I gritted my teeth. I wasn’t going to show weakness in front of the blue sparklies.

  I looked up to the livisk. Her eyes danced with something that might’ve been amusement. It was hard to tell because she was an alien, for all that we had a common ancestor somewhere along the way that meant we could smash bits.

  Again, something that would’ve probably been annoying to the legions of keyboard warriors over the centuries before first contact who talked about how that kind of thing was utterly unrealistic.

  “Go fuck yourself, General Varis t’Thal of the Livisk Ascendancy. You’re sister to a dead brother because of me, and I’ll finish the job.”

  Sure she was easy on the eyes, but she also held me captive. Maybe certain parts of my anatomy were reacting to the wrong part of fight, flight, or fuck, but that didn’t mean I was going to.

  Though thinking about how pretty she was turned out to be a welcome distraction as I pulled myself up on my arms.

  My body sang with the pain of what I was doing. It was like every nerve ending in my body was trailing pure fire and telling me I should just have a nice lie down on the deck and think about how nice it was when I wasn’t in this kind of pain.

  But that was the thing. I was in horrible pain when I was down on the deck. I was in horrible pain when I tried to get up. I figured if I was going to be in horrible pain no matter what I did then I might as well use that horrible pain to teach her a lesson.

  She stood and looked down at me. It was an imperious sort of look. The look of someone who thought she was holding all the cards here. The look of someone who thought she’d won. The look of someone who wasn’t paying attention to the livisk blaster at her side.

  They were all carrying. Even the medical personnel.

  My eyes blazed at her. I was so pissed off right now. Pissed off that I’d lost my ship. Actually lost it this time around. Pissed off about the psychic link that I guess brought her down on me in the first place. Pissed off that I’d even been put in command of a picket ship in the first place.

  “I’ll never surrender to you,” I said through gritted teeth.

  Then I did something I would’ve thought impossible just a moment ago given the way my body betrayed me and started to collapse the moment I took a step. I pulled myself to my knees. Then I started pulling myself to my feet.

  I resisted the urge to put a hand out and lean on the livisk. That seemed like the right thing to do, but I knew that was that stupid link whispering in my head.

  Strange, that.

  “Impossible,” one of the medical technicians breathed from behind Varis.

  This felt pretty fucking impossible to me, too. I felt like I’d broken so many bones that I shouldn’t be able to move, but spite was moving me in that moment. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d done something through sheer spite.

  “Human. You don’t have to do this,” Varis said. “Just tell me that I have won. That’s all you need to do, and then we’ll put you back in the stasis field where you won’t feel anything.”

  “Where I won’t feel anything until you’ve fixed me up so you can sell me off into slavery?” I asked, finally bringing myself to a standing position.

  Was I a little wobbly? Yeah, definitely. I still held myself there. I didn’t exactly stand tall or proud, but standing at all seemed like one hell of an accomplishment.

  “My name is Captain Bill Stewart of the Combined Corporate Fleets. Formerly of the Terran Navy. And I will not surrender to you. Never.”

  I took a stumbling step forward. I wasn’t sure if that was because I wanted to take a step forward, or if it was because I was having trouble maintaining my balance and I needed to take a step forward or collapse to the deck again.

  Pain flared all through the leg I stepped onto. I figured that meant I’d have an equal amount of pain whether I took a step or fell to the ground.

  Varis moved just a bit. Like she was going to try and catch me if I fell. The idea of wrapping myself in her arms felt nice. The idea of having her pressing against me felt even more interesting.

  Being close to that blaster at her side? That was the most interesting idea of them all.

  “Stop this, human. That is an order,” she said.

  I grinned despite the pain. “You don’t order me around, baby.”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I took another step. Again it was a step I had to take or I was going to fall forward. Damn it.

  I stumbled and fell into her. She wrapped her arms around me. I decided I liked having her arms around me. It also had other parts of me pressing against her, and her eyes went wide for a moment.

  I know she had to know what that meant. It was the same with humans and livisk.

  It was odd. She was strangely strong. It was my first time feeling a livisk up close and personal, or maybe it would be more accurate to say it was the first time I’d been this close to one without power armor in between us.

  Always remember to use protection when getting up close and personal with the livisk, kids.

  I looked up at her and smiled. I also moved my hand to her side. To where she had that blaster. I guess they took that shit way more seriously than my crew took it back on Early Warning 72.

  All the livisk in the room were distracted by the spectacle of their captain wrapping her arms around me. Distracted to the point that none of them seemed to notice that I was going for her sidearm. I just hoped they didn’t have these things tied to biometrics, or that I was close enough to her that it would assume I was the one doing the firing.

  “Why do you smile, human? You’ve been defeated.”

