Repulse: Europe at War 2062-2064

by Chris James

  The authorities elected not to issue a general warning to the affected populations. The reasons given afterwards were twofold: there remained only minutes before battle was joined, during which time few citizens would be able to reach safety; and if the defences did not perform adequately, having roads full of fleeing people would add to the confusion. (It is worth noting that in the US at this time, autonomous, super AI-controlled freeway systems only existed in the densest conurbations; much of the country’s road network could still be used by individuals controlling their own vehicles themselves.) Although this decision was correct, and probably did save lives on the night, it also did much to fuel the numerous conspiracy theories afterwards.

  In 10/13, Fisher describes the first city to suffer: ‘The Pulsar batteries located on the Carter Dam and sluices separating Lower Bay and Upper Bay opened fire at ten after four. The Caliphate machines knew exactly what they needed to do. For ten years, the Carter Dam had kept the rising sea out of New York City while managing the flow of the Hudson. Now flashes and explosions lit the sky and ripped the night air. The formation broke apart and fifty Spiders from a single Blackswan smashed into the Pulsar canons, destroying them. The following waves of Blackswans released their Spiders at five-hundred yards’ distance from the main dam wall. These dove into the water - the blue glow from their shielding could be seen under the waves - and dispersed to form three diamond patterns across the width of the wall at three-hundred-yard intervals. They detonated against the dam wall in this formation, causing numerous cracks. The subsequent new ACAs also dove into the sea, where they descended to the centres of the diamonds and exploded. The third wave finally broke the wall, and the Atlantic Ocean rushed in to inundate New York.’

  The flooding did not transpire to be as bad as the authorities first feared. The Carter Dam’s main function was storm defence: sea levels had risen an average of two metres globally in the preceding fifty years. Many lives were initially saved with the simple expedient of climbing up floors in high buildings, with which New York was amply furnished. In outer-lying regions, the speed and pressure of the water did the greatest damage and caused the most casualties. The night’s other targets fared little better. All of Philadelphia, New Haven and Providence endured breached flood defences which led to thousands of casualties as well as ruinous dislocation for hundreds of affected communities on the eastern seaboard.

  However, this transpired only to be the Caliphate’s opening salvo of the night. At the same time as these formations of enemy ACAs went speeding past the George Washington carrier group, a lone Indonesian satellite high above the central Atlantic noted the brief passage of some two hundred and fifty Caliphate machines as they emerged from the impenetrable electronic fog which smothered Caliphate territory in North Africa. Established after the war to have left from mobile launchers on the coast, in less than a minute they arrived at the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands. They proceeded to bore explosively into the western flank of a volcanic ridge called Cumbre Vieja. At 04.23, a vast section of the flank separated from the island and crashed into the sea.

  This collapse proceeded to generate the largest tsunami in recorded history. The wave began by smothering the other Canary Islands in a wall of seawater which was later estimated at a minimum height of four hundred metres. Unsurprisingly, there were no survivors from among the population of a few thousand banana and tobacco farmers. These people were mostly descendants of the few who chose to remain in the face of the Caliphate’s expansion in the 2040s, when millions left the islands.

  Thereafter, the tsunami radiated out across the Atlantic Ocean, losing height as it went, but arriving on the eastern seaboard of America as the people there were trying to come to terms with the breach of their sea defences. Fisher lamented in 10/13: ‘The time arrived for the American people to face Armageddon. Everyone from the president down knew what was coming. The word spread far and wide throughout the agonising hours of the wave’s approach. For millions, flight was impossible, panic pointless. In many ways this was worse than a nuclear attack: there would be no blast, no radiation, no enemy to obliterate in reply; just a massive, unstoppable wall of water two hundred feet high sweeping over the land.’

