by Chris James
“Less than two kilometres to the northwest and closing. Recommend you switch over to your Battlefield Management Support System as you will shortly be in a potential combat situation.”
“Okay,” Kate answered, momentarily confused because she felt sure she’d asked Bolek to switch to the Squitch automatically without prompting her in such situations. She leaned out of the queue to get people’s attention. “Okay, everyone,” she urged, “this transport is needed back where we came from. Hurry it up, please. And activate your Squitches if you have not already done so.”
A surge of movement greeted her request and she allowed herself the luxury of a smile. At least discipline remained intact so far.
She unclipped her helmet from her belt, put it on her head, and closed the strap under her chin. The Squitch, with a voice similar to Bolek’s, spoke in her ear. “Warning. Potential threat detected.”
“Specify.” She reached the automated armoury. Her PKU–48 smart assault rifle slid out of a hatch and she grabbed it with both hands, turned left, and trotted down the exit stairs among the others, noting the drop in air temperature on leaving the aircraft but enjoying the wave of relief to get her feet finally on solid ground. A soft breeze tugged at her tied brown hair and the scent of leaf mulch reminded her of a world beyond all of this drama and chaos.
Her relief was short-lived, as the Squitch informed her: “Six Spiders from the aerial engagement remain unaccounted for. Increased elec—”
“Are you all getting this?” Kate shouted to the other troops as two other transport alighted on the scrubland at one-hundred-metre intervals. An assortment of confirmations came to her ears before she instructed: “Code twenty-two in this vicinity.”
The Squitch answered: “Confirmed and initiated. However, thus far—”
“Where are all the other transports?”
“Destroyed.”
Kate swore under breath and then asked: “What about survivors, the injured?”
“There is a near-certain probability that any survivors will have been killed.”
Kate stopped walking and surveyed the terrain. Sixty or seventy troops from a mishmash of the unit and corps of half a dozen armed forces, all armed, proceeded on foot from the three surviving Autonomous Air Transports to the western edge of the large, open area. Several NATO personnel carriers rumbled into the area, emerging in a line from a forest track. Kate saw they were the older model Autonomous Land Transports on which she used to train years before. “Are there any medics on those,” she asked the Squitch.
“Negative, however they are fully equipped with—” the super AI stopped in mid-sentence.
“What?” Kate demanded testily.
“Danger,” it responded. “Six Caliphate Spiders approaching from the west. You are their targets. One thousand metres and closing abreast in a straight line. Take defensive action immediately.”
Kate activated her Pickup and inserted a magazine into the rifle. She briefly wondered if the Squitch had made a mistake, for when the super AI said ‘You are their targets’, it had used the Polish singular pronoun, meaning Kate personally, rather than the plural pronoun meaning all of the sixty or seventy troops in the area.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the other NATO soldiers also take defensive measures. Many shuffled closer to the transports from which they had only recently alighted, guns raised. Kate decided that given the volume of explosives hurtling towards them, gaining cover offered little tactical advantage.
The Squitch updated: “Eight hundred metres and closing.”
With gentle mechanical whines, panels on the fuselages of the Autonomous Air Transports and on the roofs of the Autonomous Land Transports retracted and banks of missiles rose up. Kate breathed easily, ready as though this were simply another NATO training exercise.
“Six hundred metres and closing.”
Kate thought she could hear a clicking or clacking sound. The Squitch overlaid estimated positions of the Spiders as they approached. “Where the hell did they come from?” she asked.
“Assets remaining from the attack on the air transports. Reassigned for a harassment attack. Four hundred metres and closing.”
Hisses ripped the air as the missiles launched from the transports and sped over the ground towards the treeline at the eastern end of the clearing. Kate followed the vapour trails as they flew over the scrub and low dunes of beige dirt. When they reached the treeline, a series of orange and black balls of flame erupted, interspersed with green flashes. Deep pops followed on the air.
With a glance around her, Kate breathed in relief to see a number of troops with Stilettoes poised on their shoulders. She looked ahead and six separate clouds of dust rapidly approached their positions, with around thirty metres between them.
“Two hundred metres and closing.”
More hisses split the air as the single-shot missiles left their launchers. Other troops opened fire, their rifles making loud cracking sounds. Kate’s breathing remained even. She fired. The NATO ordnance hit the Spiders but did not slow their approach. Green hues kept flashing on the enemy devices as the ordnance hit them, and disbelief surged inside Kate that anything could withstand such concentrated firepower. The magazine emptied. As she had done ten thousand times before, she dropped the empty and slotted a new one in less than two seconds. In the heat of this battle, two seconds felt like minutes.
The middle pair of the six Spiders appeared to be hurtling straight towards her, and as she kept firing her Pickup, she realised the shells from other guns around her were being directed towards the pair of Spiders coming at her. In dread she realised that these Spiders had indeed targeted her personally. In response, the NATO super AI redirected the shells fired by the other troops closest to her, so that they also hit the two Spiders immediately in front of her.
