Into the Light

by David Weber

  Several people chuckled, but then Routhier’s expression sobered.

  “I’m going to let Commander Quinlevan handle the details of what we’ve found—or think we’ve found—so far. Mister Jackson’s been coordinating with the Diantians on the civilian side, and Major McIntyre’s been liaising with their police and military. I think that at the moment we have a pretty clear picture of what the Diantians know—or think they know—but the truth is we’re really just starting to put this thing together.”

  He paused and Abu Bakr nodded.

  “Of course you are,” he said. “Couldn’t be any other way. So, why don’t you go ahead and start, Commander?”

  “Yes, Sir,” Quinlevan replied. She was a tall, black-haired woman with a pronounced Galway accent, and she brought up her own phone’s AI, producing a larger-scale map of Sanda, alone.

  “What we know so far,” she began, “is that in the space of less than thirty minutes, the people behind this were able to execute no less than sixteen attacks. They met with varying degrees of success, but we’ve lost a lot of people. That degree of coordination suggests much better planning than we or the Diantians had expected out of the Chelthists, which in turn suggests that we—and by ‘we,’ I mean specifically the mission’s intelligence staff—significantly underestimated the threat.”

  She looked around the briefing room, gray eyes unflinching, and Abu Bakr waved one hand.

  “You were hardly the only ones,” he said. “Secretary Dvorak and I have been in constant contact with both the Diantians and the Qwernians, and neither of us—or any of our Sarthian contacts, for that matter—expected anything like this, either. What matters is that it’s happened and how we decide to respond.”

  “Of course, Sir,” Quinlevan replied, and cleared her throat.

  “The first attack was the one on Secretary Dvorak’s convoy,” she continued. “We suspect that the terrorists, at least in the Republic, were in communication by telephone. All of the attack teams had to be in position ahead of time, but the sequencing strongly suggests that they were waiting until they could be notified by landline that the initial attack had gone off on schedule. The attacks in the Empire and in New Dianto had to have been timed, rather than the result of that sort of notification, however. We’re still trying to figure out how they could have known the Secretary’s schedule closely enough to carry those attacks out before we could tighten our security measures.

  “So far, all weapons used were standard Diantian Army issue, and Major McIntyre is in touch with the police and military authorities who are tracking serial numbers to discover where and how they were diverted. I’m inclined to think most of the rifles were surplused rather than stolen, but we can hope otherwise, because if they were stolen for the Chelthists, it may lead us to someone we can squeeze.

  “In terms of the damage inflicted, so far—”

  Abu Bakr frowned in concentration, listening closely, and wondered how they were going to react to his own observation.

  * * *

  “AND THAT’S ALL the hard data we have at the present moment,” Commander Routhier finished the staff presentation twenty minutes later. “There’s a lot of speculation down on the planet, of course, and filtering through that is going to take a lot longer. Until we’ve had time for that, none of us are prepared to make any hard and fast conclusions about how this all went down, but we’re in agreement that so far—so far—” he emphasized, “nothing we have contradicts the Chelthists’ claim of responsibility.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t contradict it,” Wilson observed, “but the timing outside Sanda damned well raises some interesting questions.”

  “I think so, too, Sir,” Major McIntyre agreed. “At the same time,” he continued in a respectful tone, “while I hate to say this, we may very well have made the whole thing possible by being so predictable—and open—with the Secretary’s movements.”

  “Trust me, Tony, I’ll be kicking myself over that for a long time.” Wilson’s reply was harsh, but everyone around that table recognized the true target of the anger in his tone. “But my point stands. No one outside the Republic’s phone network could have known they’d gotten Dave—the Secretary—and Trish before they attacked Ivanov, Berke and Jane.”

  “They may have figured it didn’t matter,” Admiral Swenson said.

  “Because the other attacks were going in whether or not they were able to attack the Secretary’s convoy?” Abu Bakr asked.

