“It is not that much of a mystery,” she said.
Images of the ship that was bearing down on her in space before Kian flew in a blew it up flashed in her mind. Those moments, when she’d been in the pod, looking for a place to land herself, and stay safe until Veta found her.
And a ship had been aiming for her.
She had tried to convince herself that it was just because of alignment. The Terran ship was defending her from the Rhimodians.
But even at the moment, she knew that was not what she saw.
“No. It is not,” Kian said.
A silence stretched between them. The question was valid—why would the Terrans attack their own people?
It made no sense.
Of course, not much the Emperor did made sense. Hence the reason Freya had hacked the Terran data streams before they left. To find some meaning in the madness.
But the Emperor could not be trusted. Regardless of his public persona, Freya had always been terrified of him. He was a master at manipulating the narrative to his own advantage. Before the Empress died, and after.
Especially after.
Freya, like many children, had grown up hearing the tales of the dangers that lurked in the Sol system. Terrors lingered for them in the dark—like Rhimodians and monsters and cruel enslavers. Even before the war, the fear of others outside the Terran Empire was fierce.
The war had only escalated that thinking.
Especially since the Rhimodians did not have female counterparts. They would steal and enslave all the women. Wicked, hideous monsters that were more machine than male.
Yet to look at Kian, Freya didn’t understand where it came from. Kian was a fine specimen, his ass a perfect male’s backside.
She could watch him walk all day.
Not chase after him, like she was doing now, but just watch him move.
It was like observing active art.
If all Rhimodians looked and behaved and kissed like Kian, a mass exodus of straight women in the Terran Empire would not be outside the realm of possibility.
Especially now.
It was believed that the Sol system was too harsh to live in. Too much work would be needed to make each moon that orbited the gas giant hospitable. Those five moons being the only places in the system with sustainable life traits. Every other planet in the system could not support life, even with the best terraforming.
Some resources could be taken, but nothing that was livable. That had been the Terran Empire’s belief for decades.
Then the Rhimodians came.
Not only were they able to survive, but they defended Sol and turned it into a valuable commodity. Just looking at the roots of the plants above was evidence of the hard work the Rhimodians were putting in terraforming this system.
The Galactic Alliance had not expected the Rhimodians to make a home in the Sol system. Even Freya had heard the representatives from the Galactic Alliance say as much. The Alliance officially refused to have anything to do with the war between the Terrans and the Rhimodians
No one else had been able to create something from the system. Why would these new settlers be any different? The little semi-dead corner of space was mostly a smuggler’s bypass to avoid the warp tunnels and travel in less-than-official capacity. The Sol system sat on the edge of the Terran border, and the Emperor wanted it to control the area.
And the Rhimodians, or so the rumors went. One of those rumors that sprung up every once in a while. The Emperor wanted the system to enslave the Rhimodians.
Fortunately, the Terran Empire's senate did not agree with the Emperor on this one. So instead, the Emperor had sent his beloved to negotiate peace. Since Rhimodians had no females among their people, they would marvel at the Empress and the Imperial Princesses. Be wooed by their feminine charms or some such thing.
Instead, the opposite had happened. They hated females so much that they killed the Empress to prevent peace. It had been the catalyst that created the war.
After the Empress had died, the war had begun in earnest. The Emperor was determined to win in his beloved's name.
