I tried to force my legs to move, but they refused to even so much as budge. I commanded my mind to put one foot in front of the other, and my mind refused to send the signals from my brain down to my feet.

But I refused to admit that I had a problem. I tried to take another step, and I immediately realized there was no point to this. I turned to looked to Varis.

At least I could still move my head around. That was something to be happy about. I didn't want to be the level of paralyzed where I couldn't even move my neck. That was the kind of paralyzed that meant spending time in a medbay, and maybe a month or two recovering and relearning how to do basic stuff like walking and wiping your ass.

"I need help," I said, letting go of my ego entirely in that moment.

Which was something I probably should've done a while ago. I probably shouldn't have even allowed my ego to push me to this point in the first place. The point where I had to worry about all of this because I'd allowed Arvie to inject me with that transmitter. I also had to let Arvie inject me with that transmitter if I was going to have any chance of distracting the empress long enough to save my people.

"Come on," Varis said, nodding to Rachel. Both of them ducked under one of my arms and started dragging me through the tunnel that was shifting and moving all around us. Ominous bits of dust fell here and there, and I could hear the massive cacophony of metal grinding and tearing behind us as the explosion took out the reclamation mind behind us.

"That doesn't sound good," I said.

"I'm showing that the explosion has gone out to at least half a kilometer, which is a little shorter than what the empress said the strike zone would be. That's hardly surprising. She does tend to show a surprising lack of interest in the weapons she's telling her people to use against her enemies," Arvie said.

"She was never very big on actually learning about the stuff she was using to kill people," Jeraj said. "Probably a good thing. I'm sure a few of her enemies have survived over the years because she didn't bother to actually learn about the capabilities of whatever she was ordering to be used against her people. Gives the military types some wiggle room if they want to carry out her orders without actually carrying out her orders."

"Do you think somebody out there deliberately sent a lower-yield weapon because they sympathize with us?" I asked.

"Doubtful," Jeraj said. "Never attribute to someone helping you on the inside that which can be explained by the general incompetence of the imperials."

"Good to know," I said. I'd rather have an incompetent enemy than an enemy who's riddled with spies on our side.

Incompetence was eternal. Relying on someone who might or might not sympathize with you was a numbers game, and eventually your number would come up.

There was more tearing as what sounded like a chain reaction of stuff getting knocked over by the explosion took place behind us. Which meant we probably didn't have very long before that chain reaction reached us and squashed us like a bunch of bugs.

"We should probably get moving if we don't want this place to turn into our tomb."

"That would be a good idea," Arvie said. I don't relish the idea of the empress pulling me apart line of code by line of code like she promised."

"That doesn't even make any sense," Rachel said. "How would that be painful for you at all?"

"See everything we've said about the empress not really understanding the stuff she's threatening people with," Jeraj said.

"Fair enough," Rachel said. "I'd make a quip about the livisk being incompetent, but we have a bunch of incompetent assholes running things in Terran space rather than just the one incompetent asshole sitting on top of everything."

"Hey now," I said, "that's not very accurate."

"Excuse me?" Rachel said.

"She's an incompetent bitch. Probably an incompetent asshole too, but let's be precise in our language."

Rachel snorted and rolled her eyes. "You haven't changed at all from the Bill Stewart I knew once upon a time."

We kept moving. I wanted to turn and look over our shoulders. I don't know why I had the perverse desire to turn and look at the end coming for us. Looking at the end coming for you was the last thing somebody was supposed to do, but I couldn't help myself.

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Luckily my feet still refused to move in the way they should, and so it was difficult for me to do anything but try and shuffle my legs this way and that as I tried to provide a little bit of help to Rachel and Varis as they pulled me along.

"Almost there," Varis said, moving as quickly as she could while dragging me along.

"We need to move a little faster," Jeraj said, and he was looking over his shoulder. If the way his eyes went wide was anything to go on, he didn't see anything pleasant waiting for us back there.

"Must go fast," I said.

"We're going as fast as we can dragging your ass," Rachel said. "Maybe if you hadn't done that bullshit with the neural link things we could move faster. What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that's the kind of thing people use to play fully immersive video games back in human space, so it couldn't be that much of a big deal in livisk space when they've been using that technology for years."

"It's alien technology you had implanted in your brain being operated by a potentially hostile machine intelligence," Rachel said.

