Invasion

by Chris James

  “Sixty-two percent,” Bolek replied.

  Kate swore under her breath. She watched their progress to the VIPs as the mobile command vehicle made its way with painful slowness towards the north of the city. Trailing in her wake came two personnel carriers, one of which contained Captain Fiala. Combined, these three vehicles might accommodate ten VIPs if they squeezed in.

  The risk limit—the forecast probability of the destruction of Kate’s vehicle—crept up as time passed. She did not feel concern to begin with. She could recall many exercises with this kind of situation. However, on exercises the upper limit was never more than fifty percent, and that was when they were only pretending.

  They entered the outskirts of the city and Kate asked: “Show me outside, all-round view.”

  The screens that provided her with all of the data she needed to monitor the troops under her command vanished to reveal a panorama of suffering. Her vehicle made cautious but certain progress along the arterial route into the centre of Zagreb, past refugees both living and dead, or possibly injured, Kate reflected, which in this environment constituted the same thing as dead. Palls of black smoke marked the results of attacks or the resting places of shot-down ACAs. Kate noted with curiosity that although to the south fires raged as they had over so many European cities in the last few weeks, north of the river Zagreb seemed unscathed. Overhead, the battle continued its inevitable pattern. As NATO resources dwindled, the enemy’s Spiders busied themselves coming to ground to dismantle the capital city of Croatia.

  “That’s enough. Put the screens back up.”

  Bolek said: “You are still within acceptable risk parameters.”

  “You are including the potential for ambushes, yes?” she asked, recalling only too well the previous confrontation which had led to the deaths of several of her troops. “You remember your mistake last time, yes?”

  “The total sum of the enemy’s tactics and operations are always factored into the forecasts.”

  Kate didn’t reply; she knew Bolek was just super-artificial intelligence, but irrationally hated it for the deaths she ascribed to its failure during the engagement in Serbia eighteen days earlier; deaths that had been required to allow her to survive.

  Bolek spoke again: “We are within one kilometre of the VIPs. However, they are part of a larger mass of refugees and there is an increasing potential that their extraction may become complicated.”

  Kate shook her head in mounting frustration. “Look, the river is just to our north. Hold me back here,” she instructed. She then dabbed an icon on the screen in front of her and spoke: “Captain Fiala?”

  “Yes, Major?” came the response.

  “Allow the super AI to manage the situation. If you feel it is unreliable, I will authorise you to override it. Be ready in case you need to clear your vehicle on short notice.”

  “Understood. Thank you, Major.”

  “Bolek, get me over the river before enemy ACAs target me, please.”

  “Only two bridges remain intact and will certainly be destroyed shortly.”

  “That is not helpful, Bolek,” Kate said as her mobile command vehicle lurched again, turned, and bumped as it accelerated over the debris-strewn road. “So do your job,” she hissed in frustration. “Either get me across the bridge or do not.”

  “Please specify your requirement.”

  “What? Can you get me across the river before the remaining bridges are destroyed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do it, then,” she said in exasperation. At once, she saw the two personnel carriers stop and withdraw. “What is happening?”

  “To ensure your safety, Major, the personnel carriers are being repositioned to draw enemy fire—”

  “No!” Kate shouted. “Do not give me priority.”

  “That is against current NATO tactical poli—”

  “I override that policy.”

  “You do not have the authorisation, Major.”

  Kate slumped back in the seat, suddenly realising that General Pakla had assigned her to this VIP pickup mission because he had known the super AI would protect her as the superior officer. She looked at the screens and demanded: “There, get me over that bridge now.”

  “There is a high prob—”

  “Do it now, or give me manual control of this vehicle. That is an order based on protocol thirty-two,” she said, using an override that officers were only permitted to use in extreme circumstances. And, later, she would be obliged at a court martial to justify her invocation of it. The vehicle swayed to the left and accelerated rapidly. It hit debris on the road with jarring thumps. “Bolek, what are you doing?” she shouted.

  “In accordance with your instructions, the speed of this MCV must increase to lessen the probability of its destruction.”

  Kate caught her breath as the vehicle rattled and rocked. She managed to order: “Update on the VIP extraction.”

  “The personnel carriers are taking individuals on board now.”

  “I hope Fiala can extract the right people. How are the probabilities looking now?” she asked through clenched teeth as the vehicle careered along the road.

  “Enemy targeting of the personnel carriers will become a certainty in forty seconds; of this vehicle, in forty-five seconds.”

  Kate knew it would not be enough to get them to safety. She asked forlornly: “Any hope of reinforcements?”

  “The NATO forces remaining in the battle space will be destroyed in… have been destroyed. The nearest support is too far away to affect the outcome.”

  “Rear-view window, now,” Kate instructed, not wanting to die without seeing the real world a final time. On noting that her vehicle was the only one negotiating the wrecked vehicles and other debris on the bridge, she asked: “Where are the two personnel carriers?”

  “In transit north over bridge zero-three.”

  “Will they make it, at least?”

  “Highly improbable as there is now nothing to hinder the enemy’s advance through the north of the city and beyond.”

