Eyes of Tomorrow (Duchy of Terra Book 9)

by Glynn Stewart

  “Good catch, Commander,” Morgan replied, suppressing a shiver as she watched the bioform detach itself from a Laian storage depot, dozens of missiles held in its tentacles. “That’s disturbing.”

  “Yes. But those C-Ones are probably key to the Infinite’s technological adaptation,” Shotilik noted. “They’re probably doing a lot of the work around building and installing the hardware they’ve adapted from the Laian systems.

  “But on the other hand, if that’s as small as they get, we don’t need to worry about Marine-equivalent bioforms boarding our ships and taking over.”

  “Small mercies,” Morgan muttered. “I’ll tell the Fleet Lord. Anything else we need to be concerned about?”

  “No. They look about what we expected,” Shotilik said. “They’ve pulled the last of these manipulator bioforms back into themselves and are all but sorted out. I’d guess we’ll see them accelerate toward the fleets in a minute or two.”

  “Understood. Thank you.”

  Morgan relayed that to Tan!Shallegh, who gave her an acknowledging tentacle gesture while his attention was focused on a conversation with the other two fleet commanders.

  Finally, Tan!Shallegh returned his attention to the flag deck—just as the tachyon sensors showed that Swarm Bravo was finally moving out at its ridiculous acceleration.

  “The combined fleets will advance to two light-minutes and initiate an engagement with hyperspace missiles and starfighters,” he told the flag deck. “We will use the HSMs to target the largest bioforms while the starfighters sweep up the smaller units.

  “Once we have expended fifty percent of the Grand Fleet’s HSMs, we will advance to regular-missile range,” he continued. “The expectation is that the enemy will attempt to force a plasma-range engagement.

  “We believe that our hyperfold cannons have a longer range than the Infinite’s plasma bursts…so we will permit them to close the range until we can unleash those cannons.”

  His beak snapped in determination.

  “There are still fifty million Laians in this system. We will save them.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The Infinite might not have interface drives, but their unknown reactionless propulsion was still disturbingly fast. With accelerations of a percent and a half of lightspeed per second, they didn’t seem to max out at all below the impenetrable barrier of lightspeed.

  The combined fleets, on the other hand, advanced at sixty percent of lightspeed with only a few seconds of acceleration. It was a matter of minutes for the two forces to close to the targeted two-light-minute range, and then the allies reversed course.

  The Infinite would continue to close, but for the moment they were out of range—and two of the three fleets facing them had weapons that could cross the distance.

  Each of the two hundred and fifty star hives brought by the Wendira Battle Hives carried over a thousand starfighters. Another two hundred star intruders each fielded just over two hundred and fifty apiece. Within moments of reaching the designated range, over three hundred thousand star fighters, each piloted by a sentient being determined to earn immortality, blazed into space.

  And by the time the last starfighter was in space, the first salvo of hyperspace missiles was on its way. Designated “single-portal” missiles to distinguish them from the still-more-advanced weapons commanded by the Mesharom, the Imperium’s hyperspace missiles were launched through self-contained portals concealed at the armored hearts of their warships.

  They crossed two regular-space light-minutes in seconds and then activated the hyper emitters they carried, diving back into normal space with suicidal ferocity and detonating ten-gigaton antimatter warheads as they found their targets.

  When Morgan had fought the Infinite the first time, she’d refused to fire first. That decision haunted her now, but it also meant that the Infinite had no idea weapons like these even existed. They were confident that no weapon their enemies possessed could reach them at that range.

  They were maneuvering enough to throw off long ballistic fire. They were not maneuvering enough to throw off missiles that arrived in seconds, guided by real-time tachyon targeting.

  There were four Category Fives at the heart of the fleet, the largest units in the Infinite armada and the ones that they were sure carried singularity guns. Eight hundred–plus kilometers across, they dwarfed any warship the Imperium had ever seen.

  So, Tan!Shallegh had sent the entire massed firepower of his fleet at one bioform. There was no point in counting the explosions. At least several hundred HSMs emerged inside their target, ten-gigaton warheads detonating in the flesh of their enemy.

