The Caliphate Invasion

by Michael Beals

  “That’s even sillier. It’s a reactionless drive, so no way to cause some nuclear explosion, or whatever you’re fantasizing about. Besides, it’s a moot point anyway. This thing is too heavy to lift off again. Every Caliphate ship that landed on Terra’s surface is stuck here permanently. That’s why they left one in orbit. Why waste your time destroying a derelict? Now, the shuttle bay is this way and not nearly so heavily guarded…”

  Kat stepped up to the wall and circled her finger around a point several decks below them. “What’s with this small cluster of blue fuckers?”

  For the first time, the engineer’s confidence faded. “Huh. I don’t know. I don’t have access to the details, but the system labels it, uh… I guess ‘tactical operations center’ would be the English equivalent, whatever that means. Is that some military term?”

  Kat and Dore shared a savage grin. The Spetsnaz commander clapped them on the back and chortled.

  “Can my boys still take point?”

  “No, I’ve got a better idea. You take half the team and secure that shuttle bay. I’ll take the other half and hit the Tactical Command Post on the way to meet you. Don’t worry; you aren’t missing anything. This is a simple in-and-out raid.”

  Dore snagged a satchel charge from one of the Russians. “But we will need all the boom boom gear, if you don’t mind.”

  The Spetsnaz commander’s eyes twinkled. “I tell you what. We’ll split the cache and see who can leave the biggest impression on our hosts.”

  Final Caliphate Tactical Operations Center

  After two minutes of stumbling through blackened corridors, Kat and her team found their target. At the far rear of the group of commandos, Kat whispered to her newfound guide. “I’m Kat, by the way.”

  The future man flashed a lopsided grin. “Abraham Washington. It’s a pleasure and all that.”

  “Excuse me? What now?”

  Washington beamed. “Yeah, I know it’s an odd name. My parents were fundamentalist Americans. Good people though, despite their beliefs. I suppose I’m technically an American myself, but I haven’t attended a town hall meeting in ages.”

  Kat peered around the corner and covered their rear, but she couldn’t help chuckling over her alien rifle stock. “Okay… I suppose it’s good to know there’s still an America in the future. Tell me, did we ever have a female president?”

  “Sure. Plenty of local congresses elect women as presidents. Oh! You mean America like a political entity. No, no. Nations exist in my time, but they’re more a philosophical and spiritual thing than having anything to do with geography or culture. Nation-states aren’t exactly a practical way to manage people spread out among a thousand inhabited planets and scattered across fifty-thousand light years. I guess you can think of countries in the future like religions. Of course, most of their members would take offense to that dirty word…”

  Kat shook her head. “You sound so crazy that I’m beginning to believe you.”

  Without warning, all hell broke loose ahead of them and around the corner. Kat recognized the booms of frag grenades, but since both sides were now using the same guns, she had no way to know who was winning.

  That didn’t seem to be an issue for Washington. He stared off at nothing and whistled. “Wow. Your people didn’t lose a man.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The surveillance net is back online. Looks like they’re on to me, too. I’ve lost admin privileges to the entire network. Give them a few more minutes and I won’t even be able to connect through my backdoor. Whatever your boss plans to do, he better do it quick.”

  Dore’s voice cut in over her radio. “All clear. Kat, bring your boyfriend up here.”

  Kat and Washington hustled into the operations center. The place was a jumbled mess of storage containers and spare parts. Except for the holographic displays in the middle of the large room, Kat would have pegged the command center as a particularly neglected high school locker room. At least if the room wasn’t littered with bodies.

  “Hey, spaceman. What the hell is this?” Dore stood facing the largest display and waved a hand over his head.

  Kat stepped over an all-too-human “alien” corpse and dragged the reluctant Washington deeper inside. He didn’t say anything. Dore fixed him with an icy stare.

  “Is this what I think it is? That’s clearly our army. So what are all these blue triangles? There must be thousands of them. Those can’t be…”

  Washington nodded solemnly. “Yes, those are what you people call drones. The Caliphate’s been pumping them out of the nano-assemblers like crazy since they landed and had access to plenty of raw materials. They’ve been stashing them out of sight in the abandoned sections of each city.”

  Dore froze with a detonator in hand and watched the unfolding disaster. As the coalition army advanced on all fronts and committed the last of their reserves, the blue triangles leapt to action.

  “My God. We walked right into it… You! You son of a bitch! You knew this was an ambush, didn’t you?”

  Washington shied away from the massacre. “What could I do that your whole army couldn’t? You’re the ones that served up your planet on a platter. If you’d stayed dispersed, the Caliphate would have spent months hunting your soldiers down and destroying them piecemeal. Given time, you might have figured out a way to counter their technology. Instead, you people just made it easy by coming out in the open and throwing everything you had at them. Damnit, you’ve got no one to blame but yourselves!”

  Kat ignored their exchange. She couldn’t take her eyes off a much smaller projection in the corner. “Washington, what is this station?”

  He glanced at the screen she obsessed over. The display highlighted several trajectories in orbit. Mostly debris from destroyed satellites, but one mammoth sausage stood out.

  “That’s the last Caliphate ship still in space, isn’t it?”

