The Caliphate Invasion

by Michael Beals

  “I’m not going to lecture anyone about duty. There’s a world war going on and humanity is losing. No one’s going home until we change that. Any questions?”

  Kat snarled, but aimed her rage at Washington. “Yeah, I’ve got some questions. I say it’s time to debrief our miracle man here. Who the hell is the enemy and just where did they come from? No more of that from-the-future bullshit.”

  “I told you. Religious extremists calling themselves ‘The Caliphate.’ I’m not a history professor, but I think they’re some variation of radical Islamists. Or maybe fundamentalist Christians. I don’t know the difference. Both sound the same to me. I can download all their speeches over these last three years for you to hear.”

  “Uh huh. Let’s table that for later. Where did they come from?”

  Washington puffed out his cheeks. “Hell if I know where the Caliphate came from originally. It’s a big galaxy. I was inside the dark-matter generator on my ship doing routine maintenance when they attacked. They overran the spaceport like a plague of locusts.” He shuddered and scratched at his bald head.

  “Long story short, the Caliphate managed to seize most of the vessels. When a Peacekeeper fleet arrived to retake control of the port, they escaped into the nearest wormhole and pointed their captured ships at old Terra. Earth was nearly three hundred light years away and we traveled at about a hundred times the speed of light. So, fast-forward three years for us shipboard, and, well, here we are. At our destination, but three hundred local years in the past.”

  Some German soldier in the back snorted. “Mist! If time travel is so easy, why aren’t there drunken future tourists crashing spaceships left and right?”

  “No, no. It’s far from easy. Point to point wormhole travel, you know, where you just fold space dimensions without touching the time axis, is the standard everywhere in the future. Any other interstellar travel system is illegal. Not to mention impractical. Besides, artificial wormholes are so cheap to generate nowadays. Or will be in about two hundred years.”

  Captain Dore rolled his eyes and mouthed “WTF,” but Kat perked up. She wasn’t completely lost. This was the type of sci-fi stuff her daughter was always going on about.

  “But you just said they flew faster than the speed of light. If Faster Than Light travel is so easy, then why isn’t everyone doing it? Illegal or not, there must be someone trying it out.”

  Washington slapped his head.

  “Faster than light travel? Seriously? You watch way too many science fiction holos. Sure, there are all sorts of relativistic drives that can theoretically push you past lightspeed, but every star system outlawed them before I was born. Yeah, some system militaries experiment with hyper-lightspeed drives in secret, but as weapons. Not for propulsion. Every Faster Than Light method I’ve ever heard of requires bending not just space, but the time dimension as well. That’s why it’s impossible to exceed the speed of light. At least for all practical purposes. Einstein’s alive in your time, right? You’ve never heard of his theory? Wasn’t he president or something?”

  Kat snickered despite her exhaustion. The engineer sighed. “Excuse me, ‘king’ then or whatever you people call your leaders. Aren’t you familiar with his work? Exceeding the speed of light requires infinite energy because your mass is infinite once you hit lightspeed. The only way to beat that natural speed limit is to use an exorbitant amount of both negative energy and/or negative mass to balance the equation.

  “Now, creating the required negative particles is expensive, but not terribly difficult. No, the real problem is then you need to figure out what to do with the displaced positive energy. Since you can’t destroy energy, it has to radiate somewhere. That’s why every attempt to exceed the speed of light over any significant interstellar distance has failed. Spectacularly so. Usually resulting in either the ship or the destination point going supernova from the out-of-control radiation. The closest anyone ever came was by channeling the extra energy into another dimension. Nothing blew up that time, but the ship simply didn’t move. Even the Artificial Intelligence can’t explain why. So yeah, faster-than-light travel just isn’t realistic.”

  “Enough with the techno mumble jumbo. If it’s so impossible, then how the hell did these psychos get here?”

  “I told you, with the wormhole. Look, this is all new even in my age, but it had been theorized if you activate an Alcubierre-type drive at the exact nanosecond you exit the event horizon of a wormhole, then there’s a small chance you could… hmm, how to put it? You’re basically destabilizing the wormhole and riding the negative energy wave for propulsion. The displaced positive energy is then consumed by the collapsing wormhole while your ship scoots away with, hopefully, only minor damage.”

