I absolutely love LH so far, cant wait to see more. And while it might seem like i am hating on your work, know it comes from a place of excitement for whats to come, rather than malicious intent.
Most people who mentioned this really liked the use of this word, and totally understood its use immediately. But there were a few who didn't like it.
I personally preferred when they called me "Captain". IMO, both should be used, which you seem to be doing already. "Pet" has a submissive tone to it, even if to the Pantherian's it is similar to marriage.
I have 4 "problems" with it so far. (And I'm being really nit picky here)
1)
The wormhole generator is stated to be a new technology, yet its their standard way of unloading ships? If they dont have any ships, why do they have the infrastructure to unload ships with wormhole tech if its brand new.
On the topic, why send us to go scan a planet if you could just wormhole a probe/satellite into orbit of the planet you want. Why didnt they just place a bomb inside the Acladean rebel ships to blow them up?
2)
When were the Pantherians planning to use the wormhole to come to Earth? If they are as technologically advanced as they claim (which i have doubts about), then they should have been able to calculate when Earth would blow up. So when exactly were they going to send people to the planet?
3)
MC is ordered to come down to Pantheria and is punished for doing so. I feel like the MC should have brought this up when he goes on his rant to the queen.
Warning: This next one is the result of me overthinking things, and trying to apply real life science to a Sci-fi world. You have been warned.
4)
The distance between Earth and Pantheria is inconsistent if you think about it way to much. The Pantherians saw the Aurora for the first time in a close to finished state, as they believe it was an alien ship making contact. So, they cant have seen it under construction at any point, as a half built ship is a dead giveaway. It doesnt say how long the Aurora was being built for, however we do know it was finished 6 months ago after at least 10+ years of progress.
Now, the Pantherians started watching Earth after they detected a large energy source, which we know came from the Aurora. Due to the above reasoning, this source must started close to the Aurora's completion, otherwise the Pantherians would have seen an unfinished ship. This means that the Pantherian system is around 6 light-MONTHS away from us. For reference, the closest star to us IRL is 4 light-years away. This would mean that the ninety-six minutes is a very reasonable FTL travel time. However, it causes many other problems.
At first, i thought that maybe the Pantherians thought that the Aurora was complete, when it was just an empty shell. This would allow the distance between systems to be well over 10 light-years, which is an improvement, even though its still very very close on a galactic scale. However, Natalie somehow knows that the Aurora has ion engines, which means that they likely wouldn't make that mistake.