Relics of Eternity (Duchy of Terra Book 7)

by Glynn Stewart

  “We can’t trace it in the current state of hyperspace here,” Nguyen said after a moment’s thought. “Whatever made it out is long gone. The chaos of the nova will prevent any useful tracking for a while.”

  “What are we looking at, Rin?” Morgan asked.

  “Best case? The Womb used a partially constructed hyperdrive system to help the Children escape,” the archeologist told them. “They’ll be a pain, but I’m reasonably sure the Imperium can deal with three rogue destroyers.”

  Morgan remembered the warnings coming out of Kanzi space. The Theocracy’s civil war was probably going to send more than three rogue destroyers into Imperial space.

  “And the worst case, Dr. Dunst?” she asked.

  “The worst case is that the Womb overcame the limitations of her design,” Dunst told them. “The Alava would not have designed it to be able to reproduce—but they also would not have designed it to build interface drives or hyper portal emitters.

  “It would have had to create the structure for a child from scratch, but I think we can be very certain that the Womb was very smart and that it had a long time to work out how to create a seed.”

  He shrugged helplessly, and Morgan understood the understated terror on his face now.

  “So long as it took it ten thousand years to travel between stars, there was no point in it breaking the Alava restrictions on its ability to reproduce. Given a hyperdrive and potentially some kind of interface drive…it could very likely have decided that there was a purpose to it creating more of itself.”

  “If there’s another one, we know how to kill them now,” Nguyen said grimly. “Plus, it’s going to take it at least a few hundred years to grow to its parent’s size, right?”

  “Probably,” Dunst agreed. “But remember that this is not a stupid creature. This is a creature that, presented with an interface drive, learned how to duplicate it. Learned its limitations…and then worked out a way around those limitations for its own purposes.

  “The Children called it a god. I am far from that generous, but it was a terrifyingly intelligent creature. Its child will be equally capable—and it will know how we killed the first one.”

  Something Morgan suspected Dunst had worked out, even if no one had explicitly told them that Defiance had fired a starkiller into the Womb’s captive sun.

  “All of that will need to be written up and reported,” she told her crew. “Right now, at least, that child isn’t a threat. We have time to find it and time to deal with the Imperium’s other problems.

  “We’ll pass on everything we have to High Command, and they’ll decide what we do about the child. For now, let’s get our people home.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  “Welcome, Captain. Have a seat.”

  Morgan felt the doors to Davor’s office swing shut behind her like the swing of the executioner’s axe. She obeyed the gentle instruction, taking the solitary chair in front of the big red stone desk.

  “I don’t have much else to do, sir,” she admitted with a small smile. “Defiance can’t even enter hyperspace on her own right now. We appreciate you sending Green Corona to get us.”

  Green Corona was the second-most powerful warship under Davor’s command until the battleships arrived sometime in the next few days, a Thunderstorm-D class cruiser built during the Taljzi Campaigns. Given Defiance’s current state, Green Corona was the only thing really standing between Kosha Station and anyone who wanted to cause trouble.

  Of course, Morgan was reasonably sure she’d eliminated the only real threat to the base. For now, anyway.

  “It’s not often I see a ship crawl back home in quite that bad a shape,” Davor said levelly. “Most ships that get that abused, Captain Casimir, don’t make it home.”

  “We did some of the worst of it to ourselves getting into hyperspace at the end,” Morgan said. “The Womb’s effect on the local hyperspatial interface was unusual.”

  “And the Final Dragon weapons had their own effect, as I understand,” the Echelon Lord noted. “I’ve reviewed the reports prepared by you and your senior officers, Captain. You do understand, yes, the problem for maintaining Final Dragon Protocol security that your actions create?”

  “I do, sir,” Morgan confirmed. She was staring at a point just above and to the right of Davor’s bony shoulder. “It was made clear to me when I was briefed on the full armament of my command that any deployment of the Final Dragon weapons would need to be justified before a board of inquiry or equivalent.”

  “In addition to that, I must point out that you deployed strategic weapons in violation of a direct order,” Davor said calmly. “Given the shortcomings of the Servants, it seems clear that, say, a squadron of superbattleships should have been able to clear local space around the Womb and enable a far closer examination of what remains perhaps the most intriguing Precursor artifact we have ever encountered.”

  “It did not appear that a squadron of superbattleships would be available soon, sir,” Morgan replied. “And I agreed with Dr. Dunst’s assessment that it was only a question of time before the Womb constructed a hyperdrive. The fact that it created a hyper portal to allow someone to escape at the end suggests we may have even been overestimating how long that would take.”

  “I read the report,” the Ivida flag officer reminded her. “Though I did draw a conclusion from the reports that I’m not sure you did. You were concerned at the time and in hindsight over the potential for the Womb to capture your ship and use its matter-conversion core to accelerate its exotic-matter production or potentially augment its feeding cycle.”

  “Yes, sir. Capture of a modern warship could have led to…serious problems.”

  “You are assuming, Captain, that the Children of the Stars were able to provide their databanks to the Womb in a manner that could be read by a fifty-thousand-year-old organic brain designed to interface with a completely different communications and information systems technology base,” Davor told her.

