Into the Light

by David Weber

  “Suits,” the vehicle CO agreed. “Switch to explosive, Gus.”

  * * *

  LYRQUYN WATCHED SICKLY as the alien vehicle lifted off the pavement in eerie silence, leaving the street literally running with Sarthian blood. As far as ou could tell, every single member of the assault force was dead. Ous entire company, gone. Just … gone. And ou was alive, untouched. How was ou going to live with that?

  And then, as the alien craft hovered there, ou saw the turret training around in ous direction and realized ou wouldn’t have to.

  * * *

  THE GROUND FLOOR of the first mansion disintegrated as the thirteen-millimeter twin mount hammered it with fourteen hundred rounds per minute of high explosive. That torrent of destruction gutted it within seconds, and then the turret swiveled to the second structure.

  “Good?” the vehicle commander asked five seconds later.

  “Good,” Floden acknowledged. “Now get us the hell out of here.”

  * * *

  THE AIRAAVATHA SCREAMED towards orbit, tearing a hole through the smoky air, as the first mansion simply collapsed downward onto its disintegrated ground floor.

  * * *

  THEODORE BERKE LOOKED up as the door to his suite slammed open.

  “Can I help you?” he asked the four armed soldiers who poured into the room, shut the door, and then began pulling furniture over to block it. “You, know? ‘Knock, knock. Come in’?”

  “Sorry, Sir,” one of the soldiers said. He turned, and Berke recognized him—Sergeant Demir Noorani. “We just got the Oswald warning. Looks like the Qwernians are trying to grab humans across the Empire. I grabbed—”

  The door shook as something slammed into it from the outside.

  “What?” Berke asked. He’d seen the Oswald warning flash, but that was in Razdyr; it hadn’t been local. Besides, he was in the Palace, where he was sure to be safe. He’d gone back to what he’d been doing. “They’re attacking here? In the Palace?”

  “Looks like it,” Noorani said, waving the other soldiers over to grab Berke’s desk. “They already grabbed Doctor Yamazaki and killed two of his guards. There are reports of other attempts going on across the Empire.”

  “What … what should I do?” Berke asked.

  “Go into your bedroom,” Noorani replied. He pulled his pistol from its holster, reversed it, and handed it to him. “Take this. If anyone enters without shouting ‘Oswald’ first, shoot them.”

  Berke took the pistol and looked down at it as the door reverberated with another crash.

  “Go, Sir!” Noorani repeated. “We’ve got this. I don’t want you getting hit with any stray rounds.”

  Berke nodded once, then went into his bedroom and closed the door. The slamming continued for another thirty seconds and then went quiet. Before he could ask if everything was fine, an explosion rocked the outer room, and he realized it wasn’t.

  Rifles fired, and someone screamed. The voice sounded human. More rifle fire followed, the bellow of Sarthian weapons burying the far quieter fire of the Space Marines’ Brontos. Berke moved to the other side of the bed and took the pistol in both hands while the weapons thunder seemed to go on and on, endlessly. But then it ceased, and he aimed the pistol at the door. He wanted to yell out to the soldiers, but knew that their silence was all the answer he needed as to who had been victorious.

  The door burst open, and he fired, but the round went wide and slammed into the door frame. He tried to control his shaking hands as a Sarthian filled the doorway, and he fired again. Success! He hit the Sarthian, and it fell back. Before he could congratulate himself, a flood of troops raced through the doorway. He was able to fire only one more time before several dove across the bed and tackled him to the floor.

  * * *

  HALF A DOZEN Qwernians dragged Berke down the broad palace corridor. His shoes left smears of blood on the marble floors. Some of it was human, but even more of it was Sarthian, and his captors were no gentler than they had to be.

  Which wasn’t very.

  They turned a corner and his shocked brain realized they were approaching the clan ruler’s personal suite. He’d never been in this section before, but he had little chance to appreciate the extravagant furnishings as he was hustled through it and to a set of stairs that led belowground. The dropdown hatch above them was propped open, but it looked like it could be sealed with very little notice. The locking mechanism he could see on the bottom of the hatch was impressive. Once it was down and locked, he doubted anyone would be able to get through it.

