by Chris James
Armoured formations received similar attention, as NATO could not afford a repetition of the lessons learnt during the Caliphate’s swift subjugation of Europe. Arthur Ford, a twenty-seven-year-old tank company commander in the newly recreated 4th Royals, wrote to his brother in the infantry: ‘They’re assigning variant Falaretes to all of the Challengers as well as upgrading the software. The Yanks were full of themselves with how effective their Abrahams are, until the CO reminded them that we invented the Falarete, which was going to make them last as long as a whole minute before they brewed up.’ This improved technology necessitated a comprehensive review of tactics: super AI forecasts produced innumerable scenarios concerning how Caliphate warriors might defend the territory they had gained. Any attempt to retake the European mainland had to begin with a clear plan of combining NATO forces in the most effective manner. Scythes, battlefield Pulsars, tanks and infantry would be required to attack the defenders in a manner which would minimise flesh-and-blood casualties. Certainly, Sir Terry Tidbury and the other generals of May 2063 had no intention of restaging similar beach landings as in June 1944. Repulse called for the Scythes to clear significant coastal landing areas before land-based armour and troops could be deployed by air.
Much of the spring of 2063 was taken up with these tactical and strategic considerations. All the while, NATO forces built up: on 2 May the final designs of the Scythe ACAs were approved and the machines went into full production; the British Army expanded to a size not seen since the First World War; more Atlantic Convoys survived Caliphate interference and docked at British ports, full of equipment, munitions and US Army troops. The US Marines finally discarded the failed exoskeletons. As Gen. Pearce later told the US Congressional hearings: ‘Maybe we’d all seen too much goddam science fiction in the movies, I don’t know. What we did know was that those exoskeletons were a death-trap. In the early part of the war we lost too many good Marines because of the mechanical shortcomings. Oh, sure, they looked great. Problem was, they just didn’t work in a real battle situation. Jesus, we’d spent billions designing and testing these things, but against the targeted smart bullets the enemy used to freeze up the joints, those boys might as well have been naked.’
III. REPULSE COMPROMISED
On 4 May the head of MI5, David Perkins, crossed the river Thames in London to meet Sir Terry Tidbury at the Field Marshall’s headquarters in the Ministry of Defence. He carried news which would again alter the course of events. Although both men in their respective memoirs recalled this meeting with different impressions, they agreed on the key development: the English diplomat in Beijing, who had supplied the copy of Zayan’s data-pod before the war, now told London that knowledge of Repulse had reached the Chinese government, and he assumed therefore that Tehran would also shortly find out. Perkins explained that the mole could not provide evidence without compromising his diplomatic cover. Sir Terry was reluctant to take action without certain evidence. As he wrote: ‘I told Perkins it wasn’t the cleverest thing to go to the PM and cabinet and begin a conversation with: “We’ve heard a rumour…” By this point, I had developed a measure of respect for the head of MI5, but this war didn’t offer much scope for espionage.’
For his own part, Perkins admitted the problem when he wrote after the war, in Are the Ghosts Real?: ‘The fact that the Caliphate was a completely sealed society meant the older methods of subterfuge were no longer available. All of the intelligence services were left one stage removed. We constantly had to rely on data coming out of third countries. Decades of cost-cutting also meant we had to depend on allies passing us information, and sometimes I trusted them less than I trusted the Caliphate. The mole in Beijing was one person I thought we could probably trust. The data-pod and other information before the war stood in his favour, and we had a protocol set up in case he was turned. I didn’t think he’d pass on misinformation without our knowing it.’
Prime Minister Napier was informed and decided to call an emergency War Cabinet meeting for that evening. Her aide, Crispin Webb, confided to his diary: ‘I’ve told the boss before that having a War Cabinet meeting in the evening is not a good idea, because everyone is testier at that time of day. It’s clear she trusts Perkins and I think that annoys the Field Marshall. The other military types agreed with Sir Terry, that we shouldn’t do anything without something concrete from the contact in Beijing. I thought that was the right thing too, but the boss wouldn’t let it go. Liam [Burton, Defence Minister] suggested we come up with some insurance in case the Caliphate finds out about Repulse, couching it in those snobby phrases like, “Perhaps it would be prudent if we took under consideration the potential of a leak,” and similar. The issue pinged back and forth, and I saw Andrew [Soames, Home Office] getting fidgety because, as he told me before the meeting began, he wanted to bring up the issue of making the black-out apply to the whole country. Finally Liam himself suggested a clever little answer. Sometimes I wonder if the crafty bastard isn’t after the boss’s job.’
The ‘clever little answer’ was to approach the Nordic countries and request their support for a diversionary operation, which would consist mainly in generating excessive electromagnetic noise over their territories to suggest that any potential invasion of mainland Europe by NATO would come from there, rather than the British Isles. Codenamed Operation Cloud Cover, this would utilise the black-out precautions already in place over southern English airspace, and draw attention to an imaginary army in Norway and Sweden; provided, however, the leaders of these countries would agree to place their own populations at potential risk of a Caliphate pre-emptive attack.
