The important thing about Lonazar, homeworld of the Kobaroians, was that the gravity was signifitly higher thah’s. Firstly that meant that all (living) Humans and Issiod’rians were reeo wear their power armour at all times. Vampires were strohan average humans, so the Kobaroian advisors felt Thisbe would probably be fine unarmoured if she wao be. Out of curiosity she decided she’d see what higher gravity was like on her own.

  However, one member of the imperial family would not be able to be part of the nding party: Houyu was simply too small. It wasn’t just a matter of not being able to walk or crawl about. Just breathing was harder in the heavier gravity (and thicker atmosphere). As such Vivian agreed to stay in orbit while the group went down. Svetna tried to offer to be the oo stay instead, but that was quickly shot down. It was her tour of the gaxy.

  Looking a little embarrassed she followed the others over to the nding shuttle.

  “It would probably be fine for me to go back up for a bit though, right?” Svetna asked after they disembarked. “So that Vivian visit Lonazar?”

  “Mhm. That would be fine,” Bokarza replied. “Once we gh some opening ceremoogether and all that.”

  “Fair enough,” Svetna said with a nod.

  The rest of the ride was fairly quiet. Bokarza was used to the view, having made the trip up and down for Lonazar many times, even before she had ied the throne. For the others it was their first time, though. While Plynx may have seen pictures it was likely she felt as moved by the trip as Bokarza was going to feel when they went on to the Issiod’rians’ capital world. A gesture of peace after so many years of flict.

  The actual ndi smoothly at the primary spaceport of Lonazar. A number of royal guards were in attendance, all tall and armoured with their horns polished and gleaming. All of them were so much taller than Bokara that she felt self scious. Maybe it would have been good to get some ptform boots like Svetna sometimes wore... though she wasn’t certain how they’d stand up to Lonazar’s gravity.

  Speaking of, the weight of it felt good on her bones. A proper sense of stability that most travels in the gaxy cked. Sure, it made unches off of ps harder, so ies teo lean lighter, but it was just so muicer to actually feel ected to the ground below one’s feet.

  “I feel half starved in this weight,” Thisbe whispered while sug on a bag of b grown blood to keep up her strength.

  The others were quiet. Their armuardians provided them enough strength to move about with ease but clearly the thick air was hitting them a bit.

  “The extra ozohiess should make the sun burn you less as well,” Bokarza said, leading them towards what was teically her pabsp;

  Even if she barely spent time there.

  She disliked paperwork about as much as Svetna (even if Kobaroic paperwork was rather less likely to involve actual paper) and, for some reason, she ut in charge of signing so many things whenever she was at the pace. The estate ran itself just fine when she wasn’t there, various attorneys and atants having permission to a her absence. Likewise the Kobaroic Graing Hall was able to pass its own ws in the monarch’s absence. Yet, as soon as she was in the pace, her traditional ceremonial position was suddenly indispensable and she o sighing.

  Well, at least she was allowed to give Svetna a tour of the grounds of the grand gover pza first. All the representatives of the great herds were thrilled to meet Svetna in person. There were whispers about how small she was for a female monarch, but if Svetna heard those it seemed to only improve her mood.

  That still struck Bokarza as funny. Gendered norms really were so different across species.

  “Are you looking forward to seeing the Peace Garden over on Jo-Kraul?” the prime minister asked after Svetna had finished exging pleasantries with everyone.

  “Uh... I heard something about a Peace Garden, but I don’t know what a Jo-Kraul is?” Svetna replied.

  “It’s a ti. Up in the far north,” Bokarza replied. “We’ll take a suborbital skipper up. Should just take an hour or so.”

  “I thought you said this was the only real settlement on Lonazar?” Svetna asked.

  “Yes. It is?” Bokarza replied.

  “Then why is there a garden going up on a whole different ti?” Svetna said.

  “Oh! Well, there’s some small resorts here and there. With support staff. Nothing with more than a few hundred inhabitants, uhe various ministries and supp bureaucracy here that means we’ve got a few thousand residents,” Bokarza said.

  “Folks often like to visit the nds where their aors lived before the evacuation,” the prime minister added.

  “Ah,” Svetna said.

  “Not many folks lived up on Jo-Kraul, but all the other tis have majardens and memorials. We felt it was time they got ohe older woman then added with a nod.

  Standing on one side of Svetna while Bokarza stood oher side of her Plynx was all smiles for the camera as they each applied the final paint to the fence around the edge of the park. It was all a perfect opportunity to show off the new good retioween Issiod’rians and Kobaroians.

  A small swarm of reporters asked them a barrage of questions, which Plynx did her best to keep up with. She hadn’t quite adjusted to the non-standard atmosphere and gravity, but the couple hours they’d spent on the p was certainly helping pared to her initial nding.

