Eyes of Tomorrow (Duchy of Terra Book 9)

by Glynn Stewart

  “Exactly, Staff Captain. I look to you to provide the context,” he told her. “I’ve seen the estimate of the capabilities of the X-type bioforms, Casimir. I want you to validate those estimates with a new team—and then I want you to tell me how long it's going to be before I should expect to face an enemy with every weapon I have mounted on a warship the size of a planet.”

  “I still believe, sir, that they are limited in their ability to update the larger bioforms beyond implanting hardware on the surface,” Morgan noted. “That leaves the possibilities of Category One bioforms serving as symbiotic systems on the larger bioforms but does limit how much firepower they can truly bring to bear.”

  “And that, Captain Casimir, is exactly the analysis and breakdown we need,” he told her. “I need to know the threat level, because right now? Right now, I am assuming the threat level is functionally infinite, and I can’t fight that.”

  The phrasing was probably even intentional, and Morgan bowed her head in acknowledgement of Tan!Shallegh’s point.

  “Resources, timelines, logic and tactics,” she murmured. “We’ll break them all down as best as we can. I should probably get started.”

  “Yes,” the Fleet Lord agreed. “Take the coffee with you,” he noted, indicating Morgan’s barely touched cup. “I have a noncom arriving in a few thousandth-cycles to take you to your new office.

  “Whatever you need for your team, talk to my chief of staff, !Pana,” he continued. “We will make it happen. Knowledge is the greatest weapon against all foes but the sea, Captain.”

  Morgan nodded her acknowledgement—but her mind finished the old A!Tol saying.

  Knowledge is the greatest weapon against all foes but the sea—and the sea cannot be defeated.

  The noncom left Morgan alone in her new working space, and she took a few moments to just absorb what she had to work with. The Fleet Operations Center wasn’t a portion of an Imperial capital ship where she’d spent a lot of time before—she’d been due for a tour as a task force operations officer before she was promoted to flag rank, but she hadn’t held the role yet.

  The FOC supported the flag bridge by providing a separate space for the operations officer to stuff the team of analysts and technicians that backed them up. Often, it was little more than a glorified version of the conference room she’d run her Infinite team out of aboard Jean Villeneuve.

  Ashmore had been making full use of Villeneuve’s FOC. Here, though, Tan!Shallegh’s operations officer was aboard a different ship entirely, which left the ridiculously well-equipped space for Morgan’s new special analysis team.

  It was an oval room anchored on a four-meter-long holotank, currently showing the strategic map of the Dead Zone and the Astoroko Nebula. A dozen consoles were positioned in the main room, all facing toward the holotank but leaving enough space for the senior ops team to stand around the holotank and use it as a planning board.

  One wall of the FOC was a massive screen, providing an additional shared working space for the entire team, and the opposite wall was home to six offices—for the ops officer and their top five officers and senior noncoms.

  It was only slightly smaller than Defiance’s bridge had been and was designed for only two-thirds as many sentients. Right now, Morgan was the only person in the space, and she stepped up to the holotank, tapping commands to bring up the files she’d transferred over from Jean Villeneuve.

  The Queen appeared in the center of the display, a small scale at the bottom corner marking the almost-incomprehensible size of the immense Infinite creature.

  She was easily over a hundred thousand kilometers long; they never had got a solid-enough look to get a definite number. The Queen was the entity Morgan had communicated with—and she wasn’t even sure if the Queen was an individual or if the Infinite shared some kind of hive mind.

  The latter seemed unlikely to her, but it was a scenario she had to consider.

  With a sigh, she swept the hologram away, bringing up the data they had on the force that had driven off the blockading fleet. The final estimates had been broken down on the trip to the Grand Fleet.

  Not that they were reassuring.

  Eleven hundred—plus/minus about fifty—bioforms had put out approximately a million missiles in each salvo. Morgan wished she could break them down by category. She had to hope that there’d been a significant number of larger bioforms in there; otherwise, her estimates of the enemies’ firepower were badly off.

  “They said I’d find you here,” Rin’s voice said from behind her. “Already gazing into the mind of the enemy?”

  “The factories of the enemy, more like,” she told him without turning around. “A million launchers and at least five million missiles.”

  She shook her head.

  “According to the Laians, Builder of Tomorrows could have produced that, but it would have required a lot of raw materials, and we’re not sure if they could have accessed that much, say, raw iron in the middle of the nebula.”

  “Outside my expertise,” Rin admitted. He pulled a chair over to the holotank and plopped down on it. “You don’t have to answer those questions alone, either. This space seems designed for a few more than one.”

  He gestured around the FOC.

  “Seventeen or so,” Morgan agreed. “I have a list. I need to expand it.”

  She shook her head.

  “I just… I’m worried I’m missing something, Rin,” she admitted. “And they’re basing the entire deployment of fleets around my advice and analysis. There’s only so comfortable I can be with that!”

  “Would you trust someone else to do it?” he asked quietly.

  That question shocked a sudden laugh from Morgan—especially because the answer was immediate and definitive in her head.

  “No,” she admitted. “I take your point.”

