“So we kill them all? Commit genocide ourselves?” Annbjörg asked.
“Before I answer that question there is one more thing that I need to share with you concerning the Sowir. I and a few of the others had been aware of this matter for some time.” Tomas paused, he gathered his thoughts and then continued. “The Sowir are not really Sowir, at least who we believe Sowir to be are not actually them.”
His words were met with confused looks from most of the room, save Adrian, Laura, and Seo-yun. The three Nel Clan Leaders were the ones most confused.
“What do you mean?” Clan Leader Sumia asked. Tomas gestured to Seo-yun and she stood up and started to speak.
“Thirty years ago after the Sowir attack on Nuva, we recovered corpses of those that our forces killed. We brought them back to Sanctuary and did extensive testing on them. What we found out was… Interesting to say the least.” Seo-yun said.
“What did you find?” Clan Leader Jusan asked.
“The “Sowir” brain isn’t capable of higher intelligence, they are on the level of a very intelligent animal, but an animal nevertheless.” Seo-yun said.
“That’s impossible!” Sumia said, “They have a civilization, they build cities, command ships they…”
Seo-yun raised her hand. “I know, but think about it. Have you ever heard or seen a Nel speaking with a Sowir one on one? Other than through a comm system from a ship?” Seo-yun asked.
Sumia was startled. “They don’t communicate in the same manner as we do, they need machines, computers to translate whatever their language is, to something we can understand. That equipment is too big to fit on a person…”
“Perhaps you are correct, but I bet that no one has ever seen a Sowir actually use a device to speak with another being, I bet you that there was always a distance between the speakers.”
“But still, they can’t be animals. Animals cannot use technology.” Sumia retorted.
“Again, you are correct. So let me explain. During our testing we found that the bodies have another additional brain, at first it made sense that they had two. One that was capable of higher thinking and the other used for more primitive thoughts, basic instincts. But the more we looked at the second brain the more confused we became. The brain was filled with things that we later identified as some kind of receivers, and all of its connections to the primitive brain lead to the motor functions. There were other mysteries as well, we couldn’t figure out how they communicated. And then we started testing their genetic code in full.” Seo-yun paused for a moment, looking at the people around the table.
“We discovered that their second brain was actually engineered and added to them. Over time we even discovered that the second brain was used as a way of controlling the primitive brain and it was made to receive instructions. The higher brain takes complete control over the being, through it, it is capable of executing complex tasks. Whether they are receiving the control signals by technological means or something else we are not sure. But what we are completely certain of is that the beings we believed to be Sowir are in fact nothing more than tools –unwilling agents if you will. Without guidance from the higher brain they will revert back to being simple animals.” Seo-yun said.
“How can that be? Wouldn’t we notice something?” Jusan asked softly.
“Your knowledge of genetics wasn’t nowhere near ours now, and even if it was I doubt that anyone would have looked for something like this. And whoever is in charge is very smart, they kept themselves hidden for centuries.” Seo-yun said.
Then Jack Gin nodded to himself and spoke. “Well… Now Nuva makes much more sense.”
“What do you mean?” Sumia asked.
“I have reviewed the reports and viewed the vids of our people fighting the Sowir on Nuva, and there had always been something strange about their behavior. If they were guided by something or someone, then their actions make much more sense. The force sent down to Nuva was treated as if it was completely expendable, they were just trying to kill as many as they could. And they weren’t acting as trained soldiers, more like a pack that was let loose.” Jack said.
Laura then got a thoughtful expression, “We never did find many bodies from the wreckages, and they always had redundancies that made sure their ships self-destructed. When we disabled a ship it was filled with traps and self-destruct triggers. And there was rarely anything we could recover from that.”
“Do we know anything about who it is that controls them?” Sumia asked.
“No, other than that they appear to be able to control them from the distance, at least from a couple of light minutes away.” Seo-yun said.
Glancing at Seo-yun, Tomas saw that she was finished so he spoke. “I plan on taking or destroying every piece of infrastructure that the Sowir have, and to cut off the connection they have with their agents. We will not compromise with them, they don’t deserve mercy. If they surrender, we will quarantine them on a single world with only their most basic needs seen to, otherwise we will destroy them all.”
A few hours later once most of the Clan Leaders had left, Tomas sat down with the people responsible for outlining their plans for the offensive against the Sowir. Adrian and his second in command Isani sat on the left side of the table with Laura, and on the right were Jack, Seo-yun and an Agent of the Hand. While not actively included in the planning, Hand of the Empire always had people present.
“Are we really sure about this?” Laura said, “We are talking about breaking our word, going to war, and killing a lot of people from a race that we currently have a treaty with.” She said uncertainly.
Tomas had struggled with the same for some time. He knew that he couldn’t allow Sowir to remain anywhere close to the Empire, they were too much of a threat. But still he held values and ideals he learned on Earth as a child close to his heart. He turned to Laura to try and answer when her adoptive son Adrian spoke.
“I, like all of you here was born on Earth, and I too was brought up to believe in things that people of Earth held paramount at the time. Be kind, do not steal, do not kill, keep your word, and everything will turn out well, you will be rewarded. But the truth is that life is not black and white, there is no good and evil. Only point of view and shades of gray. What we humans and Nel consider good might differ from what Sowir consider good, if they even have those concepts. I have devoted a lot of time thinking about these things, pondering the various beliefs that humans hold paramount as proof of the civilized. And I had spent a lot of time studying history. I have realized that we are not as civilized as we like to think, we have used the values of good to do terrible things, allowed evil to go unpunished in the name of justice and forgiveness.” He paused and took a deep breath, then looked around the room.
“We need to decide what path we are going to take. Are we going to be a people that will forgive those that had wiped out three other sentient races, nearly wiped out the fourth and killed our own people with no provocation? Are we going to seek justice?” Adrian’s gaze hardened and his eyes locked with Tomas’. “The truth is that our word to Sowir means as much as theirs means to us. Nothing. The one you give your word to needs to be worthy of trust and respect. The Sowir are none of those things, they are not worthy. We need to end the threat that they represent, not just because they pose a danger to us, but for all other races that they might encounter in the future.”