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

Her duffel was probably already on her shuttle, waiting for her to catch up.

“The entirety of three fleets is now armed with the knowledge and analysis this team has done,” she continued. “Given the limited information and time available to us, we have done amazing things in projecting and analyzing this enemy.

“Our knowledge of them remains far from perfect, and refining that knowledge will continue to fall on you. That’s why you are remaining a separate team, even as the data you’ve provided is absorbed by Fleet Operations.

“I would have liked to have had more time with you, but duty calls us all,” she told them. “And I have faith in you and in Staff Captain Shotilik, that you will continue to provide the Grand Fleet and Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh with the knowledge they need.

“Thank you.”

“We’ll do our job, sir,” Shotilik promised quietly. “I’m getting the impression yours is going to be…fraught.”

“Duty is duty,” Morgan told her. “We do what we must.”

She had to agree with Tan!Shallegh. The mission she’d been asked to take on was dirty business—but the other option was to risk everything.

Chapter Forty

Morgan’s shuttle ramp extended smoothly to the deck, matching positions with a perfectly turned out double file of Tosumi Marines. The four-armed avians, distinctive in midnight-black ceremonial armor that offset the raucous colors of their feathers, held plasma rifles at port arms and formed a path across Odysseus’s flight bay.

Two women were waiting at the far end of that path as Morgan traded salutes with the Marines and boarded her new flagship. One of them was the petite redheaded woman who’d stood at her right hand as she’d taken Defiance into one crisis after another, now promoted to Captain Bethany Rogers.

The other was a stranger to Morgan, a situation that couldn’t be allowed to last. Captain Cathrine Koumans was the senior of her four captains—technically, in fact, she would have been about three years senior to Captain Morgan Casimir—and Morgan knew she would need to depend heavily on her Flag Captain.

Koumans was a tall and broad-shouldered woman, with a shaven scalp and heavyset features that returned Morgan’s assessing gaze evenly.

“Welcome aboard Odysseus, Division Lord Casimir,” she greeted Morgan. “I believe you know Staff Captain Rogers?”

“I do indeed,” Morgan agreed, clasping hands with her new chief of staff. “The Fleet Lord apparently felt that I shouldn’t be allowed out without my usual minder.”

She then turned and took Koumans’ firm handshake.

“And I know you by reputation, Captain Koumans,” she told Odysseus’s commander. “But I don’t believe we’ve served together at all.”

“No, I was on the Coreward Kanzi frontier while you were dealing with their murderous cousins,” Koumans confirmed. “We also serve who stand and wait, they say, but it goes against the grain nonetheless.”

“Someone had to watch our backs,” Morgan agreed. “Let’s not forget that the Kanzi civil war started because some of their fleet commanders did try to backstab us.”

That had not ended well for them, and the civil war had given the High Priestess and her chosen partner, High Warlord Shairon Cawl, the chance to rebuild the entire Theocracy. Morgan couldn’t necessarily approve of dragging out the civil war the way Cawl and his mistress had done, but she could see the need.

Slavery was not a societal structure that died easily.

“My officers are swamped, preparing to ship out,” Koumans said after a moment’s silence. “Normally, I’d have my officers and your staff here to greet you, but most of your staff is still on their way and, well…”

“Your people have work to do that’s far more important than stroking the new division commander’s ego,” Morgan said with a chuckle. “There will be time for everyone to get to know each other. This mission should be…straightforward enough, in some ways, but my understanding is that if we succeed, I get to keep the division.”

The division in question was the 73-2-2—the Seventy-Three-Twenty-Two in the English-translated parlance of the fleet’s officers. The Second Division of the Second Echelon of the Seventy-Third Battle Squadron.

Of course, since the Houses of the Imperium were still arguing over trying to reduce the fleet strength back to the fifty battle squadrons it had been limited to when Earth had been conquered, Morgan was unsure how long the Seventy-Third Battle Squadron would exist.

On the other hand, the Infinite were a great argument in favor of keeping the fleet at seventy-five squadrons.

“Then we will have plenty of time, yes,” Koumans agreed. “Shall I give you the tour, Division Lord?”

“Or should you, perhaps, be returning to helping your officers deal with that pile of work?” Morgan asked. “I can find my own way to the flag deck, Captain. I’m familiar enough with the basic Bellerophon design for that, and I know what our time pressure looks like.”

Koumans had solid self-control, but Morgan still picked up the other woman’s internal struggle over that. Tradition said the Captain showed the new flag officer around—but the plan was for the special task group to ship out in less than three cycles.

“I…would probably be better served helping my people, yes, sir,” she conceded.

“Staff Captain Rogers and I will be on the flag deck if you need us,” Morgan told her. “If you can break time free for yourself and your officers to dine with me this evening, that may work best for us all.”

“I will make it happen, sir,” Koumans replied.

The flag officer’s suggestions, after all, carried the weight of orders from someone else.

Odysseus’s flag deck was quiet when Rogers and Morgan entered. A standard task force information graphic hung in the middle of the holotank, currently showing data on the four battleships of the Seventy-Three-Twenty-Two.

The flag officer’s seat was right next to the tank, with a clear space in front of it for Morgan to stand and study the tank—or pace in front of it, as she’d known some officers to do. Like the FOC aboard Va!Tola that she’d just given back, the flag deck had the space for a dozen officers and