"William."

"I don't have time for it."

"But I wanted to..."

"I said I don't have time for it, Arvie."

"Bill."

I blinked. I pulled myself away from the simulator. I looked down at my hand, which was fuzzing as I grabbed the control stick. Then I looked up at Arvie.

For a moment there, it felt almost like I was completely inside the simulation. Like it was my mind that was controlling things directly in those ships rather than using the computer representation of the physical controls I'd be using in the real world instead.

I blinked.

"You called me Bill."

"Don't get used to it," he said with a smile. "I simply wanted to get your attention."

"Okay, Arvie, what's going on?"

"I'm monitoring the neural link. The thing is still very new, and I worry you are pushing yourself too hard too quickly."

"Yeah, and I worry we're about to have a bomb dropped on us, so you'll forgive me if I don't worry too much about overdoing it with the neural link or whatever it is you're so worried about."

Arvie stared at me, and then finally he sighed and shook his head.

"I suppose you do have a point, but I don't like that you have a point."

"Yeah, I bet you don't like that I'm making a good point," I said, and I turned back to the display in front of me.

I sent one of the ships after a bomber, then switched. The second one fired off a volley of missiles at a bunch of fighters rising through the city to go after the third fighter.

With the third fighter I dove down into the concrete canyon that was the livisk capital city, though it wasn't even really a concrete canyon. No, it was made out of a bunch of exotic building materials, but the term concrete canyon had stuck in language, and so that's what I thought of as I dove down in between the buildings.

I moved to the fourth fighter and fired off my plasma blasters at a livisk fighter stupid enough to get too close, then I moved to the fifth fighter and turned towards the bomber, really punching it to get in close.

Then I moved to the sixth fighter, and I turned in the direction of the imperial palace.

"William, what are you doing?" Arvie said.

"I'm fighting the empress," I said.

Back to the first one. The missiles went off, and it took out a good chunk of the fighters. The problem being there were a lot more imperial fighters coming out of the woodwork than I could conceivably deal with. I switched to the fighter with the plasma blasts and turned, firing my plasma guns at yet another one. Though everything was moving so slowly that it was almost like flying on easy mode.

I was gaining ground on the bomber. It was doing a bunch of evasive maneuvers trying to get away, but then I noted two more bombers had appeared.

I switched to a fighter that had other imperial fighters pursuing it, but I had a little bit of room in between us. I could feel the buffeting as their plasma blasts slammed into the fighter, but I knew I'd be able to do this. So I punched it on that one as well, wanting to get in closer to one of the other two bombers before I fired off my missiles.

The closer I was, the less likely it was that something from down below was going to hit me.

I moved to another fighter just in time to see the world go black. Damn. I hadn't even had a chance to get off the missiles before I switched to that one.

I switched to yet another, turning to fire my plasma blasts at yet another fighter that didn't have time to react.

"William," Arvie said, and this time there was a quiet to his voice that caught my attention and had me turning to look at him.

"What's wrong now?" I asked.

He was staring at me with wide eyes looking at the simulation in front of me.

"How are you able to do this?" he asked.

"You mean fly a bunch of fighters at once? Well, the empress is making this easier on me. Every time she destroys one of those things, it means less that I have to concentrate on. Other than that it's just like alt tabbing between windows in a game, and everything being slowed way down makes it super easy. Barely an inconvenience!"

I moved to the fighter that was going towards the palace. I dove down in between the canyons there as well. The better to shrug off any missile or countermeasures they might send at me. I could even see the palace straight in front of me. It was like when they designed Imperial Seat with the massive palace at the middle surrounded by a bunch of pyramid towers that provided shield-generating capacity as well as defensive capacity in case somebody tried to do what I was doing they never conceived of a world where somebody might try to do a trench run in between the buildings to avoid all their fancy defenses.

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I could sense other fighters trying to come in after me thanks to sensor sweeps from the other fighters I still had up there. Only five of them left now, and two of them were down in the canyons.

I moved to the other one that wasn't doing a trench run towards the imperial palace. I shifted and moved up along a building, causing some of the windows on it to blow out as a result of the antigrav

I didn't even so much as wince at that. As long as it wasn't one of Varis's towers then I didn't feel bad for whatever bastard owned the thing.

I switched to the fighter that was still in the middle of a dogfight. There were too many fighters all around me, and they were starting to score too many hits. So I dove for the deck with that one as well, but not before leaving a little surprise. This one had a mine installed in the back for some reason, and so I dropped the thing out the back. For all the world like my fighter was taking a crap on Imperial Seat.

Which in a way it totally was.

Then I switched back to one of the other two that was still up and going for a bomber. I was close enough now that I was able to fire off every missile, and I made sure every one was heading straight for the bomber. But I could also sense that there were more bombers starting to take off.