  To her surprise Svetna seemed to be adapting quicker. Clearly O’tmyil’s fitness routines for her were paying off. Maybe it was time Plynx asked O’trayj for some training tips too.

  “ we get a kiss for the camera?” a Kobaroic reporter called out.

  “Me and Svetna?” Bokarza asked.

  “You and Queen sort Plynx both kissing the Empress, your majesty,” the man expined.

  Bokarza turo the others with a raised eyebrow. Plynx shrugged, but had no reason to object. Whily left Svetna, whose face fshed with something Plynx couldn’t quite read for a moment before then nodding.

  “Sure. I’m happy to get kisses from my wives,” Svetna said with a grin.

  The holo-cams fshed with excitement for the kiss. About the only thing Plynx thought might excite them more was if she and Bokarza had kissed, but... they simply were not one another’s type. Obviously Plynx was muall for a Kobaroian woman, while Ply Kobaroians had a musk to them that simply... did not appeal. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it didn’t make her heart flutter the way humans’ sts did.

  With just her and noh Vivian actually felt properly like a parent looking after Houyu. The little tyke was out of her hands so mually that it was hard to not feel like she wasn’t pulling her weight.

  Right now, though, the baby was finally sleeping after a bit of a grump g session, so she and the android man were sat quietly watg as the view s in the et offered a rexed tour of the Kobaroie system.

  “So there’s only 14 billion inhabitants on Gznark? Really?” Vivian said tnoh as the narration paused to show various ndmarks of the city world. “I would have thought all those skyscrapers would mean more people.”

  “It is only about 1500km in diametre,” noh said. “And that many of those buildings are farms, data tres, factories, or simply towers desigo radiate heat out into space.”

  “Still, the Earth has, like, 8 billion people. I thought the capital of a kingdom that spanned a good k of the gaxy would have more people,” Vivian said.

  “Earthlings have had no other po move to. There are 250 billion stars in the Milky Way, as many humans somewhat disturbingly call it,” noh said, his words made somewhat amusing by his having taken human form to serve as Vivian’s bonded assistant.

  “Hey, in ese it’s called 银河系,” Vivian protested.

  “Fair. ‘Silver River’ is a much better name,” noh replied. “Either way, while a good k of those are in multi-star systems and thus poorly suited to ps, those that have pend to have a good half dozen, before adding in moons, ds, and smaller bodies. There simply hasn’t been enough time for any of the current peoples of the gaxy to have enough inhabitants to get more than a billion inhabitants on more than a handful of worlds.”

  “Are all the species in the gaxy really that young, though?” Vivian asked.

  “Mhm. Fairly young. The truly a peoples are generally few in numbers. Over time there is less to excite them, and so birth rates fall as cultures grid. True extin is rare, but they tend to be tired of the politics of younger cultures,” he expined.

  “I guess everything ebbs and flows,” Vivian said, really having not been ready for the versation to get so deep.

  It let her uand a bit of how a lot of Svetna’s days probably went, stantly bombarded with history lessons in briefings stretg aillennia of gactic history. Earth history was plex enough to give her a headache. Multiply that by thousands of species and billions of star systems and... she retty sure historians would be terrified of all that.

  Thankfully she was saved from any further lessons by a chime sounding through the ship. Someone had just docked, and the schedule said that would probably be Svetna.

  Hesitating a moment, Vivian found herself waved off by noh, saying he would watch Houyu while she went to go see Svetna and O’tmyil. She gave a quick thank you and then hurried off, jogging along the long ship until she reached the segment where the shuttles docked.

  As expected Svetna and O’tmyil were disembarking alongside a few members of the imperial guard and Agent Lee’s taskforce. The trast in dress betweewo types of security (regal and decorated martial uniforms vaguely remi of 19th tury military uniforms on the aliens and the bck tie suits on the Humans) amused her a little as it always did. As if one group or the other hadn’t gotten the memo on how to dress.

  “How was it? Did they actually make you cut any ribbons?” Vivian asked.

  “We painted a fence, actually,” Svetna replied.

  “Oh. Genuine hard bour. Making you earn your pace,” Vivian said with a ugh, before leaning in to kiss Svetna and then O’tmyil. “Is it hough?”

  “It’s a p,” Svetna said. “I didn’t get to see much more than some gover buildings and the one park.”

  “She felt you should get to see the wilderour,” O’tmyil replied.

  “Kobaroians will like you better. You’re the size they expect a woman to be,” Svetna added. “Plus... the tv here is plenty big enough. I watch a nature dotary if I want to see what the animals look like. All without being slowly crushed.”

  The gravity wasn’t actually that high. Only about 1.8Gs. But Vivian supposed it would probably get tiring. Plus, Svetna would be expected at the state dihat night, so was likely running off for as long as she could get away with.

