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

Harris shifted back and forth a couple of times. A tiny drop of sweat ran down one side of his face. I could see all of it in perfect detail because the screen I was looking at was truly massive.

It had to be if it looked small in this room. Everything was an order of magnitude larger in here because everything was so damn big. I wondered what this General Varis did that she had digs like this.

She was sister by marriage to the empress, or whatever the fuck that title had been, sure. But something told me a person didn't get a swank tower like this complete with a sapient Combat Intelligence because their brother was knocking boots with the empress.

Or maybe they did. We had a few examples of Dear Leaders throughout history who were capricious enough to hand out stuff like this, albeit on a much smaller scale because ancient earth didn't have cities on this scale, and then take it away on another whim.

"Are you quite all right, Bill?" Arvie asked.

I blinked. I hadn't even realized the screen had stopped moving. Clearly the CI had picked up on me stopping to think about things for a bit and decided to pause the show.

I wondered if that was because he was being friendly, or if it was because he was under orders from the blue sparkly to make sure I got to see my suffering up there on screen in full technicolor.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I finally said. "Just thinking about some things."

Harris looked very uncomfortable. Was that because he wasn't comfortable up there on the big screen, knowing there were potentially trillions of Terrans out there watching him lying through his teeth? Or was it because he knew he was about to be lying through his teeth and he wasn't comfortable with it?

Then again, in my experience he was usually perfectly fine with lying through his teeth. I'd learned that one the hard way.

"Go ahead with the show, Arvie," I said.

"Very well, Bill," he said, and he even let out a little digital sniff. No doubt to let me know what he thought of me continuing to make his nickname a thing.

"Right," Harris said. "I don't have much time. The Fleet is continuing search operations on the outer edge of the system."

"Of course they are, sir," Toril said. He leaned forward, and one part of his perfectly coiffed hair came loose. Then a moment later a small field shone for a moment and put the hair right back where it was supposed to be. "And that's exactly what we're wanting to talk to you about today. You understand, of course, that having a full Fleet mobilization on the edge of the Solar System is the sort of thing that's going to put civilians on edge."

"Of course I realize that's the sort of thing that'll put civilians on edge," Harris grunted, sounding like he really didn't like putting up with the bullshit from Toril.

Which was normally the sort of thing I could identify with. Under the circumstances? I enjoyed watching him squirming a little under the thumb of the media.

"Yes, and that's why we wanted to talk to you today, sir," Toril said, never missing a beat as he spoke with that same smooth voice. "I'm sure the CCF would love the opportunity to put people's minds at ease. There have been all sorts of rumors going around about what exactly the Fleets are doing out there, and the fact that it's Fleets, plural, really has some speculating."

"I can assure you that any of the stories you've heard about an invasion fleet or some other nonsense like that isn't true," Harris said.

Toril leapt on that like a shark sensing blood in the water.

"Is that why you're keeping civilian traffic out of the area, sir? You don't want them to see that something smaller than an invasion force was out there? Perhaps a livisk raiding party?"

I snorted at that. It's not like there was any civilian traffic out there to begin with. Aside from the occasional smuggler or ice wrangler, but I knew that wasn't what either of them were talking about. There was no reason for someone to be out there.

Even the scientists had lost interest when they finally got a ship out there and realized there wasn't a fabled ninth planet, or tenth planet depending on how much of a historical nitpicking nitwit someone was, lurking out there slinging comets at Jupiter and the dinosaurs from time to time.

No, the orbital mechanics of coming in close contact with other star systems over eons was enough to explain all those perterbrances.

"No. That's not what I said at all," Harris said. "We can assure everyone in the public that there is no longer any danger in the outer system. There's nothing out there to worry about."

Again Toril leapt on it. I was really starting to enjoy this. I didn't like the situation at all, but seeing Harris getting read the riot act was almost worth my current situation.

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Toril and Harris might both be bastards, but they deserved each other.

"Let them fight," I muttered, quoting another ancient reference about giant nuclear lizard fights that'd been canonized as a strategic maxim for the Fleet when we saw our enemies going at one another.

Maxim 29 was another piece of Fleet gospel.

"That makes it sound like there was some danger out there at the edge of the home system, Admiral," Toril said. "The way you're phrasing things seems like a statement the Fleet made up to tell us the truth without telling us the truth."

"I…"

Harris was clearly spinning. And I couldn't wait to see how he spun this.

Of course there was danger out there at the edge of the system. The livisk were able to fold in, take out a picket ship, and fold out before either Fleets could mobilize to stop them. I would've said that was a level of stepping on your own dick that defied explanation, but I figured Harris's equipment wasn't nearly big enough for him to be able to step on it in the first place.

