He noticed that her voice shifted again when she spoke. “Did you not like your service for the Empire?”
“I loved what I did for the girls. Taking care of them and helping to raise them to womanhood was a joy I would not trade for anything. They are as much my daughters as my own flesh and blood would be.”
“You have your own children then, besides the princesses?”
She shook her head. “I was never able to have any.”
He understood that. “While that is not how our people reproduce, when the Rhimodians were primitive, we did take mates and create family units. Some Rhimodians still wonder if we shall ever find a way to have our own offspring. Eventually.”
“Do you wish for that?”
“I do not wish for our people to die away.”
“That’s not a no.”
* * *
“So tell me about your moons,”Lady Bianca asked as they walked through the complex.
She had requested a tour of the facility after they had eaten, and Harbin felt that he could take her on a tour in the name of good faith and the future negotiations.
Though, he honestly just wanted more time to talk to her. She was very pleasant to converse with.
“There are the five large moons that orbit Sol. There are others, but none are worth attempting to make habitable.”
“Did your people have to terraform all the worlds?”
He shook his head. “Not by the galactic definition of creating life where it was dead to terraform, no. The moons had atmospheres, and while not completely hospitable, we did have to do some work to make them livable.”
“That can take decades.”
“It can,” Harbin agreed. It took them a long time to get the worlds functional, for certain. Not quite decades, but long enough.
“And now you have five worlds that orbit a gas giant.” She glanced out the nearby window. “To wake every day and see that in the sky. It is intimidating.”
“It is our sky,” he said. “We adapted to it. To being here.”
“I would say you have adapted rather well, in fact.” She gestured to the window. “You have done much of this in a very short time, considering.”
“Considering what?”
“Most species are looking to expand, to grow their territories—”
“The Terran Empire is that way,” he said.
“Yes, of course.”
“Not everyone wants to expand. We are content. Or rather, we would be if the war was over.”
“I have to say, I am sick of the war as well. It is exhausting.”
“The depletion of so many resources that have been used up unnecessarily is sad.”
“All in the name of dominance.”
He glanced at her.
She continued to stare out the window.
