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

  The room was silent.

  “I suspect you are correct in that Tan!Shallegh might have been thinking similarly,” Tan!Stalla agreed. “I had my own thoughts upon those waters as well, but the orders from the Eleventh Voice of the Republic were to recall all ships. Were the orders solely from our own chain of command, I would agree with you.

  “But I also hesitate to defy our allies in our operations in their space.”

  “Then we ask,” Nitik suggested, the communications officer’s voice raspy to Morgan’s ears. Ivida didn’t cry like humans did, or she’d have suspected the other woman had been weeping. “Pincer Sokotal will be able to judge the desires of his military command better than we can—but these are also their stars we risk leaving unwatched.”

  “It’s the Dead Zone,” Ashmore murmured. “Do these stars really belong to anybody?”

  “Given that the Laians and Wendira have fought at least one war through this region since they burnt it to the surface, I will not disagree with their ownership claims,” Tan!Stalla replied. “But yes, Commander Nitik. I think that may be our best course.

  “Staff Captain Casimir, join me in my office after the meeting. I think you will be of service as we draft the scouting plans.”

  Pincer Sokotal was noticeably younger than Pincer Korodaun had been—to Morgan, at least, who’d grown up with the Laian Exiles on Earth—with a smoother carapace and shorter mandibles. He also had the duller carapace coloring of a male Laian, a ruddy bronze in his case.

  “Leaving units behind to scout illuminates the field for tomorrow,” he said as soon as Tan!Stalla had laid out their plan. “After Pincer Korodaun’s sacrifice, I will admit my thought was to preserve the nest’s defenders.”

  He stared thoughtfully off into space.

  “I am prepared to leave several of my cruisers and destroyers here to watch the Infinite,” Tan!Stalla offered, “but this is Republic space and I will defer to you as to what is required.”

  “The offer is appreciated, Squadron Lord,” Sokotal said slowly, his multifaceted eyes looking unfocused to Morgan, “but…do any of your ships possess stealth screens?”

  “No,” Morgan’s boss said instantly.

  That was not strictly true, according to the data Morgan had access to. A small subset of the Thunderstorms were E-class ships. Unlike the D-class ship she’d commanded, the E-class didn’t carry weapons of mass destruction. Instead, they were equipped with a stealth system derived from Taljzi technology.

  The biggest weakness of the Taljzi system, however, was that theirs was a tactical stealth screen. The handful of Thunderstorm-Es in Tan!Stalla’s task force couldn’t hide in hyperspace.

  “Ten of my cruisers have full stealth suites,” Sokotal told them. “Do we have any evidence that the Infinite can see through our stealth systems?”

  “None,” Morgan replied instantly. “We have no evidence that they can’t, either,” she cautioned, “but the sensors we detected in the Eye of the Astoroko Nebula were conventional. Lidar, radar, tachyon scans… Nothing unusual, nothing that should penetrate known stealth systems.”

  On the other hand, using those scanners the Imperium could reliably work out where a stealth ship had been ninety seconds earlier inside a multi-light-minute range. That wasn’t enough to catch a stealth ship, but it was enough to render a scouting screen visible.

  “It will have to be enough,” Sokotal decided aloud. “I will detach my stealth ships to maintain a distant watch of the Nebula. They will have strict orders not to risk engagement. As you say, we need the illumination they will provide.”

  “We expect the Infinite will seek to occupy an empty system for raw materials,” Morgan told the Laian officer. “There are too many candidates for us to narrow down the possibilities, but their biggest weakness right now is the lack of readily available metals and other raw materials in the Nebula.”

  Relatively quickly, on astronomical time frames, the newborn stars that made up the Eye of the Astoroko Nebula would break away from each other. They would tear the nebula’s component gases and debris clouds away with them, destroying Astoroko and becoming a dozen new-formed independent systems. Those systems would see all the nebula’s immense total mass coalesce into hundreds of planets and thousands of asteroids and meteors.

  Relatively quickly, in this case, was somewhere in the region of a million years. All of the materials the Infinite needed were in the Nebula but weren’t easily available. A more ordinary star system would provide everything in neatly packaged forms.