  “So that’s all you have to do?”

  “All?! First off, it’s a one-way trip. There’s no way to return to your time if you travel to a point before man-made wormholes were invented. Naturally occurring wormholes are a deathtrap. Too unstable. Second, it’s one hell of a dangerous ride. Do you think these six decrepit ships are an invasion fleet? This was the Caliphate’s so-called ‘grand conquest.’ The Jihadis hijacked every transport in the system. They sent an armada of 200 vessels into the wormhole. What you see here are just the survivors, and they barely made it. These rocks and neutron bombs they’re slinging are nothing. Ancient weapons. Be thankful the wormhole collapse damaged the anti-matter cannons beyond repair.”

  Washington shivered. “There’s also the tiny detail that we turned the jump point into a black hole when the wormhole caved in. The entire system, half a billion people… At least they never knew what hit them.”

  Kat leaned forward in her seat. “So I take it there’s no rescue mission coming? If the Caliphate’s destroyed the past, they must have killed the future. Hey, why isn’t this ship blinking out of existence?”

  “That’s the big question. Mankind has explored most of the galaxy and even dispatched colonists to other ones, but time is still the great, unsolvable mystery. No one’s ever puzzled out the old paradox of time travel. Obviously, Earth was never destroyed in my timeline. So are we rewriting history? Perhaps this is a closed time loop? Maybe we’re in an alternative, parallel dimension. Shit, I don’t know. I’m just an engineer. Even the Artificial Intelligence comes back with a null program routine when you ask it for an answer, and it once told me what the color blue would taste like.”

  Washington rolled his head towards the wall and blinked. A meter-wide section of the grey hull turned into a digital window of the world beyond. Kat stared out the pitch-black digital display. Even at 2200 local time, there were no artificial lights in all of Italy. Only raging fires in the rough shape of a boot showed they’d crossed the Mediterranean.

  “Either way, one thing is clear. The fact that help hasn’t arrived yet proves it never will. There’s no cavalry coming to the rescue. We’re on our own. Just us and this God you people are always talking about.”

  Kat licked her lips and stared out the window. “Yeah, I was afraid you’d say that. So if God’s on our side, then who’s on their side?”

  Hwy 441 Border Control Point

  15 miles northwest of Gainesville, Florida

  Peter Dixon crouched in a blackberry stand and raised his binoculars. In the fading twilight, the high school grounds half a click away were little more than a haunted house. The school, like every other worldwide, hadn’t held classes in a month. Ever since World War Three broke out and punted civilization back to the Middle Ages, there was only one lesson people were still interested in. Survival.

  Well, that and its vicious extra credit assignment… power. The remnants of the US Department of Homeland Security, better known as the largest and most bloodthirsty militia in Florida, had swiped a colossal American flag from some car dealership and mounted it over their camp. The 25 by 40 foot mocking banner dangled limp in the night air, but hundreds of shadows raced around the school campus below.

  Dixon shifted his sight away from the
bustling forward operating base. He fought the urge to whistle as his gaze settled on a massive sandcastle blocking the highway and turn-off to the school. The enemy had stacked endless rows of dirt-filled, wire-mesh HESCO baskets, each seven feet high and five wide, together like so many dirty Legos. He zoomed out, trying to take in the towering bunker complex all at once. Camouflage netting draped every firing port and plywood sheets with sandbags on top capped off the fortress. The mini-compound three hundred yards ahead was impervious to bullets, rockets and even bombs…

  Which naturally made it Dixon’s assigned target for the night.

  Something brushed against his shoulder. Dixon grinned up at the massive Norwegian mechanic turned “Minuteman” militia private crouching beside him. Heiko had darkened his face like the rest of the unit to break up his silhouette, but he still cast an unnaturally giant shadow.

  “What do you think, Peter? It’s almost too easy. The Feds must have been in a rush to set up this base. They didn’t even bother clearing out the surrounding underbrush. You know, I bet we could crawl within fifty yards of the enemy before they notice. Why does the lieutenant always have to do things the hard way?”

