Eyes of Tomorrow (Duchy of Terra Book 9)

by Glynn Stewart

  “Statistically,” he agreed. “If we have two teleporters, we’ll probably get a thousand shots—and the odds are that we’ll get a one-shot kill on anything up to a Category Four. But…” He shook his head.

  “There is a small but real chance that the guns will overload on their first shot. This is not a reliable trap, Princess.”

  “You may not have twelve cycles, Doctor,” she warned him. “And it will need to be as reliable as you can make it. A new Infinite swarm has been detected, heading into Wendira space. Far stronger than the last; my people’s Battle Hives are prepared to face it, but they likely lack the strength to overcome.

  “The only option they may have is to lure them here.”

  Rin nodded slowly.

  “So, we punch the bear in the nose and hope he follows,” he said grimly. “How long do we have?”

  “I do not know. My communications with the Battle Hives are over a cycle out of date,” she admitted. “As of then, twenty-six hours ago, they had not yet relocated the swarm.”

  “Have you requested help from the Laians and A!Tol?” Rin asked.

  “We cannot.” She shook her head. “Ronoxosh’s pride may have broken our Hive. By refusing to work together, we now cannot ask for aid without seeming weak.”

  “Which is more important? Seeming weak or surviving?” Rin said quietly.

  “It is not my decision,” Oxtashah told him. “The Royal Commandant will engage the swarm. He will lead them here. The weapon must be ready when he arrives.”

  Rin swallowed but nodded firmly.

  “I will talk to my team,” he told her. “We may need more assistance.”

  “The entirety of Zokalatan’s crew will be placed at your disposal,” she replied firmly. “I have made this clear to my officers. Secrecy will no longer save our Hive. We cannot bring forward sufficient fleets fast enough to save our outer provinces.

  “This weapon must work.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  The teleporter station was a maze of mystery systems, ancient black molycircs and other strange devices ticking away as they slowly powered up. White-painted hybrid systems were everywhere Rin looked as he walked through the platform, each of them with a name and purpose scrawled on them in black marker.

  They had atmosphere aboard the working stations now, at least, though gravity was still provided by people’s boots. Air was necessary for efficient work—but being able to move things in zero gee was often useful as well.

  “Where’s Commander Lawrence?” he asked the first person he met—a Worker-caste Wendira working on installing white-painted power cables into a mystery gray device that was shifting shape as Rin looked at it.

  “The containment chamber,” the Wendira replied, pointing a pincer without looking at him. “Keep toward the center of the station.”

  “Thank you,” Rin said. The Wendira was clearly focused on his work, so Rin set off in the indicated direction.

  There were more Wendira as he got closer to the center of the station. Some individuals, other teams. Most of the teams were a mix of Imperials, Workers and Drones—and they started to be everywhere as he reached his destination.

  The containment chamber was the primary receiving and transmitting node for the teleporter that filled most of the space station. It was a hundred-meter-wide sphere, its interior forged of compressed matter.

  White-painted force field generators were being installed all around the surface at ten-meter intervals, dozens of the devices being linked to massive power couplings as they attempted to build a system that could hold whatever they grabbed from the star.

  “Lawrence,” he called out when he saw the woman. “Where are we at?”

  She looked up at him in clear exasperation, then waved him over.

  “You know, you could call me on the radio or something,” she told him. “You didn’t need to take a shuttle all this way.”

  “I’m in charge of all of this, and I needed to see the station,” he replied. “Plus, I needed to step away from code for a bit—and I want your opinion on the latest code sets.”

  Lawrence shook her head.

  “Fine, fine,” she said. “We’re running against an unknown time limit to build a weapon of unknown but cosmic power, and you want to do site and code review. Sure!”

  “Kelly,” he said sharply. “Doing things quickly doesn’t mean rushing. Rushing tends to result in things going slowly, doesn’t it?”

  She snorted.

  “Fair. I could probably use a step back from containment-field calculations, anyway. Want the tour?”

