Lesbian romance story. Its cores are: mild BDSM, fealty kink, and "what if you had to kill a bunch of people for utilitarianism". A catgirl spy owned by a monarch on a colony planet (Junasso) discovers he is about to start nuclear war. He hopes to be the last one standing. On his disarmed flagship are a hundred thousand people – about half of whom he intends to murder as the war starts. Unwilling to let them die, the catgirl – Sorossa – steals the ship with a friend and starts the 2 month jump to Earth. She is unable to restock on food, and not all of the people will make it. When the residents become aware of this, the ship becomes a warzone. From the pilot/admin compartment, Sorossa starts killing them to keep order.
Sorossa and her friend argue over the killings, and never come to agreement. Sickened by the violence that unfolds when they fail to follow through on their threats, Sorossa kills her friend to take control, leaving the body to decompose in the outer chamber of the pilot suite. Keeping peace is not a role to which she is suited. She finds relief when she makes radio contact with another ship on the quick but isolated route.
The ship is single-handed by a woman who is, in fact, very good at establishing order. The catgirl has been engineered to have an owner-shaped hole in her soul – her friend whom she murdered had been well on her way to becoming that person, and she finds herself latching onto this woman, sight unseen.
When they reach Earth, the woman – Apollonia – is arrested, and not the catgirl. She is the child of a tycoon that Earth’s government wants more leverage over, and Earth – which has banned the presence of slaves and therefore of animal-human splices, who are all slaves under Earth law – is uneasy about the optics of arresting a catgirl.
It sure seems like someone should be arrested considering all the bodies that are getting carted out.
Sorossa, by the way, lied to her passengers when she set out, and claimed to be acting under her monarch’s orders. Initially it was to keep people calm but there was a great deal of shame driving the lie as well. She does not correct this lie upon landing. And no one but his inner circle knows that he was the one who started nuclear war. The consequence is that one of his ministers is deputized by Earth to return with Earth troops to establish order. When Sorossa realizes this, she admits the truth – that she betrayed her master and the man they’re sending back to take control was complicit in breaking the nuclear taboo – but the gears of bureaucracy have already engaged and the decision cannot be turned back. But they need her presence to succeed in retaking the colony planet, and the catgirl names her terms: that her handler be Apollonia.
Apollonia is her father’s favorite of his five children, but she does not want to inherit. Not sure why. She would have to enter an ugly competition with them, and their resentment would be lifelong. Possibly Earth has possibly stagnated severely – it is not a positive-sum economy anymore and the only profit lies in rent-seeking. Apollonia dropped out of the race years ago to become a courier. She likes seeing the rest of the universe, and her siblings aren’t threatened by someone who’s off-planet.
The central kink of Apollonia’s character is that she is shaped like someone who would have been a pretty great conqueror and warlord in premodern times, in a world with no place for such people. Until she has to quell a war-torn planet, that is. She goes back with the minister, the catgirl, and Earth troops, and neatly – Cortez style – identifies and gathers other opponents of the monarch, snowballing her forces, and eventually ending up on top.
The central kink of the romance is that Apollonia is afraid of going too far, and Sorossa is demonstrably willing to betray and murder unworthy owners.
And the central kink of Sorossa’s character is… well, making a cute, very stressed anime girl commit atrocities.