  “That gives us some time,” Sokotal observed. “I don’t look forward to the fleet they will construct with those resources, but one hopes our bases and systems near here are safe for now.”

  “They aren’t close enough and they are defended,” Morgan replied. “I can’t see any reason why the Infinite would go for them over unprotected resources that are closer.”

  The Infinite had clearly recognized the shortcomings of their weapons against the allied fleets. Morgan was quite sure she didn’t fully understand their production capacities and limitations, but she was sure they still required raw materials.

  “And if we’re wrong,” Tan!Stalla noted, “the scouts will let us know that. That is the purpose of watching the enemy, after all.”

  “We will see their movements,” Sokotal agreed. “It may not be as clear a vision as we wish, but we will see where they go.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Rin Dunst had seen the Laian First Defense Fleet and the A!Tol Imperial Grand Fleet before. It was still an awe-inspiring sight as he stood on an observation deck aboard Va!Tola and studied the blinking lights swarming above a super-Jovian gas giant.

  The Tohrohsail System—the name translated to “Citadel of Hope”—was home to the largest Laian fleet base in the Dead Zone and a supporting colony of fifty or so million Laians. Vast refueling and repair facilities hung above the gas giant, supporting the two immense fleets gathered there.

  The First Defense Fleet contained almost a fifth of the Republic’s dreadnoughts. Ten of their one hundred dreadnoughts were gone now, but the ninety that remained still vastly outmassed the eighteen squadrons—two hundred and eighty-eight battleships and superbattleships—of Imperial capital ships.

  As Rin understood it, the capital ships detached to try to blockade the Infinite were returning now, which would bring the Grand Fleet back up to twenty squadrons. The ten war-dreadnoughts lost against the Infinite would be replaced by reinforcements already on their way from the core anchorages of the Republic, but there were only so many reinforcements that could be sent.

  He wasn’t certain that even five hundred war-dreadnoughts could stand against what he and Morgan had found in the Astoroko Nebula…and while the Republic had more ships than that, it wasn’t by much.

  “Professor Dunst,” a translated voice said behind him. The translators were programmed to add certain accents to their translations, lending a distinct voice to each language even after the translation into English. In this case, the speaker was Wendira.

  “Princess Oxtashah,” he greeted the Wendira diplomat. There were other Wendira on the ship, but he doubted they’d bother speaking to him. Oxtashah’s support team had kept very much to themselves during the journey back to the Laian fleet base. “How may I help you?”

  As she stepped up next to him, he found himself fighting a sudden atavistic awareness of the Wendira Royal’s sheer size. She towered over him and could probably break him by accident. Her multi-part thorax and butterfly-like wings gave her an illusion of frailty at any distance, but at close range, his brain lost that illusion and tried to panic.

  “My old foes,” she said quietly, and gestured to the tiny moving stars out the window, not answering the question. “This fleet was gathered to fight my people. It is…strange to look at them and attempt to think of them as allies.”

  Rin was silent. He couldn’t say much to that.

  “I will shortly speak with the Voice and your First Fleet L
ord,” she told him. “I have finally convinced my Queens. Two hundred and fifty star hives and their escorts will arrive here in ten cycles.

  “If we can manage a peaceful rendezvous and cooperation, we will assemble a force such as has never been seen in this galaxy before, Professor. And yet I fear for my children.”

  “You and the Republic have never stood side by side,” Rin finally murmured. “There are few forces in the galaxy I would expect to stand against you.”

  “But these Infinite are not of this galaxy. They are of the galaxy that came before, the one of the Alava,” Oxtashah said softly, using that name instead of “Those Who Came Before” for the first time in Rin’s memory. “Against gods, they were victorious. Who are we to hope for victory?”

  “They don’t know us,” Rin told her. “They don’t know our nations, our peoples, our ships or our strengths. As we have to learn about them, they have to learn about us—and they fell with the Alava, Princess Oxtashah. They are closer to the Mesharom than the Alava, I think.”