  “Please. Then we can talk code.”

  She waved her hand around.

  “This is the containment chamber,” she told him, repeating the obvious. “All calculations suggest it’s oversized for what the teleporter can currently do. We’re picking up a fifty-meter-diameter target, which gives us space to set up a stronger containment field.”

  “Were the Alava really transmitting plasma between star systems?” Rin asked.

  “Yes and no.” She snorted. “It’s pretty clear plasma transmission was always intended to be shorter-ranged, but they were still sending plasma to other star systems. Mostly, though, they were sending straight-up electricity. Up to fifty light-years.”

  “I’d seen the records and projections, but that’s still mind-blowing,” he admitted. “Can we do that with this system?”

  “Gods no,” Lawrence told him. “Not a bloody chance. Too much of it required the universe to work in a completely different way. I’m not sure the electricity transfer could work at all anymore—but the matter transfer still does.

  “Somehow.”

  “So, we pull coronal plasma in from the star to here, and then we flick it out again?” Rin asked. “It’s here for, what, a millisecond?”

  “Twenty-six,” Lawrence told him. “Which is about twenty-four milliseconds longer than you want a twenty-five-meter-radius ball of solar plasma inside anything. This shit makes our fusion reactors look like campfires.”

  “The delta isn’t that much larger,” Rin argued. “I’ve seen the numbers.”

  “It’s an order of magnitude. For whatever reason—and no, we can’t adjust it—we’re grabbing the plasma from the hottest part of the star. We’re not sure why, but it’s the only pickup that seems to work without the collector station.

  “Good news? This setup is going to hit a lot harder than the Taljzi one did.”

  “Bad news, that point-two percent failure chance,” Rin guessed.

  “Exactly. Come on.” She led him across the sphere and out into a corridor. “Along here are what little local controls we have. Honestly, it’s basically nothing. These are communications receivers from the control station.”

  Stepping into the room next to the corridor, Rin noted that most of the original equipment was piled along one wall, replaced by white-painted Wendira transceivers.

  “Of course, none of the Alavan coms still work,” she said.

  “I set up the other end,” he reminded her gently. “We’re using standard hyperfold transceivers. We’ve even managed to test the weird hyperspace interface scanner they have.”

  “And? I didn’t see that report yet,” Lawrence asked.

  “Instantaneous to four light-hours, at least,” he told her. “We didn’t want to run the tests further out than that, because we only have one escort to send dancing around the star system.” He grinned. “And doing it for as long as we did made Sub-Commandant Likox really uncomfortable.”

  Likox was Zokalatan’s captain. A senior Warrior, probably well past due for promotion, he’d been personally tasked with Princess Oxtashah’s safety.

  Rin found the man stuffy and paranoid, though he did understand where it was coming from.

  “And the teleporter itself?” he asked. “Where is that?”

  “You’re standing in it,” Lawrence told him. “The entire damn station. I’m sure we could narrow down how much of it we need to turn on, but th
e Taljzi decided never to risk it…and we can’t really take risks, can we, sir?”

  “No,” he murmured. “Swarm Charlie was located again forty hours ago.”

  Which meant he’d heard about two hours ago. Hyperfold coms were faster than light, but faster than light did not mean instantaneous. Once the update reached a starcom, it reached its recipient within minutes, but getting a message to the starcoms took hours—roughly an hour per light-year.

  “Fuck. Where?”

  “Too close to the Shakol System,” Rin told him. “The Battle Hives were scrambling, and it’s entirely possible battle has already been joined.”

  The Shakol System was the main industrial node of the Wendira province closest to the Astoroko Nebula. That meant it was where the Wendira had concentrated their entire defense fleet. Once again, the Infinite appeared to have gone directly for the jugular.

  Of course, the jugular in this case was two hundred–plus fully rearmed star hives.

  “We should be receiving updates every nine twentieth-cycles—half a Wendira day—until…Well, until Swarm Charlie is here.”

