Duchess of Terra (Duchy of Terra Book 2) Read online

  Andrew chuckled again and stole a kiss.

  “Lucky you,” he told her. “Hopefully, I’ll get to join you, though it’s possible Villeneuve has a jail cell waiting for me.”

  She lightly smacked his shoulder.

  “We followed Bond and Bond got a planet for her efforts,” she pointed out. “You’ll be fine. I’ll see you on the other side, my love.”

  #

  Captain Elizabeth Sade was already on the shuttle when Lougheed boarded, the pilot having gone to Oaths of Secrecy first. Andrew exchanged a warm nod with the tall woman with the blond crown braid as he took his seat.

  “Next stop, Defense One,” the pilot announced.

  “I thought we scuttled Defense One?” Andrew asked.

  “We did,” the younger man agreed. “I was aboard Orbit One with Admiral Villeneuve, watched our entire military infrastructure go down in flames.”

  His tone was cheerful, but there was a shivery undercurrent to it that Andrew could understand. He’d fled the system with Bond; he hadn’t been around to watch the Weber Protocol–mandated destruction of all of Earth’s defenses once the battle was clearly hopeless. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to watch that.

  “The Duchess brought three prefabbed orbital weapons platforms with her,” the pilot continued after a moment. “Toys by Imperial standards, so far as I can tell, but they could still have held off the entire old UESF.

  “If you bring up the port camera, we’re slowing down for approach and you can see them.”

  The entire journey from a distant orbit, well outside the moon, to the orbital platform at barely fifty thousand kilometers had taken less than thirty seconds—and that was because they restricted the speed of interface-drive ships close to habitable worlds.

  As Andrew brought up the camera, a small icon showed him the distance to the platform. It started as a small disk but rapidly grew on the screen as the shuttle closed the distance at several kilometers a second.

  The platform was a sixty-meter-thick ring four hundred meters across, with eight massive spikes rising from it to contain its massive, battleship-grade proton lances. It looked intimidating—not a bad thing in the final defense of Andrew’s world.

  “Docking in thirty seconds,” the pilot told them. “I’m informed Admiral Villeneuve has sent an officer to meet you. Good luck, Captains!”

  #

  Admiral Villeneuve shook both of the Captains’ hands as they came into his office, and gestured for Andrew and Sade to have a seat in front of his desk.

  Like the rest of the station, the room had a raw feeling to it. The underlying structure of the station was there, the walls, the electronics gear, Villeneuve’s desk—but there were no personal touches, no decorations.

  Even the name on the door was damp, freshly painted on with a stencil. The new Defense One felt fresh out of the box, which wasn’t a bad descriptor for it.

  The Admiral’s office shared the same feel, but the desk and chairs were clearly out of the old UESF stores. They were cheap, light, and sturdy pieces of furniture that Andrew had seen in half a dozen space stations and twice as many ships over the years.

  What they weren’t was comfortable, and he shifted to try and find the best position as he took his seat.

  “Captain Lougheed, Captain Sade,” Villeneuve began, “first, I want to thank you for the service you’ve given to Earth. Captain Sade especially. You were a civilian called to act as a privateer and a soldier, and you rose to the call with as much courage and skill as Captain Lougheed. Thank you both.”

  The Admiral slid two pieces of paper over the desk toward them.

  “You and your crews have been recognized as UESF personnel,” he continued, “and therefore eligible for the same A!Tol military pensions every other member of a military organization on Earth got.”

  A pension paid in Imperial marks, giving a huge chunk of the population—and a chunk both inclined to resistance and trained for combat—a reason to support integration and the change-over to the Imperial currency.

  “As such, I want to make very clear that you are not obligated to take any position in the Ducal Militia,” the Admiral told them. “Duchess Bond has asked me to extend the invitation for you both to join the Militia at the rank of Captain—O6—but stressed that this was an invitation, not an order.”

  “I’m in,” Sade answered instantly.

  Andrew took a moment to consider. His understanding was that the Imperial pension—a glorified bribe to make up for the fact they’d ordered every military organization on Earth disbanded—was generous enough to live well on. He and Sarah could retire on it…

  “While Her Grace told me I wasn’t allowed to pressure you,” Villeneuve said after a moment, “I must point out that we have exactly four people qualified to command a modern hyper-capable interface-drive warship, and one of them is our head of government.”

  Of Course We’re Coming Back’s Captain chuckled.

  “All right,” he conceded. Retirement sounded nice, but… “I can see where I’m needed, Admiral. I’m in.”

  “Your crews will get the same offer,” Villeneuve told them. “I hope to get most of them in, and we’ll be transferring you and your crew to a pair of our new destroyers.

  “The plan is to refit most of the squadron with proper anti-missile systems, but we’ll be commissioning two immediately: one for each of you.”

  Andrew exchanged a glance with Sade. Their vessels had been unarmed survey ships before the necessities of Operation Privateer had led to them having missiles and lasers strapped on. A modern destroyer was much bigger than their survey ships.

  “Those will require a lot more crew than we have,” he finally pointed out.