  The Mesharom were the only survivors of the Alavan subject races. Smashed back into the Stone Age by the failure of Alavan technology, they had clawed their way back to the stars when most of even the Core Powers were figuring out how to control fire.

  “And we have seen that Mesharom can die,” Oxtashah said calmly. “Thank you, Professor. I think that is what I needed to hear.”

  “I’m glad to have been of help?” Rin said. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d have found that reassuring.

  “There will come a time, Professor, when we may be called upon to break strictures of oaths held for a thousand turnings of the suns,” Oxtashah told him. “When the Infinite challenge all that we are and all that we hope ourselves and our children to be, we must reconsider all that has been held as decided.

  “Do you understand me?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “Good.” The Princess’s wings fluttered in amusement. “I hope it does not come to that.

  “You will be advised of the conference, I presume,” she told him. “We will speak again soon.”

  She walked away, leaving Rin Dunst staring out at the massive gas giant ahead of him and softly shaking his head. He had spent his entire adult life among nonhumans, but he still occasionally felt weirded out by aliens.

  His only reassurance was the certainty that he was often just as disconcerting to them as they were to him.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The final hyper transition into the Tohrohsail System released a knot of tension in Morgan’s left shoulder that she didn’t realize she’d been holding. Several other humans on Jean Villeneuve’s flag deck gave audible sighs of relief, and she suspected that most of the other crew members were giving their species’ equivalent.

  Tohrohsail was safe—for now, at least. If they didn’t manage to pull together something capable of slowing the Infinite quickly, even the heavily fortified fleet base might have to be yielded while the galaxy found some scrap of unity.

  “We are receiving orbit instructions from Storm Sentinel,” Nitik reported. “Grand Fleet Command is advising that orbits provided are extremely tight—we are apparently clearing space for…”

  “Commander?” Tan!Stalla asked into the silence as Nitik trailed off.

  “Apologies, sir,” the Ivida woman said after a moment. “Grand Fleet and First Defense Fleet are clearing space in preparation for the arrival of the Wendira Eighth, Ninth, and Fifteenth Battle Hives. Current estimate is fifteen hundred Wendira capital ships, and Tohrohsail Control doesn’t want them within three hundred thousand kilometers of the Laian fleets.”

  Morgan whistled silently.

  “I bet they don’t,” she said aloud. “That’s a recipe for a messy fight. Three Battle Hives… That’s at least seventy more star hives than the Laians thought were facing them across the Dead Zone.”

  “And suddenly I am even more grateful that we didn’t get dragged into an ice-cursed stupid war,” Tan!Stalla agreed. “With the Grand Fleet and First Defense Fleet combined, we’d have had the edge, but it would have been much thinner than we thought.”

  “Or nonexistent,” Ashmore said. “A Battle Hive can be seventy star hives…or anything up to a hundred. War-dreadnoughts are expected to reliably fight them at even masses, but three hundred star hives would be over half again Voice Tidirok’s strength.

  “And the Grand Fleet isn’t that big.”

  “True,” Tan!Stalla said. “Let us simply be grateful that we swim in waters where that war never happened—and those star hives and their escorts are now on our side.”

  Morgan’s computer chimed as new data began to pour in.

  “I’m receiving intelligence updates from Grand Fleet Command,” she reported. “Including scan data from the scout screen Sokotal left behind.” She skimmed through the data, looking for her worst possible nightmare.

  It wasn’t there.

  “There have been no further encounters with Infinite forces in the twelve cycles it took us to get here,” she reported. “On the other hand, they have not relocated the force that killed Pincer Korodaun. They may have returned to the Nebula, or they might be out wandering around and seeing what they find.”

  “Data is what they’re finding,” Tan!Stalla said grimly. “They know as little about us as we do about them, Staff Captain, correct? Every cycle there is a bioform outside of the Astoroko Nebula, they learn more about the state of the galaxy and therefore make better plans.”

  “Thank god for lightspeed delays,” Morgan muttered, looking back at her screens. “They can only learn so much.”

  “That is true,” Tan!Stalla agreed. “Let us hope it is not enough.”

