To be honest, Orn was seriously worried about himself.
It seemed the more he sought freedom, the more shackles ended up getting thrown around his neck. It wasn't fair—but then again, he wasn't the kind of person to sit around wallowing in self-pity about it. He knew exactly what sort of reality he lived in. Even with his grand ambitions burning in his chest, all of that mattered far less than finding his mother and sister—or at the very least, discovering what had truly happened to them.
There had been no bodies.
When they'd returned to the colony where the attack had occurred—days too late, always too late—their remains were not among those that had been recovered from the wreckage. Neither were they part of the group of survivors the Theocracy and their bloody pirates were holding for ransom.
It was as if they had simply vanished into thin air.
And his father had been content to just write them off as dead. Case closed. Move on.
Orn raised his head and deliberately met the Empress Dowager's eyes through the holographic projection. She wanted him to be a puppet—her personal killing tool, a weapon to be aimed and fired at her enemies.
Orn would be lying if he said he wasn't sorely tempted by the power she was offering. And in the end, it wasn't as if he was truly being given much of a choice in the matter.
However, there was something he needed to get off his chest. And since the Empress Dowager was here, right now, this was as good a time as any to demand some answers.
The money and power she was dangling in front of him meant nothing. He just needed to know one thing—and more importantly, he needed to see the truth of it in her eyes.
It was a strange quirk of the universe, but it was extremely difficult for Psionics to lie to each other—especially powerful ones. The more developed your Psionic abilities, the harder it became to conceal deception from another trained mind. In fact, this particular phenomenon was so well-documented and intense that Psionics across the known universe had turned it into a competitive sport of sorts.
It had even evolved into the legendary Grand Archon Games—a brutal tournament held once every ten years in a cluster of dead galaxies that had been torn apart by ancient Psionic stellar storms. The games were open to Psionics from every empire and every corner of explored space.
The rewards for victory were beyond measure: eternal glory and fame, truly obscene amounts of wealth, and the kind of political power and social advancement that could elevate you to the status of... well, exactly what the Empress Dowager had become. The mother of an emperor. The puppetmaster behind a husband-assassinating Grand Princess.
She was not someone Orn wanted as an enemy.
But Orn had principles he wouldn't bend—not even for his father.
"Did your daughter try to have me killed?"
The question hung in the air like a blade.
If eyes could physically bulge out of their sockets any further, George Reese would have won the award. His face went through a rapid progression of expressions—shock, panic, absolute horror. His head looked like it was about to literally explode from the pressure of suppressed emotions.
Orn, on the other hand, didn't care about his father's reaction.
George Reese was a soldier, through and through. Soldiers didn't blunt their words or waste time scheming behind each other's backs—at least not in Orn's experience. Once you'd fought and bled alongside someone a couple dozen times, even at the highest ranks, there was rarely any scenario where you had to be overly polite or dance delicately around certain topics to play political games.
You just spoke the truth. Directly. Without embellishment.
The Empress Dowager raised one perfect eyebrow at his audacity. And then she smiled.
Orn had to admit—it was possibly one of the most beautiful expressions he had ever seen grace a human face.
But that smile was edged with danger. Ringed with threat.
The lights throughout the entire ship suddenly flickered and dimmed. The Honest Star lurched violently, experiencing three full seconds of inexplicable turbulence—in the vacuum of space, where such a thing should be physically impossible except under very special circumstances.
Yet here they were, being buffeted by forces that shouldn't exist.
It was just the echo of her Psionic signature spreading outward from wherever she actually was—probably still on Aegean Prime or one of its moons—reaching across the incomprehensible distance to affect them here, somewhere near the edge of the Inner Rim.
The distance separating them wasn't measured in mere kilometers or even millions of miles. It was measured in light-years.
And Orn suddenly worried that he had perhaps just made a catastrophically terrible mistake.
"You have a spine," the Empress Dowager said, her voice carrying notes of genuine amusement. "I like that. But then again, that's exactly how you military dogs operate, isn't it? You speak first and think later—if you bother to think at all." Her smile widened fractionally. "But you're still just a child. I can't really hold that against you, now can I?"
She leaned forward slightly in her holographic form. "But I can understand where you're coming from. If I were in your position, I wouldn't want to answer to the mother of my would-be murderer either."
The Empress Dowager paused for a single heartbeat, then spoke with absolute clarity:
"I tried to have you killed, boy."
The admission was casual. Matter-of-fact. As if she were discussing the weather.
"It was part of an ongoing scheme that has now been... scrapped, since you stubbornly refused to be like everyone else and die quietly when you were supposed to." Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "You even had the audacity to hide unregistered Psionic abilities from the empire's official registry. Multiple manifestations that were never documented. Technopath capabilities. A Psi-Pulse. Who knows what else you're concealing?"
She straightened, her presence seeming to fill the entire bridge despite being nothing but light and projection.
"Don't play games with me, boy. You do not have a choice in how or when or why I choose to use you. You belong to me now. Not to your father. Not to the emperor. Not even to his sister—your wife." She paused for emphasis. "To me. You live and die as I command. Are you angry? Are you upset?"
Another pause, as if genuinely waiting for an answer.
"No? Good. It's gratifying to see that a boy like you can behave like a man when necessary. Perhaps there's hope for you yet."
Her tone shifted, becoming dismissive. "Now stop wasting my valuable time and go kill that senator like a good little soldier."
And just like that, her hologram winked out of existence as abruptly as it had appeared.