  “We know,” the Admiral agreed. “We’re hoping to recruit more ex-UESF personnel as time goes on as well as new personnel, but you’re going to be starting with skeleton crews, and your crews are going to be badly undertrained.

  “I need you to train them up, and them I’m going to steal them for the refitted ships and make you do it again,” Villeneuve confessed bluntly. “Can you do that?”

  “Yes, sir,” Andrew said after a moment’s thought.

  “Good. One last thing.”

  Andrew paused, suddenly knowing what was coming.

  “The new Ducal Militia is, at least initially, borrowing the entire Articles of Military Law from the UESF,” Villeneuve told them. “Including the sections on fraternization. I suggest, to avoid potential problems, that you two swap XOs.

  “Commander Laurent is a capable officer, and in the situation you were in, I see no reason to cause problems over the past,” he continued, “but avoiding future issues seems reasonable.”

  Exhaling, Andrew nodded, glancing over at Sade again.

  “He’s right,” he admitted to the other Captain. “I can live with that if you’re okay with it.”

  “So long as Sarah decides she wants to join the Militia,” Sade pointed out carefully, “I’ll be happy to have her as my exec.”

  “Good, then that’s settled,” Villeneuve concluded cheerfully. “I have a tour of one of the destroyers scheduled for us in twenty minutes. We can grab a coffee on our way back to the shuttle bay.”

  #

  Chapter 9

  With everything going on, Annette was only mildly surprised when Villeneuve was late for the meeting with the Nova Industries Board of Directors. She and Zhao arrived via interface-drive shuttle ten minutes before the meeting was supposed to begin, only to be notified that the Admiral had just then made it back aboard Defense One from his tour of the destroyer they intended to commission as Washington.

  He’d be at least another thirty minutes.

  “We’ll need to start without him,” Zhao said after they got the message. “We need him for the military component of the meeting, but there are some civilian infrastructure discussions I want to have with them as well.”

  “I have some…personal matters to discuss with them as well,
” Annette told him. “Nova had its own plans under the Weber Protocols. We need to make it clear to the Board that I know what they’ve squirreled away, and we need them to pull it out.”

  Zhao whistled softly as they exited the shuttle.

  “How much did Casimir tell you?” he asked, carefully maneuvering his bulk down the narrow ramp.

  “I was his personal pilot and then commander of his primary test ship,” she replied. “I thought I knew everything, though some of the things that came out in Operation Privateer proved I was wrong there.”

  “Casimir and my government butted heads a lot,” the former ruler of China told her. “He was brilliant, but the man was almost constitutionally incapable of being entirely up-front. I would have thought if he had been with anyone…”

  “It would have been with his pilot?” Annette asked sweetly as they stepped onto the concrete and Zhao looked embarrassed.

  “With his, well, lover,” he admitted. “I had heard…”

  “Whatever you heard, by the time I commanded Tornado, we were friends. Nothing more,” she told him sharply. “I know a lot of his plans, probably more than anyone else suspects, but not everything.”

  “I apologize, Your Grace,” Zhao replied with admirable poise. “Even now, I still know little about you and must rely on what I have heard.”

  “We’re busy,” Annette said. “The whole Council is trying to get to know each other on a more personal level while we’re also trying to quite literally change the world.

  “We should consider ourselves as much a work in progress as the Duchy itself.”

  #

  “Annette!”

  The middle-aged blonde woman waiting in the front lobby of Nova Industries’ San Francisco headquarters greeted the Duchess of Terra with a cheerful shout. Somewhat taken aback by Annette’s bodyguards, she had to visibly restrain herself from hugging Annette.

  “Hi, Michelle,” Annette greeted Michelle Dalston, once Elon Casimir’s personal assistant. “Good to see you. What do they have you doing these days?”

  “Tomlin kept me on as the CEO’s assistant when he took over,” Dalston told her. “He’s waiting for you with the Board in the Penthouse, shall we?”

  The thought that the Board of Directors of her old employer were now waiting on her gave Annette the chills. It was the little things that drove home just how different her life had become.

  “We’re waiting on Admiral Villeneuve, but Councilor Zhao and I have things to discuss with the Board that don’t require him,” she told the EA. “Can you make sure the Admiral is brought in once he arrives? He’s dropping from orbit as we speak.”

  “Of course!”

  #

  Before the arrival of Imperial technology, there had been no more technologically advanced meeting space on the planet than the Penthouse, the secure meeting room that occupied the top floor of Nova Tower.

  If Casimir had been around, he’d have been incorporating Imperial tech as fast as he could find it. With Tomlin Nilsson in charge, though, it didn’t appear they’d updated the Penthouse’s electronics.

  It still had each window covered in haptic interface screens, capable of being transparent to show the incredible view from the hundred-and-ten-story tower or turning into super-high-fidelity computer screens.

  One of the few fully functioning hologram tanks built before the A!Tol’s arrival filled the center of the chamber. The furniture around the room was gorgeous, handcrafted black leather and silvered chrome. It had been commissioned specifically for this room, and the layout and technology and furniture fed into each other with a soothing line and energy.

  Casimir wasn’t a huge believer in feng shui, but his designer had been. Every aspect of the room was designed to draw and focus positive and creative energy and then to augment that knowledge and minds gathered there with all of the knowledge of the human race.

