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

Ton for ton, the Galileos could stand against any other fleet in the galaxy, and the Bellerophon-Cs weren’t far behind them…but…

“Our best guess is that there were at least fifty Alavan mothership shells still present in the nebula,” Morgan noted quietly. “Each of those was at least one thousand kilometers in diameter…and appeared to have been completely subsumed by an Infinite bioform.”

That was what the creatures had called themselves. The Infinite.

“Scans suggested the presence of somewhere in excess of ten thousand other bioforms of various sizes,” she continued. “We did not have time to resolve distinctions between bioforms other than the apparent main form in the eye of the nebula, but all of the bioforms demonstrated an unknown reactionless engine and the ability to organically produce plasma weaponry comparable to our plasma lances.”

She shook her head.

“The largest had the ability to produce targeted microsingularities at high percentages of lightspeed,” she finished. “The threat parameter of the overall Infinite fleet is difficult to judge, and there is an open question of how many bioforms they will be able to equip with hyperdrives, but…”

“Our chances are low,” Tan!Stalla concluded.

“I will need to run more numbers based on our scan data, sir,” Morgan admitted. “But my expectation would be that even one of the bioforms wearing an Alavan compressed-matter-armor shell could take on this entire fleet.”

“You will need to run those numbers,” the Squadron Lord agreed. “We have data from the Laians on what one of their mobile shipyards should be carrying, but…”

“Do we know what this one was carrying?” Morgan questioned in the silence Tan!Stalla left.

Builder of Tomorrows was the Laian mobile shipyard in question, an FTL-capable space station designed to repair the Laian Republic’s two-hundred-megaton war-dreadnoughts on the move. Accompanied by a mixed force of Laian and Wendira capital ships, its owners had been trying to provoke a war between those two Core Powers.

Their plan had been to use the war as cover to find a semi-mythical fleet of ships belonging to the long-dead Alavan Precursors. They’d succeeded in finding that fleet…and might have just doomed everyone.

“Not with certainty,” the Squadron Lord admitted. “You will have access to all of the data we possess. I need some idea of what’s coming at me, Captain, and that will be your task.”

“My task, sir?” Morgan asked.

“I have a full staff, but they have not encountered these Infinite,” Tan!Stalla told her. “I am adding you to my staff as a special advisor on this threat. I recommend you pull together a team of tactical and engineering specialists.

“I want you to go over everything you learned and put together a threat assessment. A realistic one, even if I expect that to be utterly terrifying.

“We know very little about what we have found—but without knowing more, all we can do is stand guard where we know the conspirators entered the nebula and hope the idiots managed to wipe their navigation databases.”

Tan!Stalla’s skin was a gray-black color that Morgan had seen before—but only during the darkest hours of the first campaign they’d fought together.

“Give me answers, Captain Casimir,” she ordered. “And let us hope that your friend Rin Dunst is successful in convincing our Laian allies to take the threat seriously.”

Chapter Two

Professor Rin Dunst was quite certain that he had almost no business being in the meeting he was in. The stockily built dark-haired academic was a xenoarchaeologist, a student of the fifty-millennia-dead Precursors who had called themselves the Alava.

His expertise had drawn him into far too many strange situations for him to say anything was unexpected, but he would never have expected to be present as the fate of two Core Powers was decided.

The Core Powers were the oldest and most technologically advanced species of the galaxy, all resident closer to the galaxy’s center than the Arm Powers like the A!Tol Imperium. The Laian Republic was the Imperium’s closest Core Power neighbor—and the Wendira Grand Hive was their age-old enemy.

“The presence of these bioforms is concerning,” Princess Oxtashah of the Grand Hive stated. She was a Wendira Royal, a four-winged being almost two and a half meters tall with scales and wings of iridescent gold and purple. “They were a threat to the Alava fifty thousand years ago, and we are mere children against Those Who Came Before.

“But.” A clawed arm waved at the other sentients in the room. “The Infinite did not kill thousands of my people’s children.”

“As we have provided more-than-sufficient proof, the deaths and violence here in the Dead Zone were caused by a rogue faction of both of your states,” First Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh said grimly, his skin the dark gray of a determined A!Tol.

Tan!Shallegh was Rin’s boss today, the supreme commander of the Imperial Grand Fleet. Technically, they were there as allies to the Republic. But since it was the Imperium’s officers—in the form of Rin Dunst and Captain Morgan Casimir—who had dug out the conspiracy and found the Infinite, the Fleet Lord was playing moderator today.

“Princess Oxtashah, we stand amidst a hundred dead worlds,” the Laian member of the talks said quietly. Tidirok was the Eleventh Voice of the Republic—the eleventh-highest-ranking member of their entire military. The scarab-beetle-esque sentient spoke for the Grand Parliament just as thoroughly as Oxtashah spoke for her Queens.

“Your people and mine murdered these worlds,” Tidirok continued. “We burnt stars and shattered systems in our anger and our hate. Billions died in the graveyard we stand amidst. Billions.

“We both came here with claims and righteous anger,” he said. “But all I have left are fear and fatigue. Your people, manipulated by these conspirators, killed thousands of mine. My people, equally manipulated, killed thousands of yours.

“We have both reviewed Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh’s evidence. We were fooled. Do you doubt this?”

“Whether I believe it is irrelevant,” Oxtashah replied, her wings folding in to reduce her size. “What is relevant is that the Queens sent me here to demand satisfaction for those deaths. This new threat is concerning but remains quiescent so far.”

Rin wished he