I looked around the edge of the corridor and was greeted by sizzling blasts of (gasps) Lydia energy weapons for my trouble.


    Thankfully they weren''t using actual laser weapons, just charged plasma. That would really ruin my day if it hit me, but it didn''t travel at the speed of light. There was no way to dodge that shit.


    I looked at the two Marines standing with me. I made a few quick hand motions the Lydia couldn''t pick up on that told them to go around the Lydia position and hit them hard from behind.


    Giggity.


    The blue sparklies would no doubt say that was dishonorable or some other bullshit about how you were supposed to act in a battle. But I wasn''t in a position to give a flying fuck what they thought about my personal honor, or my professional honor for that fact.


    Especially when engaging them in a fair fight was the sort of thing that was likely to get my ass shot out from under me.


    "Go," I said.


    The Marines nodded their deep crimson armor whispering as they disappeared down a side corridor.


    That was one nice thing about fighting on home territory. I knew my ship better than any Lydia invader could ever hope to. It gave me a distinct home field advantage fighting off the bastards.


    The downside, of course, was that if we were fighting on our home territory that meant the Lydia had already boarded us. I tried to be a glass half full kind of dude though.


    I did a quick double check of all my readouts. So far power levels were optimal and I hadn''t taken any hits that threatened to take my power armor out of the fight.


    I reached down between my legs for a moment. Hey, the readouts could tell me that particular bit of armor was still in place. But it wasn''t going to stop me from double checking that my favorite piece of anatomy was still going strong.


    Well, my second favorite piece of anatomy. I really didn''t want to have my head or my brains blown out.


    The Lydia might be able to take a couple of blasts without any armor thanks to that damned thick skin of theirs, but humanity didn''t have any such luxury.


    We had to do what we''d always done: flip the middle finger to Mother Nature who hadn''t given us anything but our brains to work with, and use those brains to come up with something better than anything Mother Nature could ever dream up.


    I moved my rifle around the corner and squeezed off a couple of shots with the heads-up display that appeared in my helmet. The Lydia waited until my weapon was safely back around my corner before returning fire.


    So much for those bastards looking to die in honorable combat, fucking Klingon wannabes.


    We''d broken out the big guns as soon as it was clear we were being boarded. There''d be none of the pea shooters we used for human security on board. This was the sort of stuff that could stop a Lydia with a couple of shots, rather than simply glancing ineffectively off of their ridiculously thick skin.


    If I was lucky, new line, and had good aim, new line, which wasn''t necessarily the case. I was supposed to be moving a ship through the galaxy and telling people to fire and engage and make it so, and all that kind of shit. I wasn''t supposed to be deep in the shit like this.


    Which was probably a personal command failing that there were enemy aliens on board my ship. But again, glass half full.


    It gave me plenty of opportunity to get firsthand experience trying my hand to testing my rifle skills in an active and engaging environment. Yeah, that was the kind of bullshit the Admiralty liked to see on their reports, though something told me no amount of bullshit was going to get me out of the frying pan on this one.


    We also broke out the plasma cutters for good measure. Those things cut through Lydia skin like butter. Unfortunately, they were all wearing armor that covered their hearts, which meant we couldn''t hit them hard there and take advantage of that evolutionary off button that seemed like a really bad idea for a species that enjoyed getting into fights on the regular.


    I was getting distracted though. There were borders to take care of and all that.


    "Are you sure you don''t want to surrender?" I shouted down the corridor.


    There was maybe a half second delay as the computer in my suit took what I was saying and translated it into something the Lydia would understand.


    "Death before surrender, eh, Livas?" A Lydia with a surprisingly sensual voice shouted back in standard. Okay, I guess we were having a friendly conversation after all.


    I shivered at that voice. That was a voice made for radio as they said back on Earth, even though radio hadn''t been a going concern for a few centuries. But the saying was a relic as much as the save icon on computers still referencing ancient magnetic floppy disks on ancient computers.


    That was the problem with the Lydia. They might be as prickly as Klingons when it came to matters of honor, but they were as good looking as the Deltans. Look up your ancient sci-fi if you aren''t up to date on that one. It''s a little obscure these days.


    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    Only they were blue instead of bald or having ridged foreheads, and they sparkled like an ancient vampire.


    Which was...


    The Lydia down that corridor would be the same as all of their soldiers. The men would be tall, dashing, handsome, and muscled to the point that the ancient governator himself, blessed be his AI fitness routines, would tell them they needed to take it easy.


    And maybe get to the choppa, which was another line we still used even though everything was using anti-grav these days instead of rotary wing for lift.


    The lady soldiers, something that had always interested me far more, thank you very much, would be like runway models stepping out of a fashion show ready to destroy my ship in a fit of pique.


    Not to mention I didn''t give a fuck how hot they were. The fact that they carried energy weapons and were currently doing their best to commandeer my baby right out from under me did away with any chills that might be multiplying as I thought about them and was losing control.


    Still, it was unfair that the enemy looked like a species of sparkling blue underwear models.


    Supposedly there were plenty who didn''t look that good back on their home world. They had to have accountants and teachers and others who weren''t warriors, REM-F types who sought their honor by finding loopholes in whatever tax code their empress had come out with. But I fought the Lydia, that meant running into the perfect specimens who fought for the glory of their empire.


