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

whenever they came across them. I guess that only leaves one question, but it’s not like we can answer that one, either.”

“Do they regard us as the Alava they wiped out…or the people they basically ignored before that?” Took asked. “We cannot control the winds of their minds. But at least we can conclude that there is a chance they haven’t burnt Tohrohsail to the bare rock.”

“What kind of chance?” Ito asked, her voice strained even through the translator. “One in five? One in three?”

“One in three is what I’m going to tell the Fleet Lord,” Morgan decided aloud, rising from the holotank, and turning around to look at them all.

“Thank you, Rin,” she told him. “We needed that information. We don’t know what they’re doing now—we can only go on what they did before.

“And the fact that Swarm Bravo just hit Tohrohsail with everything they had. There’s no way the forts and frigates held, people. We’re three cycles out—and in three cycles, this ship and every one of her sisters engages the Infinite.”

There was no way for them to send messages home or anything until they left hyperspace and could link into the hyperfold network. Even then, Rin understood that it would take longer than normal if the starcom station in Tohrohsail was gone.

“We don’t know if they see us as successors to the Alava,” he murmured. “But I suspect we’d really prefer it if they didn’t.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Morgan didn’t know what discussions had taken place in the closed virtual conferences between the top levels of the fleet’s command. She did know that less than half a cycle had passed between the combined fleet receiving the news of the attack on Tohrohsail and the entire force turning around.

“No contacts in hyperspace around the system,” Etri announced from Storm Sentinel’s flag bridge.

Every member of Tan!Shallegh’s staff and their support teams were on duty at that moment. Morgan had the operations officer’s console on Va!Tola linked to her analysis team in the FOC. If something happened to Storm Sentinel, her team would become the Fleet Operations team.

Until then, their job was to intake data and make assessments of the enemy.

“Shouldn’t there be something in hyperspace?” !Pana asked, her skin shading darker.

“It’s possible for space around Tohrohsail to be empty,” the Pibo operations officer said slowly. “But statistically unlikely. For the entirety of the time the Grand Fleet was there, there was a near-continuous stream of supply transports flowing back and forth from the Republic.”

“Then there are almost certainly Infinite sentinels in hyperspace,” Tan!Shallegh declared. “I know they are not running interface drives, but we do not want to be surprised at close range by even smaller bioforms.

“Focus the fleet’s sensors, Division Lord Etri,” he ordered. “There has to be a way to detect them.”

“Not unless they move, sir,” Etri admitted. “We’ll watch for them to twitch, but unless they move or activate an interface drive, they’re invisible outside the visibility bubble.”

“Both the Laians and Wendira have ships that can stealth in hyperspace,” Morgan pointed out. “Maybe one of them can send scout ships forward to clear the zone around the system?”

She agreed with Tan!Shallegh’s assessment. For the hyperspace around Tohrohsail to be as quiet as it was, the Infinite had been wiping out any ships coming through. That meant there were bioforms in hyperspace—and even a smaller bioform could cause a lot of havoc if they only discovered it at three hundred thousand kilometers!

“I will ask,” Tan!Shallegh agreed. A privacy shield descended around the Fleet Lord a few moments later, leaving the rest of the flag deck teams to their duties.

Morgan’s duties were mostly preparation at this point. Her team had given their best estimate of what they were facing in Tohrohsail and would actively update as the battle continued.

They were reasonably certain they were facing Swarm Bravo, which gave them some basic information. There were no shielded units but lots of missile-launcher-equipped bioforms. Seizure of the fleet depots in Tohrohsail meant that the Infinite had a lot of ammunition to play with, too. The estimates Morgan had received said there were at least twenty million missiles in the fleet base’s storage facilities.

Swarm Bravo had a lot of long-range firepower to play with. What they didn’t have was hyperspace missiles or starfighters, which gave the combined fleet advantages from its diversity.

“Two squadrons of star intruders are moving forward to sweep the hyperspace-equivalent of the Tohrohsail System,” Tan!Shallegh reported as his privacy shield lifted. “The rest of the fleet will hold position here, at one light-minute, while those carriers advance.”

The star intruders had been humanity’s first encounter with the Wendira—if not necessarily the Imperium’s—when several of them had been used to attack a human colony in the Alpha Centauri Incident.

Stealthed carriers, smaller even than the star shields, let alone their star hive siblings, the star intruders were effectively unarmed other than their starfighters. Each carried a Grand Wing of two hundred and fifty-six of the unique-to-the-Wendira spacecraft, piloted by the short-lived Wendira Drone caste.

With only twenty A!Tol long-cycles to live, Wendira Drones’ only hope for immortality was history. That urge had given the Wendira some of their greatest musicians and artists—and also provided them with a near-infinite supply of pilots willing to strap in for missions with an average fifty-four percent loss rate.

Morgan watched as the massive array of hyperspace anomalies marking the combined fleet came to a halt relative to their destination. It didn’t look like anything kept moving, which meant the ten carriers already had their stealth systems engaged.

“Are we getting anything relayed back from them?” !Pana asked. “I’m not seeing com drones.”

“That would risk the stealth,” Etri suggested. “We’ll see when they deploy their fighters. It’s not like the intruders themselves can deal with the bioforms.”

It only took a few minutes to cross the distance to the system, but it was almost ten before new anomalies appeared on the scanners. The star intruders had positioned themselves evenly across the area of hyperspace that corresponded to the Tohrohsail System and