by Chris James
At this point Napier interrupted to caution the two men, but later, in private, Sir Terry offered his resignation to Napier. Although this offer and its rejection is common knowledge, the meeting which caused it is not. Both Perkins and Sir Terry would work more effectively together after the outbreak of war, but this and similar COBRA meetings go some way to explaining Sir Terry’s feelings as he set them down in In the Eye of the Storm: ‘By this point, I began to feel isolated, redundant, and outdated. A relic. Everyone around me trusted this damnable super AI, as though it were some kind of oracle which predicted a future of safety they were desperate to hear. The debate was measured, like government social policy which feigned concern for the disabled when the government, being wholly able-bodied, did not really understand at all. Thus it was here as well: the super AI “predicted” what they needed it to predict. They tried to be dispassionate and pretend to critique its advice, but at once I saw through them. Perhaps it was because so many of them were young enough never to have known a time before super AI? By November 2061, I’d lost patience. Maybe they were right and I was wrong? Why would the Caliphate be interested in Europe anyway? Perkins was correct: it had millions of Muslims much closer to its borders, most of whom would readily join it. So, in private, I offered Napier my resignation. There were a few very good younger lieutenant generals who could easily step into my shoes. But she declined, I have to say in very generous terms. I felt quite flattered.’ This refusal to accept Gen. Sir Terry Tidbury’s resignation at a critical moment would transpire to be the English Prime Minister’s most prudent decision of the conflict.
III. THE COMING STORM
In the years after the war, a long and controversial debate raged about how much the Chinese and, to a lesser extent, the Russian governments knew of the Caliphate’s intentions. Many commentators accused China in particular of the most heinous perfidy at its failure to warn any Western government of the Third Caliph’s designs. However, these accusations do not stand up to scrutiny. When all of the available evidence is analysed, the only reasonable conclusion is that the Chinese government also did not know the Third Caliph’s true intentions. As mentioned above, the only certain proof the West had was Zayan’s data-pod, but this merely described the extent of the Caliphate’s armaments program; it did not hold any indication of if or where the Third Caliph meant to deploy his ACAs and warriors. And in any case, it was for the most part dismissed as planted evidence. Moreover, it is inconceivable that, had elements of the government in Beijing known, this information could have been kept secret. China had the most complex and widespread intelligence network of any nation state, and as such leaks could find many outlets. In the 2050s, for example, the CIA had numerous double agents inside the huge Chinese corporations in Africa and South America, yet for all the data these operatives passed on, none could add any significant intelligence to the little the West already knew about the isolated Caliphate. A far more likely probability is that the accusations against China represent one of the many ways in which, after the war, Western commentators sought to justify Europe’s collapse.
It is generally futile to speculate how much preparation the West could have undertaken if a warning had been forthcoming at some point in 2061. NATO governments had agreed a level of ACA production which they considered to be sufficient to meet any threat. These decisions were made with the assistance of each country’s super AI, all of which uniformly, and disastrously, estimated the Caliphate’s military strength at less than 8% of what it transpired to be.
Nevertheless, the most salient issue is that the Caliphate’s isolation was an entirely one-way affair. By 2060, its territory covered some nine million square kilometres and held a population of two-hundred-and-sixty million people. Suspected by but unconfirmed to the outside world, the Caliphate had evolved systems of management which drew from the sum of human knowledge: the Third Caliph had his subordinates employ super-AI technology to meet the needs of their religious dogma and bitter, depthless hatred for non-Muslims. Only via technology created by their sworn enemies could they develop and bring to readiness a vast and lethal armada of ACAs. Only with Chinese imports was the Caliphate able to produce the staggering amount of arms it employed in the conflict. The Caliphate took what the rest of the world created, and turned it all into an agent of destruction. On the night of Monday 6 February 2062, its fury would be unleashed on a broadly unsuspecting Europe, with devastating consequences.