The bastard probably had his wife jerk him off with tweezers.

"The world wonders, Admiral," Toril said, still leaning in with a gleam in his eyes.

"I am authorized by the Fleet to assure you that there is no longer a danger at the edge of the system," Harris said again.

I imagined that right about now there were more than a few people with gold bars weighing down their shoulders who were chugging antacid and having kittens wondering how long their careers would last if news got out that a livisk raider had been as close in as the Oort cloud.

Alien raiders weren't supposed to get in close enough to start passing by astronomical things that were named after scientists who'd been dead for nearly a thousand years.

Well, they weren't supposed to get close enough to things named after scientists from a thousand years ago that weren't distant stars cataloged by various space surveys from back then, at least.

I could take some small satisfaction in knowing Harris was probably at the top of the list of admirals currently having kittens about their career prospects. If he got a "not recommended," the equivalent of a dishonorable in the regular Fleet, then he could kiss his CCF pension goodbye.

The whole point of putting up with the bullshit of a second stint in the much more lax CCF was the prospect of a second pension to pad out what had become a long retirement in an era where human lifespans had been expanded into triple digits.

The screen fuzzed a bit and Harris's face distorted.

"Apologies," Arvie said. "We picked this up off a pirated signal near one of the border systems, and sometimes the reception from those relays isn't the greatest."

"By all means. Take your time to adjust the tracking on the signal that came from thousands of light years away," I said.

The signal finally came back in. Harris seemed on more sure footing this time around, which wasn't good. If he was on more sure footing then that meant he'd come upon something he was more comfortable with.

He was also sitting in a different position. Like that little error had come with a time jump.

"As we all know, Captain Stewart has had trouble in the past," Harris said.

Ah, yes. We'd come to the bus throwing. Like that brief fuzzing was that someone wanted me to see a highlight reel of what the admiralty was saying about me rather than Arvie's excuse about the signal not coming in the strongest.

Of course he was more comfortable throwing someone else under the bus. Deflecting responsibility and making sure someone else took the blame while they got all the credit was what admirals did best.

"This posting was his last chance before being drummed out of the service," Harris continued, finally smiling just a little. "The loss of a picket ship is tragic, but unsurprising given the circumstances and the command crew."

"Very interesting, yes," Toril said, tapping away at a tablet in front of him. "But we've obtained records from the CCF archives thanks to a concerned person working within your ranks who shall remain anonymous."

Suddenly Harris was sweating again. Like he sensed a trap closing in around him.

"I never thought I'd say this, but get him, Toril," I said.

"This Toril person is quite interesting," Arvie said. "You don't see many of the personalities in livisk media, such as it is, questioning authority figures like this."

"That's something of a tradition in human culture," I said. "Journalists got a taste for official ass back in the 1970s when they took down a president, that's sort of like an emperor who only serves a term for a few years, and they've been chasing that high for nearly a thousand years."

"Fascinating," Arvie said. "Anyone who would dare question the empress would be slowly tortured to death in some very unpleasant ways."

"I don't doubt they would be," I said. "I'm not saying that never happens with humans, either. History is littered with dead journalists, but I don't think anyone is going after Toril Jak."

"Again, a fascinating idea," Arvie said.

"These documents we've obtained show that you were the admiral responsible for giving Captain Stewart another posting after the loss of the Allamaraine. So if it was known that Captain Stewart was a liability, why did you make the decision to allow him to continue command even after knowing about that liability?"

Okay. Now the sweat was really starting to pour down Harris's smarmy face. I pumped my fist in the air, then immediately regretted it because it looked ridiculous.

I didn't want to look ridiculous in front of the livisk Combat Intelligence.

"Quite the rhetorical flourish," Arvie said. "I assume this pleases you as well?"

"You bet your circuits it pleases me as well," I said.

The recording fuzzed again, and then it went out. I waited for the picture to come back in like last time, but that never happened. There was a little more fuzz, and then it was gone.

"Hey, what's the big idea?" I said.

"That's the end of the recording," Arvie said. "I'm afraid I don't have any more for you."

"Shit," I said. "You cut it off right as it was getting good!"

"I could try to find more of it, if you like?"

"That would be great if you could do that," I said.

"I will work on that, but I can't make any promises."

I sighed and fell back on the bed for lack of anything better to do. Someone was sending me a message.

The Fleet was keeping the home system from going into hysterics, and keeping their jobs at the same time, by engaging in a good old-fashioned coverup. And I was the fall guy.

I rolled to the side and felt something different from the sheets with the ridiculous thread count. I gathered the material in my fist and held it up. Blinked.

It was a blue outfit that sparkled. Almost like someone was trying to make me look as close to a livisk as possible.

Ugh.