Into the Light

by David Weber

  And that was at current productivity levels, he reminded himself. And from only the Invictus complex. Provocatio would double that output, and if his people could tweak production rates the way their projections said they should be able to, the results could be … impressive.

  McIlhenny decelerated smoothly to rest relative to Refinery Five and rolled the workboat on its gyros to give her boss a better angle to the massive construct. Three more refinery platforms were bright marbles of reflected light from their new position, and her radar showed her a quartet of incoming colliers. Each of them was over a kilometer and a half in length, capable of carrying almost two million tons of cargo from the asteroid belt and the Jovian subsystem to feed Invictus’ insatiable appetite.

  She looked out from her own side of the cockpit at one of the ungainly-looking platforms, each somewhat larger than one of the U.S. Navy’s CVNs had once been, which made up the ten-platform constellation known as Printer Five and marveled yet again at what their newfound technology could do. MacQuarie insisted on calling them “printers,” which was how they were listed on the official manifest, and was actually the best description of what they did. Unlike pre-invasion human 3-D printers, however, these platforms printed on the molecular level, and so long as their materials banks were fed, any one of them could produce anything—anything at all—whose plan was in its memory. And it was probably inevitable that the official name for them should be challenged by the one most of McIlhenny’s fellow pilots and drone supervisors applied. After all, what they did was a hell of a lot more like a Trekkie’s replicator than any “printer” she’d ever seen!

  She waited patiently while MacQuarie watched the construction drones putting the finishing touches on Refinery Five and wondered yet again what new roads Homo sapiens would explore in the years to come. It was hard enough to wrap her mind around how far her species had come in less than two years. Trying to visualize where they might go in the next century or two was more than she could even begin to imagine.

  Except for one thing, Sheila McIlhenny thought, watching the growing muscle and sinew of planet Earth’s industrial might. One thing I know for damned sure is that the miserable bastards who sicced the Puppies on us aren’t going to like it one frigging bit.

  Which, when she came right down to it, was all she really needed to know, now, wasn’t it?

  . XIX .

  NEAR MONGUNO,

  FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA

  “You wanted to make an entrance,” the pilot said over the intercom as the massive Starlander touched down on the wadi in northeastern Nigeria. “I think it’s safe to say we have.”

  The ramp in the back of the craft came down, and Abu Bakr bin Muhammed el-Hiri could see dozens of men swarming around the craft. When the ramp hit the sand, he strode down it, and, almost as one, all of them pointed their rifles at him.

  “Don’t worry,” Jasmine Sherman stage-whispered behind him. “If they shoot you, I’ll make sure I avenge you.”

  Abu Bakr raised an eyebrow at her over his shoulder. “I’m not sure what good that will do me,” he replied. “But I do thank you.” He regretted, for a moment, not accepting the “gift” of vampirism that had been offered him when Longbow had been converted. While a huge part of him had wanted to cross over to the other side, so that he could more fully harry the Shongari and drive them from Earth, he’d decided his eternal soul was worth more to him in the end.

  “No,” he’d said. “This is not the way for me. This … this is a cheat. While it may seem like a gift, I believe this is a gift from Satan so he can steal our souls.” He’d shrugged. “Maybe it’s Allah’s test—I don’t know. Either way, though, while it appears to give us what we want—the power to defeat the alien heathens—it takes away that which is most important to me—my eternal soul.” He’d shaken his head with his final pronouncement. “No,” he’d said, “if you do this to me, you’ll do it against my will, and I’ll fight you tooth and nail to keep you from turning me into one of … you.”

  “That’s okay,” Longbow had said. Abu Bakr had never seen his comrade in arms as serious as he had been that day; even when surrounded by the Shongairi, Longbow had always remained upbeat. “I’ve got this one, Bro,” he’d said. “My soul doesn’t mean all that much to me, in a lot of ways. I know yours does, to you, and one of us should come out of this as the man he once was.” And so Longbow had nodded once, gone off with the vampires, and come back as one of the soulless ones. Abu Bakr didn’t love him less as a vampire—he’d fought by his side too long to give him up that easily—but deep down, he believed the vampires were … something less for having taken the easy way out.

  Abu Bakr sighed, sure he’d made the right choice, even if it was the more dangerous one, and continued down the ramp towards the jeering men. Jasmine reached the ramp’s midpoint behind him and sat down while he continued to the bottom.

  “Allahu Akbar!” the only man without a rifle greeted him as he stepped off the ramp. “God certainly is great, for he has brought us this giant craft that we may use to spread our message anywhere we choose!”

  All the men within hearing waved their rifles as they cheered his pronouncement.

  “Have you come to join the cause?” the man asked.

  “No,” Abu Bakr replied. “Quite the opposite. I’ve come to bring you back to the path. Boko Haram was once a positive movement for our religion, but it is no more. Now it is just a force for terrorism—for giving you access to the pleasures of the flesh—and no longer for the betterment of the Faith.”