  I tried to say something. Then I frowned, because it turns out I couldn’t talk nearly as loudly as I felt like I should be able to talk. My body was wracked with coughs, but that was just fine. It meant she held me closer as some of the livisk medical pukes all around us moved like they were going to try and help me.

  The last thing I wanted was their help, but I would use their distraction.

  “What was that, Bill?” she said, using my name for the first time.

  That name sounded odd on her lips. She was surprisingly tender as she said it. She leaned in even closer. Like she was trying to understand what I was saying even as I slipped her blaster out and pressed it against her stomach.

  Her eyes went wide.

  “I have your blaster,” I said.

  She looked down. Her eyes went wide as she realized the mistake she’d made. I wasn’t sure if this was going to be a killing blow. I wasn’t sure if I was suicidal or just really mad. I figured it probably wouldn’t be fatal considering we were in the middle of the livisk medbay surrounded by blue sparkly doctors, but I figured at the very least it would be sending one hell of a message.

  I pulled the trigger exactly one time. Once was all I could do before she let go and I tumbled to the ground again. Though I maintained my grip on the pistol as I fell.

  Also? I almost thought I could feel the pain of that bullet ripping into her stomach. I could definitely feel the surprise. Or I thought I could feel the surprise.

  It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. It made me wonder if she could feel some of the pain I was dealing with as I slammed into the floor and the world around me exploded in pain all over again.

  I writhed on the deck. I figured I’d done what I came here to do, and now I was going to bask in the pain from all the injuries that’d been done to me when the bridge on 72 went up all around me.

  One of the livisk medical people came at me. I brought the blaster around and pulled the trigger. Blue blood painted the wall behind them as they stumbled back, hit the wall, then slid down.

  That had several of the medical types pulling out their own weapons finally. They trained them on me as I turned to see Varis, also on the deck with a hand over the new ventilation shaft I’d just opened in her stomach.

  She was staring at me and smiling. I smiled back at her. I guess we were going to die here together after all. The real irony is it was her crew who were going to do the killing.

  One of the livisk reached me and kicked the pistol out of my hand. I grunted in pain, but it’s not like them kicking my fingers was any worse than any of the other bullshit I was dealing with.

  “Wait!” Varis said as several of them trained their weapons on me and twitched like they were about to pull the trigger.

  They hesitated, looking down at their general in confusion. Her voice held a commanding presence still, for all that there was some blue liquid coming out of her lips. Maybe I’d hit something critical. Maybe it was just a lung shot.

  Which would’ve been critical anywhere but the middle of a medbay where they could load her in a glowing chamber and presumably fix her up.

  One of the medical types got down on their knees in front of her and started running some strange device over the hole I’d made in her side, but she waved it away.

  “I’ve had worse than this, she grunted, pulling herself up on her elbows.

  “I’m two out of three, sparkly,” I said.

  “You didn’t hit anything vital, human,” she growled back.

  “Yeah, well I wanted to give you a little something to remember me by after you have your goons here send me to the great beyond,” I said.

  She stared at me for another long moment. I was sure the order to kill me was going to come at any moment now. So imagine my surprise and disappointment when that didn’t happen.

  “You are very stupid, Captain Bill Stewart, but it’s the sort of stupidity I can admire,” she said. “Still. It’s time for this farce to end.”

  “Are you sure?” I said, grunting in pain as she gestured and several of the livisk standing around grabbed me and pulled me up.

  They were none to gentle about it, either.

  “So much about that whole do no harm thing, huh boys?” I said, avoiding moving my head to either side to get a look at them because it would hurt too much. “Or do you swear the opposite oath? That seems like something a livisk would do considering the way you slaughter humans wholesale or sell them into slavery. How does that feel knowing you’re fixing my crew up to sell us into slavery?”

  “If you think you’re going to tug at their heart strings you’re sorely mistaken, human,” Varis said, standing and holding a hand over the hole I’d blasted in her side. Though she also smiled as she looked at me.

  She stepped forward and pushed me back into the medbay I’d just stepped out of. Pain bloomed all through my body.

  “I could kill you now and there would be no loss of honor,” she said, that smile never leaving her face.

  But I felt the doubt there in her mind. A little worm of it. Just an echo of the emotion, but it was there and I could sense it. And the fact that I could sense it…

  “Yeah, and go insane in the process,” I said, spitting on her.

  It landed on her shoulder. She looked down, and then back to me.

  “I won’t kill you,” she said.

  “Coward,” I replied, still grinning.

  “No, not a coward. I won’t kill you because you wish it, and because you intrigue me. Field up.”

  Sadly I didn’t get the last word. No, the glow surrounded me again, and suddenly I was back in that warmth where I didn’t care about anything.