This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/daecrist on 2025-10-02 00:53:45+00:00.
<<First Chapter | <<Previous Chapter
I stared at the prince consort standing in front of us. He really did cut an impressive figure. He stood at least a head taller than yours truly, and he had that cool cape thing going for him.
It didn’t exactly whip in the breeze. There wasn’t much of a breeze blowing down here in the Undercity. Not like up above when there’d been a literal firestorm created by the nuclear weapon the empress had been stupid enough to drop on one of Varis’s fortresses.
But there was also something about the way he carried himself. Something about his body language as he looked at us. He was standing on one foot. He had a hand on his hip, and he was looking at us with his lip jutting out, looking for all the world like a petulant child who was about to throw a tantrum because they were being forced to do something they really didn’t want to do.
He looked at me. His eyes ran up and down. Then he glanced over at Varis, but it was merely a glance. Like he was more interested in me than he was in her.
Which I could sort of understand. I was the crazy human who’d come down to their planet and started messing things up. Sure I was still pretty certain that was going to end in my untimely death sooner rather than later, but in the meantime? I’d definitely been able to shake things up down here just a little.
Finally, he looked to the woman standing at his side. She was in the body armor the livisk wore, but she wasn’t in power armor. So far nobody had come down here in power armor, not that they usually needed it.
Varis had alluded to another race of aliens they were fighting over on the other end of the Livisk Ascendancy. They’d expanded too far. Dug too greedily and too deep until they ran into a couple of alien species who pushed back.
But the species pushing back over at the other end of their territory wasn’t a hominid remainder from the Ancients like humanity. As far as I knew, we were the first Ancient-descended hominid species that had actually managed to push back against them rather than being enslaved.
The sons of bitches in human territory who refused to sing Kumbaya and join the Galactic Federation we’d tried to set up in the 23rd century didn’t know how good they had it. We mostly left them alone unless there was some resource on their planet we really needed. But it’s not like it happened all that often.
“Hello? Are you even paying attention?”
I blinked and came back to the here and now. The prince consort was staring at me. I frowned. There was something vaguely familiar about that annoyed tone, but it couldn’t be familiar. I’d never met this man before in my life.
Though I noted that he looked to be a little more lithe, a little more slim, than your typical livisk warrior. Though if he was part of a battle pair with the empress, it’s not like he needed to be all that muscular to begin with.
“I’m sorry, were you saying something?” I said.
He rolled his eyes, and his body language oozed with disdain.
“Are you serious? I have to come all the way down here to threaten you before I take you into custody, and you can’t even be properly terrified of me?”
I blinked as I stared at the guy, then looked over to Varis. She gave a shrug. The link told me she was just as confused as I was. I turned back to the guy. I cocked my head to the side as I looked at him.
“Um, I don’t want to sound egotistical or anything, but do you have any idea who I am?”
The prince consort rolled his eyes. “Of course I know who you are. You’re some human who’s been causing trouble with the empress, and that means I have to come down here and take care of business when I should be getting my evening massage. Do you have any idea how annoying it is to have date night with that woman when I haven’t gotten my evening massage?”
“That woman?”
“The empress!”
"Um…”
I trailed off again. Again I looked over at Varis. Again she hit me with one of those shrugs as she looked just as confused about all of this as I felt.
“I mean, I can imagine how difficult it probably is to get it up when you’re dealing with the empress,” I said.
“William, that’s not very nice,” Varis hissed.
“Oh, come on,” I said. "Maybe some of the stuff comparing her to Mr. Ed in the human propaganda is a little off the mark, but it’s not very far off the mark. And she has the kind of personality that would give Viagra a hard time helping a dude keep it up.”
“Who is Mr. Ed? Or this Viagra?” the prince consort asked, frowning in confusion. “Are they great warriors on your planet?”
“Never mind about that. It would take entirely too long to explain. The point is, I can totally understand why you might need a relaxing massage to get the blood flowing before you’re expected to perform for Her Majesty,” I said.
“Right,” he said, and suddenly he seemed a whole sequel trilogy of a lot more open and a whole lot less irritated than he’d been just a moment ago. “Nobody appreciates the kind of performance anxiety I’m under on the regular. Like I told my father. I wasn’t interested in the whole arranged battle pair thing, but he told me that I needed to get with her because she was the empress and she had huge tracts of land.”
I blinked as I stared at him. Again, I glanced over to Varis and back to him. I was doing that so often I worried I was going to get whiplash.
“What is it?” Varis said, and suddenly her head was on a swivel looking all around us for some sign of something that was about to attack us. But the sudden confusion I was sensing through the link didn’t have anything to do with something potentially being about ready to attack us, and it had everything to do with what he’d just said.
“Did you just say huge tracts of land?” I asked.
"Well, yes?” he said.
“And when you’re talking about huge tracts of land, are we talking about…”
I trailed off, but I reached my hands up and mimed squeezing over where my breasts would be if I was a lady and I had breasts. Which I totally didn’t.
Not the kind of thing a lowly captain in the combined fleets could get away with. Though I knew a couple of admirals out there who had a set of knockers that said they spent more time dining in flag country than actually planning anything.
And judging from the confused look the prince consort hit me with, he was just as confused as I was.
“What are you talking about?” he said. “The empress has huge tracts of land on multiple planets all throughout the Livisk Ascendancy. If I play nice, then we’ll be able to get some of that in our own family at some point.”
“I see,” I said, biting my lip to stifle a laugh. “Of course that’s what you’re talking about.”
“What’s wrong?” Varis asked. “The link says you’re barely holding it together.”
“It’s something from back on Earth,” I said. “Another thing I don’t have time to explain.”
“Well, I don’t have time for this either,” the prince said, waving a dismissive hand. "I really don’t want to have to go back to the imperial palace for an evening with that woman, but if taking you captive means I get to get it over with and let her bother the other prince consorts for the next month or two then I suppose I have to do what I have to do. Though I do feel sorry for you and what you’re going to have to endure when she gets her hands on you.”
We stared up the prince consort for a long moment, and then I glanced over at Varis. I could sense she was sensing the same thing I was. I looked at all the troops gathered all around. Particularly up at the woman who’d been running this little encounter from the very beginning. She had her arms crossed and one of her feet was tapping in obvious irritation against the debris pile she stood on. Like she wanted to get all of this over with just as much as I did. Just as much as the prince consort apparently wanted to.
I turned back to him. I sensed an opening here. An opportunity that wouldn’t involve all of us trying to fight our way out of this situation.
“So you don’t really like the empress?”
He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but then the woman at his side tightened her grip. He let out a growl and tried to move his arm to get away from her, but it didn’t seem to be working.
“Would you stop trying to manhandle me?” he said.
“You know what you’re supposed to do,” she said. “You are an instrument of the will of the empress. Nothing more and nothing less.”
“I am a prince consort and you will give me the respect that I am supposed to be afforded.”
“I will give you the respect you should be afforded once you start to give us an indication you deserve that respect, brother."
I blinked. Varis blinked next to me. Then she shook her head and started to chuckle.
“Well, okay then.” I suppose it was maybe something of a cliché in livisk society that the fuckup brothers from some of the more powerful families were sent off to bang the empress since those families couldn’t think of anything else productive for them to do.
But again, I saw an opportunity here. An opportunity that required making nice with the prince consort.
“Ma’am, could you please let go of your brother?” I asked.
“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” she g…
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1nvpvoc/how_i_helped_my_smokin_hot_alien_girlfriend/