  Fisher spends much of 10/13 detailing with exemplary precision the towns, cities and districts inundated during the morning. Desperate superlatives describe the seemingly endless destruction and loss of life. However, the aftermath rubbed salt into the wound in the most breathtaking manner: ‘As the chaos unfolded, President Coll put out a press statement laying the blame squarely at the Third Caliph’s feet. But almost at the same time, the Third Caliph’s Council of Elders declared publicly the tsunami to be an act of God. The Caliphate took responsibility for the attack which breached the dams, but claimed that the western flank of the Cumbre Vieja falling into the Atlantic was caused by a volcanic eruption which had nothing to do with the Caliphate, but which constituted “divine retribution” on the infidel.’

  In the days following this flood of biblical measure, the global media flared with evidence and opinion. Seismic monitoring stations in the US, India and Chile insisted the collapse of the Cumbre Vieja’s western flank had been caused by a carefully orchestrated sequence of artificial explosions. Similar facilities inside the Caliphate, and from China and Russia, countered that the collapse was the result of a natural, undersea eruption, even going as far as to produce their own false analyses in support. Independent geological experts conceded that an earlier eruption on La Palma in 2057 could have weakened the previously identified crack, but the islands’ proximity to Caliphate territory dissuaded western scientists from investigating if this had indeed been the case. The Indonesian government, holding the only evidence which could resolve the issue, demurred releasing it until five years after the war to avoid upsetting Beijing.

  At the time, with contradictory evidence vying for acceptance, many conspiracy theories exploded into the public discourse. In the first place, the Caliphate’s attack on the American sea defences defied any tactical or strategic reasoning. With an American carrier group escorting a sizable relief convoy to the British Isles, the Caliphate chose to ignore a valid military target in favour of softening up flood defences as a prelude to a catastrophic act of divine intervention which was nothing of the sort.

  It bears repeating that at this stage of the war, pressure had been increasing on President Coll to end involvement in the European theatre. Many voices in the Republican-controlled Congress called for prioritising US defence needs over spending precious resources on what most considered was a lost cause. As global public opinion divided into two distinct and opposed camps, a number of respected media outlets fell victim to the hysteria and paranoia: from comparisons to Hitler’s 1941 declaration of war to the claim the English provoked the Caliphate to ensure the US remained in the war, to a ridiculous suggestion that the Democrats had themselves somehow engineered the tsunami to improve Coll’s approval ratings. These and many other intentionally misleading public discourses promulgated by those allied to the Caliphate’s destruction of Europe did a great deal to obfuscate the former’s direct involvement in causing the western flank of Cumbre Vieja to plunge into the Atlantic.

  The tsunami not only inundated the eastern seaboard of America from Nova Scotia to Florida, in some places up to a hundred kilometres inland, but it proceeded to cause havoc to most Caribbean Islands as well as the coastal areas of Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and northern Brazil. By Sunday 15 October, American shock had fused into anger. If the Third Caliph’s objective was to promote hatred, then he succeeded well.

  The US Congressional hearing after the war which focused on the tsunami heard many harrowing accounts from survivors and first responders. Typical was thirty-eight-year-old fire-fighter chief Ken Bell, based in Wilmington, North Carolina, who described the range of problems he and his men faced: ‘We all knew it was the worst disaster in American history, but I told everyone we had to concentrate on doing our jobs. We had hard-s
kin boats taking survivors from downtown to the New Hanover High School, as the building withstood the initial wave and the second and third floors were clear. Also, I made the school the central treatment point because choppers could land on the roof and evacuate serious cases. But downtown was a real mess. The bodies were starting to bloat, and I knew they’d add to the health hazards. We had homeowners trying to get out in soft-skin inflatable boats. They worked fine till they scrapped the top of a twisted piece of metal just below the waterline. We had folks calling and shouting all over the place - way more than we could deal with. The worst were the freaks. I saw one guy standing on the roof of a house. He was armed to the teeth and screaming that he was gonna kill all the Muslims in the whole world. He kept shooting into the sky and it unnerved us all - those shells had to come down someplace. Lots of folks freaked out, I guess. At one house, we had two children - a brother and sister both under ten - who looked terrified and told us mommy and daddy were under the water.’

