Read Online Semper Human by Ian Douglas - Free Book Online

intriguing.
    â€œSo far as the Xul minds within the target node are aware, everything’s going fine, they’ve stamped out all possible threats to their existence, and there’s nothing out there to upset their poor, xenophobic sensibilities. They get routine—and negative—reports from their probes and listening stations, routine comm traffic from other nodes, everything’s fine. And our AIs are in a position to intercept any incoming data that says otherwise, or be aware of any decision by the node’s chorus to go out looking for trouble. They could even shut the node down completely, if need be. Literally cut their power and turn them off.”
    â€œWhy don’t you? Turn them all off, I mean.”
    She looked uncomfortable. “Genocide, you mean.”
    â€œIf it’s a matter of survival for Humankind…yes.”
    â€œWe can’t do that!”
    â€œWhy not? I’m not even sure electronic uploads qualify as life .”
    â€œMembers of Homo telae would object to that, General. So would most members of our AI communities.”
    â€œBut their survival is at stake, too, damn it!” He felt exasperation building up, threatening to emerge as raw fury. How could he make her understand? No Marine he knew liked the idea of wholesale genocide, but when your back was up against the wall, you did what you had to do to survive.
    She sighed. “That…option is debated from time to time. It comes up from time to time as a possible strategy. But there’s a strong egalatist faction within the Associative government—”
    â€œâ€˜Egalatist?’”
    â€œAll intelligence is equally valid, no matter what the shape of the body that houses it. And many Associative species—many human religious factions, too—think the Xul are a legitimate sapient life form, and that wiping them out is the same as genocide.”
    â€œHell,” Garroway said. “The bastards have tried to pull the plug on humans often enough in the past few thousand years. Maybe we should pull the plug on them. This is war .”
    â€œThe concept of war may be out of date, General,” Schilling said. “If we can contain the Xul without switching them off…wouldn’t that be better? Especially if we can eventually find a way to reason with them? Cure their xenophobia, and bring them into the Associative?”
    Garroway wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that. “Maybe….”
    â€œThe Xul aren’t evil ,” Schilling said. “Very, very different, yes. And they have a worldview that makes it tough to reason with them on human terms. But they would have a lot to contribute to Associative culture.”
    â€œListen, if you people are so all-fired eager to make friends with those things, why’d you bring me out of cold storage?”
    â€œBecause the containment may be failing,” Schilling said. “We have intelligence from several sources that suggests that, just as we’ve been infiltrating their systems electronically, they’ve been infiltrating ours.
    â€œAnd just the possibility that they’ve begun reacting to us coherently has scared the shit out of some of us….”
    Hassetas, Dac IV
Star System 1727459
1901 hours, GMT
    The Krysni mob, a wall of gas bags and writhing tentacles, lunged toward the Marine line. Garwe saw a telltale warning wink on within his in-head displays, and read the data un-scrolling beside it.
    â€œI’m getting a power spike, Captain!” he shouted. “The bastards are armed !”
    â€œWeapons free!” Xander called.
    With a thunderclap, a searing, violet beam snapped in from the jungle wall to the left, washing across Lieutenant Wahrst’s strikepod in coruscating sheets and arcing forks of grounding energy. The smooth surface of her pod silvered, then seemed to flow like water as internal fields and nanotechnics shifted to shunt aside the charge.
    The