Into the Light

by David Weber

  “We all regret them, Director,” the Earthian said quietly. “But we’re looking forward to any information you have for us.”

  Bardyn shook his head in agreement, and then sat silent again, watching as the monstrous shape looming against the stars grew steadily huger.

  * * *

  “THANK YOU FOR coming, Director Bardyn,” Néhémial Routhier said as the Sarthian followed Jackson into the compartment.

  Bardyn was doing an impressive job of hiding his awe and wonder, and he probably would have fooled another Sarthian. Then again, no Sarthian would have had the advantage of the translating software’s emotion-parsing capabilities.

  “It was the least I could do,” the swordsman consort said with quiet—and genuine—sincerity. “It’s our maniacs who have done all of this. Anything we can do to help will be far less than you deserve of us.”

  “Sir, I’m afraid we Earthians have had ample experience with religious or political fanatics.” Routhier grimaced. “For the last triple-eight or so of our own years, we’ve been focused on other threats, thanks to the Shongairi. But left to our own devices, we’ve been just as willing to kill each other over disagreements as any Sarthian.”

  “So Secretary David’s said,” Bardyn agreed with a curled nasal flap. Then his smile faded. “And, speaking of the Secretary—?”

  “We’re pretty sure he’s out of the woods—I mean that he’s out of danger,” Routhier replied. “In fact, we’re expecting him to make a full recovery.” Which was true enough, aside from the lingering concerns about brain damage. “Even with our physicians, though, he’s going to be out of action for a long time.”

  “That’s very good to hear. That he can be healed, I mean. And I have to say you’re very fortunate to have Ambassador Abu to stand in his place until he’s fully recovered.”

  “We think so, too,” Routhier said. “But, now, let me introduce my companions.”

  “Of course!”

  “This is Lieutenant Commander Quinlevan,” the commander said, indicating the tall, dark-haired, gray-eyed Earthian to his left. From the shape of Quinlevan’s torso, Bardyn thought that she was almost certainly a female. “This is Colonel Palazzola, Brigadier Wilson’s chief of staff, and this is Major McIntyre, the Brigadier’s staff intelligence officer.”

  Both of Brigadier Wilson’s subordinates were probably males, Bardyn decided. Especially Major McIntyre. Earthian males tended to be taller than their females, he’d learned, and McIntrye was at least a kyran taller even than Secretary David!

  “I’m honored to meet you all,” he said, as the Earthians murmured polite greetings.

  “Admiral Swenson and Brigadier Wilson are in conference with Ambassador Abu,” Routhier said then. “They’ve asked us to share information with you and present them with a briefing in a secar or so. If we need longer than that, the briefing can be rescheduled.”

  “I don’t think we’ll need that long,” Bardyn said, settling into the chair Routhier indicated and feeling it conform to his body shape as the one on the shuttle had. “I do have a couple of notes Prime Director Qwelth asked me to deliver to Ambassador Abu. One is from the Prime Director ouself, expressing ous and our government’s profound regret and shame that this should have happened on Diantian soil. The other is from Bearer Mykair, expressing ous bitter grief and shame that anyone even purporting to act in Chelth’s name could have been guilty of such heinous actions.”

  Routhier remembered to shake his head in acknowledgment. Bardyn’s personal remorse was obvious, and he didn’t doubt that Mykair’s was even greater than the intelligence director’s. For that matter, Qwelth was undoubtedly sincere, if only because the Prime Director had to be aware of how severely attacks by Diantian fanatics were likely to affect Terran views of the Republic, as well.

  “The real reason I’m here, though, is to update you on our latest findings,” Bardyn continued, laying his briefcase on the table and snapping the latch open. “We’ve been looking at all the information available, piecing together the bits and pieces, identifying the holes in what we think we know so far—” he continued, reaching into the case for the first of the fat folders it contained “—and we’ve turned up a few surprises, including one that’s potentially significant. To begin with—”

  * * *

  “SO, NÉHÉMIAL—” FRANCESCA Swenson tipped back in her chair, arching her spine, fingers interlaced against the back of her neck, as Commander Routhier and Colonel Palazzola entered the compartment “—what do we know?”