  She waved away the data on the Infinite swarm and brought back the strategic display again.

  “Their main body is still here.” She tapped the Eye of the Astoroko Nebula—a rosette of newborn blue stars that screwed up hyperspace around them with gravity signatures, part of why the Infinite had never been found.

  “The strength we’ve seen there is basically unimaginable,” she noted. “Even if we brought the massed battle fleets of the Core Powers into play, I’m not sure we can actually breach the Eye and destroy the Queen.

  “Certainly, we can’t do it with the resources we have right now. So, it’s a holding play still, even if containment has failed.”

  “It looks like the Alava held them in this region for a while,” Rin noted. “There’s some odd mining sites that the Laians took me to investigate that looked like biotech. With hindsight, I’d say they were Infinite extraction sites.

  “They can access resources fast, if that site is an example,” he warned her. “But that was from Alavan times. They still dug up most of the planet over the course of a year, which suggests they were there for a year.”

  Morgan grimaced.

  “Short of Alavan-style chopping planets in half to get at the core, that’s still probably the fastest I’ve heard of someone exploiting most of a planet,” she pointed out. The Infinite seemed to work on the same scale as the Alava, and that meant the current galaxy was feeling badly out of scale.

  “So, what do you think their next steps are?” her boyfriend asked.

  Morgan tapped a command, highlighting a crescent of stars in orange.

  “There are fourteen uninhabited systems within five cycles’ hyperspace flight of where we engaged the Infinite,” she told him. “None have seen significant scouting from anybody, as they have no habitable planets.”

  Anything in that zone that had been habitable was gone now—and so was its star. The Laians and Wendira had been very thorough about trying to genocide each other before they’d eventually wised up.

  A little, at least.

  “And we’re preparing based on the assumption they’re tearing those systems apart for resources, I would guess?” Ri
n asked.

  “Exactly. And my team needs to work out what they’re turning those resources into,” she said grimly. “We now know it took them under fifty cycles to create and deploy a hyperspace drive out of their biotech.

  “I’m hoping they weren’t doing parallel development of other systems, but that means I’m expecting about the same time period before they start deploying either biotech missiles or biotech hyperfold guns.”

  She shivered.

  “I’m guessing missiles,” she admitted. “They haven’t seen hyperfold cannons since leaving the Nebula, so they’ll recreate the systems they’re already using and we’ve used against them. Their priorities may change after the first regular-space engagement.”

  “Wouldn’t they have seen hyperfold cannons from the conspirators?” Rin asked.

  “Yep, and they have samples on board Builder of Tomorrows,” Morgan agreed. “But the big fights they’ve had with real fleets have been missile duels, so I suspect we’ll see them bring their own missiles to the party in short order.”

  “Which will basically be, what, miniature bioforms?”

  “Most likely,” she said. She shook her head. “I need to pull that team together and sit down and have this conversation with them. Can you see if you’ll be available? We’re clearing them for everything we know about the Alava, and I’d like you to brief them.”

  She heard him inhale and then release a long sigh.

  “That could take a while,” he admitted with a chuckle. “But I think I know what’ll be relevant. I’ll be here when you need me, Morgan. I hope what I know can help.”

  “So do I,” she said. “Because I’d love it if we found an easy answer to this mess—because I’m not sure I see a solution once they start moving Category Sixes and Sevens out of the nebula!”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Despite his assorted commitments, Rin still managed to find time to steal moments in the massive superbattleship’s observation domes and breathe. Dragging Morgan along on those moments was harder, but he managed it.

  His reward was to watch the tightly wound blonde slightly—ever so slightly—relax a bit as she looked out at the gas giant “beneath” Va!Tola. The lights of the ships and the Tohrohsail Fleet Base detracted slightly from the calming appearance, but the gas giant itself was quite pretty.

  “My team is ready,” she said after several minutes. “I’m going to hold you to that briefing, if we have time.”

  “I haven’t heard much news of significance,” he told her. “Things are quiet for now.”

  “Which makes me nervous as well.” She shook her head at him. “We’re in position to see them move, so why haven’t we seen them move?”

  “You’re supposed to be relaxing,” Rin countered. He was enough of a workaholic himself to recognize that Morgan was overdoing it, but even as her lover, he only had so much clout to get the woman to relax.

  “I’m also supposed to have a briefing for the combined command staff in two cycles, once the Wendira arrive,” Morgan replied. “One that we’re going to base our war strategy off of for the next few weeks at least.”

  “And you’ll be better prepared to draft and give that briefing if you rest once in a while,” Rin told her. They were alone in the observation dome at the moment, though that probably wouldn’t last. Enough of the crew would swing through on a given work shift to make the privacy with the view rare and precious.

  “Fair,” she conceded to his point, but he could tell that she was still thinking away.

  “I was hoping the planet would be more successful at distracting you than I am,” Rin told her with a smile. “It is much prettier, after all.”

  She turned away from the big window to look at him and shook her head. Rin figured she knew he wasn’t particularly bothered by his looks or weight—but it was hard to argue that the red, green and blue gas giant wasn’t absolutely gorgeous.

