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

that they were prepared to sacrifice the entirety of Swarm Echo to make sure she didn’t have any starkillers left to fire.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Part of the planning assumptions around Morgan’s mission—and the general strategic structure of the allies’ response to the Infinite—had been that a lot of Swarm Bravo’s intelligence had died with the swarm.

That theory started to fragment the moment the Wendira starfighters hit missile range of Swarm Echo. Irisha’s fighters were veterans doing their work perfectly. Rapidly rotating formations, dispersed squadrons, seemingly chaotic maneuvers—everything that could make targeting them harder was being done.

But Echo was clearly expecting it. Missiles lashed out the moment the starfighters were in range, each of the Category Threes flinging at least a thousand missiles at the smaller ships. The patterns were broad wedges, covering as much space as possible until the missiles found a target.

“They’ve seen data on the starfighters,” Morgan said quietly. “They shouldn’t have. Only Bravo fought starfighters, and we wiped them out that day.”

“That answers the question of whether Infinite have an FTL com, doesn’t it?” Rogers replied. “Without relays, even hyperfold coms wouldn’t have made it back to the Queen. They’ve some trick of their own.”

“And today it won’t save them,” Morgan said. “Irisha’s people are too good.”

They weren’t good enough to save themselves, but they were good enough that over half of the starfighters survived to reach hyperfold-cannon range of the Infinite fleet. Ten seconds after that, the fighter strike was over.

“All fighters confirmed lost,” Rogers reported. “Estimate…fourteen Category Threes destroyed.”

Fourteen ships bigger than Laian war-dreadnoughts, wiped out in exchange for thirteen hundred starfighters. It was probably a fair trade—the Drones who flew the starfighters would have called it a fair trade—but Morgan still hated it.

“Regular-missile range…now.”

Rogers’s report echoed in a suddenly quiet bridge.

“Engage as specified,” Morgan ordered softly. Every one of her ships pulsed on the main display as they fired, hundreds of interface-drive missiles flashing onto the screen. She fired barely two thousand missiles.

The fifty remaining Category Threes and the half-wrecked-by-now Six-A fired seventy thousand back.

“Full defense screen deployed; all missiles targeted on the Six-A,” Ort reported.

“I have the defense screen,” Rogers reported. “All drones reported in, and I am interfaced with local control.”

“Maybe we should have held the fighters for this,” Morgan murmured. Sixty seconds of flight time was enough for her to regret her choices. Those thirteen hundred fighters would have been another twenty-six hundred hyperfold cannons to defend her fleet.

“We’ve got this, sir,” Rogers replied. “We have shields. They don’t.”

“So far,” Morgan muttered, but she kept that quiet. If Swarm Echo’s bioforms had shields, she’d have seen them by now.

“Singularity hit,” Rogers reported a moment later, shaking her head. “Kozovan, one of the Laian starkillers. She’s gone.”

They were now down three of eight starkillers, and Morgan could already guess the targeting path of the missile swarm.

“Pull the surviving starkillers back behind the rest of the task group,” she ordered. “They’ve been targeting the starkillers as a priority so far. I doubt they’ve changed now we’re in missile range.”

The seconds were ticking away as the missiles crossed the void. Morgan’s ships were running at an angle to the swarm, buying themselves time in each range bracket. They knew the Infinite had plasma cannons and hyperfold cannons—both had been thrown at the starfighters.

“Missiles hitting the perimeter,” Rogers reported.

No one was giving details, but Morgan watched the cascade of red dots fall onto her fleet like a deadly rain…and disappear. There were multiple layers of defensive drones. Hyperfold-cannon-equipped drones were the farthest out and carried the longest-ranged weapons, lashing into the missiles while they were still millions of kilometers away.

The laser-equipped drones were next. They had the lowest kill rates of the three weapon systems in play but the second-longest range when backed by tachyon scanners. They took their own cut of the missiles—and then the survivors ran into the rapid-fire plasma cannons of the final internal screen, backed by the lasers, plasma guns and hyperfold cannons of the ships themselves.

The battered survivors lunged through, but their targeting was clearly confused. Thousands of missiles tried to pass through the fleet to engage the starkillers and were wiped out by guns firing from behind them.

Others took the targets in front of them, swarming onto the ships of the special task group—primarily the Wendira escorts.

Less than five hundred missiles hit anything—but over three hundred of them slammed into two Wendira fast escorts, ships that were designed to hide behind ten-megaton battleships.

“Osofa and Kana are down,” Rogers reported grimly. “The escorts can’t take that kind of firepower.”

“And they’re close enough in size to the starkillers to confuse the missiles,” Morgan replied. “Fuck. How’s that sphere looking, Ort?”

“We hit her, and we hit her hard,” Ort replied. “She’s dropped to point-four c and didn’t fire in the latest missile salvo. She’d leaking fluid constantly, but she is still maneuvering after us.”

“And firing singularities,” Rogers reported grimly. “Astarax is gone. We’re running out of starkillers, Division Lord.”

“Keep focusing fire on that Six-A,” Morgan told them. “Maintain the defensive screen, keep the starkillers back and clear them to maneuver independently. We can’t shield them from the teleporter; we can only stop the missiles.”

“Next wave is in the perimeter,” Rogers reported.

The flag deck fell silent, people hoping not to distract the officers and techs buried deep in the dual process of saving them from the enemy’s missiles—and killing the enemy before they launched again.

This time, none of the missiles were confused. All of them dove “down” and tried to dodge around Morgan’s main body, driving to get at the starkillers she was protecting. She watched as Rogers turned drones and even sent the Laian cruisers diving toward the missiles at sixty percent of lightspeed to expand the defensive perimeter.

It wasn’t enough. Missiles hammered into the starkillers, which were actually tougher than the escorts…but not tough enough.

The last singularity hit was as much insult to injury as anything else, and Morgan swallowed grimly as Swarm Echo completed their mission. All eight of the special