Eyes of Tomorrow (Duchy of Terra Book 9) Page 8

  “They guard their bloodlines and their power obsessively. Even the Mesharom never truly convinced the Queens that they were a threat.”

  Morgan shivered.

  “I saw a Mesharom battle fleet,” she murmured. Ten war spheres could outmass the entire Wendira military—and the Mesharom had possessed over a hundred of the planetoid warships before the Taljzi campaigns. “Ignoring that takes…imagination.”

  Tan!Stalla flashed blue and red in amused acceptance, snapping her beak in surprise laughter.

  “Yes, it does take a certain ability to twist the waters of reality,” she conceded. “The Laians, for their arrogance and their flaws, are at least more realistic about the galaxy they live in. That, I think, is why we have managed to make allies of them.”

  A shuttle was already waiting for them as they stepped into the shuttle bay, a squad of Marines falling into place around it. To Morgan’s surprise, the Marines were all human—and led by her former Marine CO, Battalion Commander Pierre Vichy.

  “Aren’t you a little senior for a platoon command?” she murmured as they stepped up to the tall dark-haired Frenchman.

  “Oui,” he agreed. “But flashy medals and insignia are a necessity for honor-guard duty, and everyone believed mine would be most…readily available and ready to go.

  “Pour quelque raison.” He grinned.

  “Are we ready, Battalion Commander?” Tan!Stalla asked.

  “The shuttle is fueled and prepped,” he confirmed with a crisp salute. “I have an honor guard of twenty Marines ready to go in dress uniforms. No weapons.”

  “Good, good.” Tan!Stalla paused, studying the sleek lines of the Imperial assault shuttle. “Then let us get to the waters. Duty awaits.”

  Jean Villeneuve massed twenty-one million tons. She was twenty-five-hundred meters from bow to stern, with flared arch-like wings that stretched to a full kilometer in width and height. She was the largest warship the A!Tol Imperium had yet deployed.

  And against Scion’s Sword and her sisters, she looked like a toy. Scion’s Sword was nine kilometers in length and three wide, a long beetle-like dome that resembled her builders’ carapaces. Just under ten times Villeneuve’s mass, she carried roughly fifteen times as many interface-drive missiles, proton beams, and hyperfold cannons.

  Her sensors were keener and her missiles were smarter than the Imperial ship’s—but ton for ton, her armor and shields were actually weaker, and she lacked any equivalent to the faster-than-light weaponry of the Imperium’s hyperspace missiles.

  When Morgan had been a child, a single war-dreadnought had been enough to threaten the entire Imperium. Now the ship she was approaching was no match for a squadron of well-handled Imperial ships that matched her mass.

  Time marched on and the galaxy changed. The Laians, once enemies, were now friends. The Imperium, once irrelevant to the Core Powers, was now rapidly approaching membership in their ranks.

  “The Category Five we saw would tear them apart at close range,” Prott murmured as they approached their destination. “The sheer scale of the Infinite’s larger bioforms renders anything we bring…”

  “Underweight,” Morgan finished the thought after Prott was silent for a few seconds. “Any Category Four could take down Scion’s Sword if they made it into range.”

  “That’s the big if, isn’t it?” Tan!Stalla told them. “Maneuverability and range are our advantages over the Infinite. Size is their edge over us. Do we have any idea, yet, how much firepower they can even put out at close range?”

  “Not really,” Morgan admitted. “My team has been going over the data from the probes we passed through their formation, but only the lighter ships engaged there.”

  She shrugged.

  “We’re still deriving most of our assessment of their armament from the Servants,” she said. “But projecting from that…well, the Category Five probably couldn’t one-shot a war-dreadnought unless they hit with everything.”

  The shuttle was silent and she heard Prott click his tongue.

  “But it would win the fight against a war-dreadnought,” the chief of staff concluded.

  “It would win the fight against all ten, if it could bring them to plasma range,” Morgan said. “As Tan!Stalla noted, if they get in range of us, we are doomed.”

