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

I settled into the cockpit seat, and I put my hands over the controls. Notably, I was in the pilot seat this time around rather than taking the co-pilot position.

Varis had realized I was the better pilot between the two of us, and she was more than willing to make use of the tools she had at her disposal. Even if she had to let someone else do the flying in her baby.

Even if this was the Baby-A, and would probably be the first in a long line of replacements. There were a lot of letters in the alphabet, as a wise man once said.

"Hello, baby," I said, running my hands along the control surface. "It's been too long."

"Should I be insulted," Varis asked. "Or do you and the fighter need to get a room?"

I turned to grin at her. "Nothing like that, baby. There's room in my life for both of you."

She glared at me for a moment, but I could feel that she was more amused than anything via the link.

"We should probably get a move on," she finally said, looking up and moving through all of the pre-flight stuff. Even though Arvie had already gone through most of that, and there was no need for her to actually do it here in physical space.

"You know I already did that," Arvie said.

“And the pavement is smeared with the burnt wreckage of pilots who trusted somebody else to do everything for them," Varis said.

"Fair enough," Arvie said.

She continued moving through the checklist. Meanwhile, I had my eyes on the threat board. Like the threat board that was literally on the big board in my head via the connection. I also glanced at the threat board in front of me in the fighter, but I had a much better view of everything with the threat board in my head. For all that I also didn't want to get too used to relying on that.

There was no guarantee I’d always have that connection, after all. Though I also figured if I was ever in a position where I lost contact with Arvie then we’d be in deeper shit than I could handle on my own.

And when I glanced at that threat board, I saw something disturbing. There was a wing of fighter craft heading in our direction, and it looked like they were escorting a big-ass bomber of the variety I'd tried to take out earlier when the empress was getting frisky and trying to take care of business at the reclamation mine.

"Looks like we're about to have company," I said, lifting off even as Varis let out a surprised yelp.

She couldn't feel the ship moving all around her, of course. The inertial compensators in the livisk ship was more than enough to keep her from feeling anything. But she could see from the instruments that were suddenly blinking an angry orange color in front of her that I was moving when she'd been going through her checklist, which wasn't something you were supposed to do.

"Do you really think it's a good idea to take an untested fighter craft out like this?" Varis asked.

"Oh, come on," I said. "This isn't an untested fighter craft, and we're going to have to be more hands-on with our shakedown anyway. We've got incoming."

She looked up at the threat board. Her eyes went wide as she realized what was going on.

"Arvie, I need you to make sure all of our forces know they need to get out of here, and they need to be out of here sooner rather than later."

"It's already been communicated to all of our forces," Arvie said. "Don't worry. There's nothing to worry about."

"Except for the bomber that's coming in hot," I muttered, staring at the big board and the display.

"Do we think the empress is about to try and do something clever?" I asked.

"Like what?" Arvie asked.

"I don't know. Like, she's sending that big obvious target at us, but she might be sending something in under cover of stealth."

"I've been monitoring the city and trying to keep an eye out for anything like that," Arvie said. "So far, I haven't seen any indication of any other weapons that are coming in our direction."

"Okay, so we need to be a little careful about this, but we might be able to get out of this without getting our hair mussed."

"One can only hope," Arvie said.

I rose up and I looked around. Immediately, several entrances to the Undercity were highlighted all around us. Entrances that would allow us to sneak away. I looked up at the threat board in front of me.

Arvie sighed.

"What was that sigh for?" I asked.

Suddenly the fighter craft and the bomber that were coming for the detention center lit up with a bunch of targeting info boxes, as well as different firing solutions we could use to hopefully take all of them out before they had a chance to get back to us.

I stared at that for a moment, and then I grinned.

"You know me so well, Arvie," I said.

"I would like to think so, after all the shenanigans we've gotten up to together," Arvie said.

"Okay, so we're doing this," Varis said, staring at the threat board and at the display that showed exactly where we could go after all of those ships. "You do realize that's an entire fighter wing of elite imperial ships coming for us, escorting a bomber that's meant to send a message. That looks like one of the heavy duty bombers that’s meant to barrel through opposition rather than lightly dodge through it.”

"Yeah, I realize that," I said moving the throttle forward with a thought.

That was really neat. I was tied into the ship's systems, and so there was no need for me to use the physical controls. All I needed to do was think it, and it happened. That was going to take down the lag in the middle of combat by a good chunk.

"How are you doing that without touching the throttles?" Varis asked.

"Just a little bit of the magic I get as a result of the connection in my head," I said, turning and grinning at her.

"I really need to get one of those things installed so I can do all of this stuff," she said. "The tactical advantages are mind-boggling."

"You know it," I said, grinning and winking at her.