Two days later, Sir Terry had to endure a difficult conversation with Gen. Pakla. His 1st Polish Battalion now boasted over forty thousand troops, as it had proved popular with the English descendants of the Poles who flocked to the country in the first decade of the century. Although English, many young men and women were attracted by the exoticism of having Polish grandparents, and decided to join the 1st Polish. Gen. Pakla confronted Sir Terry with the information that he had been planning to put forward precisely this idea for his own battalion’s deployment. Sir Terry wrote: ‘I was nonplussed, to say the least. By this time we’d had dozens of meetings concerning the structure of Repulse. Pakla knew and had accepted that the 1st Polish would land in Belgium and proceed eastwards parallel with the Baltic coastline. And he’d have German formations to help him hold his right flank. Now he announced he wanted his battalion to move to Sweden and jump straight into Poland because of the Russian threat. I tried to calm him down, at which point he blustered: “Remember, Russia may not be the enemy, but it is an enemy.” I told him we had to give priority to getting a successful foothold. Besides, if the Norwegians and Swedes declined our request regarding Operation Cloud Cover, they’d hardly agree to allow the 1st Polish to use them as a stepping stone. This seemed to calm this bulldog of a soldier down somewhat.’
Gen. Pakla’s desire to reach his homeland as soon as possible was not merely a manifestation of patriotic pride. A question mark remained over Russia’s intentions. In the media Russia and the Caliphate pleaded a mutual respect, but western governments received reliable intelligence that war between them was a material risk; not at the European border with Poland, but further south, in the Caucuses on the other side of the Black Sea. Here were millions of Muslims who may or may not prefer to live under the Third Caliph’s benevolence, but who harboured a centuries-old hatred of their Russian overlords unmatched even by the Poles. Nevertheless, and as will be shown below, once Repulse began, securing Europe’s eastern borders would not transpire to carry any greater threat than expelling the Caliphate.
On 7 May Napier had a private conference with the prime ministers of Norway and Sweden, who responded that they would have to consult their respective parliaments for approval. Napier requested that this be done in camera, as secrecy was paramount. History does not record the Nordic reactions to this somewhat obvious observation.
On the sa
me day, Sir Terry Tidbury also met Gen. Hastings to discuss the objective of disabling the Caliphate’s ACA production plant at Tazirbu. As Sir Terry later described it in In the Eye of the Storm: ‘Hastings was in his element. He said we had two choices: either we conduct it as an invasion, which according to him would require three battalions and support units, and upwards of ten thousand Scythes. In any case, even if the objective was achieved, it would likely result in annihilation for the troops involved. The second option was a small unit, to travel to the facility undetected and then wreak as much havoc as they could. He told me he’d need a submarine to drop his men and equipment at the coast. The key was to avoid discovery. To achieve this, his unit would replicate outdated technology which could not be detected by conventional means. His research showed that a motorcycle called the Triumph Bonneville T-140 would provide the most secure transport. On arriving at the target, an assessment would have to be made. Hastings had thought this through, and deduced that the production facilities at Tazirbu must consist of several separate plants covering many square kilometres. If a small unit were to do sufficient damage to knock the facility out for more than a few hours, and assuming that I would not allow him to take a handful of battlefield nuclear weapons with him, he’d require a new kind of weapon.’
Sir Terry’s credulity became more and more stretched. He continues: ‘Hastings then popped a data-pod into the port on my desk and brought up a holo-graph of a remarkable thing: a mine which emitted ultralow sound waves. I was speechless that he could have thought of something like that.’ So began one of the most famous episodes of the war. Much has already been written about Hastings and his sonic mines, using technology either decades out of date or discarded in favour of more modern, and destructive, equivalents. Through his surprise and disbelief, Sir Terry saw the potential, gave Hastings permission to carry on, and ensured he would have all the support the British Army could give him. Hastings began the realisation of his audacious plan.
IV. THE ‘MEDWAY INCIDENT’
English airfields took delivery of the first complements of Scythe X-7s during the second week of May. On 13 May there occurred an event over which historians of the war still argue. Caliphate forces in France had not mounted a serious assault on the British Isles since the widespread deployment of the Falarete. Throughout the winter, temperatures and other weather conditions had been sufficiently adverse to deter major operations. Occasionally the Caliphate did launch Blackswans on harassing missions to test the defences, which resulted in their comprehensive destruction. On the night of 12 May, however, a local battalion-level commander in Normandy decided his army now possessed enough replacement ACAs to attempt an invasion. As was established after the war, the commander and three of his regiments’ elite liaison officers hailed not only from the same district, but the same village. With the Caliphate’s normal structure for ensuring compliance among its warriors thus undermined by this geographical quirk, the four men agreed that to mount a successful invasion of the British Isles would lead to great riches. This is debateable. When aggregated, data scanned from warriors injured during Repulse prove a key tenant of its training was to limit independent initiative in warriors who had not received an extensive education to begin with. Nevertheless, the four men, all of whom would die during Operation Repulse, must have felt sufficiently assured of their decision to proceed; the commander had more than forty thousand warriors in his battalion who obtained information and orders only through the military chain of command.
