This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/daecrist on 2025-07-01 00:13:31+00:00.
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“This is a nice place," I said, looking up and around.
It was a massive bubble set in the side of her tower. One of several. I hadn’t seen it before, but I could spend an entire year going through every part of Varis’s tower and still not see every part of the place.
Not to mention the one time I’d been on a flight out of this place I’d been more focused on what was in front of us than what was behind us at the beginning. At the end I’d been to busy flying for my life to focus on the building.
“Are you talking about the restaurant or the bubble?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I do rather like it,” she said, taking a sip from her soup bowl.
That was how the livisk ate their soup. They didn’t use a spoon. No, they just picked up the bowl and drank from it. They also didn’t seem to be big fans of having a lot of chunky bits in their soup to interrupt the sipping.
“This makes me wonder what you give your children when they have a cold,” I said.
“When they have a what?” she asked.
“A mild sickness.”
“They will overcome their sickness or they will die,” she said with a shrug.
That sounded like a very livisk solution to fighting an illness. Feed a fever, starve a cold, or engage the microorganisms invading your system in honorable combat to the death. The problem being that a microorganism was more likely to win. Especially with a kid. Even a livisk kid.
“Okay,” I said, putting my bowl down.
The muted thump of a bomb slamming against the force field outside carried through that force field and into the place. It barely rattled my cup, but the rattling was still there.
There was also the distinct sound of anti-aircraft fire going off from the building.
“I feel like we’ve been under assault like this forever.”
It’d only been a couple of days, but the irritating assault had been getting more and more insistent. Especially when we did something outside, or in a bubble like this. The kind of place where someone could easily get a reading on a human and livisk life sign enjoying some fine dining.
“The empress is upset,” Varis said.
As though it was the most mundane thing in the world. Could you pass the local alien equivalent of salt, please? The empress is upset. She’s running a bombing campaign against all of us that could potentially kill everyone in the building if one of the shield generators buried under said building happens to go."
"You just seem remarkably blasé about the empress being upset to the point that she’s bombing everything. Again,” I said.
“Because the empress can throw her tantrum for as long as she wants,” Varis said, arching her eyebrow as she looked at me. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to give in to her tantrum.”
"Let me guess, when your toddlers throw tantrums you give them knives and tell them they need to fight their big feelings honorably or something?”
“Of course we do,” she said, not missing a beat as she looked at me.
I almost would’ve believed her. The only problem with her bullshitting me being I could feel the small bit of amusement running through her body, into the link, and over to my brain.
“Very funny,” I said.
"Mommy, look at the incoming, Mommy!” an excited little girl said.
I turned and glanced out the massive window. The restaurant only took up one part of the bubble, but it was a big slice right near the middle that gave it an impressive view both up and down. Including a nice view of the now continuous battle going on all around us.
I felt bad about all the people out there fighting the empress, but Varis had brushed it off, saying something about how it was great to get a real live fire exercise from time to time. Better than just doing simulated stuff.
I had to admit that when we went up against the livisk, their pilots did seem to have the kind of veteran ability that only came from getting into actual fights on the regular. The intel pukes thought they just had a really good training regimen. After I’d seen the kind of training Varis had, though, I realized it was mostly that they fought each other semi-seriously on the regular. At least often enough that they got a little bit of seasoning for their pilots.
I turned to look out the window in the direction the little girl was pointing. Sure enough, there was an imperial fighter coming in at us. Which was becoming an annoyingly regular occurrence in my life.
“Yeah!” the little girl screamed, pumping her fist as the fighter fired plasma blasts at us. "All glory to the empress! All glory to General Varis!”
I looked at Varis. She had her mouth quirked up in a smile. Like she was more amused than anything.
“The little ones often don’t understand the nuances of how politics work in the city,” Varis said. “I’m just pleased that she’s saying my name along with the empress.”
Though her parents were looking at the little girl and obviously trying to quiet her down. They kept casting nervous glances over at Varis. Maybe the little girl didn’t realize General Varis was sitting right next to them at the fancy restaurant listening to her enthusiastic commentary, but they obviously realized it and didn’t want to upset her.
“Are they actually in any danger?” I asked.
“Of course not,” Varis said. “The shielding around the bubbles is some of the most powerful in the building. Almost as powerful as the stuff I have covering my own quarters up above.”
I snorted at that. Her quarters was that entire building the size of a skyscraper all its own. They took the building of megastructures to an extreme here in Imperial Seat. Like it was all about the ostentation and showing off. Making sure everybody literally showed off that they had the biggest building in some sort of architectural dick-measuring contest.
“That’s not what I was talking about," I said.
“What were you talking about?” she asked, sounding genuinely curious.
“Those parents over there. They were trying to shush their little girl. Like they’re worried something bad is going to happen if you overhear her talking about glory to the empress considering the current strained relations between you and her majesty.”
“Why would I be upset about somebody showing proper deference and wishing glory to the empress?” she asked, and she seemed more amused than anything now. I could sense that amusement coming through the link.
“I mean, look outside. It’s not like we’re the empress’s favorite people right about now.”
“That’s true, but one should always give all glory to the empress.”
“I’d like to give all glory to her by shoving a nuke down an exhaust vent on the imperial palace,” I muttered.
“Like the little girl said. ‘All glory to the empress,’” Varis said. “But to answer your question, no. Her parents aren’t in any danger because their little girl is talking about the empress and me in the same breath. I might have a quarrel with my sister by marriage at the moment, but that might change. You never know.”
“Yeah, that might change,” I said.
I took another sip of my soup, doing the two-handed bowl lift. The same that all the other livisk seemed to be doing. Then I looked over to the fighter craft that’d been making that run straight at our part of the bubble. Almost like they knew I was here, and they were focusing in on me.
“Are they doing that because they can use a scanner to tell I’m here?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?” Varis asked.
“It seems like those bombers always have a hard-on for attacking whatever part of the tower I’m at. I’m wondering if that’s because they’re tracking human life signs in the tower and they’re going after me specifically, or if it’s because they have some way of tracking you and figuring out where you are, and you’re a target too.”
Varis frowned, and I could immediately tell we’d gone into yet another lost in translation moment.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand. What do you mean they have a hard on for you?”
“It’s a human turn of phrase,” I said, grinning and blushing just a little. “Think about what happens that you really like when I get a look at you in that little outfit you wore last night.”
“Oh,” she said, and then her own face darkened as she realized exactly what I was talking about. “Oh. I see.”
“When humans say something like that, it means somebody is really interested in someone else. I’m wondering why they seem so fixated on hitting right where I am every time.”
She shrugged. “It’s probably that they have my bio signature and they’re going after me, or it could be they’re going after me when you’re around because they want to send a message. It’s also entirely possible they’re tracking public videos and images of us on the Imperial Net. You are a subject of fascination, after all.”
I thought about all the times I’d seen livisk taking video and pictures of the two of us. Forget worrying about that shit getting back to the Terran Galactic Net. It was causing trouble for me in the here and now on this Imperial Net.
“Sending a message,” I muttered, slumping against my chair.
“Yes, and she’s not going to stop sending a message until I get the message.”
“I see,” I said, going slightly cross-eyed as I thought through it all.
That fel…
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