  Chapter Twelve

  A wave of almost superheated dry air swept into the shuttle as the ramp slid open. The air aboard a Laian ship was breathable to all of the members of Tan!Stalla’s staff, but the dryness almost instantly hurt Morgan’s throat.

  It also left her a bit concerned about the Squadron Lord and her Va!Sara Syndrome, but Tan!Stalla forged forward without hesitation. Since Morgan’s only real concern was the A!Tol, she followed.

  At least some of the heat and dryness quickly turned out to be an artifact of their own shuttle arrival, though the shuttle bay was still brighter, drier and hotter than any Imperial ship except maybe one with a pure Ivida crew.

  Vichy’s Marines had already led the way, forming a double file that matched up with their Laian counterparts like they’d practiced it. Morgan followed her CO through the files of Marines and Laian soldiers toward their destination.

  Korodaun glittered even more brightly in person than she had over the camera, the iridescent colors of her carapace shining under the shuttle bay’s lights. There were other Laian females in the room, but she was still the most brightly colored of them.

  Morgan had to wonder if there was some kind of cue or meaning to the Pincer’s coloration. She knew that Laians had a severe sex imbalance, with their distribution skewing toward the sperm-donor end. She’d grown up with a monogamous Laian couple as friends of the family—and had realized that most Laians regarded that relationship as strange at best, deviant at worst.

  “Squadron Lord Tan!Stalla,” Korodaun greeted Tan!Stalla. “Welcome aboard Scion’s Sword.”

  “Thank you, Pincer of the Republic,” the A!Tol replied. “This is my chief of staff, Staff Captain Prott, and my special analyst for the Infinite, Staff Captain Casimir.”

  Morgan folded her hands together in a way that was mildly uncomfortable and bowed over them, reciting a few long-practiced phrases that her tongue barely managed to wrap itself around.

  Korodaun’s mandibles widened in surprise and she chittered delighted amusement. Then she bowed her head in return.

  “May the sun shine upon your home and crops as well,” she recited, the translator turning her Laian into English. “I haven’t heard that greeting in some time, Captain Casimir. It is archaic, but your dedication is to be admired.”

  Morgan wasn’t surprised it was archaic. She’d learned it from the Laian Exiles on Earth, the descendants of the losers of the civil war that had turned the Laian Ascendancy—a barely limited constitutional monarchy, as she understood it—into the Laian Republic—a representative democracy with an unlimited franchise.

  A civil war that had been hundreds of years earlier.

  Morgan also suspected that Korodaun could guess where Morgan had picked up the greeting, but that only made her more amused.

  “Come, Squadron Lord, Staff Captains,” the Laian officer told them. “We have much to discuss.”

  The conference room that Korodaun led them to was notably cooler, dimmer, and damper than the rest of the ship. A diligent Laian junior officer urged Tan!Stalla, Prott and Morgan to a specific side of the table as well—a side that turned out to be even more humid.

  A!Tol were terrible at concealing their emotions, and whorls of blue and red relief flashed across Tan!Stalla’s skin as she settled onto the stool set out for her.

  The chairs around the table were each shaped to the species of the individual they were meant for, which impressed Morgan. She wasn’t sure at what point Korodaun’s people had known what species Tan!Stalla was bringing with her, but even her and Prott’s chairs were slightly different, accounting for the extra joint in the Ivida’s legs.

  Against the backdrop of the deep earthy-red walls�
�Morgan realized they were actually baked clay, with three-dimensional mosaics worked into the several-centimeter-thick wall covering—the moisture and the various specialty chairs, the plain black wooden table was almost weirdly prosaic.

  It wouldn’t have looked out of place as a conference table on Earth, let alone on any of the multiracial warships Morgan had served on.

  “Squadron Lord, you have already engaged this enemy,” Korodaun noted once everyone had taken a seat. “Without losses, which is impressive, given what I’ve seen of our scans. Would your team share the light of your impressions?”

  “Casimir?” Tan!Stalla gestured to Morgan, who nodded and leaned forward.

