The reaction from the livisk all around us was immediate, and it was interesting to see. They were all looking around at each other. Like they almost couldn't believe what was happening.

I looked over to Varis to see if she had any idea what was going on here. She shrugged and hit me with a look as confusion came through the link and made it clear she had about as much idea of what the hell was going on here as I did.

Which is to say, she didn't seem to know a whole hell of a lot at all.

"Is a fox important to your society or something?" she asked.

I smiled. "I can think of at least one famous outlaw who goes by that name."

"So it's like the Spider."

I shivered.

"What's wrong?" Varis asked.

"You really need to stop saying that," I said.

"Why?" she said, and this time there was amusement that came through the link. "Do spiders bother you?"

"Spiders on Earth don't bother me," I said, perhaps sounding a little too snippish. "But spiders on this fucking planet scare the crap out of me."

"There's nothing wrong with them," she said. "They're good eating if you can hunt them down."

I shivered again. I'd seen a couple of livisk delicacies that involved eating the damn things. There were supposedly some haute cuisine places where hunting them down with knives was part of the fun. I'd even thought about trying it as revenge for the one that bit me in the ass in the shower, but then I'd ultimately decided there wasn't a chance in hell I was going to do anything of the sort.

"You're the Terran Fox," the outlaw said, staring down at us.

"None other than," Olsen said.

She pulled her weapon up and pointed it down at him. The tip started to glow and there was yet another hum that came from the thing.

"You have a lot of balls showing yourself down here. That's the way you phrase it in Terran, right?"

She said part of it in Standard and part of it in Livisk. Probably to make sure she got the meaning across.

"Truly, you have a staggering command of human cursing," Olsen said, turning and grinning at me.

"He's a chip off the old block," I said, miming reaching up and wiping a tear from my eye. Though, of course there were no tears waiting for me up there. I was just watching this situation play out. It was quite interesting, to say the least.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you right here and now for all of the raids you did on our supply lines, Fox," the outlaw said.

"Well, that should be pretty simple," he said. "My people have you surrounded. You might be able to get a shot off on me, but you're not going to be able to kill all of my people before they start shooting, and I can assure you that we have no silly notions about it being dishonorable to shoot somebody in the back if it looks like they're about to shoot us."

"This is seriously Olsen?" I said, turning to Rachel.

"Yup, this is seriously Olsen," she said. "He's gone through some shit down here."

"Damn," I said, shaking my head.

The outlaw turned her attention to Varis next.

"You stink of human," she said. "It's pathetic that you would keep so many of them in your company. It brings dishonor on you and your family and the entire livisk…"

She let out a quiet gagging noise. Like she was trying to draw breath and suddenly found it difficult to do so, and that probably had something to do with the massive glowing plasma hole in her chest where her lungs had been just a moment ago.

The outlaw looked down at that hole in her stomach where her lungs had been, then she looked up to Varis who was holding her plasma pistol out. She'd hit the woman dead center. The tip of her plasma pistol was still glowing and letting out an ominous hum.

"Holy shit," I breathed.

"Holy shit," Olsen said.

"Damn," Rachel said, "Remind me to never piss off your alien girlfriend."

"Right," I said, "Isn't she amazing?"

The outlaw fell forward, which was rough, because she hit a couple of jagged bits of metal and debris that were sticking out. It looked like we were at some sort of building that had collapsed in on itself once upon a time during some ancient conflagration, and she was hitting every sharp bit of it on her way down.

Not that I thought the outlaw was going to feel much of that, what with the way she'd been robbed of the ability to breathe.

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"Does anybody else want to criticize me for spending time with my human?" Varis asked, looking around at everyone with a challenge in her eyes. "Particularly since all of you were just bested by this human? It sounds like you've been spending the last couple of months getting bested by this human."

Again, all of the livisk exchanged glances, and then they all started to lower their weapons.

"Good," Varis said, turning to Olsen. "I want you to distribute all of their weapons amongst everybody else on the crew. I want everybody to have a plasma weapon they can use to defend themselves or to run an assault."

"To run an assault?" Olsen asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Exactly," she said. "We're going to go pay a visit to this Spider who's been so rude about dodging your invitations."

I blinked. Well, okay then. That was certainly interesting. Maybe we were going to do a little something-something while we were down here.

I also knew having a crew that was full of mostly almost-retirees wasn't exactly the best way to go about leading an assault against what was probably going to be a fortified livisk position, so I reached out with my mind to the probe. Which had Arvie turning and looking at me curiously with that probe.

"William, what are you trying to do?" he asked.

That got him an irritated look from Varis, and so I quickly put my thumb to my neck and made a cutting motion. Hopefully he'd figure out that meant he needed to cut that shit out and be cool. The last thing I needed was Varis getting upset because I was trying to reach out and touch somebody via my latest mental link.

