Xeelee: Endurance (Stephen Baxter) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги (ч. 11)

Humans spread across the stars, their capability increasingly rapidly, their zone of influence expanding at many times light-speed.

A period known as the Assimilation followed, in which the wisdom and power of other species were absorbed, on an industrial scale. Those they conquered became mere resources: even the last traces of those pushed into extinction, like the Silver Ghosts, were exploited.

Soon, only the Xeelee stood between humans and dominance of the Galaxy, and beyond.

And all the time, as humans belatedly learned, the Xeelee were waging war on another front, against a cosmos-wide force that was wrecking the stars themselves.

The Xeelee war had its own terrible logic. Eventually the tide turned against humanity.

The conflict had lasted a million years. There were many casualties.