  Bell was only one of thousands of similar emergency workers who found themselves obliged to cope with a disaster to which few in positions of authority had given material consideration. Many Senators and Congress members demanded an immediate and emphatic nuclear response, until they were reminded of Israel’s fate the previous February. While the Caliphate could not yet inflict total destruction on the mainland US, any nuclear-armed attack on the former’s territory was likely to be swatted aside.

  Inside the White House, the Oval Office became a desperate place. Wanda Morton, an aide to President Coll, described her memories more than thirty years later: ‘Those were just the worst days of my life, the worst days for all of us. It wasn’t all the people who lost their lives, or the loved ones left behind to somehow cope, it wasn’t even all those Republican bastards trying to score points off the President, hinting that she somehow let it happen. You see, till then we still saw the Caliphate as a containable threat. Sure, Europe was finished and there wasn’t a heck of a lot we could do about it. But we also knew that their next targets would be Asia or India or Africa. Our best projections at that time, which I remember because I had access to the data, concerned a massive nuclear exchange with India or China, and our problem would be drifting radioactivity. None of us really thought we’d suffer such a direct attack, and the way the Caliphate got four billion Muslims to believe that Allah really had struck at the infidel only added to the shock. After the shock, I remember the depression. Poor Maddie suffered as much as any of us: it happened on her watch, and we lost a lot of time with her reproaching herself for all the what-might-have-beens. I don’t think, till her dying day, Maddie ever understood it wasn’t her fault. You had to be mighty pragmatic to realize that America simply wasn’t that powerful anymore. It broke my heart, to be real honest. It broke a lot of hearts.’

  Whatever the Third Caliph’s strategic objective, unsurprisingly the tsunami placed the United States implacably in favour of retribution. Throughout October, a series of NATO meetings indentified Operation Repulse as the plan which had the most likelihood of expelling the Caliphate from Europe, containing its expansionist designs, and potentially allowing a reckoning. In the meantime, swathes of the US eastern seaboard resembled a catastrophic disaster area hitherto only seen in Asia and Africa. However, in a show of resilience which typified the country’s underlying strength of character, millions of US citizens rushed eastwards to assist while millions more donated aid. As Hayden Fisher noted in 13/10: ‘Probably the most successful of Coll’s recovery initiatives was the Orphan Placement Program, which helped find new homes all over the country for more than ten thousand orphaned kids. Many more folks who came to help the clean-up decided to stay for good. It may be a little ironic that the tsunami led to such a migration from west to east, but everyone needed to find something positive in the worst disaster in American history. On the other hand, two months afterwards more than forty thousand victims still hadn’t been identified.’

  From NATO’s perspective, of equal concern was the damage done to the US Navy’s eastern bases. Most installations at the Atlantic Fleet’s home base at Norfolk, Virginia, suffered from inundation with thousands of tonnes of material destined for the British Isles lost. In one notorious image, the tsunami lifted the USS Stark from her moorings and deposited her with a severe list, portside embedded in an R&D hanger. However, in another example of American resilience, the entire base and its facilities would be fully operational again in only six weeks.

  In the narrative of the war, the Atlantic tsunami of 13 October 2062 did little to affect the course of the conflict bar ensure the Americans remained as committed to supporting their NATO allies as they had hitherto been. Despite the voices of dissent in political circles, it is highly unlikely Coll would have withdrawn US support for the British Isles. With the British having successfully stalled the Caliphate’s advance, there is every probability that American support would have continued without the Caliphate causing the worst natural disaster in human history. In an ironic twist, unknown to all except the most senior NATO leaders, Atlantic Convoy SE-117, which the Caliphate’s ACAs bypassed on their way to attack American flood defences, was carrying the first shipment of the rare earth element europium, a key component in muon-catalysed fusion power units. The convoy docked without further interference at Southampton on Monday 16 October.

