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

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