  Immense as the Category Five bioform was, it couldn’t take that kind of damage. It never even had a chance to die. It was simply gone.

  “Fleet targeting move to C-Five-Two,” Tan!Shallegh said calmly. “Maintain fire concentration.”

  It might be overkill—but it was definitely enough kill, and when it came to a bioform eight hundred kilometers long, the last thing they could afford was to leave it intact after hurting it.

  The Infinite were evading now, desperate maneuvers that threw off the Grand Fleet’s targeting data. Their entire formation dissolved into chaos—but there was a beauty to the chaos, a pattern Morgan couldn’t quite pick out but which told her that it wasn’t chaos.

  It was a planned evasive maneuver, just as well-thought and logical as the evasive maneuvers Va!Tola was engaged in. Like their maneuvers, it would look random to the outside but was coded to keep ships from colliding with each other.

  The sheer volume of fire the Grand Fleet was throwing at a single target was enough to render the maneuvers pointless. A second Category Five died in an antimatter sun tens of thousands of kilometers wide.

  And then the allied fleet discovered that the inverse of the logic that killed the Category Five was equally true. With enough targets in play, it didn’t matter whether your fire could hit a specific target. It had a good chance of hitting a target.

  Eight microsingularities punched through the allied formation like javelins thrown by angry gods. Traveling at eleven nines of lightspeed—99.999999999% of c—and absorbing any tachyons that came near them, the black holes were impossible to see coming.

  And impossible to stop.

  One hit a Laian war-dreadnought, tearing a hole half a kilometer wide through the massive starship. Another clipped an Imperial battleship, delivering the same devastating damage to the bigger ship that a similar strike had inflicted on Morgan’s Defiance.

  Two Laian escort cruisers just…disappeared, torn to pieces and the wreckage dragged along with the mass of their killers. Another Wendira cruiser was almost missed, the singularity itself passing by but its gravity well tearing chunks out of the warship.

  Even at this range, the combined fleets were simply too big a target. The microsingularities didn’t have time to curve toward anything, but they didn’t need direct hits. And near-hits were far too easy with thousands of ships gathered into a single formation.

  Morgan grimaced—but the last Category Five died as she did so, and nothing smaller could host the singularity guns. They hoped.

  Plasma and hyperfold cannon fire now filled the space around Swarm Bravo as the Wendira starfighters reached their targets. The range was still dropping, but the two fleets hadn’t yet reached missile range of each other.

  And if the Wendira Drones had their way, they never would. Morgan had never seen the deadly small craft in action, only heard stories from her mother and her honorary aunts and uncles.

  Now she watched them tear into the Infinite. Formations designed to alternate squadrons to confuse enemy targeting had been adopted to alternate entire Grand Wings. The Infinite unleashed a full million-missile salvo at the small ships as they approached, but Wendira fighters were notoriously difficult targets—and that was for gunners who knew what they were facing.

  The missiles took their toll, but it was far from enough to stop the hundreds of thousands of
fighters swarming over the Infinite, hyperfold cannons and missiles of their own hammering down on bioform after bioform.

  But their power generators could only handle so much sustained fire, and the starfighter strike finally passed beyond range of Swarm Bravo. They were…much reduced, Morgan judged. Three hundred thousand–plus starfighters had gone in.

  If she was reading her numbers right, only two hundred thousand had come out.

  They’d gutted the smaller bioforms in exchange. If there was a Category Two bioform left in the Swarm, Va!Tola’s scanners couldn’t see it.

  That just left the middle of the road. The Category Threes and Fours, ships ranging from two kilometers to a hundred long.

  There were a hundred and fifty of them left, and Morgan was already running the math on their missile armament—because the math on their velocity was clear!

  “Missile range in thirty seconds,” !Pana announced calmly. “All defensive drones are deployed.” She paused. “Are we clear of incoming singularity fire?”

