Eyes of Tomorrow (Duchy of Terra Book 9) by Glynn Stewart (best e book reader TXT) 📕

“Tan!Stalla.”

“Sir, one of the Laian cruisers just exited hyperspace,” Captain Arnaud said quickly and grimly. “They are reporting a major hyperspace anomaly exiting the nebula—and headed directly for the last position we encountered the Infinite.”

“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.