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

entire fucking universe that the Infinite could detect, no matter what we did, it’s a goddamn starkiller.”

The miniature versions, the Final Dragon weapons she’d carried on Defiance, might be safe. But the regular destroyer-sized weapons were straight-up, barely modified Alavan star drives. The Infinite knew their old enemy better than anyone else still living.

“They saw right through our stealth fields because eight of our ships, the weapons that were the entire purpose of our mission, were basically brilliant beacons to their scanners,” Morgan concluded.

“And now the starkillers are gone, they can’t see us nearly as well.”

“I don’t like the price, but that might be handy, since we’ve already paid it,” Rogers said grimly. “What do we do?”

Morgan looked at the three red splotches on the display and sighed.

“I wish I had coms with the rest of the galaxy,” she admitted. They weren’t even receiving messages. The distorting effect of this many stars in close conjunction was blocking starcom reception as well as hyperfold transmission.

“We don’t even know what happened with Swarm Charlie, and we can’t tell anyone that our mission is a bust,” she continued. “All we can do is save ourselves, realizing that everyone is going to think we’re dead.”

“That sounds like you have a plan, sir,” Rogers pointed out.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Morgan murmured, studying the display and its shaded error zone around their trip—and the overlay marking the chaos that the rosette was inflicting on hyperspace scanners.

“We’re at the narrowest part of the impermeable zone created between realspace and hyperspace by the rosette,” she said. “It’s thirty light-cycles across here—larger inside the stars than outside, constructive interference being what it is.

“The rosette’s radiation and gravity patterns also screw with realspace sensors, though not as badly, and will augment the stealth fields’ effects.”

The rosette was also a full light-year across. Tiny in the grand scheme of things, especially for a formation of a dozen blue stars, but immense by any practical standard.

“We go inside the rosette,” Morgan decided aloud. “We use it to reinforce our stealth fields and we run dark at a random angle. For…a hundred cycles, at least.

“Even the Infinite can’t blockade every possible exit from the Eye of the Astoroko Nebula,” she said. “So, we go deep and we run long. If we’re in the impermeable zone and hiding behind stars for a hundred cycles, that’s a fifty-to-sixty-light-cycle-radius zone we can emerge in.

“Everyone outside is going to think we’re dead,” she repeated. “But we have the supplies for it. Hell, we have the supplies to do it and run all the way back to the Imperium if things really go to shit in those hundred days.”

“I don’t…hate it,” Rogers said. “Koumans? Your thoughts.”

The battleship’s Captain looked as exhausted as the flag staff.

“I’m not sure any of us are thinking clearly, but it makes sense,” she conceded. “If nothing else, we dramatically expand the error radius of their scans and force them to either commit more ships or spread them more thinly.

“And if they spread them thin enough, we might be able to punch out and make a run for it.”

“It pretty much doesn’t matter what we do; we’re going to have to fight our way out,” Morgan told them. “But the more we confuse them, the less forces they have directly in position, and the more likely we are to make it through.”

“It makes sense to me,” Koumans said. “And it’s your call, Division Lord.”

That sent a chill down Morgan’s spine, and she looked at the map and the icons of her fleet. Even with her losses, there were still thirty ships under her command. The better part of forty thousand people.

“Our mission has already failed,” Morgan noted. “The only task left to me is to extract as much of my command intact as possible. This is the best choice we’ve got. Ort—work with the navigators, get the course set.

“Once we’re closer to the stars, we’ll stand down to status three and send most of the crews to sleep,” she continued. “We all need rest, or this is going to get worse fast.”

Chapter Sixty

Morgan hadn’t planned on sleeping for twelve hours, but that was how long her communicator said she’d been asleep when she finally woke up. A quick check of the ship’s status told her that they hadn’t quite made it to the theoretical line that marked the “surface” of the rosette, but also that nothing was pursuing them.

She took the time to properly shower and re-braid her hair before putting on her uniform and returning to the flag deck. The short ritual made her feel both cleaner and more human.

Everything she could do to sharpen her mind was important now. It would be another thirty hours, in her judgment, before they were entirely safe from detection. They wouldn’t—they couldn’t—be at battle stations for all of that time, but that was the time where quick decisions might still be needed.

Only a portion of her staff was on duty when she stepped onto the bridge, exactly as it should have been. Ort was the senior officer on duty, rising as she entered and gesturing for her to join him.

“I’m glad you’re here, Division Lord,” he greeted her. I didn’t want to wake you, but there’s something strange going on.”

“Good strange or bad strange?” Morgan asked, standing beside the Ivida’s chair and looking at the man’s screens—currently showing a series of visual reports from Odysseus’s Fleet Operations Center.

“Strange strange, I think,” Ort said after a moment’s thought. “Take a look. This is Delta-Six, the third pursuit swarm to come into regular space after us, and their course over the last six hours.”

Morgan noticed the time stamps first.

“This is nearly real-time,” she noted. “How?”

“This is our vulnerable period, so I took the initiative to lay a series of drones behind us,” Ort told her. “The farthest drones can’t hyperfold-transmit to us, but they can transmit to the drones along the chain. As we pass through the rosette, it will become impossible to sustain even that, but