  “We should be,” Morgan replied. “My team has numbers on the missiles on the remaining ships. We’re estimating the Cat-Threes at an average of a thousand launchers and the Cat-Fours at five thousand. Total is four hundred thousand launchers on the Cat-Fours.

  “Our scans and opticals suggest these guys carried the biggest chunk of their launchers.”

  The four Category Fives had carried almost a quarter-million launchers between them, with the remaining three hundred and fifty thousand launchers spreading over nine hundred Category Threes and Twos.

  “Bucklers and shields will hold,” Tan!Shallegh said calmly. “They have neither. This should be…short.”

  “We can hope,” Morgan agreed. Her consoles were already running through the range estimates on a Category Four’s plasma bursts, and she didn’t like what she saw.

  “Shotilik, confirm these numbers,” she ordered.

  The missile launches started. Both Swarm Bravo and the combined fleets fired simultaneously—and Morgan’s team’s analysis appeared to be perfect. Exact numbers were impossible, but roughly four hundred thousand missiles were heading toward them.

  And the combined fleet sent a million missiles back. She had never seen firepower deployed on that scale before, and she’d been present for the Battle of Arjtal, where the Imperium had fielded its largest Grand Fleet prior to the one she was aboard now.

  “Orders to the fleets,” Tan!Shallegh said suddenly, clearly in coordination with the other two fleet commanders. “We will advance to maximum hyperfold-cannon range while sustaining full-rate missile fire.”

  Morgan swallowed and checked her console.

  “I have the same numbers, Captain,” her Rekiki subordinate told her. “So does Ito. The Cat-Fours’ plasma bursts will sustain integrity to twenty light-seconds.”

  Six million kilometers. A million kilometers longer than the range of the hyperfold cannons carried by the allied fleet—and while the hyperfold cannons’ shots were instantaneous and hence more accurate, the combined fleets were a very large target.

  “Fleet Lord, we estimate that many of the larger units can engage us from beyond our hyperfold-cannon range,” she told Tan!Shallegh. “We’ve been revising the numbers based on everything we’ve seen today.”

  “Understood,” the Fleet Lord said levelly. “!Pana, Grand Fleet ships will increase evasive maneuvers. Etri, make sure our allies know.”

  The incoming missiles were melting away under the fire of the defensive drones, but the range was already dropping. Morgan was about to ask why they didn’t change the plan—but the vectors gave her the answer.

  It was already too late to adjust velocities. It would take six seconds to reverse the fleets’ courses…and those six seconds would take them to the edge of six million kilometers, where Swarm Bravo’s velocity advantage would bring them into range within moments anyway.

  They’d run the numbers too late.

  Morgan watched as the two forces hurtled together and plasma fire began to blink on the screens exactly as her team had predicted. The Category Threes were firing as well, but their plasma bursts lost containment before reaching the fleet.

  The bigger bioforms’ weapons didn’t—and the organization of the combined fleet meant that their fire almost inevitably ended up focused on only one component of the allied force. In this case, the Wendira.

  Star shields maneuvered to get out in front of the hives, protecting the under-armed carriers from the incoming fire with their own shields and hulls. For all of their mass and protection, they were facing blasts of star stuff easily the same size of the light capital ships.

  Wendira ships died by the dozens.

  “Hyperfold-cannon range,” !Pana reported. “All ships engaging.”

  It was a blur now. No living mind could keep track of what happened over the following few seconds, but the targeting priorities were already programmed into the systems. Tens of thousands of hyperfold cannons worked over the biggest bioforms first, the blasts of energy skipping the intervening space to hammer into armored hide and internal flesh alike.

  Plasma now flashed both ways, and proton beams added their coherent particles to the chaos, but the hyperfold cannons were the true close-range ship killer of the three fleets—and the Infinite bioforms were uniquely vulnerable to internal damage that bypassed their defenses.

  The silence, when it came, was as sudden as an axe falling.

  “All targets destroyed,” !Pana reported.

  “Stand down all beams and launchers,” Tan!Shallegh ordered. “Stand by for maneuvering orders from the Laians. They’ll probably want us somewhere specific.”

