Eyes of Tomorrow (Duchy of Terra Book 9) Glynn Stewart (100 books to read .txt) 📖

again, they will have been retrofitted with some form of interface-missile armament.” She smiled thinly. “We also believe it is highly likely that the Six-As, like the rest of the Category Sixes, possess microsingularity cannons.

“This bioform represents a single unit capable of threatening the entirety of the Laian First Defense Fleet. Our special task group would stand very little chance against it.”

She wiped the close-up away and replaced it with the scans of the Eye of the Astoroko Nebula.

“The Eye is defended by forty-six Category Six-A bioforms, two hundred and twenty-two unarmored Category Six bioforms—all of whom are significantly larger than their armored cousins—and eight Category Seven creatures averaging sixty thousand kilometers in length.”

Morgan paused again, making sure her people were following her, and then gave the holoprojector one last command.

The scan of the entire Eye vanished, replaced by the reconstructed video of the Queen rising out of the Eye’s gas giant.

“All of it to defend this creature, which we believe to be the oldest of the Infinite and the likely progenitor of at least this cluster,” Morgan told them all. “We have designated her Category Eight…and are mostly calling her the Queen.”

She surveyed her officers.

“Now, does anyone in this room have suggestions as to how our three nations could engage and defeat the forces massed in the Eye of the Astoroko Nebula in conventional battle?” she asked quietly.

A deafening silence answered her.

“My understanding,” Sub-Commander Irisha finally said, “was that we were not planning on doing so.”

“We are not,” Morgan agreed. “That is what this special task group exists to avoid. But it is not easy to stand amidst the ruined worlds of the Dead Zone and readily embrace the concept of murdering stars.

“We all must understand the risks we face in this operation and the reason why this operation has been contemplated,” she told them. “We will need to infiltrate past whatever sentinels the Infinite have set throughout the nebula, recognizing that if we are detected and fail to eliminate the sentinels in time, we will face an utterly overwhelming force.

“Our objective is these stars,” Morgan explained, pulling the zoom out to show the cluster of stars at the heart of the nebula. “Twelve relatively newborn blue giant stars form a gravitationally balanced structure around the not-yet-ignited dwarf at the heart of the Eye.

“This rosette of stars creates a massive realspace and hyperspace anomaly that interferes with hyper portals, hyperfold weapons and even our hyperspace missiles,” she noted. “It forms the bars of the Infinite’s prison, and we are going to implode that prison on them.”

Eight of the stars, selected after careful calculation, flashed red.

“Targets Astoroko One through Eight,” Morgan said calmly. “The plan is to preposition one stealthed starkiller at each of them. The STG will then withdraw at least one realspace light-year and send a hyperfold detonation code that should trigger simultaneous detonation of all eight stars.”

A simulation started on the hologram, the stars rapidly expanding to fill the Eye with fire and radiation.

“There is a high likelihood, that my staff has estimated at seventy-five plus/minus ten percent, that the sequence will trigger sympathy novas in the other four stars,” Morgan noted. “Whether or not those occur, we believe the gravitational effects of the novas will keep the Infinite contained in the rosette while the realspace effects wipe them out.”

“Sounds straightforward enough,” Protan observed. “Every ship in the group is stealthed. Even the Wendira shouldn’t be able to screw this up.”

Morgan had a hand up before Irisha could speak.

“Sword Protan, make one more prejudicial comment, and I will be asking Voice Tidirok for a new Laian squadron commander,” she told the Laian calmly. “We cannot afford to be at each other’s throats. If we fail, large portions of the Grand Hive and the Republic alike will be sacrificed to buy time for the galaxy to muster the forces necessary to overcome the Infinite.

“Am I understood?” she asked.

There was a long silence, and then Protan bowed her head.

“I offer my apologies, Sub-Commandant Irisha,” she said, though the words didn’t sound entirely sincere to Morgan. “For the good of the Republic, I will control my words in future.”

Morgan turned her attention to Irisha, whose body language she couldn’t read. After several seconds of silence, Irisha’s vestigial wings snapped inward.

“I acknowledge your apology, Sword,” he declared. “Let it fall.”

“Good.” Morgan gestured to the three-dimensional image of the Astoroko Nebula. “Now, we’ve talked about what we’re planning to do, but that requires our stealth fields to be completely impermeable to the Infinite and our hyperfold communicators to be reliable enough to send the activation codes to starkillers in terminal mode.”

While the command module of a starkiller was hyper-capable on its own, no one wanted to cut that timing any closer than they had to.

“What all of us are here to discuss and work out as a group is what we do when that perfect world fails to be our reality.”

Chapter Forty-Three

“You want me to what?” Kelly Lawrence demanded, the athletic computer specialist almost physically recoiling from Rin as he finished his initial explanation.

She took a deep breath and then rose from her chair in his borrowed office. He’d brought the privacy-field generator with him when he’d boarded the cruiser Lawrence served aboard, making certain no one on the ship would listen in on their conversation.

He let Lawrence pace the office for a good thirty seconds before he cleared his throat.

“We have access to an Alavan Dyson swarm,” he repeated. “We’re putting together a team of experts—people who either worked on the Taljzi one or have enough other background to be useful—to see if we can duplicate the Taljzi’s trap.”

Lawrence put her hands on her hips and turned back to him, probably consciously accentuating the uniform she wore—that of a Lesser Commander of the Imperial Navy.

“I am the senior intelligence officer for Division Lord Scheinberg,” she pointed out. “Part of the command staff of an entire squadron of Imperial cruisers. And I took a job with Navy Intelligence because I decided