  “Sirs, we have new orders from Storm Sentinel,” Nitik announced. “Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh has requested that Squadron Lord Tan!Stalla and Captain Morgan Casimir report aboard Va!Tola one twentieth-cycle after we make orbit.”

  Morgan blinked. She’d expected ASAP orders—at least for the Squadron Lord.

  “Captain Casimir’s instructions are a formal transfer order,” Nitik clarified after a moment. “You’re being moved to Va!Tola under the First Fleet Lord’s command, sir.”

  “Ah,” Morgan said. That made more sense. “I think I will need to pack and speak to Commander Rogers in that case.” She turned to Tan!Stalla.

  “With your permission, Squadron Lord?”

  “You don’t seem surprised,” Morgan told Rogers after she’d updated her subordinate.

  “I’m not,” Rogers said. “Your family’s history with Tan!Shallegh goes back as far as humanity’s history with the Imperium. He trusts your mother beyond anyone else—and you’ve proven yourself worthy of similar trust in his eyes, I suspect.

  “And now you’ve been at the center of the greatest potential crisis the Imperium has ever seen and been the one pulling together all of the data.” The redhead shrugged. “No one knows more than this team, but Tan!Shallegh needs his own Infinite analysis group. He might poach some of us later, but right now, he’s claiming you.”

  “He’s the First Fleet Lord,” Morgan conceded. “If he thinks I’ll be more use there, that’s where I’ll be.”

  “It also is where Dr. Dunst should be, isn’t it?”

  Morgan snorted.

  “The thought had occurred to me, but I was considering where I would be of more value to the Imperium, not where my boyfriend is,” she told Rogers. “My personal desires are secondary to the Imperium’s needs, Commander.”

  “You’re still allowed to consider that a bonus, sir,” her former executive officer said. “Look, sir, you’re not disobeying the First Fleet Lord. The only real question in this case is whether you really should be bringing the rest of the analysis team with you—and that’s a discussion for you to have with Tan!Shallegh.

  “Right now, I’ll take over the team here and we’ll continue our work while you sort out what the Grand Fleet needs,” Rogers told her. “The sky won’t fall in the next few cycles.”
<
br />   “The Infinite might fall on somebody in that time,” Morgan said grimly. “But we’re too far away to do anything about it, anyway.

  “I’ll check in with the rest of the team, but I also need to pack.” She chuckled. “What little I bothered to unpack. I had more space on Defiance.”

  She’d had the Captain’s cabin on Defiance. Visiting officers’ quarters aboard a superbattleship were nicer than most of the officers’ quarters on a cruiser, but they still fell short of a Captain’s cabin anywhere. Rank hath its privileges, and all that.

  “Go pack,” Rogers suggested. “I’ll wake the team up for a quick and dirty goodbye and get the wheels rolling. We’ve only got, what, a tenth-cycle?”

  “Trust an XO to find the efficient path,” Morgan said with a chuckle. “I swear, Captains get rusty at that far too quickly—because our XOs are too damn good at it!”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  There were no Marines or fancy escorts waiting when Morgan and Tan!Stalla disembarked from their shuttle. They’d apparently been ushered into the quietest shuttle bay anyone could find, and Morgan had a moment of panic wondering why.

  Then she saw the two people waiting for them there. The first was the person she’d expected, the tentacled form of the highest-ranking officer of her own military service. The second, however, was a pudgily overweight and perpetually befuddled-looking academic with a stupid grin on his face.

  Morgan managed to control her urge to do something ridiculously childlike and approached Tan!Shallegh and gave him a crisp salute.

  “Sir, Captain Casimir reporting,” she said. “I have transfer orders.”

  “I know what they say, Casimir,” Tan!Shallegh told her with a flash of red amusement on his skin. “I did write them.”

  He turned to Tan!Stalla.

  “Squadron Lord Tan!Stalla, Captain Casimir, welcome aboard Va!Tola,” he told them. “I keep meaning to transfer back aboard Sentinel, but there hasn’t been time. This is how the current flows, it seems. A split command is likely a wise choice as we proceed, in any case.”