  The silence seemed to stretch into eternity, but the Fleet Lord was already turning to other officers.

  “Etri, I want a report of our losses and damaged units within a twentieth-cycle,” he ordered the operations officer. “Leezor”—he turned to the Anbrai logistics officer, also on Storm Sentinel—“I want an assessment of every ship’s munitions status by then. We’ll coordinate with our fleet train to replenish our HSMs as quickly as the waves allow.”

  They shouldn’t be facing another fight soon, but they were still learning how this enemy thought and fought.

  “Casimir, get your team digging into everything that just happened,” he ordered Morgan. “Link up with the Laians; they’ll be interfacing with their civilians and getting reports on what happened during the occupation.

  “For eleven cycles, the Infinite controlled this system. I want to know what the locals saw in them.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Rin entered Tan!Shallegh’s office hesitantly.

  “You called me, Fleet Lord?”

  “Take a seat, Doctor,” Tan!Shallegh ordered, gesturing Rin to a chair on the same side of the desk as him. “I have a conference with Ronoxosh, Oxtashah and Tidirok in a few moments, and I would like to get your perspective.”

  “I’m…not sure what perspective I can provide, my lord,” Rin admitted, but he took the seat anyway. When the First Fleet Lord asked you for a favor, you gave it. It was hard to avoid.

  “Like Captain Casimir, you have an understanding of this enemy that I think still eludes most of us,” Tan!Shallegh told him. “You know their ancient enemy better than anyone else alive, except perhaps some Mesharom.

  “Your knowledge is useful…but mostly, it gives me an excuse to include you in the meeting,” the Fleet Lord said with a red flush of amusement. “I find your perspective, as neither a fleet officer nor a diplomat, surprisingly valuable.”

  “I am at your disposal until the Empress or the Institute give me new instructions,” Rin admitted. “If you want me to sit silently in high-level meetings, I shall.”

  An incoming message icon lit up on the Fleet Lord’s operating system, and further commentary was cut off by Tan!Shallegh tapping the icon, linking both of them into a conference.

  There were more people in the virtual conference room that unfolded around them than Tan!Sh
allegh had suggested, but given Rin’s own presence, he wasn’t entirely surprised. The holographic illusion filled the Fleet Lord’s office, giving the impression that ten sentients from five different species were sitting in a single space around Tan!Shallegh’s desk.

  The fifth species was a surprise. Rin tended to forget that both the Republic and the Grand Hive had secondary races, as they were both even more dominated by their founding species than the A!Tol Imperium was. But the figure standing behind Voice Tidirok resembled nothing so much as a two-meter-tall stalk of broccoli, with waving green prehensile fronds acting as both hair and hands—a Shondra, one of the few non-Laian races of the Republic.

  Oxtashah was alone, but Ronoxosh was accompanied by two smaller but heavier-chitined Warrior-caste officers., bringing the total to ten.

  “I must thank all of you,” Tidirok began before anyone could say a word. “We recognize the losses incurred by your forces retaking a Republic system and liberating Republic citizens, and we can offer only our gratitude.

  “The Infinite did less damage here than we feared, but that may not have lasted. Millions live thanks to your truth and honor. Thank you.”

  “What do we know of the Infinite occupation so far?” Tan!Shallegh asked.

  “Not much,” Tidirok admitted. He gestured with a pincer to the Shondra behind him. “Akata is the civilian intermediary for my fleet. They have been interacting with the civilians and learning what we can.”

  “Not much so far,” Akata’s translated voice admitted. “It will take time to recover sensor records and carry out interviews across an entire star system.”

  “For now, the refueling infrastructure is intact enough for us to begin replenishing the fleets,” the Voice told them all. “The First Defense Fleet will be dependent on our fleet train for other needs, though. The depots here were thoroughly looted and destroyed.”

  Rin had seen images of the many-tentacled small bioforms used for that work. He doubted they’d left anything they weren’t trying to extract intact in one piece.