Out of the Dark by David Weber

than these humans were when the Barthoni first visited them was—what? Close to a standard millennium ago—over two thousand of KU-197-20’s local years. In fact, it was
us,
fighting each other before we ever
encountered
the Dainthar-damned Hegemony. So even though Shairez probably
is
being overly cautious, a little excess caution in a situation like this is unlikely to hurt anything, whereas too blithe an assumption of superiority might well get hundreds of your warriors killed. So you do need to find out what their “contingency plans” are, and you need to do it in a way which will let you spend a few days considering what you discover before you have to attack. But how to do that?
    He thought about it for several moments, then looked back across the briefing-room table at Shairez.
    “I strongly suspect, Ground Base Commander, that you’ve already considered possible solutions to your problem.” His ears rose in a half smile. “You’re not the sort to simply tell a superior you can’t do something.”
    “I try not to be, at any rate, Sir,” she acknowledged with a smile of her own.
    “So, tell me, would your solution to this one happen to be launching your attack through one of their own groups?”
    “Yes, Sir. It would.”
    “And which of their groups did you have in mind?”
    “I’ve been considering the nation-state called ‘Iran,’ Sir. Its relations with most of the First World nation-states are extremely tense and strained. In fact, according to what I’ve been able to discover, those relations have become progressively much worse over the last few local years. Apparently, internal unrest has been a problem for the current régime, and its opponents haven’t approved of the techniques it’s used to control that unrest.” Her ears twitched derisively. “These creatures’ insistence on forms and proper procedures is ridiculous, yet even allowing for that it seems apparent the régime has singularly failed to identify the true leaders of the unrest. Either that or, despite its opponents’ condemnation of its ‘extremism,’ it’s failed for some reason known only to itself to act effectively against those leaders and compel their submission.
    “In the meantime, however, the hostility existing between it—and especially between it and the United States—could well be made to serve our purposes. Iran’s technical capabilities are generally much inferior to those of the United States, but there are specific areas in which those capabilities are rather more sophisticated. Given its relations with the United States and the ‘West’ in general, a cyber attack coming out of Iran would surprise very few of the human governments. The
sophistication
of the attack might well surprise them, but I believe they would automatically assign responsibility for it to Iran and simply order investigations into how Iran might have acquired the capability to launch it. And given the régime’s apparent propensity for routinely misrepresenting inconvenient truths, no one is likely to believe any denial it might issue in the wake of our attack.”
    “I see.”
    Thikair thought about it briefly, then flipped his ears in agreement.
    “I think all of your points are well taken, Ground Base Commander,” he said approvingly. “And I quite agree that it would be well to discover everything we can about any ‘contingency plans’ the humans might have in place. For that matter, it’s probable that there’s quite a bit of generally useful information in those secure systems of theirs, and it would be wise of us to acquire as much as possible of it while the computers in which it’shoused still exist. One never knows when that sort of data might become useful.
    “As for the possibility of using this ‘Iran’ as a mask, I approve entirely. Meet with your team leaders and come up with a plan to implement your suggestion as soon as possible.”

. VIII .

    A human hacker would have called it a