  Myrcal was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

  “What … what’s the meaning of this?” Berke asked.

  Myrcal waved, and a soldier stepped forward and slammed the butt of his rifle into Berke’s stomach. The representative collapsed to the floor, fighting to catch his breath and trying desperately not to spew out his lunch. After several seconds huddled in a fetal position, two of the bigger Sarthians grabbed him, pulled him to his feet, and held on to his arms.

  Myrcal strode over, grabbed the collar of Berke’s shirt, and pulled his face down to where ou could look eye-to-eye with him.

  “I am in charge,” Myrcal said, “and I ask the questions. Do you understand?”

  “Yes…” Berke gasped. “Yes, I do.”

  “Good,” Myrcal said with a shake of ous head. “Now, I know you have the ability to contact your people in orbit.”

  “I can’t—” Berke started, but then a soldier stepped forward and slapped him in the head with an open palm. Berke saw stars momentarily, then gasped at the pain of the Sarthian’s nails down his cheek.

  “I hadn’t asked for a response,” Myrcal said with a nod. “You need to listen.”

  Berke stared at the minister, unsure whether to nod, shake his head, or say something. His head and cheek hurt, and he cringed inwardly as a drop of blood fell to the floor.

  “I’ll take your silence to mean you understand,” Myrcal said after a few seconds. “Now, I want you to contact your people in orbit, and I want you to tell Councilor Arthur that I have an ultimatum for him.”

  * * *

  BERKE COLLAPSED TO the floor as his guards flung him into the empty cell.

  As he lay there sobbing in pain, he wasn’t sure what he could have done any differently. He couldn’t understand why the Qwernians thought Arthur McCabe had succeeded Secretary Dvorak, and he had no idea why Myrcal had reacted with such rage when he discovered who actually had. The truth had earned him a savage beating when Myrcal thought he was lying about who was in charge, but in the end the Foreign Minister had grudgingly accepted the truth and Berke had passed the message on to Abu Bakr, instead.

  And then he’d been beaten again when he’d passed along Abu Bakr’s response that “he’d get back to oum.”

  . XX .

  PUNS TROY, SARTH ORBIT;

  KWYZO NAR QWERN, QWERNIAN EMPIRE,

  SARTH

  “So,” Rob Wilson said bleakly, “how pissed off are we?”

  His blue eyes circled the Space Marines assembled in Troy’s command center and the viewscreen connected to the naval officers in Vanguard’s flag briefing room. No one spoke immediately, and that icy gaze settled on Abu Bakr.

  “Personally, I’d say very,” Abu Bakr replied after a moment. “Why?”

  “Because I want to know where I start planning mission packages.” Wilson showed his teeth. “Personally, I think it’s time we demonstrated the error of ous ways to Minister Myrcal.”

  “I think there’s general agreement on that,” Admiral Swenson said.

  “I know.” Wilson nodded. “What I’m asking about is how firmly we want to demonstrate it.”

  “The most important thing is to get our people back intact,” Alex Jackson pointed out.

  “Those of them who are intact,” Captain Jeng’s voice was as bleak as Wilson’s. His eyes were even colder, and Wilson felt a pang of sympathy. The flag captain had taken his nephew’s death hard, and Wilson knew how he hat
ed the thought of telling his sister-in-law Yuhan her youngest son would never return.

  “Send in the vampires?” Jackson suggested.

  “There aren’t enough of us,” Longbow Torino replied. “Not the way Myrcal has the hostages distributed. We could get to maybe a third of them before they realized what was going on, and if ou’s serious about killing them if we try anything—”

  He shrugged, and Wilson nodded. His quick response teams had retrieved just under a third of the humans scattered around the Qwernian Empire and Alliance before they could be grabbed. The others had been used as human shields by their captors to prevent further rescue attempts as they were hustled to obviously preselected locations. It reminded him forcibly of old footage he’d seen of the runup to Desert Storm, and he bared mental fangs as he considered how that had worked out for Saddam Hussein. In the meantime, though.…

  “That’s about the way I read it, too, Longbow,” he said. “Mind you, I don’t know if Myrcal’s crazy enough to actually start slaughtering our people, but ou might be.”

