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

“We’ve got work to do.”

By the time Morgan exhaustedly dragged herself back to her quarters, her team had assembled a list of twenty-two high-value/high-vulnerability targets near to the Astoroko Nebula—targets that could be reached by the Infinite without being detected by the scouting fleets.

The definition of “high-vulnerability” made her head hurt, since it included systems with massive sublight fortifications and, in several cases, defensive flotillas of Core Power capital ships.

She ended up sitting on the foot of her bed, staring blankly into space with one boot off.

“How do you think?” she asked the air. “If I knew that, I could make a call, but I don’t even know what you want.”

The air wasn’t able to provide answers for the distant Infinite Queen—and neither, unfortunately, was Morgan.

The Infinite had spent fifty thousand years sealed away from even the ability to see the rest of the galaxy. What did they want now that they were free? Conquest? Food? To convert everything into themselves?

Morgan didn’t know. She could project what the Infinite would do for any one of half a dozen sets of objectives, but even if they guessed right, the projections would be wrong.

She was starting to think she hated her new job.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The summons to a massive meeting probably shouldn’t have been a surprise to Rin. He’d been involved in a lot of the private meetings between Tan!Shallegh and his Core Power counterparts, and helped Tan!Shallegh and Morgan as well, but he still hadn’t quite regarded himself as part of the command structure of the joint fleet.

But as he stepped into the massive conference room aboard Va!Tola, he realized he was the only civilian in the room. Everyone else in the room was an officer of one of the three fleets—and a senior one, at that.

The room was filled with Pincers and Fleet Commandants and Fleet Lords, flag officers of three different galactic powers. Rin didn’t have the baseline to judge if every flag officer of the fleets was in the room—virtually or physically—but he suspected they were.

He was there as a member of Tan!Shallegh’s staff—and he hoped that his rush down to where he had spotted Morgan wasn’t too obvious or embarrassing.

There were at least fifty sentients physically present from the Imperial fleet, joined by at least four hundred people present by virtual holograms. While the conference room used screens and software to make it appear even larger than it was, it still felt cramped.

“Do you know what this is about?” he whispered to Morgan as he took the seat next to her.

“Not in detail,” she admitted. “But the Wendira have been here for four cycles, and the combined fleet hasn’t moved. I’ve been feeding analysis into a meeting with the three fleet commanders for that whole time, so I’m hoping they’ve decided on a course of action.”

She gestured around them.

“Every flag officer is here, and every ship captain is watching,” she told him. “People who aren’t visibly in the conference can’t ask questions, but they’re listening and they’ll see everything. I don’t see why they would have pulled everyone in like this unless they had a plan to announce.”

“But you don’t know what that plan is?” Rin asked. He was surprised by that. As she said, she’d been providing analysis of the Infinite to the fleet commanders for days.

“Not that I can say,” she murmured. “But even if I could, not enough to give a meaningful hint.”

Rin nodded his acknowledgement. There were things they couldn’t share with each other. That was the limitations of their jobs.

“Have you heard from Ki!Tana?” he asked quietly. “Or…anyone else?”

He wasn’t entirely sure who their unnamed associates scattered across the galaxy were. He and Morgan had been recruited into the society for a specific task, and no one had given them contact tools. No decoder rings for them!

“Not a peep,” Morgan admitted in a whisper. “I think she’s probably the one who got anyone other than the Ren to sign on to this mess, but no one has ships heading our way yet.”

He nodded, but further discussion was cut short by the arrival of three figures on the dais at the front of the conference room. It was just barely possible to tell that Tan!Shallegh was the only one of the three officers physically present aboard Va!Tola, with Ronoxosh and Tidirok virtually linked in from their own flagships.

“Thank you, everyone, for helping our staffs arrange this,” Tan!Shallegh said by way of greeting. “I know that fleet commanders have a certain weight in such things, but everyone’s cooperation is appreciated.

“For the non-Imperial portion of the audience, I am First Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh, the commanding officer of the Grand Fleet of the A!Tol Imperium.”

He gestured to Tidirok.

“I am Eleventh Voice of the Republic Tidirok,” the Laian officer introduced himself, though he was probably the only one of the three known to everyone in the audience. “I command the Republic’s First Defense Fleet.”

“And I am Royal Commandant Ronoxosh,” the Wendira finished. “I command the Eighth, Ninth, and Fifteenth Battle Hives of the Wendira Grand Hive.”

He gestured at the other two officers.

“Together, we represent the joint command of our allied fleet, and it falls to us—and to all of you—to protect the Republic, the Hive and the rest of the galaxy from the Infinite.”

The three sentients on the dais had the undivided attention of thousands of officers, Rin suspected, even if he was somewhat more interested in the cultural details of the three beings’ uniforms.

Tan!Shallegh wore a black leather harness that exposed most of his skin but provided a place to mount insignia and an emergency vac-suit deployment system.

Ronoxosh and Tidirok, on the other hand, both wore what were effectively black tunics cut for their number of arms. While Ronoxosh was slightly smaller than the Laian officer, Rin suspected that the two could have traded uniforms and the Wendira’s vestigial wings would have been the only problem.

“Our staffs have run hundreds of simulations about the Infinite’s next moves, but we currently suffer from a lack