Onslaught
I. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE NAVIES
A glance at the media records in the days before the Caliphate attacked reveals the extent to which the citizens of Europe and America led their lives in ignorance of the disaster about to befall them. The most popular news story concerned a missing supply vessel which had disappeared en-route to the joint Chinese/US colony on Mars. The unmanned vehicle had abruptly stopped transmitting location markers in the midst of heavy sun-flare activity two million kilometres from the red planet, and in result the director of the colony instigated pre-planned restrictions on the base’s activity.
Elsewhere, relief operations continued as thousands of evacuees abandoned numerous drowning South Sea islands for resettlement in Australia, while the travel company OrbitForYou celebrated the fifth anniversary of its New-York-to-Sydney route with a high-profile ticket giveaway for the ninety-minute journeys. Palaeontologists at the Smithsonian Institution published a paper announcing that rock sculptures and other fossil finds recently unearthed in Arizona proved the existence of a previously unknown offshoot of homo-sapiens, who reached a metallurgy-level civilisation some seventy thousand years earlier than the known Iron Age.
Amid this miniature, unseen by any satellite and unreported by any journalist, the Caliphate completed its preparations involving tens of thousands of ACAs and millions of warriors. On the night of Friday 3 February 2062, the aircraft-carrier group led by the USS Ronald Reagan, steaming seventy kilometres south-east of Italy, sent up a SkyWatcher ACA which detected fifty Caliphate ACAs flying in defence formation slightly beyond the north-African coast. A few observers watching in Washington noted that this was more than the Caliphate usually deployed to monitor its territorial waters, but otherwise no significance was read into the increase. In the Arabian Sea, the carrier group led by the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt also detected more Caliphate ACAs than usual. The next day, Saturday, passed with no unusual indications, although it is now known the Caliphate was bringing a large proportion of its army to full readiness on its northern borders. Saturday night saw more increased ACA activity.
At a briefing on Sunday morning Washington time, attended by all NATO Chiefs of Staff, this increased activity was discussed, but consultation with the Ample Annie super-AI delivered a low estimate of risk. Ample Annie pointed out that the month of Ramadan still had seven days to run, and it therefore estimated the potential for a Caliphate attack before the end of Ramadan at less than 3%. After the war began, this failure by the most sophisticated artificial intelligence the US had at its disposal caused widespread disbelief and numerous conspiracy theories. Ultimately, at the US Congressional hearings after the war, the committee concluded that super AI was still subject to the limitations of the people who programmed it. For example, US super AI prioritised American principles such as freedom and democracy, and adherence to US law, while the Caliphate programmed its super AI to prioritise the ‘values’ of its brutal dictatorship. Although Ample Annie’s tactical judgement later in the war, especially during Operation Repulse, would prove almost infallible, it nevertheless viewed the human condition through artificial eyes. It judged the probability of the Caliphate taking aggressive military action to be so small because it failed to understand the Caliphate’s true intention: that the invaders would forego even their religious imperatives for the military expediency of a wholly devastating surprise attack. Sunday 5 February saw a similar increase in activity, with more than eighty Caliphate drones patrolling a fraction beyond territorial waters.
As the
sun set over Caliphate territory on Monday evening, and Laylat al-Qadr, or the Night of Destiny in the Islamic calendar, began, the two carrier groups were ordered to maintain general stations in the highly unlikely event the Caliphate had broader designs than mere coastal defence. This order, however, would save few lives. The Royal Navy destroyer group, led by HMS Hyperion, steamed to link up with the USS Ronald Reagan to provide mutual cover. Since the war, this decision has been severely criticised by British historians, but it remains the correct naval procedure. Able Seaman First Class Bernard Rowley, a tech trouble-shooter on board the frigate HMS Argent, wrote in his memoirs Sole Survivor, ‘We didn’t think much of this order at the time. We’d close up with the Yanks, then the next day we expected to separate again. That was one of the things we did when the ragheads began to get a bit frisky. Problem was, the next day never came. For all of those lads, this was their last night on Earth.’