  “Exactly.” Swenson nodded. “It’s possible we’re looking at this from the wrong end. I admit it seems unlikely, given how tightly sequenced everything was, but the attack on the Secretary may actually have been the fortuitous part. They did know his schedule, and in retrospect, that was clearly a mistake. But with all due respect, Rob, given the tech we had protecting him, the risk certainly seemed justifiable.” She grimaced. “The lengths they had to go to get to him actually underscore that, when you get down to it. They had to blow up an entire damned city block! But they could have timed all of the attacks to hit around when they hoped to get him with the understanding that the others would go in, whatever happened in the capital. Even without succeeding there, the other attacks would’ve been a pretty damned emphatic announcement of their disapproval of our ‘demonic’ interference with Sarth.”

  “That’s probably fair enough,” Wilson said, after a moment. “I just can’t quite get past how tightly sequenced it was. If we’d had everything in place, coordinating it would’ve been a snap for us, but no bunch of terrorists on Sarth have anything like the communications capability we’ve got.”

  “The Diantian intelligence people are making the same point, Sir,” McIntyre said. “Swordsman Consort Bardyn’s people in the Intelligence Directorate obviously think the attacks on the Sandian mainland, at least, were command-coordinated. Doing that long distance to the Empire wouldn’t have been a piece of cake, but it would at least be possible. It’s the ones overseas that have them stumped.”

  Abu Bakr nodded thoughtfully. The phone networks in both the Empire and the Republic were well developed, but they were all landline. The connections across the Qwernian frontier were subject to unpredictable delays and interruptions, however, and as yet there were no voice undersea lines at all. Sarthians were still limited to telegraphic cables when it came to direct, non-radio communication between continents.

  He looked around the conference table for a second or two, then leaned forward slightly.

  “I’m about to ask a question that’s likely to sound like what Longbow would’ve called ‘a little weird … even for you,’ back in the day,” he said, hiding a smile as Wilson snorted in amusement. The smile faded quickly, however. “What if this isn’t the cut-and-dried ‘religious fanatics’ attack it looks like?”

  The others looked at him, and it was his turn to snort at the expressions of some of the older people present. People who had clearer memories of pre-invasion Earth and the role of one Abu Bakr bin Mohammed el-Hiri. He’d never been an actual terrorist himself, but he had to admit that he’d kept some fairly dubious company during his career as an advocate for the Muslim community before the Shongairi’s arrival.

  “The Diantians have positively identified the bodies of the Desqwer attackers as Diantian nationals, Sir,” Lieutenant Commander Quinlevan pointed out. “And three of them were known associates of Sokyr.”

  “And the Qwernians just informed us that the people who attacked you were all Diantians who entered the Empire within the last three local days,” Major McIntyre added.

  “I didn’t say that the people who attacked us weren’t religious fanatics,” Abu Bakr replied. “I’m just wondering if there’s another element involved.”

  “Why?” Wilson asked. The brigadier knew Abu Bakr better than anyone else in the compartment, and he was gazing at him very thoughtfully indeed.

  “You remember when you said I was lucky to get out alive?”

  “Yeah. You were. Unless you’d closed the damned hatch, at lea
st!” Wilson shook his head. “An Airaavatha’s armor would’ve laughed at a Sarthian bazooka. Even the armorplast on Dave’s would probably have held. But if she’d popped that rocket inside on you—”

  “You do have a tendency to dwell on people’s minor lapses in judgment, don’t you?” Abu Bakr said, and Wilson barked a short but genuine laugh.

  “Leaving aside any critical observations by people who weren’t there,” Abu Bakr continued, “there are a couple of things about that entire attack that bother me. Besides the fact that they were trying to kill us, I mean.”

  “Such as?” Wilson asked.

  “You and Longbow and I did a fair amount of ambushing aliens ourselves during the invasion,” Abu Bakr said, looking at his old comrades-in-arms. “Would you say we were fairly successful at it?”

  “I like to think so,” Wilson replied. “Although now that you mention it, Dave managed to get himself half-killed doing that, too!”

