How I Helped My Smokin' Hot Alien Girlfriend Conquer the Empire 3-59: Sending a Message
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The ship moved into a low orbit over the moon. I kept an eye out on all the sensor readings as we moved in low, and I made sure all the weapons were charged and ready to go.
A good ominous hum couldn’t be heard through the vacuum of space all the way down there on the planet surface. Doubly so because the moon was inhospitable to life as we knew it, and so everyone was living in the equivalent of domes and underground structures, but I figured having everything charged to the point they’d be able to detect the weapons signature was the equivalent of having a nice ominous hum that let them contemplate the error of their ways.
“What are you doing?” Sera asked.
“He’s moving into an orbit over the mining facility,” Varis said.
“Yeah, but we’re just hovering here,” Sera said. “Why aren’t we attacking them?”
“I think it’s important that you see some of the planning process on this one,” I said, waving a hand and making the holodisplay a little bigger than it’d be normally. Which meant it took up most of the windscreen in front of us with lots of facts and figures and useful information projected on it that really added to the whole presentation above and beyond what the actual 3D holoprojection showed us.
“Arvie, could you do me a favor and point out all the facilities down there we’d be able to hit to provide the maximum amount of damage while at the same time avoiding harm to life?” I asked.
“Certainly, William,” Arvie said.
A moment later the map of the facility was overlaid with targeting information. There were a few spots that handled bringing whatever they were mining up to the surface. Messing that up would cause some trouble.
Even more interesting were the life support facilities. A lot of people still had the idea that life support was something that just magically happened via some field that was generated and was the equivalent of antigrav or other fundamental forces that humanity had made its bitch through practical application of the sciences that were indistinguishable from magic.
Eat your heart out, Arthur C. Clarke. I imagined if the old bastard was still around today then he’d have some things to say about being on a moon orbiting a gas giant, but that was neither here nor there.
The reality was that life support facilities weren’t nearly as sexy as all that. Sure there were ways to scrub stuff with science that was indistinguishable from magic, but the return on investment wasn’t worth it. Even when we had reactors that basically gave us free energy.
No. When people talked about life support facilities, what they really meant were giant vats full of algae and other stuff that gave you some great bang for your buck when it came to scrubbing carbon dioxide and turning it back into the oxygen/nitrogen mix that life had evolved to enjoy on earth after some microscopic critters figured out photosynthesis and forced the issue for everything else living on the planet in a mass extinction event that made humanity’s stuff since the industrial revolution look like rookie numbers.
Not to mention the mix that so many other Ancient-descended species loved so much because the Ancients either picked worlds that were M-class to their preferences, or they did a little bit of terraforming when those planets weren’t quite to their liking.
“I don’t think you should hit the life support facilities,” Sera said.
“I would be in agreement with her on this one,” Varis said from behind me.
Worry came through the link. Like she thought I was actually capable of hitting their life support facilities. Then again, I’d shown her time and again that I was willing to make the hard decisions.
The fact that our first meeting had involved me taking her captive and then fragging a space station her brother, a former prince-consort to the empress, was currently occupying was enough to demonstrate that.
Lucky for me she’d been more annoyed by her brother than anything, and I’d solved her issues with the guy without her needing to shunt him off to some stupid make-work position.
I turned and hit Varis with a wink. She blinked. Meanwhile Harath and Bronhel were looking at me with the kind of look I was used to getting from livisk, but that was fine. It was the kind of look that said they thought I was about to do something mildly insane and dangerous, and they weren’t sure if they should try to interrupt me before I could pull it off.
But Varis merely smiled. The worry coming through the battle link quickly turned to caution, but that was it.
We trusted each other. She knew if I was going to do something stupid, it was going to be something stupid in the name of furthering her interests. Our interests.
“Why don’t you think it would be a good idea to hit the life support facilities?” I asked, figuring I’d play on a bit of the livisk bloodthirstiness I’d come to expect from her. “That would be a good way for us to take out our enemies, and we wouldn’t have to worry about sending troops down in there to clear the facility.”
Sera seemed to hesitate for a moment. Again there was some of that hesitation, but it only lasted for that moment. She seemed to be getting better at speaking her mind.
“I think there are both practical and political reasons for not taking out the life support facilities,” she said.
Meanwhile, shots started to rise from the mining facility. Which wasn’t exactly a surprise. It wouldn’t be much of a mining facility if House Alarth didn’t leave them with at least a little bit of defense. I was surprised they were able to mount those defenses so quickly after having them taking out by the mysterious alien invaders.
“Let’s go with the practical consideration first,” I said.
Some of those blasts looked like they were getting high enough that they could potentially hit the ship, but I wasn’t that worried. The ones that did hit were so low powered by the time they reached orbit that they wouldn’t have been a problem even before I took the shields and armor into consideration.
“I think there are ways for you to hit the facility that will demonstrate our power while at the same time leaving the facility able to be repaired and brought back into working order quickly,” she said.
“And you think the facility being brought back into working order quickly is something I should care about?” I asked. “We’re talking about breaking House Alarth’s things, after all.”
She hit me with a look. This time it wasn’t hesitation. No. This time around it was a look that said she knew I was full of shit. It was a look I was used to getting from the livisk women in my life, but it was a little surprising to see that look coming from Sera of all people.