  “More likely, in my opinion,” the Lord Echelon continued, “is that the Womb duplicated hyperspace and interface-drive technology from sensor data and examination of the technologies in the hands of the Children. It is entirely possible, if that assumption were true, that the Womb would be able to duplicate our matter-to-energy conversion processes based solely on close-range scans of your vessel.

  “Scans, Captain Casimir, that the Womb already had.”

  Morgan stared at her superior. That had never even occurred to her.

  “You are correct, sir; I did not draw that conclusion from the situation we were presented,” she admitted.

  “Nonetheless, you appear to have made an overall accurate assessment of the threat,” Davor told her. “The unpredictable arrival of two solar masses in the Kosha System would destroy the colony on Blue Heart, regardless of whether the Womb proceeded to eat Kosha itself.

  “Given the data you had available, your decision to proceed with the deployment of strategic weapons was both within the authority granted to you as commander of a strategic weapon platform and entirely reasonable,” the flag officer concluded. “There will be no inquiry, Captain Casimir. I have authorized your decision, and any consequences or penalties thereof will fall on me.

  “Is that clear?”

  “Sir. Yes, sir,” Morgan replied. “Thank you, sir.”

  She paused.

  “What consequences, sir?” she asked slowly.

  Davor studied her, the Ivida woman’s eyes unreadable as she analyzed Morgan.

  “This does not leave this room,” she finally told Morgan.

  “Of course, sir. Everything we are discussing is sealed under Final Dragon Protocol.”

  “More than that, Captain. You did not hear this from me, or at all. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Morgan said crisply. She was nervous now. That didn’t sound right.

  “I received both explicit fleet orders and clear back-channel personal messages informing me that under no circumst
ances was the Womb to be destroyed,” Davor told her. “By the time I’d received them, we already knew you’d engaged the Womb. Passing them on would have been pointless; they’d have been ten hours too late by the time you got them.

  “It is very clear to me, Captain, that someone in the Imperium suspected the Womb existed and was prepared to place the colonies under my protection at extreme risk to allow for study of it,” the flag officer concluded.

  “We know the Children were born out of a survey mission we can’t find any record of,” Morgan admitted. “Are you saying they may still have allies in the Imperium?”

  “What we saw of the Children was a cult born out of an encounter with a mind-bogglingly powerful entity,” Davor reminded her. “That does not mean that what we saw is all that there was. It is possible that the people who sent that first expedition out still had contacts with it.

  “It is possible, Captain Casimir, that someone in the Imperium already knew what we found out…and those waters are dark and deep. They scare me, Captain.”

  “And me,” Morgan admitted. “The A!Tol aren’t supposed to be able to do conspiracy.”

  “Our overlords lie poorly,” Davor noted grimly. “But they are far more capable of deception than they even perceive themselves to be.

  “And even if the A!Tol are silent in this matter, twenty-eight species have members of sufficient power to have set this in motion. I will cover your back from consequences, Captain Casimir, but I’m afraid there is at least one I can already expect.”

  “Sir?”

  “I cannot, given the orders I received while you were fighting the Womb, recommend you for the medals and honors you and your crew most richly deserve,” Davor told her. “All I can do is protect you from those who would attack you for your actions.”

  “Protect my crew, sir, and I am more than happy.”

  “That, Captain Casimir, was never in doubt.”

  Morgan hoped that her running into Rin Dunst outside the naval base headquarters looked at least somewhat accidental. It hadn’t been entirely planned, but she’d known he had a meeting there and she’d told him about hers.

  Despite what she’d said to Davor, the two and a half cycles since she’d arrived back in the Kosha System had been hectic chaos. Defiance was now in the capable hands of Kosha Station’s yards once more, and Morgan had time to breathe.

  “Well, you’re not in cuffs, so I take it that went well?” Dunst greeted her with a chuckle as he fell in beside her. “Lunch?”

  “Maybe; let’s walk for now,” she told him. “I know at least some people who’d think cuffs would mean things were going very well.”

  “If nothing else, I don’t believe you are the Echelon Lord’s type,” the archeologist replied as he walked beside her. “It went well?”

  “It did,” she agreed. “Some…worries,” she admitted. “Not the kind we can talk about.”

  “That’s how it goes,” Dunst agreed. “You have the same problem with Victoria, I would guess?”

  “Both ways,” Morgan confessed. “There’s things I can’t talk to her about and things she can’t talk to me about. Half the time, it turns out we both knew something but weren’t allowed to talk to each other about it.”

  She shook her head.

  “She’ll like you, if we ever get you back to Sol,” she predicted. “If nothing else, she’ll think you’re good for me. Keep me humble.”

  “She knows about me?” Dunst asked.

  “Of course. She gave me permission before we even had a date,” Morgan confirmed. “Anything else would be unfair to everyone, I think.”

  “Makes sense, I suppose,” he allowed. “Still getting used to this whole concept.”

  “Is it worth it?” she asked. She was pretty sure of the answer.

