Onslaught

by Chris James

  He followed the little cloud of dust as the tractor continued on its way, grateful for a brief, unexpected respite from the relentless need to flee. He put his head down, gritted his teeth in anticipation of the pain from the soles of his feet, and continued walking.

  Chapter 47

  11.21 Wednesday 15 February 2062

  CRISPIN WEBB STARED at the boss’s lined face and wondered if she really was starting to age or if it was just his imagination.

  She lifted her head, looked at him, and said: “Do I look so bad, Crispin?”

  Wrong footed, Crispin stammered: “No, er, of course not, boss. You know, these are tough days for all of us.”

  Napier shrugged and got up from the couch. “In some ways, very tough; in others, less so.” She walked over to the window and looked out at the grey-slate rooftops of Whitehall which matched the slate-grey clouds. “I should thank you, the media are behaving much better now.”

  “No need to thank me, boss. You wrote the memo. You know, not all of them are ever going to be on board—”

  “Like all things in politics, I only need a majority,” she said, turning back to face him, and they shared a smile. She went on: “And the majority are on board now. Did you see that feature in The Mail today?”

  Crispin nodded, “That will make people reconsider, and World War Two is the last really serious war we were involved in, even though it was so long ago. If media outlets can keep going back to that great victory, it’ll help us. And it was funny: you know how we use the idiom ‘Dunkirk spirit’? I never knew the etymology behind it until I read that feature article today.”

  Napier shook her head: “Don’t they teach you kids anything at school these days?”

  Crispin felt relief to see a spark of the old boss, as she smiled so rarely now. He said: “I went to St. Paul’s, and some of their AI teaching assistants were very good. But that’s not what matters at the moment. The media is organised, next we need to—”

  “When’s the next cabinet meeting?”

  “Midday.”

  “Euro Leaders’ Conference?”

  “One-thirty. I managed to get you half an hour for lunch after cabinet.”

  “Thank you. Will President Coll attend the ELC?”

  “Er, hang on,” Crispin’s eye muscles twitched and his glance drifted. Then he said: “Looks like it. It’s in her calendar, even though it’ll be six-thirty over there.”

  “Good. What’s the latest on the Civil Defence groups?”

  Crispin’s eye muscles manipulated the data feeds in his lens again and he answered: “Hmm, the Chief Supers have got the working groups up and running. They’re using the police forces’ super AI to coordinate the details.”

  “How soon will they be operational?”

  “Recruitment is under way and many local community groups are responding positively to it. Training will begin next week, once suitable candidates have been selected and interviewed. This is good, boss. You’re successfully reaching out to the grass roots and that’s pushing up your approval ratings.”

  “Oh, jolly good,” Napier replied, and Crispin caught her familiar sarcasm. “That will be extremely helpful when I seek re-election… Oh, no, it won’t, because I’ve just remembered that Europe is about to be invaded and destroyed, and I am the last Prime Minister of England.”

  “Boss, you can’t know—”

  “It’s all right, Crispin,” Napier replied. “In some strange way I feel freer than I ever have. Freed from all that politicking and sniping to score points from the opposition; freed from having to waste energy worrying about so many little things that used to take on so much relative importance in peacetime. But now? Can you imagine, Crispin, that all of us here might only have a few weeks left to live, that all of this history which we inhabit and continue, the hundreds of years of tradition, all of it could be gone in the flash of Spiders’ detonations?”

  Crispin swallowed and realised he didn’t want to talk about it. It seemed too severe, too unreal. The look in his boss’s eyes unnerved him in the extreme, so he decided to do what a good Chief of Staff should do, and deflect her. “Yes, well, boss, until that actually happens, we have to keep the ship of state on an even keel—”

  “Oh, quiet,” Napier interrupted him, tucking a strand of auburn hair behind her ear. “So how are we going to raise the required funds for rearmament? Have you heard from Pamela at the Treasury? What’s the state of our gold reserves?”

  Crispin said: “We do still have over two hundred tonnes… Perhaps you would like to read her memo?”

  She shook her head. “Summarise its conclusions for me, would you?”

  Crispin knew his boss’s deep dislike for figures. She was a strong humanist and a brilliant strategist, but little irritated her more than numbers and the world of financing. He said: “We can increase the money supply in the country to accelerate national production of ACAs; we can sell gold reserves to expand our ability to build defences—”

  “I was in touch with Tom,” Napier began, recalling her verbose and evasive Chancellor of the Exchequer, “and he said something about a bond issue, or was it promissory notes? Can we do that?”

  “We can certainly try, boss,” Crispin replied, keeping the groan of frustration inside him.

  “But?”

  “Let’s put it like this: asking international investors to buy bits of paper from the government of a country over whose very existence hangs a dark cloud of uncertainty means that the return we’d have to offer to get them to bite would have to be so high that even if England survived until maturity, the pay out obligations would bankrupt the Treasury.”

  “So you’d say that’s a ‘no’ then, would you?”

