Eyes of Tomorrow (Duchy of Terra Book 9) Read online

  “Understood. Bring the fleet to ready status; I will make contact with Pincer Korodaun shortly,” Tan!Stalla replied. She closed the communicator and turned her attention back to her officers.

  “To your stations, officers,” she ordered. “It appears I may have been wrong about us having time.”

  By the time they reached the bridge, Ashmore’s tactical team had the full details from the Laian cruisers uploaded into the main holotank. There weren’t as many details as Morgan would like, but what was there wasn’t good.

  “We don’t have a solid mass estimate, but we do have a velocity vector,” Ashmore reported as the flag staff took their seats. “Contact is headed toward our current position at point-seven-five c.”

  “In the waters of time, it becomes clear that we should perhaps have moved the fleets,” Tan!Stalla noted calmly. “They appear to have a solid idea of our maximum velocity as well. This should be…interesting.”

  She turned to Morgan.

  “Casimir, your assessment?”

  Morgan was running through the scenarios her people had been working on. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at, but someone had to make an educated guess.

  That someone was her.

  “It’s theoretically possible that we’re looking at a second set of cyborg hyper-portal ships,” she told the Squadron Lord, but she shook her head. “I don’t think so, though,” she admitted. “Unless they took the conspirators’ fleet effectively intact, there’s no way they had enough emitters to pull that off.

  “I think we misestimated how long it would take them to implement a biotech version of the hyperdrive,” Morgan concluded aloud. “I’m guessing we’re still looking at a limited number of ships acting as portal creators for the rest of the force, but those ships are almost certainly pure Infinite.”

  She swallowed.

  “Given the previous encounter, I suspect they will have also significantly upgraded their missile capacity. In their place, knowing I had a biotech hyper system available, I would have focused Builder of Tomorrows’s capacity on missile launchers and, potentially, shields.”

  “Thank you,” Tan!Stalla told her. “Keep updating your analysis as we engage the Infinite, Staff Captain. Your insights may yet be the difference between victory and defeat.”

  Morgan swallowed again and nodded.

  “Nitik, get the tactical channels interfaced with the Laians and get me a link to Pincer Korodaun,” Tan!Stalla ordered. “Let’s deal with this as a unified force.”

  Morgan’s “back of the envelope” calculations suggested even that might not be enough. If the force was merely comparable to the last one but with more hyper ships, they might already be in trouble.

  The Infinite, after all, had made sure they had the velocity advantage before they could be detected. Morgan hoped the Infinite had simply been conservative in their estimates—because if the enemy had a clear-enough idea of what the blockading force could do that they knew where they would be detected, the Imperials and Laians were in trouble.

  “Squadron Lord Tan!Stalla,” Korodaun greeted the A!Tol.

  Everyone on the flag deck could hear the conversation. Morgan kept a part of her attention on it as she continued to run numbers. What the blockaders were going to do was almost as important as what the Infinite did.

  “Pincer of the Republic,” Tan!Stalla said. “We appear to have underestimated our enemy…and I was not weighing them lightly.”

  “Neither was I,” Korodaun noted. “Their velocity was chosen with intent. If we do not position ourselves directly in their path, it will be difficult to engage even with missiles. They are hoping to bring us to bay, to force us to fight if we wish to maintain containment.”

  “These are your stars, Pincer. What is your order?”

  “My orders are to contain the Infinite,” the Pincer replied calmly, only a slight chitter under her words undermining her level voice. “We will advance into hyperspace and blockade the Infinite force.

  “We will send in drones and attempt to repeat the identification of the hyper-portal units that Staff Captain Casimir managed against the first force,” she continued. “Then we will engage the enemy at long range to gain data on how they have upgraded their missile and antimissile systems and doctrine.

  “If possible, we will eliminate the hyper-portal units and withdraw in hyperspace,” Korodaun concluded. “If not, we will do what damage we can and then fall back. Containment is the objective, but I will not sacrifice our ships if it cannot be achieved, Squadron Lord.

