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

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СКАЧАТЬ may prove to be the best after all. If the Xul find Earth and the rest of our worlds, the only hope for Man’s survival might well rest in one or more of those surviving colony ships making it to M-31.”

      “The destruction of the Argo is tragic, yes,” Devereaux said. “But I still don’t see an immediate threat. This all took place five hundred light-years away, after all. And the Xul have always been glacially slow in their military responses.”

      Alexander nodded. “Agreed. If they behave as they have in the past, it might be some time before that information disseminates across all of Xul-controlled space. But, Madam Devereaux, we would be foolish to assume they won’t disseminate it, or that they won’t act upon it eventually. Our best xenopsych profiles so far suggest that the Xul are extreme xenophobes, that they destroy other technic races as a kind of instinctive defense mechanism. We’ve bloodied them a couple of times now, at Sirius, at Night’s Edge, and at Sol, so you can bet that they’re going to sit up and take notice.”

      “We’re going to need to … consider this,” Devereaux said. “In light of the current difficulties with the Islamic Theocracy, we must proceed … circumspectly. Perhaps Intelligence can run some simulations plots, and come up with some realistic probabilities.”

      Damn. He was going to have to turn up the heat. “With all due respect, Madam Devereaux,” he said, “that is fucking irresponsible. It’s also stupid, playing politics with the whole of Humankind at stake!”

      There was a long pause. Devereaux’s head cocked to one side. “With all due respect what, General Alexander?”

      “Eh?”

      “Your filter blocked you,” Cara whispered in his mind.

      “Oh, for the love of …” Angrily, he cleared part of the filter program, dropping it to a lower level. The software had decided that his choice of language left a lot to be desired, and had edited it.

      “Excuse me, Ms. Devereaux,” he said as the program shifted to a lower level. He glanced down at himself. At least he was still in uniform. “Social convention required that I have my e-filters in place, lest I … give offense. But we don’t have time for that nonsense now. What I said, ma’am, was that delay, any delay—giving the matter further study, running numbers, whatever you wish to call it—is irresponsible and stupid. I believe the term my e-filter didn’t like was ‘fucking irresponsible.’”

      “I see.” Her own e-filters were in place of course, but they didn’t stop a certain amount of disapproval from slipping through in those two short words. “And just what do you expect us to do about this, General Alexander?”

      “A raid, Madam Devereaux.” At a thought, the frozen view from the Argo at the moment of the ship’s destruction vanished, and was replaced by the galactic map he’d been studying before the delegates had arrived. The viewpoint zoomed in on the irregular green glow of human space, on the path of the Argo, and on a tight scattering of red pinpoints marking the nearby systems from which the huntership might have emerged—Nu Andromeda, Epsilon Trianguli, and a few others. “What the Marines call a sneak-and-peek.”

      The display continued to animate as he spoke, the viewpoint zooming in until Epsilon Trianguli showed as a hot, white sphere rather than as another star. An A2 type star, Epsilon Trianguli appeared imbedded in a far-flung corona of luminous gas, and even in simulation was almost too brilliant to look at directly.

      A hypothetical planet swung into view, a sharp-edged crescent bowed away from the star, attended by a clutter of sickle-shaped moons. A swarm of dark gray and metallic slivers materialized out of emptiness and scattered across the system. Other planets appeared in the distance, along with the gleaming, wedding-band hoop of a stargate.

      “First in are AI scouts, to show us the terrain. We also need to know if there’s a stargate in the target system. The scouts will find out if there is a Xul presence in the system, and map it out so we’re not going in blind.”

      Obedient to his lecture, a Xul station revealed itself, menacing and black, positioned to guard the stargate. A swarm of new objects entered the scene, dull-black ovoids, descending toward the Xul structure in waves. Pinpoints of white light flickered and strobed against the surface in a silent representation of space combat.

      “The Marines go in hot, wearing marauder armor and accompanied by highly specialized penetrator AIs,” Alexander went on. “Details depend on what the scouts turn up, of course, but the idea will be to insert a Marine raiding party into the Xul, grab as much information as we can, and blow the thing to hell.”

      On cue, the camera point of view pulled back sharply, just as the Xul base in the scene, in complete silence, detonated—a searing, fast-expanding ball of white light that briefly outshone the brilliant local sun.

      “Very pretty,” Devereaux said as the display faded into darkness once more. The noumenal scene flowed and shifted once more, becoming a more conventional virtual encounter space. “But just what would be the point?”

      They now appeared to be seated around the perimeter of a sunken conversation pit three meters across, the representation of the Galaxy as seen from above spiraled about itself at their feet. Here, the individual icons all expanded into images of people, though their electronic secretaries and EAs remained visible only as tiny, darting icons of yellow light orbiting their human masters. The walls and ceiling of the room appeared lost in darkness.

      “The point, Madam Devereaux, is to avoid being put on the defensive again. We were on the defensive in 2314. You know what happened.”

      “Yes,” General Samuels said. “We beat them.”

      “At a terrible cost, sir. Earth’s population in 2314 was … what?” Alexander pulled the data down from the Net. “Fifteen point seven billion people. Four billion died within the space of a few hours during the Xul bombardment. Four billion. Exact numbers were never available, given the chaos of the next few decades, but an estimated one to two billion more froze during the Endless Winter, or starved to death, or died of disease or internal electronics failure or just plain despair.”

      “We know our history, General,” Devereaux said.

      “Then you should know that the human race came within a hair’s breadth of becoming extinct. Over a third of the human race died, murdered by one Xul huntership. One! We were lucky to be able to destroy it. And if General Garroway hadn’t backtracked the Intruder through the Sirius Stargate to Night’s Edge and found a way to take out the base there, we wouldn’t be sitting here now discussing it!”

      “And you know, General,” Devereaux said, “that the current political situation may preclude a major operation such as you seem to be suggesting. The Monists and the Starborn both are threatening to side with the Islamic Theocracy. If they do, the Commonwealth will fall.” She spread her hands. “If that happens, how are we supposed to defend ourselves if the Xul do come?”

      “I submit, Madam Devereaux, that the Human species right now has more to worry about than the exact nature of God. If we do not take a stand, an active stand, against the Xul threat, if we don’t deal with it now, while we have a chance of doing so, then none of the rest matters. We’ll be settling the question of God’s nature by meeting Him face to face!”

      “He does have a point, Marie,” another delegate in the circle said. He wore the uniform and the corona of a Fleet admiral, and the alphanumerics that popped up when Alexander looked СКАЧАТЬ