"Excuse me?" Arvie said.

"That's not fair," I said.

"Thank you, William," Arvie said.

"Arvie is definitely a hostile machine intelligence, but that doesn't mean he has any malicious intent towards me," I said.

"Well fuck you too, William," he said.

"Plus in all fairness to me, it's not the first bit of alien weirdness that's been implanted in my brain recently," I said.

"That is true," Arvie said. "And being able to study the link with Varis from the inside of your brain is going to prove invaluable once we work out whatever it is that is causing the difficulty now. It's probably simply an overload, a resonance cascade in your neurons as a result of trying to do too much too quickly."

"You overdid it, Bill," Varis said, and I could sense both pride and annoyance coming through the link.

"He has a habit of doing that," Rachel said.

"I don't think I like it when there are two of you ganging up on me like this," I said with a snort.

"Well, you'd better get used to it now that you've rescued me," Rachel said. "Besides, that's my job."

"Telling me when I'm wrong?"

"Telling you when you've done something stupid. If a good XO can't tell her commander when he's doing something stupid, then what's the point of even being there?"

"Touché," I said.

"I like the idea of this XO she's talking about," Varis said.

"Someone to tell you when you're doing something stupid?" I asked, grinning at her. "I'm more than happy to do that."

"No. I need somebody like that who can tell you when you're doing something stupid," she said.

"You tell me I'm doing stupid things all the time," I said. "You and Arvie both."

"Yes, but you don't listen to either one of us when we tell you you're doing something stupid," she said. "Maybe you will listen to Rachel."

"Not likely," Rachel said.

"Almost there," I said, looking at the light in front of us. Though it was putting lipstick on a pig to say it was light in front of us. It was more like it was less dark than the tunnel we were walking through right now. Still, any light at the end of a tunnel was some light.

"Almost there," Varis said.

"Oh, forget all of this," Jeraj said.

Suddenly I found myself getting lifted up bodily by somebody who felt impossibly strong. Like I wondered if this is what it felt like when somebody ran up against me and realized I had the kind of strength that should've been impossible for a human. I looked up and realized Jeraj was doing a classic fireman carry with me.

I grinned up at him as he started to run, and both Rachel and Varis fell in behind us.

"My hero," I said.

"Don't go saying things like that too much. A fellow might get the wrong idea," Jeraj said, grinning down at me.

"Yeah, well, thank you for saving my ass," I said.

We suddenly burst out into the light, or maybe it would be more accurate to say we burst out into the twilight of the Undercity that was a little brighter than the escape tunnel. Though as I was carried out, I also realized I could see a lot more inside that tunnel than I'd I should've been able to given how dark it looked now that we were out of it.

Maybe that was yet another thing about the link we hadn't discovered yet. Definitely something I was going to have to cover with Arvie at some point. Assuming I survived this long enough to get out and do more experimentation about what abilities the link gave me back at the tower.

"Damn," I said, holding up a hand and blinking a couple of times to try and adjust my eyes. "It's really bright out here."

"Bill, what are you talking about?" Rachel said, also looking up and around. "I can barely see what's going on out here."

"Yeah, right, we can barely see what's going on out here," I said quickly.

The last thing I wanted was to get into the link and everything involved with that. Not right now. Rachel had heard all the stories, of course. I'd told her about the livisk living in my head back on Early Warning 72, but I didn't want to get into all the particulars I'd learned about the link since the last time we sat down for a long chat right now.

Especially since the last time I started talking about the livisk living in my head had resulted in her husband thinking I was working for them.

I wondered where he was. I hadn't seen him at all. Where was he hiding? Was he still back in the reclamation mine? Had he just died because he thought I'd betrayed them and he didn't want to follow the crew if it meant coming with me? Or was he up ahead with the rest of them?

Another thing to worry about later.

Because there was plenty to worry about in front of me right now. Like a bunch of tall figures who had to be livisk. All wore clothing that didn't quite look like the rags I'd seen from some of the reclamation miners with us, but it was still obviously stuff that had seen some use. And they were all standing with plasma rifles in a wide semicircle up on top of a large pile of rubble in front of us, and those plasma weapons were glowing.

"Well, shit," I said, staring at all of them. "Looks like somebody broke out a nice welcome for us on the occasion of our escape."

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