  There was no one else in the communication relay chamber, which allowed Lawrence to curse fervently for several seconds.

  “We’re not ready, Rin,” she admitted.

  “You need to be ready,” he told her. “Worst case? The Hives lead them straight here. Shakol is three cycles from Skiefail. They could be here in less than seventy-two hours.

  “We need the system online in sixty.”

  Lawrence exhaled a sharp breath.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe. This is a nightmare, Rin. What we’re building. What it’s supposed to face…”

  “I know,” he told her. “That’s why I wanted you to look at the code I prepped. If I’ve done it right, I think we’ve created a mask that can conceal existing signatures. We may be able to hide the Wendira fleet’s interface drives.”

  “You’d need a live hyperfold connection from the ship in question,” Lawrence said instantly. “If the interface scanner is instantaneous…”

  “I know,” he agreed. “It’s a manual brute-force solution—and you’re the only person, even in this team, I trust to review my Alavan code.”

  “I’ll take a look,” she promised. “But then I need to get back to work if you want two teleporters in sixty hours.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  “And that makes three.”

  Morgan watched the force they were designating Swarm Delta-Three swim through hyperspace. Her entire task group was motionless, a full hyperspace light-cycle short of their destination, watching as the third of the Infinite’s defensive flotillas orbited past.

  “We’re too damn close,” she muttered. “Ort, what do you make their closest approach to the STG?”

  “Just over three light-hours, Division Lord,” the Ivida officer told her. “Path is the same as the first two. I estimate we’ll be clear to proceed in a half-cycle.”

  Eleven hours and forty minutes. Another delay.

  “Understood,” Morgan conceded. “Pass the word to the task group. How long until we’re in position for the first deployment after that?”

  “Two cycles,” Ort confirmed. “Two-point-five cycles until we exit hyperspace and can assess the situation at the first launch point.”

  The rosette was going to be a pain. Until they were on site, Morgan wasn’t going to know if she needed to set timers or could use hyperfold detonation commands. If she had to set timers, she’d probably need to leave the starkiller crews behind.

  “We’ll need to watch the first launch all the way in, no matter what,” she murmured to Rogers. “This is taking longer than I’d hoped.”

  “I wish we’d had a better scan of Swarm Charlie’s vector,” her chief of staff replied. “The report that they’re at Shakol…”

  Rogers shook her head. At least they could receive starcom messages in hyperspace, though they couldn’t reply.

  “We could pull this off, only to have the entire Grand Hive burnt down by the time we got out of here,” she said.

  “Right now, I’m concerned about the Delta swarms,” Morgan admitted. “That’s a lot of bioforms we can’t be sure are going to get caught in the novas. And that’s ignoring the fact that they’re our biggest obstacle to completing our mission.”

  “Well, so far, this has been slow and painful…but we’re still undetected,” Rogers reminded her. “That’s about as good as we could hope for, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Morgan agreed. “We might just be able to pull this off. The stealth fields are holding and we’re almost there. We’re so close it’s painful to keep waiting, but we’re almost there.”

  “And so far, no one has been lying doggo in our path, either,” the chief of staff said. “We’re blind to any Infinite in hyperspace that isn’t moving, and that makes me nervous.”

  “Me too,” Morgan said. “But despite everything the Infinite have done, they don’t seem to have been ready for us to sneak in a fleet with stealth fields.”

  “Were there any on Builder of Tomorrows?” Rogers asked.

  “We don’t know. It’s not like we got a nice, neat inventory for the mobile shipyard that officially didn’t exist and was operated by a multiracial conspiracy to steal a wrecked Alavan fleet,” Morgan noted. “I’d feel bad for what happened to them, but they found what they were after.”

  Rogers chuckled bitterly.

  “And fucked everybody else.”

  “It’s our job to unfuck it all,” Morgan told her. “Go rest, Bethany. Almost half a cycle before we even bring the drives back online.

  “We’re going to be here for a while.”

