, and I felt the amusement rolling through the link in waves.

I shook my head and let out a low grumble as I almost landed on the transport holding Selii and her people. I say almost because it shifted out of the way at the last moment, which caused the whole thing to move forward just a bit.

So instead of landing on the back of the transport, I found myself grabbing hold of one of the cables holding the transport in place and holding on for dear life. There was a jerk that ran up and down my arm and didn't feel at all pleasant, but I managed to hold on somehow.

I swung there for a moment looking up and down and all around. A moment later, Varis came floating up holding onto a small antigrav probe.

"How are you doing that?" I asked as she stepped down onto the transport as though she was stepping onto one of the many balconies on her tower.

"Arvie gave me a ride," she said with a shrug, "Why? Is it really all that odd? I'm just picking up on what you were doing."

"Well yeah, but I was controlling the probe directly," I said, moving hand over hand along the wire as I tried to reach her. "How did you manage to pull that off?"

"Simple," she said. "I asked Arvie politely to give me a ride up to the transport, and he obliged. No need to take control of it personally when he can do the work.”

"Oh," I said, as I yanked up on the wire and went somersaulting through air to land on top of the transport.

The whole surface lurched underneath me. Almost like the time I'd been caught in an earthquake when I was visiting Japan as a young man freshly minted in the Terran Navy.

One of the nice things about being freshly minted in the Terran Navy was you could get free transport to just about anywhere you wanted on the planet when you had time off. One of the perks of being in the body that defended the stars in the local system.

Only this was a little more intense. The whole surface bounced and jolted underneath me. It jerked forward again, and I activated the magnet locks on my boots to make sure I didn't go tumbling off the thing.

I shouldn't have any trouble if I did go tumbling off the thing. The power armor had more than enough inertial dampeners built in to keep me from turning into so much splattered human on the inside of my armor if I did have a long drop with a sudden stop. Not to mention I could take control of one of the many drones that were starting to hover around this area if I absolutely had to and pull a Mary Poppins the same as what Varis had just done.

But sometimes the simple solution was the easiest, so magnetic locks it was. I made my way slowly, step by step, towards the front of the transport.

"It always struck me as odd that they still put the cockpit in the front of these things," I said.

"Why would that be odd?" Varis asked, moving into step beside me.

She also had the slightly jerky motion of someone who had to pull up with a little more force than they were used to in order to get the magnet to release. There were supposedly boots that some of the special operators wore back in Terran space that could sense when you were about to take a step and they automatically disengaged the magnets. And supposedly the special operators never actually used them because they were always worried it was going to disengage at the worst possible moment and leave them in the lurch.

“It always seemed to me that a high value transport like this should operate on the same assumption as a warship. We don't put the CIC on top of a ship like we're in an episode of Star Trek or something.”

"I've seen several of your designs that do that," Varis said as we reached the front.

I looked down. Sure enough, there was a sharply angled canopy that gave the pilots a full view of the world around them, and it was made out of transparent armor that was probably thick enough that it didn't make any difference if it was transparent or opaque. Anything that was sufficiently powerful to punch through this canopy would also be enough to punch through good old-fashioned armor and kill anything on the inside.

Except I had a plasma sword.

The pilots looked up at us in surprise, though they turned and started chatting with each other, pointing up at us and laughing. They seemed remarkably casual and unconcerned for a couple of pilots who were currently in the middle of being grappled by a few armored towing units we'd brought over here along with all of the armed ships all around us.

A turret came up that was no doubt put on the front of this damn thing to stop anybody from doing exactly what I was trying to do. Which accounted for why they seemed so singularly unconcerned about us being up here in the first place.

I pulled out my plasma sword and casually disconnected the turret from the rest of the ship. It didn't even get a chance to glow before I sent it flying down to the depths below. I hoped it didn't land on anybody, and if it did land on anybody, I hoped that at the very least it landed on somebody who was working for the Imperials.

I looked down at the pilots. Their smiles were frozen in place as they continued staring up at us, and then they quickly started to hit buttons. The co-pilot in particular looked like they were going for a weapons console.

"Do you want to peel back the can of sardines or shall I do the honor?" I asked, turning my attention to Varis.

"You go ahead and peel the can open," she said, grinning at me. "I'm going to have a little bit of fun dealing with their weaponry."

And with that, she started laying into any guns or any turrets that came out to try and deal with us. I could see the pilots down below getting more and more frantic with every passing moment as they realized exactly what was going on up here. I grinned and hit them with a wave as I pulled my own plasma sword down and thrust it into the canopy. Right into the pilot who was still staring up in slack-jawed astonishment.

His body twitched a couple of times. I probably could have avoided that, but the dumbass was sitting right there where I was about to thrust my plasma sword down. If he didn't have the sense of self-preservation to get out of the way of somebody wielding a plasma sword, then I had no sympathy for the dude.

I started to saw around in a circle. I even started humming everybody's first to third favorite John Williams theme, depending on how much of a fan they were of any of the numerous long-running franchises he'd written the music for a thousand years prior.

I moved slowly and deliberately. The co-pilot looked even more panicked now. He kept hitting buttons over and over, obviously trying desperately to keep from letting me in. Only every time something came up, Varis was right there to lob it off and keep the thing from actually getting a shot off at us.

Again, you couldn't block a shot with a plasma sword, but you sure as shit could disable a gun before it got a chance to fire on you.

Finally I managed to cut a reasonable hole in the transparent armor and it fell down under its own weight. There was still a little bit of a ways to go before I completed the circle, but there was enough weight in the armor I'd cut out that it was enough to pull the whole thing down.

I looked down at the squashed body of the pilot and grimaced, and then I hopped through the hole and held my plasma sword up to the co-pilot's neck.

He was in the process of reaching out to grab a blaster next to his seat, but he was a little too late. Not that the tiny blaster he had on hand would’ve done him a damn bit of good against me wearing full power armor.

“You bring dishonor on yourself by wearing power armor into combat, human.”

"Maybe I do," I said with a shrug as I stabbed forward into his neck and ended his life. He slumped down to the ground, eyes wide in astonishment.

“But I seem to be winning for now. I'll take winning over my personal honor any day of the week.”

I turned around and looked behind me. There was a heavily reinforced door there that led back to the hold. I wondered if there were any guards in there. Probably, but I needed to take care of getting this transport under control before I thought about getting in there.

So I sat down in the co-pilot's seat, the one that didn't still have a smashed body sitting in it leaking corpse juice all over the seat, and I slowly dialed back the thrusters and antigrav.