  “No, the LT’s right. This is as close as we can get until he kicks off the diversion. Concealment doesn’t mean anything in the dark. Not when the other side has night vision goggles, infrared sights and God knows what else. It’s a miracle they haven’t spotted us already.”

  Heiko flicked a palm-sized banana spider off his leg and gazed out from the swamp. “Don’t be so nervous. The Feds might be well equipped, but we aren’t helpless. Not this time.” He cradled his M4 battle rifle and turned on the laser dot sight. For an avowed hippy that had never touched a gun until a few weeks ago, Heiko could sure mimic the confidence of a professional.

  For his part, Dixon just took a long pull from his last remaining water bottle. His mouth stayed dry though as he sized up the rest of the High Springs Minutemen around him. All the officers and sergeants were military veterans or ex-law enforcement, but the bulk of the militia were nothing more than semi-trained and untested civilian volunteers. Just idealistic youngsters with more guts than brains, like every army in human history. Worst of all, most were strangers.

  Besides Heiko and a handful of other guys and gals from the original “Mother Gaia Homestead,” the rest were new recruits that had wandered in from the wilderness or deserted from bandit gangs. Running the richest post-apocalyptic trading post in the state, and one led by a democratically elected government that at least attempted to honor the old Constitution, was great for recruitment. Of course, that same wealth and freedom ensured they’d need every fighter they could get their hands on.

  “Love your attitude, Heiko, but until Rand gets this half-baked confederacy organized and all the other towns join up, it’s just us and the High Springs militia against everything Heinrich can muster. That garrison alone over there outnumbers us four or five to one. Trust me, the Feds can afford to screw up and still whip us. And they aren’t amateurs. Governor Heinrich and his private army have been at war with everyone within a hundred miles since the shit hit the fan. Even if we do everything just right and somehow win here, we’re only buying a few days for the rest of the alliance to get their shit together. If they win, well, these Nazi’s will be raiding our homes before breakfast. So yeah, pardon me for being a bit on edge.”

  Heiko reached around and adjusted the cylinder tanks strapped to Dixon’s back. “That’s why we have you to lead the breach, GI Joe. You fought Heinrich’s goons before and survived. Pour some of that luck on the rest of us.”

  Dixon hefted the spray nozzle attached to Heiko’s hillbilly flamethrower. He arched his back and shifted the seventy-pounds of uneven weight. “Christ. I’m a medic, not a suicide bomber. You want to stay lucky? Then stay far away from me when the bullets start flying.”

  Heiko winked and patted his rifle. “Don’t worry. They won’t all be heading in one direction. I wasn’t kidding. This time we’re ready. Lieutenant Owen knows what he’s doing. The guy was a real Army sergeant back in the day. You never met him before? He did a tour or three in Afghanistan like you. Most importantly, he’s got a real machine gun and a crate of ammo on the other side of the road. I heard it cost the commune a truckload of cabbage and a whole hog in trade, but you won’t hear me complaining.”

  “Yeah, that’s cute. While we’re bartering for a few weapons here and there, the Department of Homeland Security cleaned out Camp Blanding weeks ago. Who knows how much firepower they salvaged from the National Guard after the neutron bombs hit? If only we had gotten our act together sooner…”

  Dixon’s walky-talky crackled to life for the first time in an hour. Colonel Brown, the head honcho of the unified High Springs/Suwannee River Trading Company’s “Minuteman” militia, broke his strict radio silence with three words:

  “Tora! Tora! Tora!”

  In the far distance, dozens of random snipers opened up on the massive base from every direction. Much closer to home, tracers lanced out from Lieutenant Owen’s base of fire section three hundred yards to Dixon’s right. A few seconds later, ten times as many orange trails hammered back from the HESCO fortress in response.

  Dixon scratched his throbbing neck scar, courtesy of some random Taliban IED years ago, and growled. “Fuck me. Is this what we’re calling the element of surprise now?”