  “I was in command of the ship that found them,” Morgan told Korodaun, in case the Pincer hadn’t been told that. “We were looking for the Alavan fleet, and we weren’t expecting to find the people that killed them.”

  They had also been running away from the conspirators who’d tried to start a new war between the Laians and the Wendira, but that was a different story.

  “Our encounter was short, but they very nearly destroyed my ship,” she noted. “We had to scuttle Defiance due to her damage, in fact. The main weapon system we encountered in the Astoroko Nebula was c-fractional microsingularities, a weapon we did not see in the force we met in hyperspace.

  “That force engaged us with stolen Laian missiles and plasma cannons. They were extremely ineffective in their use of the missiles, but they were learning.”

  “An intelligent enemy, then,” Korodaun concluded. “To be presumed, I suppose, when they are themselves starships. You survived a fleet engagement with them as well. Tan!Stalla?”

  “We kept out of their range and relied on their inability to properly use the missiles they’d stolen in hyperspace,” the Squadron Lord noted. “I don’t believe we could rely on the same weaknesses in a normal space engagement, and they will quickly learn to make up their shortcomings in a hyperspatial engagement.

  “We did, however, identify and destroy every bioform carrying a stolen Laian hyper emitter,” Tan!Stalla said. “That should buy us time. We have to assume, however, that they will find a solution now that they have seen hyper portals in action under their control.”

  “I agree,” Korodaun replied. “Do you have any intelligence, Squadron Lord, to shed sunlight on where they may be headed when they leave? I agree with the logic of your current positioning, but they have already been beaten here once.”

  “Unfortunately, I believe you have all the intelligence we have,” Tan!Stalla said. “I agree that they are likely to attempt to divert around us in hyperspace, which could be a problem.”

  “Currently, I have a swarm of ten cruisers in hyperspace creating a sensor screen,” the Laian officer told them. “They are spreading out as we speak. The plan is for them to drop into regular space and send their detection reports by hyperfold, allowing the main fleet to enter hyperspace and intercept any breakout attempt.

  “As I receive more units from the main fleets, that sensor swarm will expand and we may even split our fleet into nodal forces,” Korodaun continued. “Interception is possible and we will do all we can to maintain containment.

  “You have sensor data to identify the portal bioforms?”

  “We do,” Morgan said. “But the next wave of portal ships will likely be using a purely Infinite biotech portal emitter. They will not match the signature.”

  “No, of course not,” Korodaun agreed with a wave of her pincer. “But it will give us a starting point. Your methodology of trapping them in hyperspace will be useful, I think. I will inform my subordinates to begin refreshing their crews’ training in hyperspace combat.

  “We have sufficient weapons to challenge them there, but we must prepare for them to update their missiles and missile tactics, as you say,” she concluded. “Containment will be maintained.”

  Morgan appreciated both the Pincer’s determination and her apparent willingness to listen to the Arm Power officers.

  “Our biggest vulnerability is their straight-line speed,” Morgan told the Laian officer. “Their acceleration is lower than ours, but they can get up to velocities where even our missiles can’t catch them.”

  “That will probably be the hardest part to make sure our people account for,” Korodaun replied, glancing at the other Laian officers in the room. None of them had been introduced—or had even said a word once Tan!Stalla was seated.

  “We are all accustomed to operating in an environment where the rules of maneuver are fully illuminated,” she continued. “No power in the galaxy has used anything except the interface drive in millennia.

  “Yet the system used by these Infinite, as you say, has its own advantages over the interface drive. We must adapt. If we do not adapt, the Republic is in danger. As is your Imperium.”

  “That is the largest danger of the Infinite, I fear,” Tan!Stalla said. “We do not understand them. We do not know their technology. We do not know their minds. They fired upon Defiance without warning, their only communication to demand that Captain Casimir turn over her hyperdrive.

  “They do not fight as we expect, and they may not even plan or act as we expect,” the Squadron Lord continued grimly. “And we do not truly know how long we have before they have adapted to all of our technology.

  “They have access, after all, to one of your mobile shipyards—plus whatever was left of a mixed Laian-Wendira fleet. We cannot afford to underestimate them.”