  “Actually, Ma’am,” Commander Routhier said, “we may know quite a bit more than we did.”

  “Really?” Swenson let her chair come upright as her chief of staff’s tone registered. She glanced at Wilson, then leaned forward, folding her arms on the briefing room table.

  “Really, Ma’am.”

  “Then enlighten us. And, by the way,” Swenson added dryly, “may I ask where Penelope is?”

  “She and Major McIntyre are headed down to Dianzhyr with Director Bardyn. He brought photographs of some of the physical evidence, but they want to take a look at it firsthand with our own instrumentation. More than that, though, they want to sit down with his investigators and get them to walk us through what Bardyn summarized for us.”

  “Which is what, Commander?” Wilson asked.

  “First, let me say that all four of us were very impressed by the Diantians’ speed and efficiency,” Routhier said, and Palazzola nodded in firm agreement. “Their police and their analysts are topnotch, and they’ve really hit the ground running to turn up so much so quickly. Especially since it’s obvious this came as just as much of a surprise to them as it did to us.”

  “Actually,” Palazzola interjected, “I think it may have come as even more of a surprise to them because of how close an eye they’ve been keeping on the Chelthists. They’ve been watching those people closely, and like Néhémial says, they’re good. They thought they had the situation pretty much nailed down, and the way they got blindsided’s been really hard for them to process.”

  “That’s a fair point,” Routhier acknowledged. “In particular, they still haven’t figured out how Sokyr managed to vanish so completely. On the other hand, I think Bardyn has a couple of interesting suspicions about that.

  “His people have made some other significant progress, though. For example, they’ve been turning over every rock and beating every bush, and so far they’ve managed to identify all but two of the terrorists killed here in the Republic.”

  “They can’t identify two of them?” Wilson asked with a frown.

  “No, Sir,” Palazzola said, and Wilson’s frown deepened.

  The Republic’s ability to process biometric data lagged light-years beyond the Planetary Union’s, but it was considerably more advanced in some areas than Sarth’s general tech level might have suggested. In particular, they understood fingerprints, and while they couldn’t match prints digitally the way Terran computers could, their fingerprint experts were very good. More to the point, every “First World” Diantian child was routinely fingerprinted when he, she, or ou began primary education.

  “That’s very odd,” Swenson observed, then shook her head. “I’m starting to sound like Abu Bakr!”

  “It’s more than just ‘odd,’ Ma’am,” Routhier said. “One of the two they can’t identify has tin dental fillings.” Swenson looked blank, and the chief of staff waved one hand. “It doesn’t prove anything, Ma’am, but Bardyn tells us that modern Diantian dentistry uses amalgam fillings—usually a mix of silver and copper. Some really old-fashioned dentists still use tin, but they’re the dinosaurs. And they’re also a lot rarer in the Republic than they are some other places.”

  “I see.” The admiral glanced at Wilson, then turned back to the two chiefs of staff. “Go on.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Bardyn also tells us that at least two of the attack teams used field radios that have been recovered. Obviously, they’re a lot bigger and bulkier than ours are, but like
the weapons they used, they’re Diantian Army standard issue. No real surprises there. They’ve also turned up some evidence that confirms the attacks were, indeed, coordinated by phone, however. I won’t say I find their evidence conclusive, but it’s certainly suggestive. And one reason Bardyn pointed that out is that all landline communications across the frontier are monitored and logged.”

  “Excuse me? Without computers?” Wilson asked.