Kate barely had time to understand this when NATO fire finally overwhelmed the two Spiders and they disintegrated. She felt a vast, powerful, unseen hand pick her up and toss her over as though she were a doll. Her Pickup left her hands. She rolled in the dirt a few times, and the sensation of dry, tasteless granules being forced into her mouth and nostrils almost made her choke.
At once, she pulled herself onto her hands and knees, desperately wanting to spit and cough the dirt from her mouth. But before she could, the noise of shots and shouts coalesced in urgency before being swamped by more explosions. The change in air pressure forced Kate back into the dirt and she shouted when something heavy hit the back of her right thigh. More debris thumped into the dirt around her and she tensed, ready to be hit again.
The sounds of crackling flames mingled with shouts, cries and moans. Pain surged up Kate’s right leg. She tried to rise but the effort was too great. “Report,” she ordered.
“Enemy ACAs neutralised,” came the Squitch’s succinct answer.
Anger rose to meet the physical pain inside Kate. She spat: “Bolek? How could those machines hide? From the aerial battle to when they attacked us on the ground, why didn’t you know they were there?”
The Polish Army’s super AI, with a voice only a little lower in pitch than the Squitch’s, answered: “Initial research suggests that the burst of electromagnetic interference had sufficient duration to allow the enemy’s assets to travel to an unanticipated location and reduce their ambient power levels to avoid detection.”
“And then attack us when we thought we were in the clear… In other words, they hid from you, and you fell for it, right?”
“The most probable forecasts were made with the available data at the time. There is little to be—”
A figure running at her caught Kate’s attention.
“Major? Major? Are you all right? Can you stand?”
Kate craned her head up to see a young corporal silhouetted against the cloudy sky. She considered his question but her right leg felt like a slab of dead meat, and her left stung badly when she tried to move it. She said: “Something is wrong with my legs.”
She saw the young man peer o
ver her and the look on his face changed from fearful curiosity to revulsion. “Er,” he stammered. “I need to get a GenoFluid pack on to your legs, asap. Don’t move, okay? I mean, er, don’t move, please, Major.”
Kate managed a weak smile and said: “Go and get the pack. I’ll wait here.”
The young corporal jogged off and a breeze blew dust from his steps back into Kate’s face. She worked up saliva in her mouth that turned the dirt into mud and spat some out.
“Bolek, you made a mistake.”
“With respect, Major Fus, accepted military doctrine was adhered to, and despite the low probability of the harassment attack, casualties are within what is considered to be the acceptable range.”
Exhaustion swept over Kate. She wanted to know how many casualties. She wanted to force the super AI to admit it had made a mistake. She wanted to compose her assessment of the engagement for other commanders in other theatres to read and use to anticipate enemy actions. But suddenly she had to rest. She lay her head back in the dirt and told herself that a few moments would not make a great deal of difference in the context of the entire invasion.
She came to abruptly, as though waking from a nightmare, somnolent neurons meandering their way to pathways in her higher brain functions. Her head no longer rested in dirt. She felt the movement of the ALT as its suspension system absorbed the worst of the terrain’s imperfections. She judged the vehicle to be travelling at speed. She still lay on her front, the left side of her face resting on a cold, black, soft material that carried a partially sterile aroma. With a blink of her eye muscles, the lens came to life and informed her that she was in an ALT heading towards Sarajevo and that she should not move due to the GenoFluid currently effecting repairs to her shattered legs. The lens listed a history of communications and other events. She scanned down noting attempted contacts from friends and colleagues.
She whispered, unsure of who or how many other people might be within hearing range: “Bolek, how bad?”
“Your right leg was almost severed; your left leg crushed. The GenoFluid pack has notified that repairs will take twenty-four hours.”
“Okay. Tell the pack to send some bots to my bladder, will you? I’m bursting for a pee.”
“Done.”
“Now place a secure communications link to General Pakla, please.”
“Secure comms are unavailable at this time.”
Kate sighed and said: “Then standard will do. I would like to report to my superior officer.”
She heard a slight hiss; the ALT crossed more rugged terrain which made her head bump into the padded surface on which she lay, and a new voice spoke: “Major Fus? Are you all right?”
“General Pakla. Thank you for accepting my communication. I would like to report on the harassment attack via secure comms, but the super AI says they are not available.”
“Wait, please.”
Kate heard another hiss and a sharp click. General Pakla spoke: “You are now on my private channel, Major. However, given the current situation, we should take care in case the enemy is eavesdropping.”
A smile creased Kate’s deformed mouth. His reference to ‘the enemy’ meant all those who should not know about their affair. She said: “Understood, Sir. I believe we urgently need to review tactical protocols. The super AI did not give sufficient credence to the probability of a harassment attack by the enemy with its assets that remained in the battle space.”
“I agree,” the General—her General—replied. “I have set up a tiered diagnostic regime for the army’s super AI which will take a couple of hours.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
The General’s business-like voice softened a fraction as he asked: “The medical records say you’ll need the GenoFluid pack for twenty-four hours. How do you feel?”
Kate had not asked that question of herself, so she answered with her first thought: “I am very grateful I was fortunate enough to survive.”
“It was not down to luck, Major.”
“No?”
“You were the senior officer present, so the super AI accorded you the highest priority from among all of the troops there.”