  “They fought Those Who Came Before,” Korodaun said calmly. “If they challenged gods, Squadron Lord, we who remain must prepare as if we must battle gods.

  “So we will. And while I do not assume we can be victorious where Those Who Came Before failed, I do believe that we can keep the Infinite contained. A few more cycles and we will have thirty war-dreadnoughts to bar their way.

  “Twenty cycles, thirty? We will have a hundred war-dreadnoughts. Plus, I hope, more ships from your fleet and assistance from our old enemies. We can contain these creatures—and then, I hope, find a way to deal with them.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was a small adjustment of positions, in the grand scheme of things. The A!Tol superbattleships moved less than a million kilometers, shuttling away from the Astoroko Nebula at minimum power, their battleships and cruisers and destroyers falling in around them.

  Replacing them, ten war-dreadnoughts of the Laian Republic moved up, accompanied by forty attack cruisers. The dance had been carefully choreographed—not because the careful planning was truly needed but because they had the time and it reduced risk.

  When it was over, there was no question which of the two fleets would face the Infinite first. Two billion tons of Republic capital ships waited in the void, a thin line of metal and flesh against the monsters hiding in the dark.

  There was an audible sigh of relief on Jean Villeneuve’s flag deck, the sensation of thirty sentients from five species releasing their tension. Morgan hadn’t even realized how much strain was wrapped into the air of that room until it was released.

  “Pincer Korodaun assumes operational command,” Tan!Stalla said loudly and firmly. “Note it for the record, Prott.”

  “This mess is their problem now,” the Ivida agreed cheerfully. “We just have to help.”

  “Just,” Ashmore muttered, barely loud enough for Morgan to hear him from barely a meter away.

  “We have time now, people,” Tan!Stalla told them all. “Stand the fleet down to the lowest alert. Get what rest you all can. In a cycle, we’ll bring the fleet back to ready status and begin exercises based on the data Staff Captain Casimir and her team have assembled.

  “We expect significant Laian reinforcements before the Infinite are able to move again,” the Squadron Lord reminded them. “Nonetheless, we will remain here until relieved by the Grand Fleet. We have our own responsibilities to follow.

  “Now stand down,” she ordered. “Prott has already called the third watch up to take your stations. Rest, pe
ople.”

  Rest did not necessarily mean sleep. If nothing else, Morgan was going to have to prep the exercises everyone else would be going through in less than twenty-four hours.

  Still, she made sure to take a break, retreating to her quarters and pouring herself a glass of wine. She carefully closed her work messages for the moment—she’d look at those on the other side of the wine and eight hours of sleep—but a new-message icon popped up.

  The digital file had come a long way. First, it had been sent up to the starcom station in Earth orbit. Then, it had been transmitted to a “transfer station” for messages near the A!Tol-Laian border, where it had been moved from an Imperial starcom station to a Laian one.

  Then it had been sent to the nearest starcom base to their current location, a military facility intended to support the defense of the Dead Zone, and transmitted into the hyperfold relay network. A dozen hyperfold relays had carried it from there to Jean Villeneuve—and now Morgan Casimir looked at a blinking alert telling her she had a message from her stepmother.

  Taking a sip of her wine, Morgan tried to remember the last time she’d sent the Duchess of Terra—or even her father—a message. It hadn’t been since losing Defiance, that was for certain.

  Ignoring a twinge of guilt, Morgan started the message.

  It was both of her parents. Elon Casimir sat next to his wife on the couch in the penthouse apartment Morgan had grown up in. From the stories Annette Bond had told her children, she’d never been a fan of the luxury of the apartment, but it had already been bought—along with the floor beneath it, converted to security barracks—before anyone really asked her opinion.

  “Captain Casimir,” Annette Bond greeted her stepdaughter. She didn’t salute, but she still gave the woman she’d raised the respect of the rank Morgan had earned. “If I’m reading all of the reports right, it might be as much as five or six days before you get this, but I hope you’re well when you do.”