  Kate wished she could speak to the General, her General, a last time, to say goodbye, but she preferred to compose herself. A blanket of black, dirty smoke shrouded the south of the city as her vehicle sped away from the chaos. Kate considered that the smoke might as well be shrouding the whole world. Against a puff of white cloud higher in the sky, she noted a procession of black dots descending in a spiral, as though performing a corkscrew pirouette for her entertainment. All too soon, the Spiders came down at the southern end of the bridge, smashed into the road, the debris, the stragglers, and detonated. Puffs of masonry dust billowed out from around the bridge and it began to collapse into the river.

  Kate gasped as the vehicle lurched and swung to the right, and the disintegrating bridge was hidden from her view by the buildings on the north bank. “What are you doing?” she asked in frustration.

  “Attempting to preserve your life, Major,” the super AI replied with, as Kate imagined it, the faint tone of answering a rhetorical question.

  “There’s no point,” she said, growing more amazed by the second that her vehicle had not been hit. Her vivid imagination threw up all kinds of suggestions of the last thing she would feel when a Spider clasped itself around her vehicle and blew itself up. She closed her eyes, wanting it to be over, wishing the shaking and twisting and turning of the vehicle would stop, wishing time would stop.

  She felt she was slowing down. She wondered if the vehicle had been destroyed and her journey to the next world had begun with a pleasant deceleration. The vehicle stopped and the curt thump on the outside could not have been divine. She remained in this realm.

  Bolek spoke: “Major, the enemy has broken off its attack.”

  For a moment, the words did not register in her brain. She instructed: “Repeat that.”

  “The enemy has broken off its attack.”

  “Explain.”

  “There may be a number of reasons, but the most probable is that the
enemy is pausing to consolidate its gains.”

  “But why now? Why here, in Zagreb?”

  “The River Sava makes a natural boundary. The enemy is proceeding with consolidating its position on the south side of the riv—”

  “Did the personnel carriers get across the bridge successfully?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Good. But how can there be any need for natural boundaries?”

  Bolek answered as the mobile command vehicle jolted and resumed moving. “There is no tactical or strategic need. However, the enemy has complete control over the territory it has gained in the twenty-four days since it began the invasion, and it correctly estimates there is little NATO can do to interfere. It is therefore at liberty to pause and build up in-theatre arms’ supplies before proceeding to subdue the rest of the continent.”

  Numbness had overtaken Kate’s limbs, a strange kind of apathy she ascribed to temporary safety having been secured. She found it difficult to concentrate on the super AI’s dry commentary that disguised the millions of lives being torn apart and eradicated. “Where are we going now?” she asked.

  “A forward HQ has been established at Ljubljana. Major, you are showing a drop in a number of physiological indicators. Do you feel all right?”

  Through shallow breaths, Kate replied: “Fine, I just need some rest.”

  Chapter 40

  15.00 Thursday 16 March 2062

  IN THE WAR ROOMS under Downing Street in London, Terry Tidbury sensed the expectation in everyone around him, as though they needed reassurance; or if not reassurance, then at least some answers. The staff had gathered in front of the NATO comms station. The broad, African-American face of the Supreme Allied Commander for Europe—SACEUR—stared back at them, emotionless, as he addressed them and numerous other NATO bases, stations and posts around the continent which NATO still held.

  “Thank you for attending, everyone. We have just passed thirty-two consecutive hours with no offensive action taken by the enemy. I think we can all agree with our computers on one thing: that we have entered a phase of the enemy consolidating his gains. As we know, since the invasion began nearly a month ago, he has taken control of over one million square kilometres of our territory.”

  Terry nodded in appreciation of SACEUR’s use of the personal pronoun, given that his audience included many Spaniards, Italians, Greeks, Romanians and others who had lost families and homes, and whose countries now suffered grievously under Caliphate domination.

  Jones’s face withdrew to a thumbnail to show a map of Europe that, with the use of shaded areas, described the territory now controlled by the Caliphate: almost all of Spain, with Portugal still free; Italy, up to a line from Genoa through Bologna and on to the Adriatic; most of Croatia, with a line from Zagreb straddling Hungary’s southern border, which continued on across Romania until it reached the Black Sea east of Medgidia.

  “According to forecasts,” Jones went on, “this pause by the enemy to strengthen its forces and its control of newly acquired territory may last for anything between three weeks to three months. It’s important to note that while our computers can extrapolate from every war and every battle ever fought, this war is new; it’s the first war using this kind of tech. Now, given that not a single one of our computers saw this invasion coming to begin with, I feel that we ought to treat their advice with an element of circumspection.”

  Jones stopped, sipped from a glass of water, and continued: “We have a number of significant problems to overcome. Right now, the enemy can control all comms over the territory he has gained. On the plus side, this control is not absolute. As it has been throughout the history of telecommunications, atmospheric fluctuations and unexpected localised weather events can let us have some peeks into what’s going on. The better news is, people, we got developments on the way which should negate this advantage altogether.”