  Crispin nodded. “Pam has said one idea gaining traction at the Treasury is to suspend Universal Basic Income payments to free up more—”

  Napier shook her head: “Can’t stop paying the U-Bee, that’s one of the untouchables.”

  “As I said, that’s just hearsay. Pam doesn’t expect Tom to put it forward at cabinet.”

  “Wouldn’t matter if he did, no one else would support the idea in any case so it would be a waste of time.”

  “I’ll communicate that back through Pam, just to be on the safe side.”

  Napier sighed and said: “And tell Pamela to encourage Tom to find some other working solution, even if it’s just to print more money.”

  “Very well,” Crispin replied, and then noted new data running up the feeds in his lens. “Ah, boss. Getting new data.”

  “What is it now?” Napier asked with the faintest trace of resignation.

  “More bad news, I’m afraid. The Met Office is forecasting progressively increasing high tides, up to a maximum swell of an extra two metres on Sunday morning.”

  “A metaphor for the tide of violence about to engulf Europe?”

  A small flare of panic flashed inside Crispin when he glanced into his boss’s eyes. He’d never seen her look so vulnerable yet distant; so wounded yet serene. He groped inside to find some words, any words. “Boss… We didn’t choose this. We didn’t ask for this and no one, absolutely no one, could’ve seen this coming. It’s not our fault—”

  “Of course it isn’t. We are but the custodians of the end.” She crossed the room and approached him. “I was talking to my husband in bed last night, and he suggested that I should try to be as careful and prudent as possible, lest history judge my premiership too harshly. Do you know what I said to him?”

  Crispin shook his head, barely able to draw breath.

  Napier whispered: “I said: ‘What history?’ You see, we are but custodians of the end, my dear Crispin. We have mere weeks, possibly months, and all of our history ends. And before it gets to us, before the Spiders and Lapwings level the Houses of Parliament and Downing Street, I am obliged to send thousands of innocent people to their deaths.”

  Crispin didn’t blink, but did manage to breathe in.

  Napier took a step back. “Time’s ge
tting on. Let’s get to cabinet. As you said, we still need to keep the ship of state on an even keel, especially as we sail towards the iceberg.” She turned and made for the door, and then added over her shoulder: “They did teach you about the Titanic at school, didn’t they?”

  Chapter 48

  05.48 Thursday 16 February 2062

  LIEUTENANT GENERAL STUDS Stevens stood at the rear of the underground command control room at the vast March Air Force Base in Southern California and observed the young techs monitoring the progress of the attack which had just begun in the high atmosphere above the territory of the New Persian Caliphate.

  He fought to overcome the jetlag, having arrived back from England only a few hours earlier. He’d slept fitfully on the flight, unnerved by Earl’s near-implosion after dinner on the Tuesday evening, and now felt his concentration drifting as the USAF’s PeaceMaker ACAs converged on the western rim of the Caliphate’s satellite nest. He put this down to old age: all of his physical senses seemed to desert him for a second, and he felt as though he might collapse, until they suddenly returned and he could focus once again.

  Stevens felt another stab of regret that he’d been born too late. The USAF, like England’s RAF and the air forces of every other country, employed no pilots. All air forces were entirely made up of tech specialists and maintenance teams, and their superiors. But even these were seldom needed: the tech teams monitored the super artificial intelligence units as they self-diagnosed and self-corrected any problems, and the maintenance teams merely supervised the robots which repaired and maintained the ACAs.

  Stevens had joined the USAF just as human pilots became redundant. More than two decades had passed since a human had flown a combat mission. There was still great enthusiasm for amateur flying of upgraded old aircraft at public air displays, but these remained firmly in the realms of pastime. Humans flying the last piloted planes into war against modern ACAs and expecting to win made as much sense as a caveman taking his cudgel and expecting to best a machine gun post.

  One of the Tech Sergeants sitting around the command control desk announced: “Attack wings approaching targets. Are we gonna be discreet, Sir?”

  Stevens pushed himself off the wall and strolled up to the desk, stopping behind the Tech Sergeant’s seat. “Hell no, Sarge,” he said. “We’re at war now, and there ain’t no need to pretend we’re just going for a stroll in low-Earth orbit, minding our own business. Now we can hit them head on. You send both wings in and give ’em hell.”

  “Yes, Sir,” came the satisfied reply.

  Above the large desk, a holographic representation of the battle space above Caliphate territory shimmered. At its centre sat an image of the Caliphate ‘nest’, seventy satellites in orbits ranging from one hundred and fifty kilometres to over ninety thousand kilometres, represented by gold pyramids with information panels next to them. From outside this space, several silver lines approached them from over the Atlantic Ocean, climbing rapidly.

  “Okay,” the Tech Sergeant said, “Ample Annie has decided the best target is a group of four Caliphate machines at an altitude of eight-five thousand metres, and it projects a near-certainty that their destruction will open electronic signals traffic.”

  “Monitoring stations?” Stevens asked.

  “All report active and following events as they unfold. If we breakthrough, we’ll scoop up whatever leaks out.”