At 06.22, the first waves of Blackswans left Normandy. Less than two minutes later Falarete batteries on the south coast of England opened fire and the Caliphate machines began falling into the English Channel. Forty-two-year-old civil defence officer Nick Rattenburg, responsible for the northern sector of the county of Kent, later told the media: ‘I don’t think it surprised anyone. We’d been training for just such an attack for months. The occasional waves they sent over only served to give us target practice. What were they thinking, sending a lousy thirty-k machines when we’d trained assuming five times that number? But with those kinds of numbers, I suppose we were bound to get a couple of malfunctions.’
The malfunctions to which Rattenberg refers happened when the battle reached the height of its intensity. A number of Falarete batteries failed to engage hostile machines, despite receiving confirmation from the SkyWatchers high above (the SkyMasters were still subject to final tests). Fifteen Blackswans breached the defences and released their Spiders over the Medway Towns, on the north Kent coast. The attack had only been in progress for eleven minutes, thus the civilian population did not know about it until the Spiders began detonating around them. Mother-of-three May Bishop, sleeping in a house in Gillingham, described waking up that morning: ‘The first explosion brought me out of sleep in a sudden panic: the attack we’d all been waiting for. The second shook my house and broke my bedroom window. I pulled open the curtains and saw the Medway Hospital opposite the green on fire like some Wagnerian version of hell. More explosions, further away. We all knew how the Spiders worked: finding the weakest part of a building before blowing up. I saw the nurses’ accommodation blocks collapse. There used to be six, each of which was home to ninety nurses. Now they were huge plumes of smoke in the early sunlight, with flickers of flame in between. I ran for my kids, just to give them one last hug and say goodbye before a Spider chose our street.’
Bishop and her family were fortunate to live in a location which the super AIs controlling the Spiders deemed low priority. Casualties amounted to six thousand killed and twice that number injured, with significant damage done to hospitals and schools, and the three bridges over the Medway destroyed. The Civil Defence Authority announced an investigation to establish why the defences had failed, but controversy exploded the next day when The Guardian media outlet claimed that Rochester military airfield was equipped with operational Scythe X-7s but had been ordered not to deploy them. The issue concerned a window of a mere seven minutes. Communication records showed the duty officer was informed of the Falaretes’ failure at 06.25. The Blackswans arrived and released their Spiders at 06.32. The subsequent official investigation agreed with the duty officer’s testimony that the X-7s’ power units took eight minutes to reach full reaction, and thus could not have engaged the Blackswans in time.
There it might have ended, but for a technician who later claimed that a test flight had been scheduled for 06.30 that morning, and in a hanger on the north side of the airfield two X-7s were indeed powered up and ready to fly. However, the technician made his claim when drunk on the alcohol purchased by a journalist who worked for a disreputable outlet, which placed notable doubt over its veracity. At length, the British Army promised a full inquiry after the war, by which time the duty officer, the technician, and everyone else connected to the event had perished.
Fuel was added to the fire after the war as no notable personality who published their memoirs mentioned the incident. This allowed some victims’ relatives to claim that the people of the Medway Towns were sacrificed to keep knowledge of the Scythe X-7’s existence secret from the Caliphate. In addition, there remain confidential government papers from this period which were not released under the thirty-year rule. These papers, mostly the minutes of situation briefings dated during May 2063, have a higher level of protection and will not be made public until every person mentioned in them has died.
Ultimately, however, there is case for both sides of the argument. If it is true that X-7s were in fact powered up and could have been used in the few minutes available to prevent unnecessary loss of life, then that is a question of conscience for those who declined to give the order to deploy them. On the other hand, it is understandable that NATO had to protect the element of surprise regarding the existence of the X-7 and the X-9, a not inconsiderable advantage in military terms. Indeed, it can be argued that the security of Operation Repulse demanded that the Scythes could not be deployed that bright spring morning. One does not have to look to
o far into history to find similar examples of warlords who had to make comparable decisions.
As Sir Terry Tidbury noted in his introduction to In the Eye of the Storm: ‘There is an old cliché that “War is hell”, which deserves not to be as meaningless as the words suggest. I’d devoted my life to the army, and until the Caliphate attacked the navies, I never thought I would be the general to face the first fatal threat to Europe and the British Isles in over a century. But it was something, however unlikely, for which the British Army had trained me, and like every general in history, I knew my country could stand or fall on my decisions. And I had to make some truly heartbreaking decisions involving the lives of thousands of people. I gave those decisions the respect of my entire being, for I did not wish one single individual to die a needless death. But the war had to be won; history itself depended on it.’