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

“Now you want me to go back into the unquestionably most dangerous type of those ruins and try to duplicate the most insane thing anyone ever did with those ruins?”

“There will be fifty of us, Kelly,” Rin told her. “We’ll have the full support of the Wendira research team as well. It’s not like I’m asking you to do it alone—and you went into the Taljzi swarm knowing you might have to leave on a bloody fusion rocket!”

“I was younger and dumber then,” Lawrence replied. “And, frankly, the only man I was interested in in a hundred light-years was making the same trip, and I was twenty-five and horny.”

“This is safer than that,” he argued. “We’re looking at an inactive system and seeing if we can turn it on. Even if we manage to turn it on, we’ll know how to turn it off.

“But the possibility of trapping an entire Infinite swarm is really tempting, I have to say. We could save a lot of lives if we pull this off…and of the eleven people in the Grand Fleet who worked on that project, you were the most senior and the most involved in the actual weapon system.”

“Yes,” she conceded. “Which means I know how nuts the task you’re talking about is. How’s your Alavan code, Rin?”

“Better than it was,” he told her. It was probably better than hers now. He’d been practicing the strange coding rules and symbology required to work with what little functional Alavan software existed.

“How’s your Taljzi code?” she noted. “How do you feel about trying to duplicate the MacGyver kludge assembled by a team of people who, thanks to some seriously fucked-up cloning tech, effectively had two hundred and fifty years each of experience working on the system?”

“Given that we know what they did, and we know it worked, pretty good, actually,” Rin said. “But I’ll feel a lot better with you on the team.”

Lawrence was still standing, glaring down at him.

“You want to fuck with a Dyson swarm and an industrial teleporter,” she pointed out. “Those are both technologies no one in the galaxy can duplicate.”

“And us working on them will make us targets for a lot of people,” Rin agreed calmly. “But if we don’t get some kind of gamechanger in play, the odds of any of the three fleets we’ve been working with surviving the next long-cycle are tiny.

“We lost half a million people retaking Tohrohsail, Kelly. How bad do you think it will be if, say, the First Defense Fleet is shattered?”

“Bad,” she said quietly. “Millions on the war-dreadnoughts alone.”

“If we can take down the next swarm with a trap, we can save those lives.”

The room was silent, Lawrence standing thoughtfully.

For at least a minute, neither of them said anything. Then she finally exhaled and nodded.

“You’re insane, Rin Dunst,” she told him. “I mean, I should have figured that out when I found out you had a computer implanted in your ass.”

“Somewhat higher than that,” Rin objected, but he was grinning at her as he spoke.

“All right. I’m in, I guess. I’m assuming there’ll be formal orders?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s volunteer-only, so Tan!Shallegh wasn’t issuing those until we’d confirmed people were in.” He slid a chip across the desk to her. “That will cover everything you need. Everyone has to report aboard Oxtashah’s ship within a cycle.

“We’re starting to run short on time. Nobody is cleared to know about this mission. We haven’t even told the Laians the Dyson swarm exists.”

“This just gets better and better,” Lawrence said with a resigned sigh. She picked up the chip and gave him a vague salute. “Into the shadows we go. Lead on, Professor.”

Chapter Forty-Four

Despite their losses, the three Wendira Battle Hives still assembled thousands of starships. Their separation from the other two fleets and movement toward the hyper limit was a sea change, looking more like a tidal effect on the main tactical display than a movement of individual ships.

And tucked away in one corner of that tidal effect were the forty-seven starships of Morgan’s new command. If the Wendira movement had been on a smaller scale, she might even have worried that her non-Wendira ships would stick out.

With over a thousand capital ships alone, Morgan was utterly unconcerned about that. Her four battleships were easily within a margin of error of the mass of a star shield to a broad scan—and the fleet commanders would be actively discouraging narrow scans of the departing fleet for multiple reasons.

“Lead Wendira units are opening portals,” Rogers announced. “STG ships maintaining courses and profiles as ordered. No problems.”

Morgan nodded. There wasn’t much to say at this point. Billions of tons of starships were vanishing into hyperspace, and her relatively tiny command would enter their portals in the final third of the formation.

“All ships confirmed ready for hyperspace and stealth,” her chief of staff continued. “We have full tactical telemetry.”

And that was part of why an Imperial officer was in command of the STG, Morgan knew. Right now, she knew more about the ships under her command than either side was willing to let their ancient enemies know.

Especially the starkillers.

“Portal in four minutes and counting,” Captain Koumans’ navigator reported.

“We have the course laid in for once we transit?” Morgan asked.

“Follow the Wendira for two tenth-cycles, activate the stealth field and run straight for the nebula,” Rogers replied. “Charts say we should be between eight and ten cycles on the trip.”

“Good, good.” Morgan watched the display continue to flare with Cherenkov radiation pulses as hyper portals opened again and again. She still hated the mission. There were too many unknowns—they didn’t even know enough about the Infinite for her to be okay with obliterating them—but she agreed with the logic.

Whatever ships got out of the nebula before she blew it to hell would still be a problem, but it seemed likely she’d take out most of the Category Sixes and larger. That would change the entire