Then I turned my attention back to the kamikaze run I was making at the Imperial ships coming in at us, and they were coming in hot.

And maybe it was my imagination, but I almost thought I could see a bit of hesitation from them as they kept moving towards us. They were expecting us to turn tail and run. The last thing they were probably expecting was for me to come at them directly. I doubted many people did that.

Then again, given everything that had happened between me and the Imperials so far, they probably shouldn't have been surprised that I was coming at them hot.

"Let's go ahead and send them a surprise," I said, firing off one missile as a friendly hello.

The missile went away with a thought. It was a seeker that focused in on the antigrav signature from the lead ship. The motherfucker was putting off way more antigrav than any of the others. They immediately scattered and tried to get out of the way, which was an amateur hour move.

All except the bomber. It kept plodding right along like whoever was piloting didn’t care that there was a missile coming for them. Not good.

"The best the Imperials have to offer, huh?" I said, turning to look at Varis.

"I didn't say they were that good, especially compared to some of the human flying I've seen recently, but that doesn't change the fact that they are the best the Imperials have to offer."

"Got it," I said. “Playing games with semantics is fun.”

I reached out tentatively to several drones that had been set up all around the city. Most of them were lying in wait, not even running their antigrav. It could be hard to be stealthy, even for a combat drone. Even a small combat drone. But one of the workarounds for that was to simply run it powered down until you were ready to send a signal to reactivate the thing.

The scattered fighters moved in a bunch of different directions at the same time. Meanwhile, I pulled back from those probes.

"You know what to do, Arvie," I said.

"Firing solutions are laid in, Captain," Arvie said.

"Did you do that on purpose?" I said with a grin.

"I told you that I've been enjoying this Star Trek show you talked about so much. It’s amazing how much they got right about how human space travel would eventually work.”

"Good man," I said. “And they got a lot right because that show influenced a lot of how human space travel played out.”

Immediately missiles flew out from a bunch of the drones that had been lying in wait for this exact moment. It just took the one missile to get them to scatter, and they were all in a confused jumble. Which meant it was easy enough for Arvie to fire the drone missiles. And now they were dying as massive explosions ripped through their scattering ranks.

Some of them had shields that were able to withstand a blast, mostly when the missile happened to hit them with a glancing blow. But several of them took direct hits, and we were using warheads that were more than capable of giving them a really bad fucking day.

"Excellent work, Arvie," I said.

"Moving the drones up on suicide runs now," Arvie said. "We should be able to take out at least a few more of those fighters."

"Here's hoping," I said.

"You knew those drones were out there," Varis said, seemingly in disbelief.

"I did," I said. “This whole thing has been us trying to distract people long enough that we could get some of our forces in place.”

"And you were able to do all of this while being held captive in the Undercity.”

"I can't take credit for most of it," I said. "Arvie's the one who did a lot of the leg work."

"This is the point where I point out that I don't actually have legs to do any of that work," Arvie said. “And you were the one who gave the orders to put all of this in place, for all that I had to deliver the orders because you were indisposed.”

"Right," I said. "But Arvie is the one who did a lot of the organizing. He's the George Marshall to my Truman."

"The what?" Varis said.

“Old Earth historical reference. Couple of guys who won a big war on our planet once upon a time."

"Got it," she said. "This Truman and Marshall must have been great warriors indeed."

"They were certainly something," I said, pumping the acceleration.

The bomber had taken a couple of hits, but it really was heavily armored and heavily shielded. The kind of heavily armored motherfucker that could stand against anything that we were trying to throw at it.

Which was really damn unfortunate. I wanted to destroy that thing, damn it.

"Arvie, let's go ahead and patch through to one of the drones that's still hanging out around the detention facility."

"On it, William."

"What are you doing now?" Varis asked.

"Actually, you're the one who's going to do this, babe," I said, reaching a hand out and giving hers a squeeze.

I didn't worry too much about taking my attention away from the everything in front of us. I was doing a lot of it with my head at this point. I really did seem to be doing much better at it this time around than I had on my previous attempt.

"I'm doing what?” she said.

"It's gonna be super easy,” I said. "All you have to do is tell everybody down there that we’re doing our best to keep the Imperials from getting in and nuking the place, but that everybody needs to get out of there now if they want to live."

"Why would we do that?" Varis asked.

"Because there are a lot of people down there who are probably in that detention facility because they pissed off the empress, and it's probably a good idea to have people who have pissed off the empress on our side," I said.

"I see," she said. "There are also going to be criminals in there, you know."

"Yeah, well, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and I'm more interested in breaking out any political prisoners who are about to die because we started a war with the empress. Again.”

"You are an odd man, William," she said. "But I will make this speech."