Circles (Jennifer HodgesWarrior Queen Book 8) by Stuart Collings

Author:Stuart Collings [Collings, Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-02-14T07:00:00+00:00

Losses

Year 3161, Nineday 13 Day 3

Jennifer walked wearily from her basement office to her destination. The Emperor’s informal audience room. Not his office. Not the apartment they shared. His informal audience room.

Must be official, she thought. Otherwise he’d have waited until evening meal in the apartment. And it has to be important, otherwise he wouldn’t have used the pomp and nonsense of the audience room. It’s something official and something vaguely serious. He’s got to be planning on asking me for a favor. One that needs to be done, but he doesn’t want to just simply ask.

She paused her train of thought as she stepped out of the anti-gravity tube and turned left. How am I doing so far, Gretch? she asked her symbiote silently.

“You haven’t gotten us lost so far,” her symbiote replied, giggling at the end.

“You know what I mean,” Jennifer whispered, pretending to be annoyed.

“Yep and yep. It is something important. I told you about this when I explained why you had been chosen.”

There had been a lot of information revealed in that conversation, back when Jennifer was still set on killing herself. She was running through the conversation in her mind, when she arrived at her destination.

“Time’s up. The answer awaits within.”

“You’ve been accessing those stupid pseudo-supernatural short stories that Gretchen made me read.”

“They help pass the time. They are stupid though. I agree.”

In through the outer doors, the guards outside them having parted. She walked over to the Secretary of the – whatever the title was. She smiled at the woman, feigning patience and quiet amusement as she was “examined” (and just how many blonde human females were there in the Empire?) then escorted to the male holding the mace that would be struck against the impressive double-doors so that two male servants standing just inside would pull them open. Then her presence would be announced. At least, being the Mother of the Wakira, they wouldn’t actually have to voice a verbal petition on her behalf to allow her the honor of an audience. All pomp and nonsense.

As soon as the doors were once again closed, and the attendants had gone a discreet distance away, she started smiling and walked over to where he was seated. He stood, and returned her smile. Once they got close, they raised their right hands simultaneously, the caresses on the cheeks turning into the knuckle rubs that the Wakira found stimulating. “How can I please my Father?” she asked him formally, to help him make his request.

He hesitated briefly, then began the speech that he had rehearsed over and over again for the last interval or more. “You are not required to agree to do this, Beloved. Part of me wants you to say yes, but part of me is hoping that you’ll reject the request.” He paused again. She said nothing. She merely resumed the knuckle rubs. “We have finally officially heard from the new Andante regime. Aside from the gratitude they expressed when they were finally able to re-establish supply routes to the Andante colonies that we had been supplying.

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