  “My staff will forward you our formation plans momentarily. I trust your discretion on the deployment of Imperial units inside those plans.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The addition of the Laian war-dreadnoughts certainly felt like it should make this encounter go differently. The ten massive capital ships outmassed the entire Imperial force and led the way in a solid block.

  The Imperial capital ships formed the second line, once again in a broad cross of thirty-two capital ships. The escorts from both forces were formed into wings around the capital ships, in position to either swing forward and reinforce the missile defenses—or to swing back and hide behind the bigger ships’ shields and armor.

  “Hyper transition complete,” Ashmore noted. “We have the hostile anomaly on our scanners. Estimated range, two twentieth-light-cycles. Estimated time to zero distance, two twentieth-cycles, seven thousandth-cycles.”

  Roughly two and a half hours, Morgan mentally translated. They were moving toward the Infinite fleet at point-six c and the Infinite fleet was moving toward them at point-seven-five c…but velocities didn’t add together neatly at those kinds of speeds.

  The interface drive negated temporal dilation from relativity but not spatial dilation. She had no idea if the reactionless drive used by the Infinite negated anything, but the Infinite certainly didn’t seem bothered if their sense of time was completely screwed up.

  “Laians have deployed drones to sweep the Infinite visibility bubble,” Ashmore reported. “We’re still trying to resolve individual contacts.”

  Morgan was keeping an eye on their success on that task—and it was making her nervous. The Infinite force was spread out across a sphere at least three light-seconds wide. That expanded their visibility bubble, assuming they relayed sensor information to each other, to roughly five light-seconds.

  It was the same stunt that their fleet was pulling with sensor drones and spreading out their own escorts. The Bucklers and their Laian equivalents weren’t out yet, but they would interface with the sensor drones to provide an extra two light-seconds of bubble—with the Bucklers at one light-second and the sensor drones at two—in which to engage incoming missiles reliably.

  The issue was that if Morgan looked at the blockading fleet’s anomalies, there were clear layers of anomalies that showed the different ships and positions. There were no such layers in the anomaly she was seeing of the Infinite—which suggested a sphere of full-size bioforms three light-seconds across. One that was dense enough to cause problems with identifying individual creatures.

  However Morgan cut those numbers, that was a lot of Infinite bioforms. The only real good news was that the anomaly scanner had lightspeed delays in hyperspace, too. They could see where the Infinite had been two hours before and estimate where they were now, but the Infinite wouldn’t see them until the light from their arrival reached the aliens.

  And at a combined relative velocity of over ninety-three percent of lightspeed, they would very nearly be in range when that happened.

  The drones arrived first, their anomalies glittering snow across Morgan’s displays as they descended on the Infinite swarm. Pincer Korodaun clearly believed in quantity over quality, as there were easily thousands of the robotic spacecraft zooming in on the Infinite fleet.

  And if there had been any question that this group of Infinite knew everything Tan!Stalla had done to the last group of Infinite, it was answered the moment the probes came
within a million kilometers of the outer perimeter.

  From the main fleet’s range, they couldn’t pick out individual plasma bursts. They could barely resolve individual sensor probes, and they knew the courses those were supposed to follow—but Morgan could tell when hundreds of probes died.

  The snow metaphor came back to her mind as the dusting of tiny anomalies melted away as the Infinite opened fire. The Laians had sent thousands forward…and thousands died.

  “We’re not going to get detailed targeting data, sir,” Morgan told Tan!Stalla quietly. “They’ve worked out what we did last time, and they’re not going to let our drones get close enough to pick up data—let alone survive to return with it.”

  She was reporting the obvious, but someone had to say it. What little battle plan they had had been predicated on being able to identify their targets. Now… Now they were going to be loosing their missiles effectively blind into a swarm a million kilometers across. The missiles’ tiny brains would have to identify targets and calculate vectors in the final moments of their flight.

  They were designed for that, but it was still a big ask.

