The Complete Inheritance Trilogy: Star Strike, Galactic Corps, Semper Human. Ian Douglas

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СКАЧАТЬ bubble of electromagnetic radiation at radio wavelengths expanding outward at the speed of light—a certain indicator of intelligent, technic life at its center.

      Alexander allowed himself a mental grin at the memory of an old joke. Perhaps it wasn’t an indicator of intelligent life, given the nature of much of the entertainment content of that bubble. Still, anyone with the appropriate technological know-how could hear that babble of noise, and know that technic civilization was responsible.

      And The Singer had broadcast something to the stars back in 2067 when it was freed from its icy tomb. No, there was no way Humanity could keep its existence secret much longer.

      And how was Humankind to survive in a contest against a technology half a million years more advanced?

      It was a problem the Marine Corps had been struggling to resolve since the twenty-first century. So far, for the most part, they’d been able to fight isolated and tightly controlled battles, applying tactics that emphasized Marine strengths while sidestepping Xul technology. As commanding officer of the 1st Marine Interstellar Expeditionary Force, Alexander was responsible for keeping on top of the Xul threat, and keeping the Commonwealth government informed of any changes in the situation.

      And the situation certainly had changed now, with the taking of the Argo.

      “General?” Cara said, interrupting increasingly grim thoughts. “Will you want your full filters for the meeting?”

      “Eh? What was that?”

      “Your e-comm filters, sir. The delegates will begin linking in before too long. How do you want to be dressed?”

      He grimaced. Personal filters were an important part of modern electronic communications. Within a noumenal setting—literally inside the participants’ heads—your personal icon could take on any appearance desired, anything within the programming range of the AIs giving the encounter substance. Filters allowed the image projected into the group mind’s virtual space to be of your own choosing, with apparent dress, body language, even inflection of voice under your control.

      He didn’t like it, though. He never had. Though e-filters had been around for centuries, a necessary outgrowth of noumenal projection, they still seemed … dishonest, somehow, a kind of social white lie.

      “You can’t,” Cara told him, a disapproving tone to her words, “receive the Defense Advisory Council like that.”

      Mentally, he looked down at himself. As usual, he was projecting his real-world appearance into the galactic imagery … which, at the moment, was of a lean, middle-aged man with graying hair and a dour expression. He was also naked.

      Causal nudity was perfectly acceptable within most modern social situations, but Cara was right. This was not the proper appearance to put before twenty-four of the more powerful and important of the arbiters of Commonwealth government policy.

      “What do you suggest?” he asked her.

      “Something,” she said, “more like this.” She gave his sim an electronic tweak, and his body morphed into something leaner, tauter, and with more presence, and wearing Marine full dress, his upper left chest ablaze in luminous decorations and campaign holos. The brilliant gold Terran Sunburst, awarded for his role at the Battle of Grellsinore as a very raw lieutenant, was emblazoned on his right breast. His head and shoulders were encased within a lambent corona flammae, another social convention granted to officially designated Heroes of the Commonwealth.

      “I think we can lose the decorations,” he said. He gave a commanding thought, and the medals vanished. His uniform dwindled a bit into plain dress blacks. “And the damned light show.” The corona faded away.

      “With respect, sir,” Cara told him, “you need the bric-a-brac. The council’s chairperson is Marie Devereaux. She is impressed by proper formal presentation, and you will need to enlist her support for your plan.”

      He sighed. “Okay. Medals, yes. But not that damned glow. Makes me look like an ancient religious icon, complete with halo.”

      “The corona flammae is part of your sanctioned uniform, sir. For your service at and after the twenty-third Chinese War. And the delegation members will have their own.”

      “Fucking trappings of power. I hate this.”

      “Indeed, sir,” Cara said as the light came back on … but a trifle subdued, this time. “But how many times have you lectured me on the need to blend in with the local social environment? To do otherwise will elicit disapproval, and might well send conflicting signals or, worse, could alienate your audience.”

      Alexander looked sharply at Cara’s icon—which was presenting itself, as usual, as an attractive, dark-haired woman of indeterminate years wearing a Marine undress uniform. It was tough at times to remember that “Cara” was, in fact, an electronic artifice, an AI serving as his personal military aide and electronic office manager. A resident of the noumenon and virtual workplaces, she had no physical reality at all.

      “Okay, boss,” he said at last. “Light me. But no parade or fireworks, okay? Even heroes of the Commonwealth should be granted a little dignity.”

      “I’ll see what I can do, sir,” she told him. “But no promises!”

      And then, with Cara serving as gatekeeper and announcer, the first of the council delegates began linking in.

       5

       0507.1102

       USMC Skybase

       Paraspace

       1005 hrs GMT

      It was, Alexander decided, a bit like being in an enormous fish tank. The delegates of the Defense Advisory Council appeared in the simulation as small and relatively unobtrusive icons, until one or another spoke. At that point, the icon unfolded into what appeared to be a life-sized image, standing on emptiness and aglow with its own corona. With a swarm of golden icons surrounding him, together with a larger swarm of smaller, dimmer icons representing the group’s cloud of digital secretaries and personal electronic assistants, he felt as though he were a large and somewhat clumsy whale immersed within a school of fish.

      There was also the feeling that the entire school was studying him intently, and not a little critically. They included, Cara had reminded him, eight delegates from the Commonwealth Senate, ten senior military officers from the Bureaus of Defense, five members of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Group, and Marie Devereaux, the President’s personal advisor and representative.

      Alexander shrugged off the feeling, and continued with his presentation. They were adrift in an absolute blackness relieved only by a fuzzy circle of light surrounding them all, a ring dividing the darkness into two unequal parts. Within the smaller part, the ring shaded into blue, the leading edge. The trailing edge shaded into red.

      This was how space had looked from the point of view of Perseus, the AI commanding the colony asteroid ship Argo СКАЧАТЬ