  “What about Juzhyr?” Swenson asked. The others looked at her, and she shrugged. “We haven’t heard a single peep out of oum. Myrcal’s obviously ous front man—expendable front man—in all this. But do you think ou’d let Myrcal start killing Earthians?”

  “He’s already let them slaughter enough of our Marines, Ma’am,” Colonel Palazzola pointed out in a voice like crushed gravel.

  “I realize that, and I’m not trying to minimize anything here.” Swenson’s tone was sympathetic but unflinching. “But there’s a difference between casualties inflicted during the actual take-down and the cold-blooded murder of hostages. For humans, at least. I’m wondering if Juzhyr’s ready to cross that line with us. Especially after what happened to the Ambassador’s ‘escort fighters’ and the bastards who tried to take Ms. Batma.”

  “Morgana?” Wilson asked, looking at his niece.

  She looked back, her eyes dark and somber. Marcos Ramos had been speaking to a group of Qwernian psychologists when the attacks began. No one knew for certain if he was alive, but they knew none of his escorting Space Marines were. And his absence left her the senior member of the psychology team.

  “I can’t say for certain, obviously,” she said. “And I think it’s fair to say that I’m at least as pissed at these people as anyone else. I’m trying to allow for that in my thinking, but I’m pretty sure it’s coloring my response, anyway.

  “Having said that, Juzhyr’s probable reaction depends on things we can’t assess from orbit. Clearly, Myrcal, at least, thinks that if ou demonstrates sufficient fortitude and ruthlessness, we’ll make the obvious calculation that Clan Qwern is the only clan on Sarth capable of conquering the rest of the planet for us. That represents a serious … misunderstanding of our entire mission here, and there could be a lot of reasons for oum to be that far off base. The one that worries me the most is that I think it’s entirely possible that, in human terms, we’re dealing with a sociopath. I don’t think Myrcal has an internal value set of ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ I think ou has an internal value set of ‘useful’ and ‘useless.’ By definition, anything that advances ous objectives is good; anything that fails to advance ous objectives is bad; and ou’s probably able to deny anything ou has to deny to believe ou can win. I’d also say that, like most human sociopaths, ou has virtually no sense of empathy for anyone else, which means no one else is real for oum in the sense of having any intrinsic value or rights as a living, thinking being. Again, tool or obstacle—the only categories ou uses even for fellow Sarthians, far less aliens.

  “The difference between the Qwernian view of custom and tradition versus the Diantian view of the rule of law has to factor into this, as well. I’m not the historian Dad is, and I don’t have his gift for wrapping my mind around alien societies, but in some ways, Qwernian society is sociopathic where anyone who’s not a member of Clan Qwern is concerned. For instance, I strongly suspect that in Myrcal’s thinking, humans, by definition, can’t fit into the category of clan member, and probably can’t fit into the category of ‘guest,’ either. If we fell into either of those niches in ous thinking, Clan Qwern’s own societal codes would require oum to protect us, not victimize us. But as soon as ou denies us that status, Qwernian custom justifies anything ou might do to us or with us to advance ous clan’s objectives.

  “And that’s the point where Juzhyr’s reactions become problematic, as well. Thanks to our remotes, we probably have more—and more current—data on oum even than the Diantian diplomatic people, but it’s not enough for me to even hazard a guess as to whether or not ou shares Myrcal’s attitudes towards Earthians. It’s tempting to conclude ou must, if ou’s going to authorize an operation like this. But there’s that Qwernian tradition of the clan ruler’s infallibility and inviolability. Ou may well genuinely believe that we’re prepared to settle for Myrcal’s head, the way a Qwernian would, rather than assigning ultimate responsibility to Myrcal’s clan ruler, the way a Diantian would. And, if that’s the case, then ou may be prepared to let Myrcal go just as far as Myrcal wants to go because ou thinks ou has a fallback position: handing over Myrcal.”

  “So the bottom line is that we can’t know for certain, but there’s probably—what? A fifty-fifty chance?—that ou would let Myrcal kill at least enough of our people to ‘send a message,’” Swenson sighed.

  “I don’t know if the chance is that high,” Wilson said, “but I know for damn sure that it’s higher than I’m prepared to risk.”

