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

aboard a Laian ship was breathable to all of the members of Tan!Stalla’s staff, but the dryness almost instantly hurt Morgan’s throat.

It also left her a bit concerned about the Squadron Lord and her Va!Sara Syndrome, but Tan!Stalla forged forward without hesitation. Since Morgan’s only real concern was the A!Tol, she followed.

At least some of the heat and dryness quickly turned out to be an artifact of their own shuttle arrival, though the shuttle bay was still brighter, drier and hotter than any Imperial ship except maybe one with a pure Ivida crew.

Vichy’s Marines had already led the way, forming a double file that matched up with their Laian counterparts like they’d practiced it. Morgan followed her CO through the files of Marines and Laian soldiers toward their destination.

Korodaun glittered even more brightly in person than she had over the camera, the iridescent colors of her carapace shining under the shuttle bay’s lights. There were other Laian females in the room, but she was still the most brightly colored of them.

Morgan had to wonder if there was some kind of cue or meaning to the Pincer’s coloration. She knew that Laians had a severe sex imbalance, with their distribution skewing toward the sperm-donor end. She’d grown up with a monogamous Laian couple as friends of the family—and had realized that most Laians regarded that relationship as strange at best, deviant at worst.

“Squadron Lord Tan!Stalla,” Korodaun greeted Tan!Stalla. “Welcome aboard Scion’s Sword.”

“Thank you, Pincer of the Republic,” the A!Tol replied. “This is my chief of staff, Staff Captain Prott, and my special analyst for the Infinite, Staff Captain Casimir.”

Morgan folded her hands together in a way that was mildly uncomfortable and bowed over them, reciting a few long-practiced phrases that her tongue barely managed to wrap itself around.

Korodaun’s mandibles widened in surprise and she chittered delighted amusement. Then she bowed her head in return.

“May the sun shine upon your home and crops as well,” she recited, the translator turning her Laian into English. “I haven’t heard that greeting in some time, Captain Casimir. It is archaic, but your dedication is to be admired.”

Morgan wasn’t surprised it was archaic. She’d learned it from the Laian Exiles on Earth, the descendants of the losers of the civil war that had turned the Laian Ascendancy—a barely limited constitutional monarchy, as she understood it—into the Laian Republic—a representative democracy with an unlimited franchise.

A civil war that had been hundreds of years earlier.

Morgan also suspected that Korodaun could guess where Morgan had picked up the greeting, but that only made her more amused.

“Come, Squadron Lord, Staff Captains,” the Laian officer told them. “We have much to discuss.”

The conference room that Korodaun led them to was notably cooler, dimmer, and damper than the rest of the ship. A diligent Laian junior officer urged Tan!Stalla, Prott and Morgan to a specific side of the table as well—a side that turned out to be even more humid.

A!Tol were terrible at concealing their emotions, and whorls of blue and red relief flashed across Tan!Stalla’s skin as she settled onto the stool set out for her.

The chairs around the table were each shaped to the species of the individual they were meant for, which impressed Morgan. She wasn’t sure at what point Korodaun’s people had known what species Tan!Stalla was bringing with her, but even her and Prott’s chairs were slightly different, accounting for the extra joint in the Ivida’s legs.

Against the backdrop of the deep earthy-red walls—Morgan realized they were actually baked clay, with three-dimensional mosaics worked into the several-centimeter-thick wall covering—the moisture and the various specialty chairs, the plain black wooden table was almost weirdly prosaic.

It wouldn’t have looked out of place as a conference table on Earth, let alone on any of the multiracial warships Morgan had served on.

“Squadron Lord, you have already engaged this enemy,” Korodaun noted once everyone had taken a seat. “Without losses, which is impressive, given what I’ve seen of our scans. Would your team share the light of your impressions?”

“Casimir?” Tan!Stalla gestured to Morgan, who nodded and leaned forward.

“I was in command of the ship that found them,” Morgan told Korodaun, in case the Pincer hadn’t been told that. “We were looking for the Alavan fleet, and we weren’t expecting to find the people that killed them.”

They had also been running away from the conspirators who’d tried to start a new war between the Laians and the Wendira, but that was a different story.

“Our encounter was short, but they very nearly destroyed my ship,” she noted. “We had to scuttle Defiance due to her damage, in fact. The main weapon system we encountered in the Astoroko Nebula was c-fractional microsingularities, a weapon we did not see in the force we met in hyperspace.

“That force engaged us with stolen Laian missiles and plasma cannons. They were extremely ineffective in their use of the missiles, but they were learning.”

“An intelligent enemy, then,” Korodaun concluded. “To be presumed, I suppose, when they are themselves starships. You survived a fleet engagement with them as well. Tan!Stalla?”

“We kept out of their range and relied on their inability to properly use the missiles they’d stolen in hyperspace,” the Squadron Lord noted. “I don’t believe we could rely on the same weaknesses in a normal space engagement, and they will quickly learn to make up their shortcomings in a hyperspatial engagement.

“We did, however, identify and destroy every bioform carrying a stolen Laian hyper emitter,” Tan!Stalla said. “That should buy us time. We have to assume, however, that they will find a solution now that they have seen hyper portals in action under their control.”

“I agree,” Korodaun replied. “Do you have any intelligence, Squadron Lord, to shed sunlight on where they may be headed when they leave? I agree with the logic of your current positioning, but they have already been beaten here once.”

“Unfortunately, I believe you have all the intelligence we have,” Tan!Stalla said. “I agree that they are likely to attempt to divert around us in hyperspace,