  Leading them back to her , which was he other end of the long star runner, Svetna and Vivian mostly talked about how gd they were going to be wheravelling was finally over. Especially whearted thinking about gravity. The gactic standard was only a hair over 0.9Gs, roughly half that of Kobaroic gravity and just enough to make everything feel slightly off for Earthlings. The iia a of things simply did not align properly.

  “Looks like we’re getting to see Lonazar early,” Vivian said tnoh oering her .

  “The wildlife is apparently less exg than I realised,” Svetna expined. “You would have thought with the tail clubs and the horns that the Kobaroians were having to survive somewhere super dangerous... but apparently the only other creatures heir size are closely reted goril-sloth-things.”

  “Ah. Yes. Their various natural ohe result of sexual sele, not predatory pressures,” noh said as he stood up. “If you have a ce to visit the Lanthonean homeworld you may find it more exg. There are many dangerous predators.”

  “There is also Zarnav 3,” O’tmyil added, having been following quietly. “Possibly the most dangerous biome in the gaxy.”

  “I don’t need danger,” Svetna mumbled. “Just... big is cool.”

  “It’s a shame that space whales aren’t real,” Vivian added.

  “Space... whales?” noh asked, stepping into the hallway beside Vivian. “What... what would they eat? I suppose they could have a self-tained respiration via photosynthesis, but they would still need nutrients.”

  “Well, yeah, but they’d be cool,” Svetna said, before biting her lip.

  She then turo Vivian with an impressive iy. Tugging lightly on the colr of Vivian’s shirt, she brought Vivian’s lips down to kissing rahough Vivian wasn’t quite prepared for the sheer passion of the kiss, briefly w if Svetna was going t her off to bed. To be ho she’d have probably preferred that to a safari to go see alien rabbits, but... it proved not to be. Svetna broke it off as Vivian was beginning to run out of oxygen and offered a soft smile.

  “I love you,” she said softly.

  “I... I love you too,” Vivian replied.

  O’tmyil stepped forward to give Vivian a quick pe the cheek. They exged quick ‘I love you’s as well, before Vivia with noh.

  Staring at the stout vaguely reptiliaures gathered around the pond Auguste suspected he’d have been about as excited by a safari in southern Engnd. While all the animals were unknown to him the high gravity apparently made most of them take a rather low effort approach to life. Hunting was done via ambush, where it was do all.

  “The air is a bit thicker than on most worlds,” the guide was expining, “but not enough to ba the high gravity, so few creatures developed anything more than gliding.”

  There weren’t even proper trees. At best there were se shrubs a bit taller than the average female Kobaroian, but he was fairly certain the average basketball pyer would be able to see over almost everything on the p. Eveopography was mild, the root able to support dramatic cliffs or peaks.

  “Tell me your homeworld is more iing,” he muttered to Plynx as their hover car slid along the sparse pseudo-grassnds.

  “It was. Vast ice sheets covered much of it, though the tropics remained dry and hot,” she replied. “We ended up outpeting most of the rge predators, but there were still a few in the era of civilization. As well as herbivorous megafauna.”

  “That sounds--why are you describing everything in past tense?” he asked.

  Ears dropping in annoyance, Ply out a sigh. “When we were a few decades ahead of the Earth an early AI attempted to overthrow civilization. The p is probably still somewhat radioactive and deeper into an ice age. Some of the wildlife has probably survived fine, but we were cast out into the gaxy and don’t remember exactly which star system it was.”

  “... oh,” Auguste replied.

  “It was millenia ago. We don’t really mind much,” Plynx said with a casualhat he found more off putting than the initial information.

  That was rather more depressing than he’d hoped. Apparently being able to watch fuzzy snake-like creatures slowly drag themselves up a small tree was something for Kobaroians to be proud of.

  And, well, the oype of ambush predator they saw reminded him a bit of a manul. It was eaining to watch the grumpy looking little pseudo-feline march about through the tall weeds around it. He vaguely wondered how many Lonazarian (Lonazaric? Lonazarish? He’d ask ter...) animals were avaible as pets. They would probably love being pced in a terrarium with a heat mp and having food provided.

  Before he could ask about pets or endonyms a rather more aerodynamic looking vehicle caught his eye as it raced towards them. Though it being more aerodynamic than the hovercar they were riding was more a statement on their vehicle than the one approag, due to the blocky designs favoured by Kobaroians.

  The faster vehicle drew up beside them and a male Kobaroian emerged in a hurry from a cockpit that looked barely big enough for him.

  “The Imperial Family is requested to return to the pace immediately,” the man blurted.

  “What? Why?” Bokarza asked, the tuide seeming just as fused.

  “The... there has been an i. It is unclear what happened, but her majesty the empress is missing,” the man replied.

  AnnouI maybe got distracted with some world building. Oops.