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

know they have copies of the Laian versions of all of these—and we also have to assume, at this point, that they have full access to Builder’s computer systems.

“Maps. Tech databases. The works. The maps are Pincer Korodaun’s problem,” she said with relief. “But the tech databases are our problem. So, for those exercises we’re giving them tomorrow, I want us to mock up a dash-X category modifier, for ships fully modernized with the Laian weapon systems.”

“So, missiles, IDMs… Shields?”

“Shields and interface drives,” Morgan agreed. “Using whichever of their reactionless or our interface drive seems more efficient at a given moment. A Category Four-X will have everything, people.”

“Any other category modifiers we should be thinking of?” Shotilik asked thoughtfully.

“Dash-H, for units like the ones we saw in the last attack,” Took suggested. “Standard bioforms with hyper emitters.”

“We’ll use dash-H for hyper-equipped units and dash-M for IDM-equipped units,” Morgan told them. “But for the simulations, the only thing we throw at people is dash-X. Worst-possible-case scenario.”

“Makes sense,” Rogers agreed. “If we train to fight the worst possible scenario, the reality can’t help but be better, right?”

“I’m not taking that bet,” Took said flatly. “If I did, I’d pull out all my feathers from stress. I’m going to have to pull launcher and magazine estimates by mass. They’ve got to be lower than Laian numbers, right? If they’re basically bolting the Laian system, one way or another, onto existing forms?”

“Run me two sets of numbers, Took,” Morgan ordered. “First, the one that we’ll probably use for training purposes, is where they’ve updated themselves with an equivalent launcher-to-mass ratio as Laian war-dreadnoughts.

“Second, your best guess of what they’ll look like if they’re adding a Laian launcher-and-magazine assembly to an existing bioform, but trying to get up to a number of launchers that can seriously challenge us at range.

“That’ll be the one we use for intelligence and operational assessments,” Morgan concluded. “Run it conservative but realistic. We don’t want to terrify people outside of training scenarios, but we don’t want to underestimate these creatures, either.”

“I’m on it,” Took confirmed.

Morgan pivoted to Kadark.

“Kadark, you were Engineering, right?” she asked the big Anbrai.

“Yes, sir,” he confirmed.

“I want you to tear into whatever we have on the Laian mobile shipyards,” she told him. “I need to know just what Builder probably carried—but more importantly, what she can do. If she can update and modify war-dreadnoughts, she can probably at least do implants and modifications on Category One, Two and Three bioforms. I want an idea of how much she might have done to them in terms of implants and grafts.”

“On it,” he confirmed.

Morgan turned to Ito, Rogers and Shotilik and considered them.

“Ito, Rogers, I want you two to start putting together our scenarios for the training,” she told the Pibo and her former XO. “Use the numbers from Took once she has them, but you’ll need to come up with guesses for shields as well. We’re almost certainly going to be staying out of ranges where plasma and hyperfold cannons matter for now, but if they start having shields to eat our missiles, it’s going to change the math.”

“And their use of plasma for missile defense is going to get better as well,” Rogers suggested. “It wasn’t that long ago that even the Imperium relied on shields alone to handle missiles, but we’ve already seen them shoot ours down.”

“Agreed,” Morgan said.

Finally, she turned her assessing gaze on Shotilik, the second-senior member of her team after Rogers.

“Tactical, right?” she asked the Rekiki.

“Yes, sir,” Shotilik agreed.

“You and I get the most fun job,” Morgan told her. “We’re going to go through the Infinite’s resources and the numbers everybody else puts together, and we play OPFOR. We’re going to assess their resources and try to extrapolate their goals and objectives.

“Everyone else’s job is to assess what the Infinite have. We get to try to guess just what the Queen will do with those resources.”

The simulated Category Five-X blazed across the hologram at eighty percent of the speed of light. Eight hundred kilometers across, it seemed to spray missiles like a sprinter spraying sweat. The tiny icons scattering in front of the behemoth represented Laian war-dreadnoughts, the largest warships available to the defenders.

The dreadnoughts’ missile fire was almost invisible against the tsunami the Infinite bioform unleashed, but their defenses rallied in trained synchronicity. Plasma-cannon-armed equivalents to the Imperium’s Buckler drones opened fire at two light-seconds against the portion of the missiles that reached their target in hyperspace, and they dodged away, taking advantage of every bit of maneuverability their interface drives gave them.

It was…not enough.

Morgan watched grimly as their simulation ground to its inevitable conclusion. Shotilik hadn’t even used the bioform’s interface drive to match the Laians’ maneuverability. The Rekiki had simply taken the Infinite forward and smashed the dreadnoughts to pieces with overwhelming missile fire.

“So, I’m hoping that is not our conservative estimate of the Infinite’s missile armaments,” she observed as the last war-dreadnought—controlled by Rogers this time—blew apart.

“It isn’t,” Ito confirmed, the Pibo looking tired. “That’s Laian war-dreadnought ratios—six launchers per megaton. But on an eight-hundred-kilometer bioform…that’s millions of missile launchers, sir.”

“Millions,” Morgan echoed, looking back at the simulation. “And the more conservative estimate?”

“Their ratio appears to be ten to one for length versus average height and width,” Ito said. “So, an eight-hundred-kilometer-long unit is two hundred kilometers wide and high at its largest point, average of eighty kilometers. Volume of over twenty million cubic kilometers.”

“They’re limited by surface area, but…” Morgan wasn’t even sure how she’d meant to finish that sentence.

“My conservative estimate is that a Category Five-X bioform that has been fully updated with Laian tech will have a hundred thousand missile launchers at the minimum end,” Ito told them all. “That’s a unit that is a mere hundred and twenty, say, kilometers long. At the high end, the eight-hundred-kilometer bioform we used here… A minimum of a million.”

“I’m not sure I can even wrap my brain around those numbers,” Morgan admitted, understanding why Ito