  “So far,” he agreed with a chuckle. “Even if we occasionally butt heads.”

  “That won’t change,” Morgan warned him. “I’m on Kosha Station for a while as Defiance gets repaired, but after that…I go where the Navy sends me.”

  “And I go where the Institute sends me,” he warned her in turn. “Though if you’re looking for a place to crash while you’re on Station, I do have an apartment here.”

  “Wait, seriously?” Morgan asked in surprise. They’d spent their night together on Kosha Station in a hotel, after all.

  “I’m not expected to be on Kosha Station very much,” he told her. “But we’re looking at half a dozen potential digs in this sector, so it made sense to find some place to stick my stuff. You’re welcome to use it while you’re on station, even if I’m not.”

  “You disappearing that quickly?” Morgan said.

  “Probably,” he admitted. “A bunch of messages are flying back and forth, but even though we blew up one site, we identified several more. The list of places we want to dig into is expanding rapidly, and it isn’t the Alava’s nature to have only done one of a type of thing.”

  “You think there’s more biological megastructures?”

  “I know there are,” Dunst said. “So, we’ll keep poking at Alava sites until we find them, and we’ll keep the Navy in the loop. I’m here for at least a few more cycles, but I expect to be gone long before Defiance is back in commission.

  “But you’re welcome to use my apartment while I’m gone,” he repeated.

  “And if Victoria comes to visit?” Morgan teased.

  “Then she is also welcome to use the apartment,” Dunst agreed with a chuckle. “Do I know how any of this is supposed to work? No! Am I willing to give it all a shot? Yes.”

  “Good. Because I am worth it,” Morgan told him. “Victoria, for all of her continuing frustration with me, tells me so.”

  “So long as the Imperium recognizes your worth as well, I think you’ll be just fine,” he said.

  That sent a chill down her spine as she considered Davor’s warning.

  Most likely, the sun-eating Alava creation she’d just killed had sent a child fleeing into hyperspace, with an escort of cultist warships. On top of that, those cultists appeared to have allies within the Imperium.

  Now Dunst was warning there might be more Alava biologicals in the sector—because she needed more worries.

  And beyond all of that, the Imperium stood on the edge of not one but two wars.

  She shook her head.

  “No lunch,” she decided. “Show me this apartment, Dr. Dunst. I’m curious to see how well the Imperium keeps our premier archeologists!”

  Thank you so much for reading Relics of Eternity. The Duchy of Terra saga will continue in Shadows of the Fall, book 8 of the Duchy of Terra series, due out in October 2020.

  Read on for a preview of the first contact space opera Exile, book 1 in the Exile trilogy, or click to check it out in the Amazon store.

  For all the Glynn Stewart news, announcements, and more, join the mailing list at GlynnStewart.com/mailing-list

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  A shackled Earth, ruled by an unstoppable tyrant

  An exiled son, and a one-way trip across the galaxy

  A perfect world, their last hope for survival

  Vice Admiral Isaac Gallant is the heir apparent to the First Admiral, the dictator of the Confederacy of Humanity. Unwilling to let his mother's tyranny stand, he joins the rebellion and leads his ships into war against the might of his own nation.

  Betrayal and failure, however, see Isaac Gallant and his allies captured. Rather than execute her only son, the First Admiral instead decides to exile them, flinging four million dissidents and rebels through a one-shot wormhole to the other end of the galaxy.

  There, Isaac finds himself forced
to keep order and peace as they seek out a new home without becoming the very dictator he fought against and when that new home turns out to be too perfect to be true, he and his fellow exiles must decide how hard they are prepared to fight for paradise...against the very people who built it.

  Chapter One

  “The wormhole station is ours.”

  The transmission from the Marine boarding parties that Vice Admiral Isaac Gallant’s people had spent weeks infiltrating onto the Eridani Wormhole Station echoed loudly across the flag bridge of the Confederacy battlecruiser Vigil.

  “Do we have a stable communication wormhole?” the Vice Admiral asked calmly. If his Marines had seized the station, then the die was well and truly cast. The Rubicon was crossed.

  Battle Group Vigil was now unquestionably in rebellion.

  “Brigadier Zamarano has her people holding the line,” his communications officer replied.

  “Put her on,” Isaac ordered. “Kira, what’s your status?”

  “We have secured all key engineering and command segments of the EWS,” Kira Zamarano said crisply. “Resistance has been minimal. We have some casualties but no fatalities on either side. Overwhelming force pulled its usual trick.”

  “Well done, Brigadier. Pass my regards on to the Marines of the 77th,” Isaac ordered.

  EWS had roughly a battalion of Marines as security. Zamarano had infiltrated her entire 77th Brigade aboard the station. That kind of imbalance of forces was useful for avoiding losses.

  “Inter-system communications?” he asked his Marine commander.

  “Locked down. We now control all communication and travel out of Epsilon Eridani,” she confirmed. “What are your orders?”

  “Move to Phase Two,” Isaac replied. “The Battle Group will be on our way momentarily. 35th Brigade will bring your transports with theirs. How many Marines will be needed to hold EWS?”