  Tomlin Nilsson was standing next to the door, dressed in a perfectly tailored black suit that exactly matched his dark hair. The Board waited behind him, the three men and three women having taken their seats.

  “Welcome back, Duchess Bond,” Nilsson told her. “Before we dig into the complexities of this meeting, I just want to say, for myself, that I was delighted to hear you’d survived your mission.

  “I also wanted to pass on my condolences about Elon,” he continued. “We were all close. His loss hit us hard.”

  “We both knew Elon,” Annette replied. “And we’ve both mourned him—but like I said, we knew Elon. I question whether or not he’s truly dead.”

  “I’ve done the same,” he admitted, “but he was in the house when it burned down—and if it had been some kind of trick, someone at Nova would have heard from him by now.”

  “Perhaps,” Annette allowed. She allowed him to guide her and Zhao into the room, settling them down at one end of the table, an empty chair to Annette’s left, and then taking the single seat facing them down the table.

  The table was made of dozens of separate pieces and could be organized for anything from an intimate dinner for two to a mass meeting of Nova Industries’ hundred-plus mid-level and senior executives.

  A momentary flash of memory of other uses for the smallest version of the table crossed her mind, and she suppressed a currently inappropriate smile as she focused on the here and now.

  “Ladies, gentlemen,” she greeted them. “Thank you for meeting with us. I understand that you are all busy.”

  “We are not attempting to uplift and run a planet,” Nilsson pointed out. “We could argue back and forth over who is busier, but we are all here, which means you have something important to say.”

  “We have a few things,” Annette agreed, “but first, I have a very simple question for you: where is Morgan Casimir?”

  The entire room was silent. Even Zhao hadn’t been expecting that question and stared at her in shock.

  “I…don’t understand.”

  “Ms. Wong,” Annette addressed the oldest of the three female board members. “With Elon Casimir’s death, Morgan Casimir inherited his holdings, including his sixty-two-percent stake in Nova Industries. That four-year-old girl is your primary shareholder—and an orphan and the only child of one of my dearest friends.

  “So, I repeat, where is she?”

  Nilsson sighed.

  “We don’t know,” he told her. “Per Elon’s will, I became trustee of Morgan’s holdings, but she was whisked by a private security firm to an undisclosed location.”

  “Who’s taking care of her, then?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “Tomlin, everyone Elon would trust enough to take care of Morgan Casimir is in this goddamn building,” Annette said flatly. “It would have been me, you, or Michelle. So, if it’s not one of the handful of people I knew Elon to trust caring for her, who is it?”

  “I don’t assume I knew all of Elon’s friends,” Tomlin replied, his voice cold now. “I can assure you, Your Grace, I have communicated with Morgan since her father’s death. Not much, but enough to be certain of her safety.”

  “I appreciate that reassurance,” Annette told him. For all the grilling she was giving him, she trusted Tomlin. If he said he was comfortable with Morgan’s safety, she was almost certainly safe. “You’re missing my point, though. I suspect that’s because I know something you don’t.”

  “Which is?” Wong asked.

  “I was Morgan’s designated guardian,” the Duchess of Earth told them. “I know who that security company is, and they are currently refusing to talk to me. Which leads me, ladies, gentlemen, to a final question.

  “Have the Weber Protocol succession plans activated? Or is Elon Casimir still in control of the resources that went dark with him?”

  The entire room was silent for a long time.

  Then Nilsson laughed.

  “Annette, I didn’t even know there were a separate set of Weber Protocol succession procedures,” he admitted. “I’m guessing you know more than I do. Wou
ld I have known if they were activated?”

  “Yes,” she told him. “You didn’t think it was strange that so many sites, on and off Earth, went dark? So many people went missing who you couldn’t trace?

  “Elon had set up a parallel sub-structure to be activated if the Weber Protocols were initiated, one that would take a huge amount of resources underground—including databases and people.

  “I need those databases and people,” she said grimly. “You’ve had no contact with that group at all?”

  “I have not,” Nilsson told her. “I suspect Elon—because he may well be in hiding running this, you’re right—would keep me in the dark to avoid getting what he’s left in public of the company in trouble.”

  Annette nodded.

  “If you hear from him, or have any way of contacting him, I need to know,” she instructed. “We can survive without him and those resources, but they’d be damned useful.” She gave Nilsson a small smile.

  “Now, the rest of my piece of this is best kept for when Admiral Villeneuve gets here, but Councilor Zhao has some nonmilitary bits of policy and planning to discuss.”

  #

  Villeneuve was even later than planned, allowing Zhao to spend almost forty minutes discussing the role he was envisaging Nova Industries, as the single largest space operator in Sol and one of the ten largest industrial companies in general, playing in the technological and economic uplift process.

  Annette even managed to make it through that entire conversation without her eyes glazing over, though she had little constructive to contribute. Her involvement in economics was mostly setting high-level policy: she knew her limits. That was why her Council was almost a third industrialists and economists.

  She was still relieved when Dalston escorted the white-haired Admiral in and they could turn the conversation to such readily followed topics as military construction and technology.