  “And how do you propose to avoid it, Rob?”

  From Abu Bakr’s tone, he clearly suspected where Wilson was headed, and the Space Marine smiled coldly at him.

  “I propose that we ‘send a message’ that’s clear enough to damned well make sure Juzhyr doesn’t let Myrcal do anything of the sort,” he said.

  * * *

  “TOWER, DESHKYR ONE, requesting clearance to take off.”

  Leader of Seventy-Two Syltar SylAnTry scanned the airfield from ous observation post in the airfield’s tower. All clear.

  “Deshkyr One, Kwyzo nar Qwern Tower, you are cleared for takeoff, Runway Seventeen. Winds are from the south at two minrans per minaq.”

  “Deshkyr One is cleared for takeoff, Runway Seventeen.”

  The Shyrmal-3 fighter took the runway, ran up its engine, and started its takeoff roll.

  Its wheels had just left the ground when it exploded.

  “Seventy-Two!” Leader of Eight Mynsaro MynGenJar exclaimed. “Deshkyr One—!”

  “I see it,” Syltar replied, watching one landing gear bounce out of the cloud of smoke and fire which had once been a fighter. It bounded along the runway for another few cherans, trailing smoke, then skidded off into the grass. “Call out the crash crew and get an ambulance from the base hospital.”

  Ou didn’t think there’d be a need for an ambulance, but someone would have to take the remains—whatever they could find, anyway—away.

  Ou had just picked the microphone back up to suspend operations at the base when Mynsaro made an inarticulate sound and pointed frantically upward. The leader of eight’s eyes were huge, nasal flaps gaping in horror, and Syltar’s eyes jerked heavenward.

  The skies above Kwyzo nar Qwern were a crisscross of white contrails where the capital air defense squadrons mounted a massive protective canopy. Syltar had serious doubts about the canopy’s effectiveness after what had happened to the Earthian Abu Bakr’s “escort,” but ou’d decided to keep them to ouself. There were six squadrons overhead, stacked in three layers, at six serans, twelve serans, and eighteen serans, and ou felt his own nasal flaps widen in disbelief as he saw the first blossoms of flame.

  They started with the high-altitude squadron, but they flashed downward like fuel igniting when a match was dropped into it. The explosions grew more visible as they came closer to the ground … and he didn’t see a single parachute.

  “Dwomo,” he muttered, and then a deafening roll of thunder snatche
d his eyes back down to the runways as a row of explosions ran down the ramp of Deshkyr One’s squadron, Fighter Squadron 143. Syltar jerked back in involuntary surprise. The explosions weren’t from a row of bombs—no! Every single aircraft in the squadron had spontaneously blown up! There had to be something wrong with their aircraft … or maybe … Diantian sabotage!

  “We’ll need more fire vehicles,” Syltar said. “Call the city fire department as well—we’re going to need everything they can spare. It looks—”

  Ou stopped as every aircraft on Fighter Squadron 142’s ramp exploded. Then every aircraft on Attack Squadron 34’s ramp. Then Attack Squadron 36’s. Then Attack 176’s. Within seelaqs, every plane on the airfield was ferociously ablaze, deluging the ramps in a sea of roaring flame and seething black smoke.

  Syltar was at a loss. It had to be enemy action, but ou had no idea what had just happened. Still, it was obvious the folks on the ramps would need every bit of assistance ou could send their way.

  Ou turned to Mynsaro, but ou was staring out the window.

  “Let’s get a move on!” Syltar exclaimed. “Those troops need help.”

  Mynsaro didn’t reply; instead, ou pointed out the window.

  “Seventy-Two, what’s that?” ou asked.

  Syltar turned to find a … thing pointed at him. Although generally aircraft shaped, it wasn’t an airplane, because it didn’t have a cockpit and it was only about one-quarter the size of an airplane. And it didn’t move—it simply hung in the air outside the tower, about three cherans away. Syltar didn’t recognize much about the craft, but ou did understand one thing—the objects under its port wing looked an awful lot like the rockets the attack airplanes used. The object waggled its wings, then flew backward several cherans.

  “Run!” Syltar yelled. “Clear the tower!”