  “We all came close, one time or another. But, speaking from the perspective of that experience, they had us.” Abu Bakr shook his head, brown eyes grim. “You’re probably right about the Airaavatha’s armor, but they couldn’t have known that, and they had us, Rob. It was well-planned, and it was beautifully executed. Williamson and Pascoe didn’t give me time to walk the ground afterward, but they had to have been in position hours before we got there. They were waiting in hides, perfectly concealed until the moment they came out of the ground and opened fire. And when the riflemen opened fire, they did exactly what they were there to do; they completely distracted Williamson, Pascoe, and Cholkyr’s security detail from the one with the rocket launcher who was almost a hundred yards from the others. It was all designed to give her the shot … and enough time to be sure she found my vehicle before she fired.”

  He paused, and Wilson cocked his head, obviously running back through his Marines’ reports. Then the brigadier’s eyes widened, and Abu Bakr nodded.

  “Excuse me,” Swenson said as the pause stretched out, “but I seem to be missing something here.”

  “I was looking straight down the tube of that launcher,” Abu Bakr said. “She had me dead to rights. Like Brigadier Wilson says, I even held the door open for her, and she had plenty of time to get the shot off before Williamson or Pascoe could engage her. She would’ve been just as dead in the end as the Sarthian who shot Jane Simmons, but she had more than enough time to kill me first.”

  “Except that she didn’t get the shot off,” Wilson said slowly.

  “Exactly.” Abu Bakr nodded, then held up his phone. “I thought, at first, that it was just that ‘slow-motion’ effect that sometimes sets in in a firefight. But I had Jibril—” like most humans, he had long since anthropomorphized his phone’s AI “—here check the timing. There may have been some of that in my impressions, but Jibril says she had almost seven seconds from the moment I saw her, and I saw her before Williamson or Pascoe.”

  “Seven seconds?” Alex Jackson repeated, and Wilson barked a short laugh.

  “Back in the day, Alex, I could empty a fifteen-round magazine, aimed fire—and reload—in about eight seconds. That’s an eternity in combat. If she had a bead on Abu for seven seconds, she damned well should’ve fired.”

  “Unless she froze,” Abu Bakr agreed. “I wondered if that was what happened, and it may be what really did happen, but it doesn’t fit with any of the rest of our reports or, for that matter, with the rest of her team. They would’ve put their most reliable person behind the launcher, especially if the rest of the team planned to deliberately draw fire away from her. They probably didn’t realize how good our equipment—or your Space Marines, Rob—actually is, but they obviously figured they needed to draw fire, which suggests they at least tried to allow for that in their planning. And she still didn’t get the shot off.”

  “There could be all sorts of reasons for that, Sir,” Quinlevan said respectfully, and Abu Bakr nodded.

  “You’re right. And I think we need to eliminate as many of those reasons as we can before we draw any hard and fast conclusions about what this was all about.”

  “I know I have a nasty, suspicious mind,” Wilson said slowly, “but I’d really like to examine that bazooka.” Swenson raised an eyebrow at him, and he shrugged. “The most reasonable explanation is a ‘golden BB’ for our side.” Swenson’s other eyebrow rose. “A freak accident that caused her launcher to malfunction at exactly the right moment for Abu. And the truth is, we might be due for one, given how badly we got hurt other places. But I really do want to get our hands on it so we can check it out ourselves.”

  “The Qwernians have secured the site, Sir,” Major McIntyre said. “I don’t know how good their forensic people are, and we don’t have anyone eyes-on on the ground yet, either.”

  “Have we asked for access?” Abu Bakr asked sharply.

  “Yes,” Alex Jackson said. Abu Bakr looked at him, and he shrugged. “I asked for access to all of the attack sites as soon as we had Secretary Dvorak back on board. The Republic agreed to include any investigators we wanted to send almost immediately. There was apparently a snafu on the Qwernian side. I just got notification—” he touched his own phone to indicate how “—that Clan Ruler Juzhyr’s personally directed that we be granted complete access.”

  “Juzhyr?” Abu Bakr repeated in a thoughtful tone. His security detail had rushed him out of the Qwernian capital—over his objections—before he’d had any opportunity to speak personally with Foreign Minister Myrcal, but he couldn’t imagine why anyone had needed to buck the request all the way up to Juzhyr.