    I frowned. They''d been quiet for too long, long enough for me to get distracted thinking about how hot they were. Quiet wasn''t good.


    I moved my rifle around the corner again, using the camera on the site and the heads-up display in my power armor to get a good look. Sure enough, a couple of entirely too handsome Lydia with elaborate tattoos were making their way down the corridor.


    Not that I cared much for the men other than to wonder what their routine was.These dudes were important tactically speaking, sure, but I only had eyes for the beauty jogging ahead of them.


    My breath caught as I got a good look at her. She really was too perfect, like all of them. I might have gone weak in the knees if I wasn''t in power armor that would hold me up regardless. As it was, that armor sent an inquiry to make sure I was doing okay, because there were suddenly elevated levels of all kinds of things that usually only got elevated when I saw a pretty girl from across the room when I was on shore leave.


    I dismissed it with an irritated thought.


    She had a series of intricate tattoos that meant she had a pretty high rank. I might be looking at the commander of their ship. Say what you will about the Lidia, they were pretty egalitarian.


    As long as you were another Lidia. All egalitarianism went out the window when it came to dealing with outworlders.


    Shit. With those intricate tattoos, she might be a general or higher royalty even. The more elaborate their tattoos, the closer they were to the emperor so they could kiss her royal ass more directly.


    That didn''t stop me from trying to stop her. My aim was true, aided by the targeting laser that landed at the center of her chest.


    Which was armored, of course.


    She looked down in wide-eyed surprise at the three dots that appeared on her chest. It would''ve been comical if the situation wasn''t so deadly serious.


    She tried to dodge, but this was a narrow corridor and there wasn''t anywhere to dodge to. She''d thrown all her chips on sneaking up on me, and now that it hadn''t worked for her, she was going to hurt.


    A lot.


    Not that it was my fucking problem. She was the one who led those assholes onto my ship after all.


    I squeezed off a few shots. The first didn''t seem to do anything other than make her bellow in rage. It was a war cry that was supposed to chill enemy soldiers to the bone. But in this case, I welcomed it, because it meant the blue-skinned idiot stood tall with her arms raised.


    I landed a couple more shots and she finally went down, her chest armor smoked, though she was still breathing.


    I waited, ignoring the two male Lidia still coming towards me. They let out bellows of their own, followed by the sound of power armor moving into hand-to-hand combat as my marines appeared behind them out of a side corridor and took care of business.


    "Clear down here, Captain," one of the marines said.


    "Good. I think I can take care of this one Lidia. You guys go where you can help in the fighting. I don''t want to give up a meter once we''ve retaken it."


    "Got it, Cap," he said, turning and doing as he was told.


    It wasn''t supposed to be like this. This was supposed to be a routine mission targeting one of their space stations they were using to set up a surreptitious colony in space that nominally belonged to humanity, thank you very much. At least that''s what the star charts said even if the Lidia diplomats objected strenuously.


    And now their military was objecting even more strenuously.


    Then again, we were at war, so fuck them and what they thought.


    Once the Lidia got a toehold on a planet, disputed or not, it was as impossible to get rid of them as cockroaches had supposedly been back before some ingenious exterminator came up with the idea of mobile hunter killer microbots with frickin’ laser beams on their heads that hunted the species to extinction outside of zoos and the occasional colony world where splinter groups fucked off to pretend they still lived in some century prior to the 21st, because their imaginary sky friend told them it was somehow more pure to live with all of the greatest hits of diseases that had been eliminated through the rest of Terran space.


    I stepped forward and cross-referenced the tattoos on the leader with the database of known Lidia ranks. When the results came up, I let out a low whistle.


    I''d gotten myself one sequel trilogy of a whopper this time, not only a general, but the elaborate body paint meant she was definitely a member of the Lidia Imperial family.


    I couldn''t tell who she was. She wasn''t in our databases, for all that some of the royals were. But she was definitely a whale of a captive.


    "Who are you and what are you doing here?" I asked as I pulled off my helmet, tucked it under one arm, and regarded this strange alien woman who was so entrancing, even lying on the corridor with scorch marks on her midsection where her armor had saved her from being knocked unconscious by my shots.


    One thing was for certain: If I could bring in someone this high ranking, then there was a good chance I could get out of whatever trouble was inevitably going to come down from on high for getting my ship boarded in the first place. Not that I was the only one here whose ship was being boarded. If the comms on the bridge right before I had to come down and take care of this cleanup operation was anything to go on.


    The Admiralty was going to have some fun chewing ass after this one, that was for damn sure. Not that any of their asses were out in the sling, but that was pretty typical for them.


    I should''ve been more on my guard, both with my ship and in the current situation. If I''d been paying attention or thinking at all, then I would''ve kept my helmet on.


    As it was, I was completely unprepared when the Lidia''s eyes opened and her hand reached out to grab me by the ankle. See, all that stuff earlier about getting to engage in a... dynamic real-time combat situation and how I didn''t have a lot of experience with that sort of thing, because I was supposed to be the one who moved the ship around that delivered the people who were more used to dealing with dynamic real-time combat operations.


    In a flash, I was on the floor. I didn''t even have time to let out a cry to let the marines who''d disappeared around the corner know I was in trouble.


    Shit.