  The only response came from some militia NCO, whose name Dixon forgot, barking that ancient infantry motto in the dark.

  “Follow me!”

  Like magic, the fear vanished. The first nine-man squad bolted out of the treeline to catch up with their leader. After only fifty yards, each fighter dived to the ground and cozied up to the thickest bush around. Every other soldier chucked a homemade smoke grenade as far as he or she could.

  Despite only being assigned to the unit two hours ago, Dixon’s limited military experience made him the de facto second in command of the amateur outfit. He counted to ten so the smoke screen could build up before signaling the next squad forward. The second squad bounded to the edge of the white cloud and tossed out another line of smoke bombs.

  Heiko skipped along beside Dixon in the third and final squad as they dashed to the farthest smoke screen. “I gotta hand it to you. I never would have believed that your sugar, saltpeter and baking soda contraptions would make all the difference. I can’t even see the target!”

  Dixon couldn’t even grunt back. Anything more than a wheeze was too much for his thirty-five year old lungs to handle as he raced to keep up with his young and lightly armed squad mates. With every footfall across the swampy ground, the flamethrower’s steel frame dropkicked his spine. After a few years of torture, he finally sprawled in the mud just behind the last baking-soda smoke screen a hundred meters from the treeline. Moments later, first and second squads flashed past him, repeating their bound-and-smoke maneuver.

  Just two hundred more yards to go.

  One hundred and thirty paces… through God only knew how many tons of lead.

  The enemy base might be blanketed in smoke, but the hundreds of incoming tracers lancing through the fog sure guided the way. Assuming the Feds stuck to the standard 4 to 1 ratio between ball and tracer rounds, then by his calculations they were…

  “Jesus! Screw our orders. We need to fight back!” Heiko flipped off his rifle’s safety. Dixon reached over and swatted his barrel down.

  “You think it’s bad now? If we start shooting, they’ll know exactly where we are. Stick to the plan and don’t engage until the final stretch.”

  Before Heiko could argue, it was their squad’s turn to bound forward. The second 100-meter sprint was easier than the first.

  There was nothing like skipping over the squealing body of a teenaged militia girl, frantically stuffing her intestines back into her gut, to put his own aches and pains in perspective. By reflex, Dixon slowed and dug out a pressure dressing from his thigh pocket.

  Heiko swooped up behind him and dragged
Dixon forward. “You know you can’t do shit for her until the shooting stops!”

  Dixon snarled, but kept trudging ahead. This time he dropped beside the first squad instead of bounding past them and low-crawled over to the militia platoon sergeant. Easy enough to pick out even in the dark, since he was the only fighter around wearing real tactical gear and not homemade body armor.

  “I’m here, Sergeant. Are we at the hundred-yard mark yet?”

  The ex-paratrooper hissed while setting down his rifle and unslinging a 12-gauge shotgun. “Yes. Now stay down until we’re ready. And get away from me with that thing on your back!”

  Dixon grinned and stuck up his middle finger, but a burst of machine gun fire plowed the ground between him and the sergeant. Dixon just spit out the dirt and slithered away without letting an inch of his body break contact with the Earth.

  Out the corner of his eye, he caught the NCO ramming a 30” wooden rod down the shotgun’s muzzle. A large tin can, packed with ball bearings and one pound of Dixon’s homespun fertilizer/fuel oil explosives, topped off the stick. Dixon took pride in crafting the pipe bombs, but turning them into hillbilly grenade launchers was all Colonel Brown’s idea.

  “Three… two… one… fire!”

  Eight shotguns barked as the scattered line of militiamen fired back at the Feds for the first time all night. Dixon muttered a prayer as he rose to his knees. They had begun the assault with twelve grenadiers. Worse than even the casualties, the grenade launchers were so inaccurate it’d be a miracle if one in three hit somewhere inside the complex.

  The sergeant blew a whistle and the rest of the Minutemen poured out suppressive fire as if paid per shell. Dixon had no idea how many of his comrades were still alive, but damn if their racket didn’t mimic a whole army.

  With a bellowing “Hooah,” the militia platoon sergeant jumped up and led the first two squads forward.