The USAF again directed orbiting satellites to attempt to capture Caliphate digital traffic. Unit Gamma/186282/B managed to record and decrypt a fragment in Farsi, ‘Preparedness of,’ from which little could be deciphered, before it went dark. Then, at 02.43, a NATO SkyWatcher ACA, monitoring the airspace above the Mediterranean from an altitude of thirty-thousand metres, detected a wave of ACAs emerge from the coastal regions of North Africa. It interrogated their electronic signature and confirmed they were hostile. Tracking them as they accelerated and fanned out, it notified the super AI on board the USS Ronald Regan of their presence.
On duty was the First Officer, who called battle stations. Captain Brad Burgess had conducted regular drills and now the ship’s company responded to the emergency with the utmost professionalism. The First Officer opened a secure communications channel with the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington. At 02.46, Captain Burgess, an intense and highly analytical man, arrived on the bridge to assume command. The ship’s computers took the feed from the SkyWatcher, and the holographic display in the centre of the bridge area came alive with lines of light which denoted the hostile ACAs’ search patterns. The Captain called for an estimate of how much time they had before they were discovered, and received the answer of three to seven minutes. There followed a brief consultation between the Captain and First Officer regarding whether to order all ships in the group to shut down and go dark in the hope of avoiding detection. They decided to face the threat.
A number of commentators since the war have tried to suggest that this was a mistake, and the carrier group could have avoided its fate by shutting down all non-essential operations, which would have made detection much less likely. The group consisted of the most advanced naval ships of their time, and their sleek lines offered the minimum radar profile. However, they were also formidably armed, and both the service and the crews felt fiercely proud of their abilities. It has to be borne in mind that these men and women had been trained to the highest level, and Captain Burgess commanded a ship of outstanding fighting efficiency. In addition, given the broadly accepted level of Caliphate threat, it can be no surprise that the crews of all of the ships felt confident of meeting the challenge. The futility of their decision is knowledge that comes only with the benefit of hindsight.
Although the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington could have overruled Captain Burgess, it remained a tradition in the navies that, in such ambiguous situations, captains were still the masters of their ships. At 02.51, a Caliphate ACA detected the bustle of electromagnetic activity the carrier group emitted, as the fifteen ships of the US and British Navies brought their systems to full readiness. At once it relayed the coordinates to its companions, which accelerated to converge on the NATO ships.
On board the USS Ronald Reagan, the Captain ordered the Weapons Officer to free all of its defensive systems. Links were established between the SkyWatcher and the super-AI units on each ship. These computers advised each Operations Officer on every bridge of the courses the ships should take. The Ronald Regan swung about onto an easterly heading, to present its port side to the Caliphate ACAs, approaching from the south. On its vast hull, panels slid open to reveal banks of Pulsar Mk. III laser cannons and batteries of RIM 214 Standard surface-to-air smart missiles. The canopy over its flight deck retracted as the elevators raised the first three squadrons of PeaceMaker ACAs, unmanned tactical fighter/bombers with a top speed of Mach 8. On the bridge, the display introduced a timer above the approaching streaks of light, counting down to when the Caliphate’s ACAs would be in range of the ship’s defences.
The other ships in the carrier group moved to adjust their battle formation to the arc of attack: the cruiser Cleveland and destroyers Jarvis and Mississippi steamed further south to screen the carrier, while the destroyer-escorts Canfield, Dempsey and Rhodes fell back to flanking positions. The group’s two modestly equipped supply vessels commenced a prudent withdrawal northwards. Three kilometres to the southeast, the Type-55 Royal Navy destroyer HMS Hyperion headed its three sister ships, Havoc, Hazard and Hercules, as they positioned themselves to receive the Caliphate’s ACAs. To port and starboard, the frigates Argent and Antelope took up station.