The entirety of Imperial Seat was starting to look like I'd kicked up an angry hornets' nest, and I'd managed to do it with only eight fighters. There were a bunch of lines of traffic that were starting to get disrupted as missiles flew. A couple of those disruptions caused chain reactions where entire lines of traffic started crashing into one another. Some of them exploded, but most of them merely started moving down towards the buildings below as safety protocols took over.

I briefly felt bad for any civilians caught in that nonsense, but only briefly. We were in the middle of a war, after all.

A voice in the back of my head whispered that was what anybody who attacked a civilian population had ever said all throughout history, and maybe some of them were right. Maybe they weren't.

But I had to get my people out of the reclamation mine, damn it, and that took priority over everything else for me in that moment.

I moved back to the other fighter that was still free and clear over the city. Only there were multiple missiles rising up towards me, damn it. The anti-air and anti-starfighter stuff was really starting to come online now, filling the skies over Imperial Seat.

I fired off everything I had from that ship towards the second bomber that had appeared. Though there were even more of them now.

I moved back to one of the two doing a trench run. I did a quick reverse that had an imperial fighter behind me overshooting me, and then I took it out with plasma cannons and did a turn.

I moved back to the one that had blown out all of the buildings. I let it get a little too vertical, and that allowed some of the livisk fighters to get in shots. The thing had taken heavy damage on the port side, and the antigrav there was starting to go out.

Damn it. I let that one go a little too long.

"How are you doing this, William?" Arvie said.

"Come on, Arvie," I said, grinning at him. "This is the kind of stuff I was doing back on Earth with nothing but alt-tabbing in between a bunch of windows when I couldn't take on single-player content all on my own, so I needed to bring in a bunch of extra botted fighters."

"Damn, William," Arvie breathed.

I switched back to the one that was getting close to the Imperial Palace.

"Is it possible to generate a signature on this thing that makes it look like I'm about to launch a nuke at the Imperial Palace?" I asked.

"It is," Arvie said, and then there was a pause. "Might I ask why you would want to do something as mind-bogglingly dangerous as making the empress think you're going to fire a nuke at her?"

"Because I'm sending a message," I said.

"I don't know that the message she will receive is necessarily the message you want to send," he said.

"It's totally the message I want to send, Arvie. Now do it. We get in the shit, and then we get ourselves out."

"We get in the shit, and we get ourselves out," he said.

Suddenly there was a new signature on the fighter, and everything in the city seemed to pause for a moment.

Sure, it was difficult to tell for certain if everything paused was because of that false energy signature that made it look like I was about to launch a nuke at the empress, but I was pretty sure I'd just got Her Royal Highness's attention.

"There it is, Arvie," I said. "That's what I'm talking about."

I was moving straight down the gullet. Stay on target. Stay on target.

I wasn't going to use the Force, but it's not like I needed to use the Force to bounce a nuke off of something that big if I had a nuke. Which I totally didn't, but the empress didn't know that.

Suddenly I was hit with a blast of electromagnetic bullshit from above. The fake nuke signature disappeared, and it felt like the controls were a little sluggish.

"Damn it, what was that?" I growled.

"It looks like you got hit with a concentrated blast from a high powered sensor unit on the side of one of the buildings. The kind that can focus in on you with enough power to figure out what you had for lunch a month back," Arvie said.

"Son of a bitch," I growled.

Not that I was surprised. I'd been around the block a few times, so I knew electronic countermeasures could be quite nasty. Especially when they wanted to know exactly what you were carrying on your ship.

Out above the city more fighters started to rise. So I did something that was probably stupid. I hit the override, and then I started activating a resonance cascade on the fighter's matter-antimatter intermix.

"William, I feel like you're doing something precipitous again."

"Yeah, I hope so," I said, and then I opened a communication channel. "I'll keep flying this thing right down your gullet if you don't call off those bombers, Your Worship."

There was a pause. I wondered if I was going to get some functionary. But then, to my surprise, the empress actually came over the channel. Which was really a surprise because I'd deliberately chosen an open communications channel. The kind of thing anybody could listen in on. Sort of like police scanners back on Earth.

My grandma had one of those, and it had always been fascinating to listen in on it. Especially some of the orbital channels from the space stations going around Earth.

"I will kill you."

"Yeah, and maybe I'm only going to destroy one of your buildings, but I have a pretty good chance of doing some damage, Your Worship. Not to mention all the damage that'll be caused by the blast reflecting off your shields."

I could hear teeth grinding on the other end.

"This isn't over between us, Bill Stewart," she said.

"I never said it was, but again, this round goes to me. At least if you don't want to risk dying or having a chunk of your palace blown up."

I didn't think that was actually going to happen. They had pretty heavy shielding on the imperial palace. But the thing about a good bluff was you had to play it until the very end. I waited, wondering if she was going to fall for it.

And then suddenly the bombers she'd sent out turned around and started returning to base.

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