The Sovereign audience appears on the large screen. An actual Askari drone is in the auditorium now. Then more. A dozen. The sparrow-sized machines hover above the stage, waiting. Faces from the audience appear on the screen along with employee IDs, home addresses, social media IDs, and birth dates with the years blurred. A drone approaches Sharon, who is standing next to curtains at the edge of the stage. She waves an embarrassed hand in front of her face. It is captured on the screen. People laugh and point. The birds respond. Each pointed finger or raised hand, every head that turns, calls a drone to it. The drones move quick as hummingbirds. They dart over the audience, taking in data, projecting it onto the screen. Then something in the birds changes, as if some communal decision has been reached. The drones whisk over the heads of the audience and disappear.

The movie screen fills again.

CLOSING MONTAGE: Black schoolchildren at tiny desks eagerly raise their little hands. A massive elephant herd strides calmly through green grass. The images turn global: An orangutan swings through trees. A toucan turns its eye to the camera. A humpback whale breaches for the heavens.

MUSIC SWELLS.

PULL OUT. Mother Earth. Home. Above, a satellite keeps watch. The satellite turns. Its dish bears The Sovereign’s silver globe logo, intersected by a Perseus Group sword.

•   •   •

Krieger’s hologram returned to the stage, hands clasped. “From the beginning, my companies and I have focused on the task required. On 9/11 our job was to respond to the worst terrorist attack in history on American soil. In the years since, we have come to see instability expanding the world over. You know the locations. You’ve told their stories.

“Beneath all of us lies one beautiful battlefield,” Krieger said. “Earth. As I’ve told the president, conservation of this planet must be an essential part of America’s defense strategy. We don’t hire botanists to police drug trafficking even though cocaine comes from a plant, and we shouldn’t put biologists and scientists in charge of policing crimes against nature. We need people who understand conflict and protection. Thirteen months ago, Perseus Group selected three of the worst hotspots in Africa and sent our people and technologies there with a simple mission: to add placekeeping to peacekeeping.”

He ticked off the results of securing three African parks: Elephant and rhinoceros poaching down 70 percent. Kidnappings down 80. Theft . . . rape . . . murder—all reduced. Communities stabilizing. Class attendance up.