  Morgan was awoken by an alert. Rolling out of bed with practiced ease, she hit a voice-only accept as she reached for a uniform.

  “Casimir. What is it?” she snapped.

  “Sir, we have an update from the Wendira,” her com officer reported grimly. “It’s…bad.”

  “There’s not much we can do, Commander,” she told the Yin. “Forward it to my quarters. I’ll review and see if we need to change our plans.”

  “Yes, Division Lord,” the junior officer confirmed.

  By the time Morgan had her uniform on and the lights up in her cabin, the system on her desk was blinking with a received message. She told it to play, activating the holoprojector.

  The image of a Wendira Warrior appeared above her desk, his wings drooping in exhaustion as he faced the recorder. It was not, she realized immediately, Ronoxosh. The officer had the insignia of a Fleet Commandant instead of a Royal Commandant like Ronoxosh.

  “This is Fleet Commandant Icenar of the Ninth Battle Hive,” the Warrior said crisply. “Royal Commandants Ronoxosh, Toramon, Kalrite, and Somar are all dead. The Shakol System has fallen to the Infinite.

  “We have been forced to withdraw from the system in disarray. Our fighter strength has been reduced by over ninety percent, and we have lost over two hundred star hives and six hundred star shields.”

  Morgan exhaled as if she’d been punched in the gut. That was basically the entire fleet the Wendira had brought to Tohrohsail—and so far as she knew, the Wendira hadn’t been significantly reinforced.

  Icenar’s flat report spoke of the deaths of millions of Wendira Warriors.

  “We are falling back per the contingency plan, but we were badly outmatched by the enemy,” he continued. “They are in possession of what appear to be biotech-derived interface-drive missiles equal to our own.

  “Somehow, they knew where our anchorage was located and emerged within fifteen light-seconds of the position of the Fifteenth Battle Hive,” he said. “There are no survivors of the Fifteenth. The Infinite have deployed hyperfold cannons in massive numbers with a range that exceeds ours by at least two light-seconds.”

  He paused.

  “They have also demonstrated the use of what appears to be either hyperfold-transmitted or otherwise instantaneously relocated microsingularities. Our star hives are no
t armored against that kind of attack.”

  Morgan closed her eyes in horror. The singularity projectors had been the most terrifying of the Infinite’s weapons—but she’d also feared that the Six-As had possessed Alavan teleporter weapons.

  It seemed her fears hadn’t been imaginative enough.

  “I do not have direct control of all surviving units,” Icenar admitted. “But I am in command of thirty star hives and two hundred star shields. We have escaped Infinite missile range, but a major component of the swarm is in pursuit of us. I hope to lure them into hyperspace after me, as per the contingency plan.

  “We will enter hyperspace within a few minutes of this transmission and will reach the contingency system within seventy-two hours.”

  There was a long pause as Icenar stared blankly at the recorder. Finally, the recording froze and was replaced with another strange Wendira.

  This was an ancient male Royal-caste Wendira, a massive creature with Royal Commandant’s insignia who appeared to have lost his wings at some point in his youth.

  “Fleet Commandant Icenar’s report is being forwarded to all of our allies unedited,” the Royal said. “We have been assembling a reinforcement fleet, but we did not expect Royal Commandant Ronoxosh’s fleet to be completely destroyed.

  “If the contingency plan works, Swarm Charlie should be removed as a strategic factor. If it does not—and I neither have certainty in the plan nor permission to share it—a major joint operation will be needed to eliminate the swarm and secure our worlds.

  “I formally request that all of our allies provide forces to assist in neutralizing Swarm Charlie and resecuring the Shakol System.”

  That part of the message wasn’t for her. Morgan closed it and stared blankly at the wall. There’d be technical downloads she needed to review, of course, but it looked like her mission had just increased in priority.

  Singularity cannons were bad enough when their projectiles had to pass through space at lightspeed to reach their targets. Teleported black holes?

  More than ever, it had become critical that Morgan’s fleet remain undetected.