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

most important mission of the war,” Lawrence said with a chuckle. “Shame nobody told the chef that.”

“What, you don’t like unflavored universal protein with vitamin powder?” Abraxis Mok asked.

All three chuckled. UP was a gray tofu-like substance that had been chemically reduced to contain absolutely nothing that could threaten any species. It could provide a lot of the basic needs of almost every known species, with the remainder made up for by vitamin powders.

With work, it could even be made palatable. The Wendira were not bothering to put that work into the food they were providing their Imperial guests.

“I didn’t think we’d need to include a cook on the mission,” Rin admitted. “My mistake, it turns out. We’ll survive.”

“Some of us have lower caloric reserves than others,” Lawrence complained, but there was no real heat to it.

“How long?” Mok asked.

“My understanding is about five cycles to the Skiefail System,” Rin told them. “The Wendira have restricted almost all of their information on the Skiefail swarm to the system itself. Very little data has left Skiefail, so they can’t give us information to prep.

“It’s going to take us a couple of days just to internalize what is known before we can even start looking for the pieces we know we need.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how long we’re looking at to get the weapon online, or if it will even be possible.

“All I know is that I doubt we’ll be fast enough to be ready for the next swarm, and I’m worried about what that will mean.”

“A lot of dead people nobody could save,” Lawrence said quietly. “We’ll work fast, Dr. Dunst. I have a damn good idea of what components I’m looking for. By the time we’re done going through whatever they already have, I figure I’ll be able to tell you if it’s impossible.”

“So, we can cut off before we waste too much time, at least,” Rin concluded. “That won’t make us many friends, but I suppose it’s better than accidentally blowing up a Dyson swarm.”

“Oh, don’t worry; if we fuck up trying to turn this shit on, we probably won’t have to worry about our reputation,” Lawrence told him. “If we do it right, it’s safe. If we do it wrong, we’ll probably nova the star the swarm is anchored on.”

“Oh.” Rin stared out into the launch deck, watching another set of Wendira Workers flutter up toward the top of the ship.

“I’m not sure I realized that part,” he admitted. “But… Well, it doesn’t matter. We have work to do.”

Chapter Forty-Six

The gray void of hyperspace wasn’t necessarily dark, but the feeling of being isolated in a dark and lonely void was about the same for a ship in hyperspace and a ship in deep space. The grayness of hyperspace was brighter, but the chaos of its nature meant that even friends were invisible beyond a certain distance.

Morgan had spent a significant chunk of her adult life in hyperspace, and she, like most people, consciously turned her office lights just a little bit brighter when underway. She also found herself seeking out other people more as well.

It was a constant struggle against the unconscious awareness, in every sentient mind, that they just were not supposed to be there. That this place wasn’t designed for them and only incredibly advanced technology had brought them there and kept them alive.

That brought her to a quiet dinner with Rogers, Koumans and Koumans’ XO, an Indiri named Razh Tal. The damp red-furred amphibian was eating a different meal from the other three, but she seemed to be enjoying it.

Morgan had no idea what the pale green spheres Tal was eating were—if they were universal protein, someone had done a lot of work with them—but the classic steak-and-potatoes dish Koumans’s steward had served up for the humans went down well.

“My compliments to your staff, Captain,” Morgan told Koumans. “To turn frozen steak into something that good takes skill and practice.”

“I’m honestly not sure my staff could handle fresh steak at this point,” Koumans admitted. “I don’t think Odysseus has been within twenty light-years of Earth. Ever.”

She raised a glass to Tal.

“She was built by the Indiri, not your father’s yards. I’m surprised she was named for a human hero, given that.”

“My people name ships from lists provided by the Navy,” Tal noted, swallowing the last gelatinous green piece of her meal. “The Bellerophon class, for example, has a list of twenty heroes from each of the Imperium’s races. Almost six hundred names—and that barely swims the surface of the pond of our aggregate mythologies.”

“And the Indiri shipbuilders always like to keep things nice and stable,” Morgan said. “We borrowed a lot of their best practices when we set up the Raging Waters of Friendship Yards—including naming ships based on the Navy’s list rather than all after our own heroes.”

She shrugged.

“I don’t think that’s solely responsible for lifting us to the third-largest shipbuilder in the Imperium, but it didn’t hurt.”

That ranking ignored, of course, that the rest of the top ten yards were either A!Tol or Indiri. Humanity had one very successful shipyard that had helped propel the Duchy of Terra to major economic prominence, but the Indiri had six across four star systems—and the A!Tol and the three Imperial Races had another twenty across more systems.

Even those five species combined only accounted for sixty percent of the Imperium’s shipbuilding, but that still meant that roughly three percent of all Imperial warships were built in Sol.

Morgan’s father had certainly not grown any less rich in the last thirty-plus years.

“I have to wonder, Casimir, why the daughter of the man who owns that yard is a military officer,” Koumans said. “Unless that’s…intrusive.”

Morgan chuckled.

“The plan was…somewhat different,” she noted. “But remember that my father is looking at another century to two centuries of healthy, active life managing his businesses. He owns fifty-five percent of a one-third stake in Raging Waters of Friendship—I don’t own anything.

“I could have worked my way up in the