  “Vector-change orders from the flag,” Nitik reported. “Passing them on to the rest of the fleet. We will reverse course along this vector at fifty-two light-seconds and let their velocity bring them into missile range.”

  “We’ll stick with the Laians,” Tan!Stalla confirmed. “Those orders are confirmed.”

  They had enough time still. Not a lot of time, but enough. Thirty seconds passed while the orders were distributed, then the fleet flipped in a smooth maneuver any parade ground would have been proud of.

  Twelve seconds to completely reverse a velocity of point-six c. The interface drive had its limits, but it also had clear advantages over the enemy’s drive.

  The combined fleet completed the maneuver at exactly fifty-two light-seconds from the estimated position of the Infinite fleet…and waited.

  Instead of rushing toward each other, the blockaders were now moving away from the Infinite. A stern chase was a long chase—except that, in this case, the pursuers had a velocity edge of twenty-seven percent of lightspeed.

  Because even when they were running away, Morgan reflected, relativity was still going to screw with them.

  “Range,” Ashmore breathed, the word echoing across the silent bridge. “All ships engaging. Scatterplot Seventeen.”

  At least the targeting-convention name was honest. They had no detailed information on the force represented by the anomaly they saw. All they had was its vector. The reduced maneuverability of the Infinite made them more vulnerable than interface-drive ships, but one-point-five percent of lightspeed per second was still enough to throw off targeting solutions.

  And the blockading fleet didn’t even have targeting solutions.

  What they did have was ten Laian war-dreadnoughts, each host to almost two thousand missile launchers, backed by fifty Laian cruisers, sixteen A!Tol superbattleships, sixteen A!Tol battleships, forty-eight A!Tol heavy cruisers and eight A!Tol destroyers.

  If the cascade of sensor drones before had been a light dusting snowfall, the missile salvos were a blizzard, a solid block of icons that almost blocked the Infinite’s anomaly from view. For a moment, the fleet’s sheer firepower gave Morgan hope.

  Hope she, of everyone on the bridge, knew had to be false.

  “Anomaly contacts detected,” Ashmore said, his voice…wooden. Not flat. Not level. Not calm. Wooden, in the space beyond reasonable fear. “Estimate one million–plus missiles inbound.”

  One. Million.

  Morgan had to verify it for herself and swallowed a moment of fear as she saw the scans. This time, the Infinite anomaly was blacked out. There was no way they could derive anomalies for individual missiles…and she knew, having done the analysis, that this was still a light missile armament for the force the Infinite had sent out.

  “New vector orders from the flag,” Nitik snapped. “All ships swing ninety degrees port and go to maximum sprint speed if we have it.”

  “Do it,” Tan!Stalla barked.

  Morgan felt Jean Villeneuve struggle beneath her. Even the point-six c they’d sustained to keep up with the Laians was above their rated cruise speed, but it wasn’t their full emergency sprint. That was point-six-five c…or twenty percent of lightspeed less than the hurricane of missiles coming their way.

  Their vector change would get them clear of the Infinite, but it wouldn’t do so fast enough to evade that first overwhelming salvo—or, Morgan estimated, the two after it. They were damned.

  Except…

  “Wait, what are they doing?” she asked aloud as she saw the maneuvers of the Laian war-dreadnoughts.

  The Laian escort cruisers were breaking off with the Imperial fleet, fleeing the battlespace at point-seven c alongside the Thunderstorms and leaving the battle line behind. The war-dreadnoughts were doing no such thing.

  They’d closed up their phalanx and changed their velocity, all right—to head directly toward the Infinite and into the teeth of that missile hurricane at sixty percent of the speed of light.

  Unlike the Imperial ships, they had no sprint mode. That was as fast as they could go, and Morgan’s heart ached as she realized Korodaun’s plan.

  “Incoming transmission,” Nitik reported, throwing it into the main holotank without even asking.

