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

close range in the Eye,” Morgan warned. “When they aren’t active, they don’t look alive unless you know what you’re looking for. Once they’re awake, it’s hard to miss because they’re almost as warm as our spaceships, but they hibernate cold.”

“So, there could be another entire fleet like the one in the Eye out there?” Shotilik said quietly. “I don’t like those plains, Captain Casimir.”

“I don’t think we’re looking at one of that scale, but there might be some more out there,” Morgan said. “We don’t know. We don’t even know what we don’t know. We do know that Swarm Bravo is out there somewhere and it hasn’t pinged any sensors anywhere.

“It’s not a standard hyperspace anomaly, so they could potentially have accidentally snuck past a lot of sensor outposts before the signatures were properly distributed, but we don’t know.”

She shook her head. She was starting to hate those three words.

A shiver ran through the floor and the team before anyone said anything more, the transition to hyperspace indescribable though thankfully short.

“We have analysis based on our vulnerabilities,” Morgan said after the moment passed. “I think that’s a good pattern to keep following. We have to focus on the main swarm in the Astoroko Nebula for now, though.

“What they have, what they can do. Right now, I’d guess part of their inactivity is a limitation on the number of hyper-portal ships they’ve created and how many missiles they have.

“That, to me, means that when they next move, it’s going to be in overwhelming force,” she warned her team. “If we’re lucky, it will be somewhere the triple fleet can intercept. If we’re not, they’re going to take a force that makes Swarm Bravo look like a baby into Ren or Wendira space, and the political consequences will probably outlive us.”

That got her some pained sounds of amusement.

“So, let’s keep digging,” she told them. “I know it feels like we’re going over the same ground again and again, but that’s what analysis means. Let me know if any of you need a damn towel.”

Two of the junior noncoms, the group that was solely listening in on this conversation, were human.

Nobody else got the joke.

Chapter Thirty

Morgan was on the flag deck when the answer to the question her team kept asking was finally answered.

Most flag decks were designed with a direct link to the flagship bridge, a video-screen wall that could make it look like the bridge was attached to the flag deck. It was rarely used for that—the level of distraction both ways often overwhelmed any value, so smaller, direct screens were used—but aboard Va!Tola, it had been commandeered for a different purpose.

The wallscreen on Va!Tola was linked to the same screen on Storm Sentinel’s flag deck, linking the two superbattleships’ flag decks together into a single massive command center that almost sufficed for the task at hand.

From either of those flag decks, running the Grand Fleet alone was overwhelming. Trying to coordinate it with two other fleets, in hyperspace where most signals only traveled a single light-second, was an entire new nightmare.

They were managing it by a mix of relays and tricks like merging the flag decks of two capital ships into one virtual space.

“Someone pass an order to Sentinel’s bridge,” !Pana said aloud, the A!Tol chief of staff surveying her dual domains from the Admiral’s seat. “We need to pull them about five thousand kilometers closer in. The delay on the link is causing trouble.”

In regular space, they’d link by hyperfold com. In hyperspace, that wasn’t an option, and even twenty thousand kilometers was adding a measurable problem in the data transfers back and forth.

Morgan was working with Division Lord Etri, the neuter Pibo who ran Tan!Shallegh’s operations team, on putting together a scenario throwing a simulated triple fleet—commanded by nine officers from the operations team and Storm Sentinel’s tactical department—against Morgan’s team assessment of a Category Seven-X bioform.

Eighty-five thousand kilometers long, with shields, compressed-matter armor, missiles, and singularity cannons, Morgan figured the single Infinite behemoth had a decent chance against the entire massed allied force.

“Storm Sentinel Navigation confirms,” someone from the other superbattleship reported. “We are adjusting course to bring them to fifteen thousand kilometers. We’re swapping Liara into her old place in the formation.”

Liara, if Morgan remembered correctly, was another Galileo-class superbattleship named for a Yin scientist.

Everything about the linked flag decks was going roughly as Morgan expected. It was calm and quiet—there was nothing on the long-range anomaly scanners, and they were only halfway through their nine-cycle voyage to the Trey-459 System. It was as quiet and calm as a wartime watch could be.

And then she saw the human communications officer—Staff Captain Guo Yin—leap back from her console as if struck, staring at the screen in front of her for several seconds of shocked silence.

Only a portion of the aliens on the two bridges could read human body language, but every human was looking at Captain Guo within moments—as were most of the aliens who followed her surprise.

“Division Lord,” she finally addressed !Pana in a shaky voice. “We have an incoming Code Tsunami starcom transmission.”

Code Tsunami meant one thing only: Invasion imminent.

“Summarize,” !Pana ordered.

“Multiple Infinite bioforms have been confirmed entering the Tohrohsail System,” Guo read out. “Estimate is over five hundred units and portals were still open when…”

She swallowed.

“Portals were still open when contact was lost with the Tohrohsail starcom,” she reported. “It is unclear from the data what destroyed the starcom station, but the Infinite had been in-system for less than five minutes.”

Both flag decks were deathly silent.

“I understand,” !Pana finally said. “I will awaken the Fleet Lord. Share the message with the senior staff, but otherwise keep it to the flag deck until Lord Tan!Shallegh has made his decision.”

There wasn’t much point to that, Morgan knew. Every capital ship in all three fleets would have received the message. The Infinite had finally moved.

From the timing, Morgan guessed they hadn’t figured out the Laian hyper-density maps—but they’d definitely worked out how to find the