I could feel it there. It was like an almost tingling pulsing in the back of my mind. Not quite like the feeling I had that Varis was there. But it was like there was a part of my mind that went out beyond my mind, and I could reach out and brush that with a thought. As I did it, I was able to feel Arvie out there somewhere.

"William, what are you doing?" Arvie asked, and I noted that he was talking at regular speed.

Meanwhile, Varis had come over to me, and I suddenly found myself in a couple of different conversations at the same time.

"Can we please speed this up a little bit?" I said to Arvie mentally.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea. You're only now regaining the ability to move your feet."

"But I am regaining the ability to move my feet," I said. "So I think the whole neural link thing is working."

"Okay, so we're going to have to track down the Spider's den," Varis said, pulling Olsen over as well. She nodded to Jeraj and his sister to come and join us, and Rachel joined as well.

I found myself splitting my attention between the two conversations, and I was pleasantly surprised to realize I wasn't having nearly as much trouble splitting my attention between two places as I'd had splitting my attention between six fighter craft while making my way through the tunnel.

I also looked down at the lower corner of my field of view. A heads-up display had appeared as soon as I started this conversation with Arvie. It told me I was at a level one connection.

"What do those connection levels mean?" I asked.

"It's a measure of the degree of control you've gained over the neural link," Arvie said. "As with all things, it's something that requires practice for you to be able to do it well."

"So we have the entire crew of the Early Warning 72 ready to go," Rachel said.

"But aren't most of them retirees?" Varis said.

"Most of them are, yes," I said. "But everybody has had basic combat training through the Terran Navy and they've kept it up through the Combined Corporate Fleets."

"They're supposed to keep it up with the Combined Corporate Fleets," Rachel said, her lips compressing to a thin line. "But as far as I know, you're the only person who actually ever bothered to keep up with that combat training."

"Well, they've all had combat training at one point, right?" Varis said.

"Right," I said, switching back to mental. "Look, Arvie. I don't need a lot from you. I'm not going to try and do something stupid like taking control of a bunch of fighters, even if I'm doing a glorified version of Alt-Tab in between them."

"Alt-Tab?" he said, and then he paused for a moment. "Ah, yes. I see what you're talking about. So you don't want to do that. Then what do you want to do?"

"How is the rescue going with Selii and her people? And were you able to get Satomi?"

"I'm still trying to find Selii with some probe drones I've sent out. I have managed to waylay the transport that was holding Satomi, but I'm afraid it's currently resisting."

I looked at Varis and thought about what I should do here. I looked at her and arched an eyebrow, sending a question through the link.

She looked over at me suddenly, because this feeling had nothing to do with what we were planning here. I think she could tell that.

She hesitated for only a moment. I was trying to send the feeling that I was about to do something stupid. Something she might not like. Something that would require a little bit of that plausible deniability that she always loved so much.

She nodded.

"I trust you, William," she said. "And your people."

That last bit was obviously to cover up the conversation beneath the conversation we were having.

"I trust my people as well," I said. "And I trust you. I trust them to do what needs to be done in a fight. Especially if we're in a situation where our only option is to fight our way out of here."

"Why are we heading for this Spider's place anyway?" Rachel asked. "Aren't there other places we could go that would be less fortified?"

"The Spider is guaranteed to have some sort of communications we could use to reach the surface. She also knows the way around here. We might spend weeks trying to find a way to get up top without somebody to guide us if we don't have a reclamation mine as "a convenient way up top," Olsen said.

"The Fox brings up a good point," Varis said, earning her an odd look from Olsen. "We could spend a lot of time trying to figure out a way out of here, and it might take us far longer than we have considering the empress is going to realize some of us made it out of there and she'll come looking for us."

"This is what I'm talking about, Arvie," I said through the mental link. "We need to bring reinforcements, and it's entirely up to you to get those reinforcements in here. I don't know if we're going to be able to take on this Spider lady all on our own, even if we take a bunch of weapons from these livisk assholes."

Arvie seemed to pause for a moment. It was a pause I only recognized because my mind was now working fast enough with the implant that I could tell when he was pausing on the machine intelligence level, sort of. I still got the feeling that his brain could move much faster than mine could ever move, even with the enhancement from the battle pair.

It also upset me there were probably so many pauses I'd missed out on because I didn't realize he was even doing it.

"Fine," he said, pausing for a moment. "What do you wish me to do?"

"I need you to do everything you can to find Selii and break out Satomi, and then we need to get troops down here however you can. Sneak'em in if you can, but if we need to then we're going to fight our way through. This whole revolution thing isn't going to last very long if me and Varis get killed down here. Plus, I'd like to save my crew."

"I would very much like to save you as well," Arvie said, though he didn't sound entirely happy about how he was going to have to go about doing that saving. "But you need to stop using this link. I don't want to accidentally harm you."

"Just get to work on it and keep me updated," I sent as I turned to Varis and grinned.

"I like this plan. I think it will really come together."

She hit me with a suspicious look. I probably deserved that.

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