  “We have failed,” Korodaun said, her voice flat in the way only a translator with emotional overtones disabled could manage. “Squadron Lord Tan!Stalla, I leave the withdrawal to your command.

  “Get my escort cruisers out. They have the speed. My dreadnoughts do not. I will attempt to maintain a communication chain via sensor probes until…the end,” Korodaun noted. “We will buy what time we can for you and our people.

  “Containment has failed. The Republic endures!”

  The blockading fleet was scattering along at least nine different vectors, but Morgan left that part of everything to the rest of the flag staff. Her job wasn’t to make sure the fleet had a rendezvous point and made it out safely. She had to trust that Tan!Stalla and the rest of the staff could manage that.

  Morgan’s job was to learn as much as she could from the final charge of the Fifty-Sixth Pincer of the Laian Republic. A daisy chain of sensor drones linked the two flagships, both of them spilling out the robotic spacecraft as they moved to create a chain of relays a quarter-million kilometers apart.

  She had full telemetry data from the ten war-dreadnoughts as they charged, every launcher spitting fire as they entered the teeth of the overwhelming force. They drew the missiles in on themselves and deployed hundreds—maybe even thousands—of automated defense drones.

  They’d also kept everybody else’s defense drones, Morgan realized, and the Infinite missiles collided with a solid wall of laser and plasma. There were enough missiles and drones on the relayed scanner data to walk from dreadnought to dreadnought.

  Even so, the Imperial ships wouldn’t have survived at the heart of that maelstrom. Two of the war-dreadnoughts died, even their immense shields and armor unable to withstand the incoming fire.

  Eight survived the first salvo. Their unexpected course change allowed them to interpenetrate the second salvo, leaving most of another million missiles to blaze off into the featureless gray void of hyperspace.

  The time also gave Morgan a chance to look at the sensor data on the missiles themselves. They were what she’d hoped, in as much as she had hopes around this many missiles. They were still Laian missiles, built, presumably, by Builder of Tomorrows.

  If the yard had built this many missiles, it hadn’t been doing much else. That gave the fleeing allies a small chance. On the other hand, she had no idea where the Infinite had found the materials for this many missiles.

  The third salvo was more accurately targeted, and half of Korodaun’s remaining dreadnoughts died, along with all of their defense drones. And yet…somehow, four war-dreadnoughts reached ten light-seconds.

  T
hose ships were already broken, Morgan knew. She could see that on their telemetry. They’d been firing missiles as they came, but they had no idea if they’d hit anything. At ten light-seconds, though, they could finally resolve individual targets in the anomalies facing them.

  That was data Morgan and her people would go over with a fine-toothed comb later, but what was important at that moment was that the Laian capital ships had targets for their beams.

  Battered and broken as they were, the war-dreadnoughts still commanded over four thousand proton beams more powerful than Jean Villeneuve’s own equivalent weapons. At ten light-seconds, they couldn’t guarantee hits with an individual shot.

  But quantity has an accuracy all its own.

  Contacts began to vanish. Morgan couldn’t tell if the bioforms being hit were Category One or Category Eight, but they died under beams of c-fractional protons. For a second, maybe even two, the duel went entirely the Laians’ way.

  And then the Infinite returned fire. Plasma washed over the Laian ships at a focus and quantity Morgan had only seen once before—and her data feed died with Korodaun’s flagship.

  Jean Villeneuve’s flag deck and bridge were silent when she looked up at the others around her, turning her gaze to Squadron Lord Tan!Stalla specifically.

  “They’re gone, sir,” she told the A!Tol. “They hurt the Infinite… I don’t know how bad, but they hurt them… But they’re gone.”

  “She did it,” Tan!Stalla replied, her voice just as soft as Morgan’s. “All ships are clear of Infinite missile range on vectors that will get them to safety. Korodaun saved the blockading force, but…”

  “The blockade is down,” Morgan concluded.

  “We have a rendezvous point and will make our course there ASAP,” the Squadron Lord declared. “We must inform the Grand Fleet and our allies of this as quickly as we can.