  “You talk about the pleasures of the flesh—our leaders have for too long known these vices. When leaders sin, it is the duty of Muslims to oppose those leaders and depose them. We have done so, and we continue to work towards a better world.”

  “By stealing schoolgirls and ransoming them or forcing them into marriage or worse? By using children for suicide bombings? By destroying villages and killing everyone who lives in them?”

  The man shrugged. “Obviously, if they were not for us, then they were against us and off the path of the righteous. They needed to be destroyed. It is as Allah wills it.”

  “No, that isn’t what Allah wills, nor is it what is right. I fought against the alien heathens to get our world back—a world of righteousness—and you are despoiling it with your actions. We—my government and I—are working to build a better world, where aliens from the stars can never come and make us their slaves, ever again.”

  “You are from the government, then?” the man asked. He turned to the other men. “He is from the government!” he exclaimed. “He will bring us a great ransom!”

  “No.” Abu Bakr didn’t say it loudly, but he said it with such conviction the Boko Haram leader turned back to him.

  “What did you say?” he asked in an evil tone.

  “I said ‘no’; you won’t take me hostage, nor will you ransom me.”

  “And who will stop me? You?” The man laughed. “Your government?” He laughed harder, and was joined by many of his men. “We own the government here. In fact, we are the government. They pay us.”

  “No,” Abu Bakr said, shaking his head. “I’m not going to stop you.” He nodded up the ramp. “She is. Just as she’ll stop you and anyone else who would seek to hold young women against their wills.”

  “Maybe we’ll take her hostage and ransom her, too!” The men cheered. “Maybe we won’t ransom her—maybe we will just use her and then kill her when we’re done with her.” The cheering grew even louder.

  Abu Bakr smiled for the first time. “I’d really like to see you try.”

  “What? You don’t think we will?”

  “No; I don’t think you can.”

  The man stepped back and nodded to two of his followers. “Akin, Mobo, go up there and bring her to me.”

  “With pleasure,” Mobo said.

  The two men handed their rifles to their neighbors and started up the ramp, grinning. Jasmine watched them with an expression of mild inter
est until they came within about two meters, then she flashed forward.

  Akin and Mobo fell over backward, their torn-out throats fountaining blood. Jasmine seated herself on the ramp once more before most of the men even noticed she’d moved. She looked down at her right hand, then fastidiously wiped away a crimson stain.

  And smiled.

  There was a vast, ringing silence, and Abu Bakr stepped to the side to avoid the rivulet of blood working its way down the ramp.

  “Those were your best warriors?” He shook his head. “You’re going to need better ones than that, for my cause is pure and just, and my warriors will destroy any who oppose us.”

  The leader stepped up to Abu Bakr, and a knife appeared in his hand. He pressed the point against the American’s neck.

  “And what of you?” he asked in a harsh whisper. “What if I destroy you, first?”

  “Oh, I think not,” Abu Bakr replied calmly.

  “And why n—”

  Jasmine stood next to Abu Bakr, not a hair out of place, as the leader fell backward, his own knife buried in his chest. The crowd of men went silent as the man’s corpse hit the ground. A flash of motion caught their eyes, and three more women appeared, standing where Jasmine had been sitting.

  “What is your name, Holy One?” one of the men asked, going to a knee.

  “My name is Abu Bakr bin Muhammed el-Hiri.”

  “I will follow the Wildcat, wherever he leads!” the man exclaimed.

  “The Wildcat!” The rest of the men yelled, going to one knee. “Lead us!”

  “Well,” Abu Bakr said, turning to Jasmine with a smile. “That was easy.”

  . XX .

  REGINA, SASKATCHEWAN,

  CANADA

  “First, let me thank you again for agreeing to host our meeting, Mr. Prime Minister,” Judson Howell said, looking around the polished table in the conference room that overlooked Legislative Drive. It was snowing again—or perhaps the word Dave Dvorak really wanted was still—and despite the conference room’s warmth and the hot cup of coffee at his elbow, he was certain he felt a subliminal chill as icy wind roared softly across the Legislative Building’s roof.

  “You’re most welcome, Mister President,” Jeremiah Agamabichie replied gravely, then smiled. “And letting you borrow our facilities here seems reasonable enough, since it’s your reactor in the basement powering the entire building!”

  “No, it’s yours. Or perhaps I should say ours, given the nature of our meeting. And while I’m thanking people, I especially thank you, President Garçāo. Not just for coming all the way from Bahia, but for the much appreciated gift you brought with you, as well.” He touched the coffee cup at his elbow and smiled. “Secretary Dvorak and I had both been experiencing withdrawal symptoms—or, even worse, drinking instant coffee—before your arrival. I cannot begin to tell you how much getting the real stuff means to both of us.” Chuckles circled the room, but then Howell’s smile faded. “Seriously, I truly appreciate your coming to meet with us in person. I know it was a long flight.”

  “I suppose some might consider it so.” Fernando Garçāo’s English was excellent, although heavily accented. “It seemed less so in the Starlander you provided, however. I had not anticipated such comfortable accommodations. And the flight profile made it much shorter.”

