Eyes of Tomorrow (Duchy of Terra Book 9), Glynn Stewart [reading well .TXT] 📗

make sure Squadron Lord Tan!Stalla is advised the moment she’s available,” Morgan said dryly. “I’ll send out scouts myself, but if the Infinite are coming…she needs to know the enemy are here.”

Tan!Stalla was back on the flag bridge long before the destroyers returned, the A!Tol flag officer flickering tentacles in acknowledgement of her staff as she approached the stool that served as her seat.

She didn’t seat herself, instead remaining standing in front of the big display as her manipulator tentacles fluttered with a level of concern Morgan had rarely seen on her superior before.

“They are not going to exit hyperspace near us,” she finally told her staff aloud. “There is no one else along the vector we are seeing, which means it is almost certainly the Infinite.”

The two thoughts were disconnected, but Morgan saw the Squadron Lord’s point.

“Your orders, sir?” Ashmore asked. His voice was almost level, but Morgan was the only person who fully heard him. There were no other humans on the bridge but the two of them, and everyone else was getting the operations officer’s question through their translator earbuds. They wouldn’t catch the slight tremor of fear in his voice.

“We will wait for the scouts to return,” Tan!Stalla ordered. “But while we wait, the task force will clear for hyperspatial engagement.”

“Understood,” Ashmore confirmed.

Morgan concealed her grimace and began to pull up her analyses again. None of their reinforcements were there, which meant the Imperial task force was alone—and an Imperial task force gave up their two most powerful weapons in hyperspace.

Their long-range missiles worked by jumping into hyperspace to travel the distance to their target. The hyperspace missiles were fired through portals fully contained inside the warship, which made them useless outside of normal space.

Their main energy weapons were the hyperfold cannons, which used the same transmission system as their hyperfold communicators to send massive pulses of energy across several light-seconds. Those, too, couldn’t function in hyperspace.

“We don’t know if they have an anomaly-scanner equivalent,” she told Tan!Stalla as she pulled out their tactical data on the Infinite. “Their plasma bursts maintain integrity to about ten light-seconds and should do the same in hyperspace, but they’re going to be at least partially blind.”

“That’s the first positive thought I’ve had all day,” Tan!Stalla said. “How blind is ‘partially blind,’ Staff Captain Casimir?”

The A!Tol words for “Captain” as a rank and “Captain” as the commander of a ship were different. English didn’t have that distinction, however, so the translator turned the rank of any non-ship-commander Captain aboard a starship to Staff Captain.

It was awkward, but there were a lot of awkwardnesses tucked away in the Imperium’s astonishingly sophisticated translators.

“This first wave is almost certainly using Laian hyper emitters,” Morgan told her superior. “They are quite possibly using Laian hyperspatial anomaly scanners as well—likely on the same ships.

“But they won’t know what the data means as well as we do, which gives us a chance.”

“Hyper portal,” Ashmore reported. “Jambalaya and Starsong are back, sir.”

“Let’s get their report,” Tan!Stalla ordered. “And confirm where the other two destroyers are before we take the fleet into hyperspace.”

Chapter Seven

“The rising wind is that any movement in hyperspace appears to trigger some level of anomaly,” Commander Voyun reported. The Yin officer was rigid-spined as he faced the pickups. He had to know his report was going to every senior officer of the fleet.

“The falling wind is that those anomalies are far weaker than those left by an interface drive,” he continued. “We believe we have some resolution on the target flock, but the aggregate was only detectable due to the total mass.”

Morgan had been afraid of that. She wasn’t sure what logic the Infinite would use to pick the ships they cyborged up with hyper emitters and suchlike, but she would have put them on the biggest ships she could find—the Category Six-As, if that was possible.

“We estimate we are looking at between two hundred and three hundred individual contacts,” Voyun continued—and the bottom dropped out of all of Morgan’s theories.

“They should only have a dozen hyperdrives,” she muttered. “How?”

“The largest contacts are, we believe, Category Four bioforms, with the majority being Category Three,” he noted. “They are maintaining a steady velocity of approximately twenty percent of lightspeed along the course Builder of Tomorrows took into the Nebula.

“Without approaching within the clearer air of the visibility bubble, we could not learn any further details. Winding Road and Kitorath remained in hyperspace to maintain a lock on the enemy course.”

“Understood. Forward your data to the analysis team,” Tan!Stalla ordered. “Thank you, Commander.”

The channel closed and Morgan watched new downloads flicker across her screen. She doubted she’d get more at first glance than Voyun had already provided, and she kept her attention on the Squadron Lord.

“Your estimate, Staff Captain?” Tan!Stalla asked Morgan.

“I’m not sure, sir,” Morgan admitted grimly. “We expected approximately a dozen units cyborged with hyper-portal emitters moving forward to scout on their own, but…”

Hyper-portal emitters.

She sighed.

“I think we forget that not every ship needs its own hyperdrive,” she told Tan!Stalla. Hyper-portal emitters were sufficiently easy to manufacture that no galactic power would dream of sending ships into hyperspace without them—but you could pass through someone else’s portal.

“I would guess,” she said carefully, “that we’re looking at ten to fourteen bioforms with hyper-portal emitters, as we expected. Those units opened portals for larger bioforms to join them in hyperspace as escorts.

“Most likely, the emitter-equipped bioforms are also the ones with anomaly scanners,” Morgan noted. “Which…presents an opportunity, I think, sir.”

“We can’t detect exotic matter outside the visibility bubble,” Ashmore objected. “I see the logic, sirs, but without any ability to differentiate between targets except by gross mass…I’m not sure strategic targeting is even possible.”

“It wouldn’t be,” Tan!Stalla agreed. “But we do have sensor drones, Commander Ashmore. We would not normally deploy them in hyperspace, as they are likely to be destroyed before they enter the visibility bubble.

“I do not think that the Infinite have sufficient understanding of hyperspatial warfare to realize the