  III. AN AUDACIOUS PLAN

  Meanwhile, NATO’s picture of the structure and internal workings of the Caliphate continued to take on greater definition. Intelligence gained from the brain scans of injured warriors was cross-referenced with data collected from eavesdropping facilitated by the corridors SHF burners carved through the Caliphate’s jamming. As Sir Terry Tidbury described it in In the Eye of the Storm: ‘Quickly I realised a key problem for the success of Repulse would be the Caliphate’s weapons’ production facilities. Their main ACA-manufacturing plant at Tazirbu had to be neutralised before any invasion of the continent began. Of course, this meant an incursion over the Mediterranean and covering around six hundred kilometres of desert. I spent a long time mulling this problem. Then I remembered a fellow who had been at Charterhouse with me, called Maximilian Hastings. We had got along well enough at the time, but for some reason did not stay in touch even though we both went into the army. In a few mess halls I had heard his name mentioned, usually in connection with a radical if slightly ridiculous idea. A couple of weeks before Christmas 2062, I gave him a call and invited him to lunch. He understood the problem at once and seemed to fit the bill for what I had in mind.’

  General Hastings has a claim to be one of the most colourful characters of the war. A lean, diffident man forty-five years old in 2062, his military record was exemplary apart from certain predilections for unorthodox ideas. During a NATO training exercise some years previously, he overrode the super AI controlling the attacking group of ACAs to control them himself manually, and still managed to win the mock battle. When a subordinate asked him how he had done it, the general is alleged to have replied: ‘Bloody computers can’t be programmed with a primal desire to win that’s evolved over millions of years - but they are quite good at silly games.’

  At the lunch with Hastings in early December, Sir Terry outlined the problem: the Caliphate could not be allowed to continue producing armaments unhindered if Repulse were to have any chance of success. However, given the extensive defences that must be employed around its key installations, interfering with them was a challenge of the highest order. Sir Terry recorded that Hastings merely listened, ate, thought for some moments, and replied that he would ‘deal with it’. In the New Year, Sir Terry received a list of items and personnel Hastings would require. When Sir Terry questioned him on his plan, he declined to explain. Sir Terry elected to trust him, a choice which would transpire to be the correct one.

  IV. THE LONG WINTER OF 2062/63

  The winter of 2062/63 saw much freezing weather and little military action. From November to April, the Caliphate dominated the European mainla
nd, and as would become clear after the war, the survivors’ ranks were progressively thinned through cold and starvation. On 4 January 2063 a depression over France brought the mercury as low as minus twenty-three degrees Centigrade in places. Brain scans of injured Caliphate warriors later taken during Repulse would describe in intimate detail their disdain for such weather. However, at the time the population of the British Isles remained under the threat of attack at a moment’s notice. Typical was nineteen-year-old fire-watcher Oscar Knowles, who spent many long nights in Rochester Cathedral waiting for an assault which would not arrive until the spring. He recalled: ‘The stress kept you on edge constantly. At absolutely any moment you knew the super AI could light up the readouts with a thousand of the bastards incoming. Sure, the Falaretes were there, ready to nail them, but you only needed one Blackswan to get through the screen, and that meant a thousand dead - what if one of those was someone you loved and cared for?’

  Although at the time many commentators saw the lengthening silence as portending something worse than that which had gone before, NATO intelligence quickly revealed that the Caliphate military had already begun developing countermeasures to deal with the Falarete. Over the winter, western super AIs produced a wealth of potential forecasts based on giving due weight to all of the variables that the future directions of the war offered. One trouble-shooting technician bemoaned to his friend: ‘We have to deal with ridiculous percentages here. It’s worse than poker: there might only be a one-in-two-and-a-half-million chance of a royal flush being dealt, but they still get dealt. We can’t discount any of the tons of potential outcomes. It’s giving me a headache.’