At 02.59 the Pulsar laser cannons on the Jarvis and Mississippi opened fire, at a range of ten thousand yards. Soon the Ronald Regan’s own defence systems joined them. Almost immediately, the computers warned the bridge crew of an unexpected problem: the Caliphate ACAs were absorbing more damage than they should. Existing doctrine insisted that the most advanced shielding would only withstand a maximum of twenty-five Pulsar laser shots. Currently, the lead waves of attackers had each been subject to more than fifty, and were still coming on. The RIM 214 smart missiles fared little better: all found their targets and detonated as they should have, but Caliphate losses remained at zero.
The first Caliphate ACA finally disintegrated at fewer than one thousand yards from the bows of the Jarvis. From the flight deck of the Ronald Regan, Able Seaman First Class Ira Blake later described watching the scene: ‘It was the most beautiful, the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen. The swell was slight and broken cloud drifted overhead in the mild air, the edges lit with moonlight. At the horizon, lines of light were coming on at all of the ships at crazy speeds. The Pulsars didn’t make any noise and their shots were invisible, so you just had to believe that they were actually firing. The RIMs flew out of their batteries with howling shrieks, but when they hit and after the flash, you saw the damn ACA still coming in. The first one blew up close to the Jarvis in this amazing, blinding flash, and I felt real scared because, as an armaments Jack, I knew those sons of bitches must be carrying some serious ordinance. Then another one got shot down right in front of me, felt like within touching distance, but it must have been hundreds of yards out. I was scared, hell yeah, but I was also confident. We might run out of RIMs, but the Pulsars could keep on firing forever, for as long as the ship had power.’
After twelve minutes of ferocious activity, the last of the three waves of Caliphate ACAs, sixty in all, were successfully shot down without damage. However, by this time the carrier group faced a far greater threat. While the first attackers were still approaching, the SkyWatcher reported detecting further waves of Caliphate ACAs leaving the North African coast and accelerating to Mach 8. On the Ronald Regan’s bridge, Captain Burgess requested the onboard super AI for a tactical analysis. The initial projection was a positive outcome, in that the fleet could expect to lose one ship. But as the SkyWatcher detected more and more Caliphate ACAs approaching, the projected losses began to creep upwards. If Captain Burgess had had the luxury of more time, he may have ordered the group to scatter, although this would probably not have changed the outcome. In the event, at 03.16 the first of the next wave of Caliphate ACAs came within range of the ships’ defences, by which time no crew member on any of the bridges needed a computer to tell them the likely result of this engagement.
The Ronald Regan launched all of its PeaceMaker ACAs and placed them under the SkyWatcher’s direction. For the next seventeen minutes, the carrier gr
oup defended itself to the best of its ability, but the volume of Caliphate attackers was overwhelming, numbering first in the hundreds, and then in the thousands. The SkyWatcher handled the PeaceMakers with accuracy, but a few tens of Caliphate ACAs separated off from the main attack group to deal with them. The cruiser Jarvis became the first NATO vessel to suffer a breach of its defences. A Caliphate ACA, which would shortly be given the NATO reporting name ‘Blackswan’, expelled its cargo of devastation fifty yards from the ship’s port bow.
This was the West’s first introduction to one of the Caliphate’s most lethal weapons: the ‘Spider’, a fully autonomous cylindrical bomb one metre long with eight articulated claws. These claws remained retracted until the Spider smashed into its target, whereupon they snapped open, extended, and proceeded to traverse the Spider to an ideal location for detonation. Each Blackswan carried fifty Spiders. Three are known to have destroyed the Jarvis’s Pulsar cannons, while the rest are assumed to have clattered along the hull, under the waterline, and detonated in the ship’s most vulnerable areas. In seconds the Jarvis heeled over to port, at which point the second Blackswan to survive the defences released its Spiders, which in a tumultuous series of explosions virtually eviscerated the ship’s keel.
Watching from the flight deck of the Ronald Reagan, Able Seaman First Class Ira Blake said: ‘I can’t describe the shock, I can’t get anywhere near how it felt to see that actually happen. She was a big ship, armed to the teeth, but once her defences went down, so did she. I swear it took no more than three or four Blackswans, and the waves closed over the Jarvis and it was like she’d never even been there. She was just gone.’