Eyes of Tomorrow (Duchy of Terra Book 9) by Glynn Stewart (best e book reader TXT) 📕

pulled together a battle fleet to cover the Coreward side of the Astoroko Nebula,” Morgan said. “Apparently, they’re up to thirty billion tons of capital ships watching their borders, which is reassuring.”

“All right, so we’ve established everything is going as well as it can in this damn war, but we’re still talking work while you pace back and forth, wearing a trail in the carpet,” Rin told her. He took a sip of his wine.

“Everything is a mess, Rin,” she said. “I feel like I need to do more, but fuck if I can see any answers. Give me a squadron of ships with Final Dragons and we could end this in an afternoon!”

“There’s a reason the Empress hasn’t sent any Final Dragon starkillers out here,” Rin reminded her. The smaller strategic weapons were a stolen design, one that even most Core Powers couldn’t match.

The last thing the Imperium needed was for the galaxy to realize that the Final Dragon weapons existed—and Rin suspected that they’d need to lose a good chunk of the Laian Republic, allies or not, before A!Shall authorized deploying them.

“I know.” She sighed, and finally took a seat next to him with a surprising suddenness. “And I’m not writing home, and everything I say and do is work. But what else am I supposed to do, Rin?”

“Breathe?” he suggested. “I know, I know, we’re both workaholics, and out here, there’s nothing much to do but work. I’m trying to dig in to what we’ve got on the Infinite in the Alavan archives, but it's not much. I feel like I’m just looking at the same things over and over again.”

“That’s how I feel, looking at what we’ve got for data since the Infinite woke up,” she said. She sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know; rub my shoulders?”

Rin chuckled and gestured for her to sit on the ground in front of him.

“That seems like a good starting place.”

The night went about as well after that as could be hoped, including the rest of the bottle of wine, and Rin woke up in Morgan’s quarters the following morning. His communicator was chirping its usual alarm—as was Morgan’s—but finding the handheld devices took longer than it should have.

That was partially because they were both wrapped up in the blankets and sheets and partially because they were both naked and Rin found Morgan’s body rather distracting.

Finally, they were both sitting on the bed with their respective devices. Morgan favored the scroll-like device originally designed by the United Earth Space Force and updated with Imperial technology—two five-centimeter cylinders that pulled apart to unroll a thin-screen tablet.

Rin’s communicator was smaller, a single five-centimeter cylinder that could set up holoprojected screens and keyboards. It could also, however, interface with his cybernetics and feed information to his retinas directly.

He couldn’t control the data without using the holocontrols—the Imperium wasn’t a fan of permanent neural interfaces, and his own study of how the Alava’s interfaces had killed them didn’t help—but he didn’t need a screen.

“Strange,” he and Morgan said simultaneously, then paused and looked at each other.

“You first,” he told her.

“I have a brand-new appointment with Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh in a twentieth-cycle, right when I’m supposed to go on duty,” she told him. “There’s a notation here, advising me that both Wendira and Laian officers will be present, but it’s still listed as a private meeting.”

“That is strange,” he agreed. “Related to your analysis?”

“Probably, though gods know I’ve written enough reports that I don’t know what they think I can tell them that isn’t in the paperwork,” Morgan said. “What’s strange for you?”

“I have an invite to a private meeting with Princess Oxtashah,” Rin said. “We’ve spoken in private a few times since the peace conference, but I didn’t even know she was aboard Va!Tola.”

Morgan checked something on her communicator.

“She’s coming aboard now,” she told Rin. “I might even guess that she’s coming specifically to talk to you. That’s definitely strange.”

“And intimidating,” Rin admitted. “That woman may not be one of their Queens, but she’s a post-childbearing Royal caste of the highest bloodlines. She’s going to be one of the Queens, sooner or later.”

There were only ever thirty-two Queens, the oldest Wendira female Royal castes of eight specific bloodlines. Oxtashah was one of those lines—that was what gave her her authority—and was post-childbearing.

She had to be getting close to taking a crown herself—and she was coming aboard an Imperial superbattleship to talk to him?

“Well, I guess we should both start getting ready,” he told Morgan. “I don’t think we have much time to spare.”

He still took a moment to ogle his lover, which got him a brilliant grin as she apparently turned to do the same. There was very little as good for a man’s ego as a lover who thought he was worth looking at.

No matter how worried he was about what was coming next.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Despite the note on the appointment that it would include Wendira and Laian officers, Tan!Shallegh was alone in his office with no video links. The A!Tol was looking at reports—the perennial task of any senior officer—and closed them down as she entered, gesturing her to a chair.

The drink machine in his desk was already disgorging her coffee, the office system clearly having done the digital equivalent of taking notes from the last time.

“Your staff made this appointment on quite short notice, sir,” Morgan admitted. “What’s going on?”

“It’s complicated,” Tan!Shallegh told her. She realized there were swirls of yellow across his skin, an unusual color for A!Tol. It was often interpreted as meaning the A!Tol was lying, but it was also associated with just feeling dirty.

What was going on?

“Did you know that I opposed both the development and then, later, the deployment, of the Final Dragon weapons?” the Fleet Lord asked.

“I did not, sir,” Morgan admitted.

“Your stepmother earned her Duchy by destroying a rogue development program around similar stolen Mesharom weapons,” Tan!Shallegh said quietly. “That’s classified, though it may have been covered under the Final