  “Yes, Sir.” Routhier shook his head, his expression wry. “In fairness, there aren’t a lot of private phone conversations across the frontier. In fact, there aren’t many conversations at all, and most of those that do occur are either business or diplomatic. More than that, there are only two exchanges that handle cross-border traffic at all. So, every originating number and every destination number is recorded for those calls. They don’t exactly have the Fourth Amendment, either, and their intelligence people routinely listen in on conversations. Obviously, they can’t listen to all of them, and the diplomatic lines are privileged—it’s a severe violation of international law to listen to or record them—but they do listen to a significant percentage of all the other traffic, and Bardyn’s people have pulled the records and interviewed all of the monitors. So far as the Diantians can tell, there are no unaccounted-for calls between the attack on Secretary Dvorak and the attack on Mister Berke. There might have been a couple before the attack on Abu Bakr, but we’ve got a very good time chop on the attack on Mister Berke because of when his call for assistance was logged in. In that interval, there were no civilian calls that went anywhere near the attack’s location. And, of course, the attempt on Abu Bakr occurred in the middle of a farm, without a telephone within a kilometer of the actual attack.”

  Wilson and Swenson glanced at each other again. Then they refocused on Routhier and Palazzola.

  “All of that is interesting, and possibly suggestive,” Routhier continued, “but what really brought Director Bardyn up here is something one of his teams turned up in Myrcos. It seems that Bearer Sokyr’s right-hand man, Trygau HyrShalTry, died in infancy.”

  For a moment, the two flag officers only looked at him. Then their eyes narrowed simultaneously, and Wilson’s right-hand made an imperative “tell me more” gesture.

  “Trygau is a bachelor, so he carries his parents’ surname and there are no spouses or children in the picture,” Routhier said. “He’s lived a totally unspectacular life, all of it in Myrcos, and apparently he never held a regular job until he went to work as Sokyr’s butler and general all-around office manager. He never even had any close childhood friends, as far as the Diantians can tell—certainly not anyone who actually remembers him as a kid. I mean, he’s just a gray little fellow who’s gone through life without leaving any significant footprints until he found his true calling as a religious nut and True Believer.” The commander shook his head. “I imagine there are plenty of potential live-in-my-mom’s-basement Brownshirts looking for a Führer to follow in any species, and that’s exactly what Trygau obviously is.”

  “Why do I think you’re being ironic, Néhémial?” Swenson asked.

  “Maybe because I am,” her chief of staff replied. “Not that we’d have any reason to think he was anything but that gray little fellow if one of Bardyn’s investigators hadn’t decided on a really deep dumpster dive into his history. He and his team ran every record they had on him, clear back to Day One, back through the wringer, and they turned up his birth certificate. But then—and I think this was as much the kind of ‘luck’ persistence and good investigative procedures generate as it was anything else—they found a death certificate, too. And according to it, Trygau HyrShalTry died when he was only four local years old.”

  “That isn’t just ‘odd’ anymore,” Swenson said flatly.

  “No, Ma’am, and it gets better.”

  “What do you mean ‘better’?”

  “What the cops found is a duplicate death certificate, Ma’am. The one in the official registry is missing. They’re all numbered sequentially for each registry office, but Bardyn says gaps in the files aren’t all that uncommon, thanks to human—well, Sarthian—error. Certificates get numbered wrong, numbers get skipped sometimes, file copies don’t get put in the right place—things like that. People don’t usually think too much about it when they hit that sort of thing. But this death certificate was in the hospital records, not the official repository. And when they checked its number against the repository, they found a hole. The one before it and the one after it are exactly where they’re supposed to be; this one’s no place to be found.”

  “Jesus,” Wilson murmured.

  “Exactly, Boss.” Palazzola’s expression was hard. “Standard tradecraft. Find the birth certificate for a dead kid who would’ve been about the right age if he’d lived and step right into the identity. It looks like this time they even had someone pull the death certificate, which is a nice touch, really. They could only get away with it because the Sarthians are still stuck with paper records, but it shows somebody put at lot of thought into making sure their tracks were buried deep. And by an interesting turn of fate, the entire HyrShalTry triad and both of his surviving siblings were killed in the same house fire when our ‘Trygau’ would’ve been about twelve Earth years old, so there are no living family members to ask about it. Bardyn’s people are hunting for his school records now, but by the strangest coincidence, the primary and secondary schools he attended were parochial schools, run by the Church of Chelth, on a shared campus. And—surprise, surprise—the administrative building burned to the ground twenty-three local years ago. About the time our friend ‘Trygau’ went to work for Bearer Sokyr, as a matter of fact.”