“I think you have every intention of taking over House Alarth’s operations before this visit is over, Bill,” she said. “And I think part of that is going to involve avoiding damaging one of their facilities to the point that it would take a substantial investment of time and resources to get it up and running again.”
“And what makes you think I’m doing anything like that?” I asked.
“Because it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what you’re doing out here at the edge of known space,” she said, her eyes darting back to Bronhel for a moment. “The empress thinks everything happens in Imperial Seat on Livisqa. She ignores the wider empire at her own peril, and I think you’re paying attention to what she’s ignoring as part of one of your plots.”
“I see,” I said, surprised that she was able to put all that together.
“I might’ve also had some lessons from Bronhel about relations with the wider empire and some of the colony worlds that led me to believe she was trying to teach me something without making it too obvious she was trying to teach me something,” Sera said.
“I see,” I said, this time turning to hit Bronhel with a look. The woman’s chin went up. Clearly she wasn’t going to apologize for trying to prepare the kid for whatever was coming at her.
“Not to mention I’ve had some conversations with Arvie about what we can expect out here. He’s very bad about hiding that you’re not just out here for a vacation,” she said.
“I see,” I said, and this time I turned my attention to the Combat Intelligence who was suddenly looking anywhere but directly at me in the simulation.
“I merely wanted the child to know we were doing something useful while we were out here on this vacation trip,” Arvie said in the simulation. “She seemed quite upset that we were coming out here to enjoy a vacation when the empress needed killing. Those were her exact words, mind you. That we shouldn’t be out here wasting time with a vacation when we needed to focus on killing the empress.”
I pulled out of the simulation and turned back to Sera.
“Okay. So let’s say I want this facility to be up and running soon, but I also want to send a message. How would you handle that?”
“I would hit some of the connecting tissue between the various surface habitations,” she said, reaching out to the holodisplay and drawing a line with her finger across several of the areas Arvie and I had already targeted because we were thinking the same thing. “Something like that is easy enough to repair, and in the meantime it simply means doing an EVA if someone wants to move between the various areas. That’s the kind of thing that will be inconvenient, certainly, but it’s not going to halt operations entirely.”
“Indeed,” I said. “And what about those political reasons for not wanting to hit them too hard?”
“You said it yourself,” she said. “We’re out here trying to win hearts and minds. You want to kill the empress, but that’s going to be useless if we go to the same cycle of having a new empress take over who might be worse, or might be better, but you have to wait and see. Not to mention someone else could always come along who’s worse in the next succession war.”
I turned to look at Bronhel again. She was beaming, but the moment she realized I was looking at her she turned back to the same severe look she always had when she knew I was looking at her.
“She is really a star pupil when it comes to understanding interstellar relations and how the empress relates to the colonies,” Bronhel said.
“I have to be,” Sera said, staring at me with some of the same defiance Bronhel had been showing just a moment ago. “I want to kill the empress, but I also want to make sure nobody ever has to go through what I went through again.”
My heart broke for the kid all over again. Which is something that seemed to be happening a lot whenever something like this came up, but I guess it was what it was. It’s not like I could go back in time and fix the nuclear bomb being dropped on the building her parents were in.
Though we had quietly enacted policies all around the tower facilities that tried to keep members of the same family from all working in the same tower at the same time. Sort of like some of the ancient WWII policies of not allowing entire families to serve in the same unit or on the same ship after a few families were wiped out by one blast.
“I think that’s a very good assessment of everything that’s going on here,” I said. “Would you like to do the honors of targeting the connecting halls on the surface that you think will send a message?”
Sera looked at the targeting map in front of us. It really was pretty easy to figure out where to hit them to cause minimal damage while at the same time sending a message.
“What are you thinking, kid?” I asked when she stared at that thing for a little longer than was strictly necessary.
With most bloodthirsty livisk? I’d figure they’d just point the buttons at the targets and fire. Hell, there were a lot of human kids who would’ve done the same thing given the same opportunity.
But not Sera. She was thinking things through. You could tell when you looked at her. I could see the wheels turning. I felt that pride all over again.
“Do we need to actually fire on them to send the message?” she asked.
I glanced to Varis. She smiled and nodded. She was starting to get it, too, for all that she had a bit of that bloodthirsty livisk outlook on life as well.
“What are you talking about, kid?” I asked.
She waved at the holodisplay in front of us. One part of it showed the ship in orbit directly over the mining facility. There were currently bright lights going off all around the thing as it moved through the flux tube between the gas giant and the moon down below. The whole facility would have to be hardened against that sort of thing.
“You have a ship that hovering ominously over them,” she said. “They’re trying their best to fire on you, and their best isn’t coming close to being enough. You’ve captured a good chunk of their mining bees, and the lady running things is also our captive. I think you’ve sent them a pretty dishonoring message without firing a shot.”
I grinned and reached out to ruffle her hair. Which earned me an annoyed his as she tried to fix that hair, but she also looked pleased.
“I think that’s a great idea,” I said. “I’m starting to like this whole idea of humiliating the livisk we’re fighting without firing a shot.”
Holding them in contempt to piss off my enemies? Yeah, that was a strategy I could get used to.
Posted Sep 21, 2026, 6:24 PM UTC