  Terry glanced at the others inside the War Room and wondered what must be going through their minds. He knew SACEUR had precious little to offer them, and the multiple images of the death and destruction wrought in the invaded countries had been so widely disseminated across all media and platforms that everyone present must have felt the greatest sympathy for those involved, while at the same time being under no illusions at what awaited the countries yet to be subdued.

  Jones went on: “In addition, material support will soon be on its way from the US. In northern Europe, as you might imagine, a vast organisation is in hand to retool manufacturing to produce as much ordnance as possible. Now, I know what you’re all thinking, that our current equipment, our SkyWatchers and PeaceMakers and Battlefield Support Lasers, aren’t up to the job. But for now, they’re all we got. If we can manufacture enough—and I think we can—then we’ll definitely be able to slow the enemy down, maybe even stop him. In the meantime, I want all of you to know that we have the best minds working on new solutions, on new weapons which will be able to really change the balance of power. But, and this is the most important thing I have to say to all of you today, we’re going to need time to get those weapons ready. In the meantime, we all have to keep giving this managed defence the best each of us has to offer.

  “Just a few days ago, I don’t think any of us expected the enemy to cease offensive operations in this fashion. I think we all believed we were facing the abyss. Well, we still are, but now the enemy has given us an opportunity to reinforce our positions, and we need to take advantage of that. We can’t know how much time we have. But I think we can all guess that there might be a political dimension to this pause in addition to the military one. Only time will tell.

  “Finally, I want to end this briefing by stressing that this unexpected break is as much an advantage for us as it is for our enemy. While we can be certain that when he resumes, he will do so with great strength, now, today, we have a chance to build up our defences to absorb that blow. I also want to acknowledge the sacrifices member armies have already made. For all of us, this is just about the toughest imaginable confrontation that we find ourselves in now, but I believe—”

  “What about Italia?” a new voice shouted. Terry saw an Italian colonel who had escaped his country’s predicament. Jones stopped and said nothing, apparently letting silence encourage the colonel. The Italian took the American General’s muteness as an invitation to continue. In thickly accented English, he said: “Intel from the Mediterranean prove that the country to the south of Rome is being raped, is being just one big concentration camp—we must send help!”

  Jones breathed in and said in a measured voice: “Colonel, the issue was covered at the situation meeting this morning. If we could do someth—”

  “But we can,” the Italian colonel enthused, “and we must! We have submarines, we must use them.”

  “Colonel, we can discuss this at greater length at your specific-theatre conference this evening.” The General’s polite rebuke had the desired effect, mollifying the Italian, and Jones concluded: “Okay, everyone, we’ve all got a ton of work to do, and I’m glad I’ve had a chance to speak with you and let you know that we are working very hard to get the odds coming a little bit back in our favour. But remember this: operation Defensive Arc is not done yet. If you have any questions, please raise them at your next specific-theatre conference. Thank you.”

  Terry realised that Jones wanted to do what he could to help morale, which was why he’d called the brief conference. Terry would like to have been able to have a private conversation with Jones, but he knew both of them needed to spend important time with their subordinates. With Europe still on the brink of total destruction, moments for private conversations were very rare.

  Chapter 41

  14.41 Monday 20 March 2062

  CRISPIN WEBB COULD not help shaking his head in contempt. Anger bristled inside him, but he knew his job was to assist and only opine when he was specifically requested to do so. He stared at the back of Dahra Napier’s head and thought it trembled slightly. She reached for the glass of whi
te wine that seemed to be with her permanently when she was inside Number Ten. A voice in his head chided him for his hypocrisy, and reminded him that he also had his share of problems: falling down in the Houses of Parliament from a heart attack had elicited the usual predictable jokes about how surprised people were to find out the PM’s top aide did in fact have a heart.

  In the room with his boss sat the Home, Foreign and Defence Secretaries, and Crispin wondered what proclivities they depended on as they played their mostly passive roles witnessing the final destruction of Europe, and which they kept hidden from everyone else. Recent digging into Home Secretary Aiden Hicks’ history had thrown up an interesting little titbit, as it transpired Hicks had fathered an illegitimate child. Such scandals did not carry the political-career-destroying weight they used to, but with proper media management, they could be highly embarrassing. Crispin glanced at Hicks, watching his chins wobble as the man shook his head, and wondered if Hicks thought he would make a better PM than Napier.

  On the screen in the wall, the US President, Madelyn Coll, whined on about the Third Caliph’s latest announcement from Tehran. Crispin closed down the media lists in the view from his lens to focus on what the woman said, in the unlikely event it was important: “…should take it as a demand to surrender.”

  Napier replied in a determined voice: “I will take it as nothing of the sort. That madman has made an obtuse claim which does not even deserve validation with a reply.”

  Coll appeared to concentrate, her face creasing into a frown. She said: “Dahra, the situation is only going to get worse—”

  “But ‘annex’?” Napier broke in. “He says he’s ‘annexed’ the whole of Europe, prior to its assimilation into the Caliphate, as though it were a district or a province or some little backwater about which no one with real power really cared. And you think I should take such a ridiculous thing seriously?”

  “Dahra,” Coll said with a faint trace of patronisation, “you need to appreciate how bad your situation is—”