  “Well, how convenient.”

  “You might say that, Ma’am,” Palazzola agreed.

  “So everything else they’ve got—phone lines, monitored conversations, all that—is possibly suggestive,” Wilson said thoughtfully, “but this—”

  “Nobody could prove it in a court of law yet, but that doesn’t matter,” Routhier said flatly. “Whoever the hell ‘Trygau’ really is, he’s not who everyone’s thought he was, and none of us and none of Bardyn’s people can see any reason why a genuine religious nut would have—or, for that matter, could have—gone to such lengths to create a false persona this detailed.”

  He shook his head, eyes cold.

  “That’s not the kind of thing religious terrorists do. It’s the kind of thing nation states do, and I’m pretty damn sure it wasn’t the Republic that did it in this case.”

  * * *

  FLYTHYR MUZTOLFLYTH, FLOCK Lord Consort Pantyl, eased into her seat at the table as Myrcal FarMyrZol entered. While she was in no danger of dying—not anymore, because of the Earthians’ assistance—the doctors had advised her to take four or five full-days off to recover from her wounds. Unfortunately, current events didn’t allow that.

  Herdsman Consort Vistal Hyrkyl ShoHyrTo, head of the Imperial Intelligence Service, followed Myrcal into the conference room and raised his hands respectfully before his face to Clan Ruler Juzhyr. Then he closed the door quietly behind himself and found a chair at the foot of the table.

  “I assume there’s a reason you asked for a meeting of the senior ministries, Myrcal?” Juzhyr asked, ous eyes boring into the minister. “With the ongoing … events, there are many things that currently require my attention; I hope, for your sake, that your reason is a good one.”

  “I’m afraid it is, Clan Ruler,” Myrcal replied. “Herdsman Consort Vistal tells me we have word from Dianzhyr.” With Chancellor Erylk obviously dying now, the Intelligence Service reported directly to Myrcal, as senior minister. “I felt his report required your attention, but that you might want to keep it confined to just those of us present.” He nodded to Flythyr.

  “Fine,” Juzhyr said with a single shake of ous head. “What information have we received?”

  Myrcal closed both nasal flaps tight, then exhaled, and Flythyr could see oum steadying ouself.

 
“We have an asset on the staff of Bardyn ShoKymBar, Dianto’s Director of Intelligence. He isn’t one of Bardyn’s senior officers, but he has access to much of Bardyn’s correspondence and files. According to his latest reports, it appears they’ve found a copy of the death certificate for Trygau HyrShalTry.”

  “Trygau who?” Flythyr asked blankly, one nasal flap raised.

  “He’s Bearer Sokyr’s right-hand male, Flock Lord,” Hyrkyl explained for Myrcal. “We inserted him there some time ago. At which time—” he looked at the clan ruler “—we had the death certificate removed from the records.”

  “So how did they find it, then?” Juzhyr demanded.

  “It appears there was a copy stored locally at the hospital where the original Trygau died, and that copy has resurfaced.”

  “I don’t understand,” Flythyr replied. “The Diantians found out about one of our operatives. That happens periodically—even they aren’t stupid, after all. What’s the importance of that, compared to dealing with these Chelthist attacks?” A bad thought occurred to her. “Unless…”

  “Yes, Trygau was our male, and he’s the one responsible for initiating the attacks,” Myrcal explained. “Not only did the Intelligence Directorate learn of it, Bardyn also went to the Earthians’ spaceship to talk with them about it.”

  “Just a seelaq,” Flythyr said. “The operation is ours, and you didn’t think it was important to brief me on it, especially when I was the target of one of the attacks?”

  “You weren’t the target of the attack,” Juzhyr said. “Representative Theodore was the target.”

  “But still—I was with him! Why didn’t someone warn me about the attack?” She pointed to her wounds. “I could have been killed! I nearly was!”

  “We didn’t warn you,” Juzhyr said, “because we needed the attack to look genuine. We couldn’t tell you about it in advance, because we didn’t want it to appear staged. I did, however, advise you to take a half-eight of troops with you, which you did.”