  Stevens breathed easily as the confrontation unfolded. Not for the first time, his regret at missing the era of manned warplanes was tempered by the realisation that the approaching confrontation would see zero casualties. In a few moments, tonnes of intelligent metal and explosives would clash but no people would be killed.

  “Ample Annie is launching Ramparts in ten, nine, eight…”

  As the Tech Sergeant counted down, Stevens watched the holographic display, hoping for the best but fearing the worst. The US military’s super AI, Ample Annie, forecast a probability of this mission’s success—defined as any signals’ breach of the Caliphate’s airspace—at between seven and sixteen percent. But everyone from the President down wanted to do something, anything, to attack the enemy, and to be seen doing so. The instinctive reaction had been to throw hundreds of missiles, everything the USAF had, at the Caliphate’s nest, but Stevens convinced the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of Defense that making a more moderate first attack was the better tactical option.

  “Ramparts away,” called the Tech Sergeant.

  In the display, more lines of silver light left the PeaceMakers and accelerated ahead of them towards a group of four gold pyramids in the middle of the image. Stevens sensed more expectation than the attack deserved.

  “Okay,” the Tech Sergeant began again, “Ramparts at Mach seven and increasing… Enemy satellites discharging now… Ramparts taking evasive action… Exterior temperatures rising…”

  Stevens shook his head as, one after the other, the silver lines denoting the Rampart missiles disappeared. A ripple of tuts and groans went around the room as the Caliphate’s satellites vaporised the last missile.

  The Tech Sergeant reported: “All missiles destroyed; no digital breach of Caliphate airspace made.”

  Stevens hid his disappointment. “Okay, people. Thanks for all your effort. Ample Annie will have some useful data from this attack anyway, so that’s one good thing to take away.”

  The Tech Sergeant who’d narrated the brief encounter sat back in his chair and muttered: “Goddamn ragheads. We should be using our nukes. They’d piss right through their satellites’ shielding, no problem.”

  Stevens caught the comment. He went back to the man, leaned down and said to him: “You know something? Nothing would make the chief raghead happier than if we went at him with our nukes. And you know why?”

  The Tech Sergeant gulped and said: “Er—”

  “’Cos then he’d take ’em out and come at us with his own nukes. Israel tried that, and you remember what happened to Israel, don’t you?”

  Chapter 49

  14.44 Thursday 16 February 2062

  MARIA PHILLIPS WALKED past the frontage of shops along East Grinstead high street. She pulled her jacket tighter against the strong breeze that carried spats of rain. She marvelled at how her life, and the lives of everyone she knew, had changed so completely in the last few days. One week earlier, her biggest fears had centred on her older brother Mark and his near constant immersion in gaming worlds. She also recalled some minor health scare concerning her father, but only that it involved him having to make a few dietary adjustments.

  Now, as she walked towards her home, she saw two police officers and a municipal manager supervising a small device about the size of a dog as it trundled slowly along the road. She took out her slate, spun it open, and the screen told her the device checked the status of super-AI node connections under the road. Maria shook her head when she realised that the super AI could do that itself with almost one hundred percent reliability.

  “That’s how sure they want to be,” she murmured to herself.

  A few minutes later, she arrived at her home, one dwelling in a uniform row of semi-detached houses, anonymous like so many others in the streets around hers. The door opened at her approach as she looked up to make sure Billy still sat on the ridge tiles on the roof. She smiled and recalled the day she’d first seen the large wooden rabbit her father had carved for her as a birthday gift. But that was so many years ago. Billy was weathered now, the brown wood having faded to a dirty grey, but she loved him still.

  She went through the door, glancing at her slate to see that only her mother and brother Mark were at home. “Hi, Mum,” she called out.

  Jane emerged from the living room and hugged her as the front door slid closed again.

  Maria saw the redness in her mother’s eyes. “What’s happened?”

  Jane sighed, “It’s your brother.”

  “Mark?”

  “Of course. It would hardly be Martin.”

  Maria foll
owed her mother through the hall and into the kitchen. “Do you really think he will join the Armed Forces?”

  Jane put the kettle on. “I expect so. As the oldest, Martin’s always been the most responsible of you lot.”

  “So what’s the matter with Mark?”

  “A package arrived for him.”

  “What was it?”

  Jane put two mugs on the surface and sighed. “He’s gone and got himself a total immersion suit.”

  “But he agreed he wouldn’t do that,” Maria exclaimed, horrified. “Depending on the model, he could spend days in a Universe at a time.”

  Her mother shuddered. “And do you know how they do that? The suit has got… ‘sacks’ where he’ll… go to the toilet, which he’ll have to empty when he does come back. Really, it’s disgusting.”

  Maria felt a flash of sympathy and decided not to tell her mother what happened at the World Gaming Championships held every year in Australia, where such issues had been known to decide winners and losers in a number of categories. “But how did he get the money for that? I never thought he’d—”

  “He was here, not twenty minutes ago. He was angry. I asked him the same thing.”

  “And?”

  Maria’s mother poured the boiling water into the mugs, put the kettle back on its UG point, and sniffed. “He said he’d finally achieved sponsorship. And his new sponsor paid for the suit.”