  “You do better than you give yourself credit for,” she said anyway. “Even when you’re being serious, not self-deprecating.”

  She gave him an exaggerated leer.

  “And besides, what follows me looking at you is very distracting and relaxing,” she murmured.

  The train of thought was interrupted by the dome door opening, revealing a pair of black-armored Wendira Warrior caste. They swept the room with multi-faceted eyes, their gazes rested on Morgan and Rin for a few moments, then they withdrew.

  Rin was about to wonder what had happened when Oxtashah stepped through the door the Warriors had just checked, the Wendira Royal folding her wings in closely to fit through the portal.

  “Ah, Dr. Dunst, Captain Casimir,” Oxtashah greeted them. “Are you also here to watch the arrival?”

  “Is it time?” Morgan asked while Rin was still processing what the Wendira had said. “It’s not normally so predictable.”

  “The first scouts arrived a few moments ago,” Oxtashah said. “We needed to be certain that there was a clear section for the Battle Hives to emerge into. I believe… Yes, there.”

  She pointed a pincer at a section of space visible past the gas giant, well beyond where Rin figured most of the ships would be visible even as dots.

  While the next steps for everything in Tohrohsail were predicated on the arrival of the Wendira ships, he hadn’t actually paid that much attention to when the three Battle Hives were due to arrive. It made sense, of course, that Oxtashah had been.

  “I believed it would be worth watching,” the Wendira Princess noted. “I do not believe that fleets of my people and the Laians of such size have ever shared a system without a major battle.

  “It is a first—and perhaps a promising one, one that speaks to a new era for both our species and those around us.”

  It started with a tiny blue spark. To Rin’s surprise, Morgan tapped on the glass of the observation dome, and the area they were looking at suddenly expanded as concealed optics and screens zoomed in at a command sequence he hadn’t known.

  The tiny blue spark was just one portal, maybe a dozen kilometers across. It was joined by others. First a handful. Then dozens. Then immense portals, a thousand kilometers across, that unleashed entire star hive carrier groups.

  They had enough zoom to watch the ships emerge in their delicate-seeming formations, the ten-million-ton star shields leading the way in their hundreds. The star hives themselves were the center point, smooth pyramid-like shapes multiple kilometers high, arranged into formations of fives surrounded by star shield battleships.

  More lights glinted around the capital ships, smaller vessels invisible even at this scale.

  “Two hundred and fifty star hives, twelve hundred star shields, and nine hundred lighter escorts,” Oxtashah said softly. “Three Battle Hives of the Wendira, to stand alongside our ancient foes against these Infinite.

  “They should never have picked this fight.”

  Rin kept his peace. He wasn’t entirely sure the Infinite, trapped as they were in the Eye, had really had a choice. As soon as someone had shown up with a potential way out, he couldn’t quite blame them for trying to seize it—even if they had attacked the ship he was on.

  He could blame them for the fact that every meeting after that had also started with the Infinite shooting at whoever they encountered. That wasn’t making them any friends and was, well, why there were now over four hundred Core Power major capital ships in the Tohrohsail System.

  On the other hand, Rin Dunst had seen some of Morgan’s analyses. He still wasn’t sure they had enough ships.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Morgan’s briefing had gone surprisingly smoothly, laying out what they knew with certainty about the Infinite—not nearly enough—and what she thought they were going to do next—acquire resources to produce more systems and more of themselves.

  She’d been expecting a larger audience. She’d ended up presenting to three people: Voice Tidirok, Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh, and Royal Commandant Ronoxosh. They’d been seated in that order, either intent
ionally or instinctively putting the A!Tol between the Laian and the Wendira officers.

  Ronoxosh was smaller than Oxtashah but had almost identical coloring and other features. His wings were much more clearly vestigial than hers, tiny faerie-like things half-covered by the floor-length cape he wore, closed at the neck with the golden orb insignia of his rank.

  He had waited through the entire presentation in calm silence, then leaned forward as Morgan finished up.

  “I have questions, if Captain Casimir can remain to answer them,” he told them, his voice soft in both translation and in the untranslated musical hum of his true voice.

  “I am at your disposal,” Morgan replied. “Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh made certain I had the rest of the cycle clear.”

  She knew perfectly well that the First Fleet Lord did not have the rest of the cycle clear, though the administrators of his flag staff would rapidly fix that if the meeting continued over its schedule.

  “I do not believe my questions will take that long,” Oxtashah replied, the translator picking up an amused tone. “How wide is our catchment net for scouting around the Astoroko Nebula at the moment?”

  “The Laian portion of it is now up to forty-six stealth ships,” Morgan told him. “With long-range anomaly scanners, they are covering a section of the nebula approximately sixty-two by forty-eight degrees across.

  “We have not been briefed on the positions of the Wendira star hives covering your side of the Nebula,” she admitted.

  Ronoxosh paused thoughtfully.

  “That coverage is less than five percent of the total surface area of the Nebula,” he pointed out. “Our coverage is roughly comparable on the other side. We have not yet seen Infinite movement into our space, but I wonder…”

  “Sir?” Morgan queried before the other two senior officers could say anything.