She sensed the General wanted to say more, but she replied: “So the artificial intelligence decided that I should live while others should die, yes?” And the recollection came to her that when the attack had begun, her Squitch had indeed used the singular pronoun when it had said, ‘You are their target’.
The General’s voice softened further: “It was not so far removed from what we have all debated in ethics’ seminars and in numerous wargaming exercises, Major.”
“Except this time it was real, and real people died so that I, as the senior ranking officer, would live.”
There followed a pause, and Kate imagined what the General would say if they could have been certain of the security of their communications channel. Instead, he said: “Major, let me know if you require counselling or any other support services. I wish you a speedy recovery and look forward to a full debrief when you return to Sarajevo.”
The communication ended and Kate sighed. The motion of the ALT had settled into a more predictable undulation from side to side, and occasionally up and down, and this made her feel sleepy. Alternatively, she reasoned, it could be the management nanobots inside her body deciding their subordinate tissue repair bots might perform more effectively if their host were asleep. In any case, the pressure on her bladder had eased, which helped her relax.
With a twitch of an eye muscle, various analyses of the aerial battle in which the twenty transports were lost and the subsequent harassment attack on the ground presented themselves for her consideration. Her spirit seemed to divide in two. Part of her viewed this tiny fragment of the unfolding European disaster with pragmatism. On numerous occasions, NATO training exercises had suggested the potential of losing substantial numbers of troops, although nothing like on the current scale.
Another part of her mind absorbed the full impact of the General’s words. One report revealed that from the eighty-seven individual evacuees on the three surviving transports, thirty-one had been killed in the Spider attack on the ground. She replayed sections of visual and audio recordings from various participants’ Squitches. With her eyelids growing heavier, she noted the names, ranks and armies of those who had been obliged—unknown to them—to forego their lives to preserve hers.
As sleep finally overcame Major Kate Fus, her eyes moistened and she felt a deep emptiness inside her spirit. Abruptly, a lifetime of training had ended. Years of pretending to be a NATO soldier without ever truly expecting to have to engage in a real conflict had been concluded by time, by history, by inevitability.
Chapter 19
09.47 Friday 24 February 2062
PRIME MINISTER NAPIER’S haggard face stared out of the screen and her tired voice rasped: “Operation Defensive Arc is not going very well.”
David Perkins, the Head of MI5, thought that a vast understatement, but waited for the Prime Minister to get to the point.
“Can you tell me what is going on behind the scenes?” she asked.
Perkins, who had fought to garner more funds for most of his time as the head of England’s only secret service, once again overpowered the urge to educate his boss in certain fundamental truths. He said: “PM, the service is working to correlate data from numerous sources, but we do not have sufficient resources to establish facts through our own efforts. We rely on our allies.” He shrugged as he stated what was, to him, blindingly obvious.
“We need to increase diplomatic pressure on Beijing,” Napier said.
Perkins smothered a guffaw and answered smoothly: “I believe we have made the Chinese government fully aware that we expect them to rein the Caliphate in, but—”
“It’s getting a little late for that, Mr Perkins. I want the Chinese to pay. I want us to do something that will hurt them. We’re seeing thousands of people dying in Europe by the hour, and if they won’t stop it, then they need to know
they are not going to get off scot-free.”
Perkins stopped breathing in disbelief. He asked himself what on earth this woman thought a little island country could ‘do’ to the most powerful country in the world to make it ‘pay’ for not preventing a war which, Perkins believed, it had not been entirely instrumental in starting. Perkins peered into his boss’s face as the screen in his desk presented it, noting the red eyes that appeared to burn with frustration. Fine, he told himself, she’s had another bad night, disaster piling on disaster, but she still could not accept the limitations of the enfeebled country she ruled.
He said: “I am due to receive a report from one of our key operatives in Beijing, PM, and will be happy to update you as soon as you’re available…” then, his mischievous side got the better of him, and he asked: “Er, how do you think we might make the Chinese pay?”
Napier glanced at something or someone outside the camera’s field of view, as though seeking confirmation. She said: “For now this is top secret, but the government will seize all Chinese-owned assets in England. That might make them think. They have invested countless sums over the last few decades, and as things stand, the Caliphate will destroy them in a few weeks—as they’re already doing to Chinese interests in southern Europe. Perhaps Beijing will reconsider bringing the Third Caliph to heel.”
Perkins stammered: “Er, right. A potentially useful strategy,” while inside he screamed in frustration at such a facile plan. However, he replied: “Currently, we have no hard evidence that the Caliphate is in fact answerable to the Chinese, despite what the press is saying.”
Napier shook her head and said: “You know how it works, Mr Perkins: the act of the press saying it’s true almost makes it fact in the minds of a large section of the population. Whether true or not, many people believe that China made the New Persian Caliphate. Therefore, those people believe that China exercises control over it, and can as a result stop this war before it gets any worse.”
“But PM, the Chinese president and a number of his high-level ministers are on record distancing themselves from the Third Caliph’s aggression. All covert data we have points to Beijing having put significant pressure on the Third Caliph since the attacks on the navies and Israel, but to no effect.”