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

promise to negotiate for access to systems and resources, I can convince the fleets that are coming to stand down,” she promised. “We can…reset our interactions.

“We can try again, from the presumption of peace. We can end this war.”

The Infinite possessed abilities even the Mesharom didn’t understand. The Queen herself had likely seen thousands of years of history prior to the Alavan Fall. They could learn so much from the Infinite, and yet they were so close to destroying each other.

“Do you think she’ll buy it?” Rogers asked.

“I think she stopped outside weapons range because she was waiting for something like this,” Morgan told the other woman. “I think the Queen wants peace. I think she wants to talk to us, to learn about the galaxy where she has found herself.

“But above all else, I think the Queen wants to preserve the Infinite—and these are all that are left.”

Twenty minutes. For twenty minutes, Morgan waited. She managed not to get up and pace, concealing her nervousness and her fear from her staff. If she’d guessed wrong, the Infinite would destroy her task group.

Then they’d probably destroy the combined fleet and overrun large chunks of the Wendira and Laian nations. They’d clearly come a long way in upgrading their bioforms with hyperdrives and missiles. Not much was going to stop them now.

“Incoming message,” Litcha finally reported.

“TinyLife DivisionLordMorganCasimir, you speak hope, but your promises require faith and trust. You ask the Infinite to risk everything.”

Morgan bit her lip.

“But the Infinite betrayed your faith once. We will extend ours in repayment now.”

“All Infinite ships have ceased their pursuit,” Ort suddenly exclaimed. “They’re holding position.”

“You have our permission to exit this nebula, TinyLife DivisionLordMorganCasimir,” the Queen told her. “Your DeadFlesh may go with you. We will speak with your leaders…so long as you accompany them into this nebula.

“Any DeadFlesh that enters the Nebula without you will be destroyed. We will negotiate for peace, DivisionLordMorganCasimir, but we place our trust only in you.

“That must be enough for hope.”

Chapter Sixty-Four

Emerging from hyperspace into a section of space that wasn’t a nebula was a relief. Morgan could hear multiple members of her flag staff making assorted signs of relief.

“Ort, confirm the coordinates,” Morgan ordered, burying her own desire to audibly sigh.

They’d stopped at one point inside the Astoroko Nebula, still under the guns of a Category Seven, to check in with Tohrohsail. Every fleet in the region was supposedly headed here, to combine into a single hammer for a spoiling attack on the Nebula.

From what Fleet Lord !Loka had told her, no one was expecting the attack to seize control of the nebula or defeat the Infinite, but it was intended to finish off Swarm Charlie before it could be reinforced.

But there was no one here.

“We are in the right place,” Ort replied. “Hyperspace was…cooperative. We are about half a cycle ahead of our expectations.” He paused. “The Ren should be here, but they had the farthest to come.

“The Wendira shouldn’t be here yet. The Imperials and Laians could be here, but even normal hyperspace densities would have seen them arriving when we originally expected to,” the ops officer told her.

“So, we wait,” Morgan replied. “Everyone should be receiving a starcom message asking them to rendezvous with us before launching the attack anyway.”

But there was no way for anyone to tell her that. She hadn’t even been able to respond to Fleet Lord !Loka’s answer to her message.

“I’ll be in my office,” she told her staff. “Notify me the moment we have any contacts.”

She’d spent a good chunk of the trip there preparing messages to send to various people scattered through the Imperium—and a few Wendira and Laians, too.

Morgan wasn’t entirely okay with the fact that she’d been recruited to a secret society, but she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to pull that lever to try to make peace.

And her stepmother made for a hell of a lever all on her own.

“I believe the Queen when she says it was paranoia,” Morgan told the recorder. She wasn’t being as careful in her wording as she might have otherwise been. This message was for her parents. She might be asking them to bring their political artillery into the field for her, but they were still her parents.

“We’ve spent this entire fight acting to neutralize a threat we saw to the galaxy—and the Infinite have spent all this time acting to neutralize a threat they saw to their very existence. Our conspirators managed to burn any chance of a peaceful second contact.”

Morgan sighed.

“I’m pretty sure some of those bastards are still alive,” she noted. “The financiers and politicians behind that push for war so they could steal an Alavan fleet… If I find out who any of them are, they’d better watch their step in dark alleys.

“The Infinite bear their responsibility for what has happened. There are millions of dead people, and the Infinite killed them,” Morgan said. “But the bastards who panicked and shot at them bear some of the blood guilt too.

“I think…I believe…that I will be able to convince Tan!Shallegh and Voice Tidirok of the chance for peace,” Morgan continued. “But I can’t be certain. I’ve also sent a formal report to A!Shall, but…”

She sighed and shook her head.

“The Infinite are unique, Mom, Dad,” she told them. “I have seen nothing like them before and I don’t think I ever will again. Even the lobotomized version of their biotech the Alava had created in the cloner and the Great Mother was a pale shadow.

“I think we can work with them. I think they can do incredible things for us—and we can make it possible for them to live again. My best guess is that the Queen is a hundred thousand years old. Even if she spent half of that trapped in a stellar box, just think of what she has seen and what she knows.

“We need to talk to them. I need you to convince the Imperium of that.”

She swallowed.

“You know I