  Which was true, Dvorak reflected. The Starlander was subsonic in atmosphere and it was almost six thousand miles from São Salvador to Regina. An atmospheric flight profile would have taken nearly eight and a half hours. But the same Starlander was capable of Mach 7 on a reentry profile, and its counter gravity could take it beyond atmosphere in less than seven minutes, so the actual flight time had been about forty-five minutes—less time than it had taken him to fly from Greenville to Atlanta back when Delta had still been hauling passengers.

  “We’ve only diverted two of them to diplomatic duties,” Howell said. “We really need more, but I hate pulling anything else out of the humanitarian lift effort.” He shrugged. “As far as the ‘accommodations’ are concerned, at least it doesn’t take the printers appreciably longer—or use up any more resources—to build a ‘luxury model’ to haul our august persons around.”

  “No doubt.” Garçāo nodded. “It was a pleasant journey, however.”

  “I’m glad. Especially since I imagine all of us are about to find ourselves dealing with a lot of significantly less pleasant information. In fact, I’m afraid it’s time for Secretary Dvorak to start sharing some of that less pleasant information with us.”

  Garçāo nodded again, his expression bleaker than it had been, and Dvorak drew a deep breath, rose, gathered up his coffee cup, and walked around to the podium at one end of the conference room. A proper Secretary of State, he supposed, would’ve had an appropriately senior flunky deliver the briefing. He saw no reason to be that proper, however, and with the IT services which were now available, the only excuse for having a flunky—for this briefing, at least—would have been to prove his own importance.

  “Thank you, Mister President,” he said, setting his coffee on the handy shelf built into the podium. “And allow me to add my own thanks to both you and President Garçāo, Mr. Prime Minister.”

  Agamabichie made a small waving away gesture, although all three heads of state knew the true reason they were meeting in Regina and not Greensboro. Assuming their efforts bore fruit, Greensboro—or some other location in the U.S.—would almost certainly become the future capital of their Continental Union. At this point in the process, anything they could do to undercut the inevitable protests that the U.S. had reassumed its habitual role of international puppet master with indecent speed was eminently worthwhile. Hopefully, holding this meeting in Regina—and, later, issuing the proclamation they intended to draft in São Salvador—would underscore the fact that Canada and Brazil were partners in the effort, not simple client states.

  Yeah, lotsa luck with that one, Dave, he reflected dryly, even though the original suggestion had been his.

  “Turning to the business at hand,” he continued, removing his phone—and that was, indeed, what people had ended up calling them—from his pocket, “I’d like to begin with a few bits of good news.”

  He opened the phone and tapped the display, and the computer obediently dimmed the conference room’s lights and activated the three-dimensional holographic projector which a crew of U.S. technicians had installed in the conference room’s ceiling. A breathtakingly realistic view of the Earth appeared above the conference table, rotating slowly. The beautiful, cloud-banded blue gem was just under three feet in diameter, and a sense of awe which had not yet become routine flowed through him. He touched another icon, and the areas of the United States of America, Canada, and the Republic of Brazil superimposed themselves on the rotating planet in a sea of gleaming green light. That light covered eighty percent of North America, just over half of South America, and—altogether—over two thirds of the total land area of both continents.

  It did not, however, cover any of Central America.

  Yet, at least.

  “The Continental Union’s charter members, Gentlemen,” Dvorak said. “Obviously, it’s still early days and there are all sorts of legislative hurdles yet to be cleared, but I believe we can consider this what we in the United States call a ‘done deal.’ We’re obviously still working on the exact wording of the new Constitution, but that seems to be going well, and Mister McCoury, Mister LaCree, and Ms. Araújo will submit a draft version this evening. It’s been a … lively process.”

  All three heads of state chuckled.

  Kent McCoury, who’d become Dvorak’s Under Secretary for Political Affairs—and, God help him, he’d realized he actually needed one of those—was a few years younger than Dvorak himself. He was also a cross-grained, often ornery mountain boy from Johnson County, Tennessee. He was wiry and sharp featured, with black hair, a close cropped beard which somehow always seemed about to escape control, and a double doctorate in history and political science.
He took a certain almost childlike delight in stepping on other people’s political corns just to see how they’d react, and he cultivated an air of cynicism, but that cynicism was an imperfect mask for how deeply he actually cared.

  Eduarda Araújo, Edson Soares’ Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, was as dark-haired as McCoury, with almost equally sharp features, although they looked better on her than they did on him. She was very dark complexioned, only about five feet three, with a fiery temper. She was also fiercely proud of the job her president had done and determined that no one was going to step on her country. One would have expected that to make her a natural ally for Adam LaCree’s efforts to build in every possible safeguard to prevent the U.S. from totally dominating the proposed Continental Union, but Brazil’s ninety-eight million citizens would be a far better match for the estimated 110 million surviving U.S. citizens. In fact, Brazil was clearly the second most powerful of the three nations currently involved. On the other hand.…