  “Yes, Sir.” Jackson nodded. “And there was another strange thing about it, too. The response wasn’t directed to you, although they obviously know you got safely back to the ship and that Secretary Dvorak was badly injured. It was addressed to Arthur McCabe.”

  “McCabe?”

  “McCabe,” Jackson confirmed. “He copied it to me after Charioteer Consort Yerdaz handed it to him. I thought it was a little odd that they delivered it through the Nonagon rather than handing it directly to Fikriyah—” Fikriyah Batma was Abu Bakr’s senior aide in Kwyzo nar Qwern “—but I figured they were probably in a bit of confusion down there, themselves. But it wasn’t just delivered to him; it was addressed to him.”

  “Odd,” Abu Bakr said after a moment.

  “Might have been just courtesy on Yerdaz’ part,” Jackson said. “She and McCabe have established a pretty good relationship, and if they just sent her the clearance rather than a formal communiqué, she might’ve had to work out the wording herself. But you’re right; it is a bit … peculiar in a communication that directly invokes Juzhyr’s authority. They’re usually really careful about how they handle anything like that.”

  “True,” Abu Bakr replied. He sat for several seconds, rubbing his neatly clipped beard with one hand, then grimaced.

  “It is odd,” he said. “And the odds are that it doesn’t mean a thing, and you’re right about their being ‘in a bit of confusion,’ Alex. But I can’t help thinking what Secretary Dvorak would have said at this point.”

  “I can think of several things he might have said,” Wilson said dryly. “Which one did you have in mind?”

  “‘Curiouser and curiouser,’” Abu Bakr said. “I think there may be a few more things we need to find out before we start thinking about formal responses to this.”

  . XVII .

  PUNS VANGUARD,

  SARTH ORBIT,

  AND KWYZO NAR QWERN, QWERNIAN EMPIRE,

  PLANET SARTH

  Bardyn ShoKymBar nor Garyth tried not to gawk.

  He failed.

  He sat in the Earthian chair, which had somehow magically configured itself to fit Sarthian body structure, and stared out the port beside him. The huge Starfire “shuttle”—only about a quarter the size of the even bigger Starlander which had delivered Secretary David to the Nonagon that first day—had lifted from the Fwerchau dirigible base in eerie silence, with none of the gradual accel
eration of any fixed wing aircraft in which he’d ever flown. It really was more like one of the Navy’s airships, except not even an airship could have climbed straight up—or as swiftly, or remotely as high. That had been awe-inspiring enough, but he’d never imagined the way the atmosphere had turned darker and darker blue before the blue faded into black and he’d realized he was the first Sarthian to ever move into the hard vacuum of space.

  And now.…

  The behemoth waiting for them turned even a Starlander into a mere speck. A central hull, at least a minran in length and, more probably, even larger, rotated steadily inside an even bigger cagework of massive girders and bulky shapes whose purposes he couldn’t begin to imagine.

  “Impressive, isn’t she?” Alex Jackson asked from beside him.

  “That’s certainly one way to put it!” Bardyn agreed. “But why is that big part of it turning?”

  “To create a sensation of gravity.”

  “Gravity?”

  “Yes. Once you get off the surface of a planet, there’s no gravity. You’re in what some people call ‘freefall,’ although ‘microgravity’ is a better term. Because, really, there is gravity; it’s just so weak it might as well not exist.”

  “I don’t feel any lack of gravity,” Bardyn said.

  “We can generate artificial gravity over fairly small areas, but the energy cost is … well, it’s extreme, let’s say. We usually don’t bother with it, but it’s built into the shuttles for times like this.”

  “Like this?”

  “Times when we have passengers who haven’t been trained in microgravity.”

  “I see.” Bardyn’s nasal flaps smiled wryly.

  “The apparent gravity aboard Vanguard is a bit lower than Earth’s, but it’s pretty close to Sarth’s, so we’re hoping you’ll be fairly comfortable, Director.”

  “I’m sure I will, and I must admit I’m looking forward to the experience … however much I regret the circumstances that bring me here.”