Warpath (Rise of the Empire Book 4) by Ivan Kal

sentient race they come across. Worse still, they have proven that they are capable of genocide. The most of the Consortium races are now gone, the Pouute are most definitely extinct, as far as we know so are the Mtural and the Guxcacul, save for the few that survived on Nuva and now live in the Empire. But they are too few for the survival of their races, the Mtural have refused our offer that we try and create the immortality treatments for them and with their reproduction method it is impossible for us to create anything similar to our progeny centers. The Guxcacul are a long lived race but there are no female’s among the survivors. For all intents and purposes the Sowir had completely wiped out three sentient races, and killed most of the fourth.” Tomas said glancing at Sumia, he saw sadness on her face. “Nel have been reduced to a fraction of what they were.” Tomas shook his head. “Sowir are a blight, and I will offer no mercy to them. We will not conquer them, we will destroy them.”
    “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