  “Uh, yeah. I don’t have access, but you’re looking at some type of ad-hoc weapon targeting station. Remember, this isn’t a warship. Just a converted merchantman. I’d heard a rumor that the Caliphate had fashioned some crude particle accelerators to the hull. This must be one of them.”

  “Really? Fire control, hmm. How do I work it?”

  Washington slapped the console. “You can’t, not without a neural implant and a valid login. Besides, why would you want to? We’re wasting time. We need to get out of here—”

  Kat whirled on him. She left her weapon at her side, but the bloody blade she whipped out was even more terrifying. “Because as long as that ship is up there and dropping rocks wherever it pleases, nothing we do on the ground matters. Now, tell me who has access or I don’t see any reason why we need you any longer.”

  Washington splayed a hand at the dead Caliphate members sprawled over the deck. Troops strutted between bodies and gave each a final double-tap to the head, making sure the supermen stayed down. “Any of them would have had access, but it’s a little late—”

  Kat shoved a Green Beret away from the nearest corpse. “Hold up a sec. Abraham, give me one of those nano booster shots. Quick, man!”

  Dore shook his head. “Kat, I’m sorry. There’s only five minutes left on the detonators. It’s time to extract.”

  Kat ignored her captain and crouched over the body. She tugged on Washington’s arm. “Let’s go! Wake him up or whatever magic shit that stuff does.”

  Washington gulped. It was the first time she’d seen real fear on his face in their brief acquaintance. “You can’t do this. You don’t know them. The Caliphate are more animal than man! They’ve been bred in hate and cruelty for generations. Even genetically modified to have no conscience, if the rumors are true. You just don’t understand what barbaric depths they’re capable of—”

  Kat rolled her eyes and rose to a crouch. She calmly thumbed her futuristic rifle on and chain-sawed the enemy’s right arm clean off.

  “Yeah, yeah. Big scary monsters. I get the idea. Now give him a shot or you’re
next!”

  Even Captain Dore shirked under the fire in her eyes. Washington gritted his teeth, stabbed an injector in the corpse’s spine and then jumped back.

  Nothing happened for a few seconds. The moment Kat noticed an eyelid twitch, she opened fire and sawed off the man’s remaining arm. The Caliphate fighter levitated to his feet, without arms, and roared. Without the slightest hesitation, he charged towards Kat in a blur.

  Kat had just enough time to flash the maniac a wicked smile before adjusting her aim and amputating both his legs. His torso collapsed at her feet, but he still managed to dig his teeth into Kat’s boot.

  She kicked the beast off with her other leg and screamed at Washington. “You tell him to unlock that station if he wants to live.” Washington came a little closer, but just cowered behind her, unable to speak.

  “Come on!” She ripped the little kit from his belt. Kat squatted next to the quadriplegic and dangled the belt in front of his face.

  “You understand English, don’t you? Unlock your systems here and I’ll give you a dose. Fix you right up.”

  He flopped onto his back and gasped out a chuckle. “Go to hell, you heathen bitch! A man of God will never surrender to a woman!”

  “Easy fix.” Kat never broke eye contact as she squirted a ten-round short burst into his crotch.

  “Now can we talk? Woman to woman?”

  She pulled out an injector and ignored Washington puking behind her. Kat held the needle just in front of her enemy’s nose. The Caliphate fighter blinked so fast she thought he was dying of shock. The remnants of the man finally croaked something out.

  “Ok. Done. Give it to me, quick!”

  “Washington? Is he telling the truth?”

  “Ah, um, shit… yes! Everything’s unlocked. What do you want to do first?”

  Kat pocketed the injector and raised her rifle one-handed. She put a burst in her prisoner’s head and spun around.

  “Fire everything you got and kill that orbiting ship!”

  “Sure. Now what?”

  Kat blinked at the battle tracker display. Some blue lines lanced up from their grounded ship, but the target hadn’t budged from its trajectory. Captain Dore grabbed Washington and lifted the tall man off his feet. “Quit screwing around. You heard her. Shoot the bastard down with those particle accel-a-whatevers!”

  Washington looked confused and pointed at the display. “But I did! It wasn’t hard. The particles have an exit velocity nearly a quarter the speed of light. You have any idea how much kinetic energy that is? Bigger than any non-nuclear bomb you’ve ever seen. Like I said, that’s not a warship up there. Just a glorified cargo hauler. I punctured all fifty airtight compartments, from bow to stern. I also took out the power plant for good measure. Even if someone happened to be in a pressure suit, they’re now trapped in an orbiting derelict.”

  Kat frowned. “Well that’s pretty anticlimactic.”

  “What the hell did you want me to do? Should I have crashed a ten-million ton spaceship into your planet? Want me to finish the extinction job the Caliphate started?”

  Captain Dore studied the other screens. “Wait a second. Can you also control the drones from here?”

  “Oh sure, if I can just—”

  With a horrific screech, four mechanical arms tore through the deck plating on the far side of the room. A split second later, half the room’s floor caved in. Eight screaming soldiers fell into the pit, but only a giant metal apparition came out.

  “Down!” Kat ripped Washington to the floor as the drone’s turrets raked the room at chest height. Some soldiers made the mistake of just taking a knee, and were instantly beheaded. The surviving commandos rained enough fire on the machine to shred it apart before it could adjust its aim, but the damage was done.

  It wasn’t the dozen men killed in seconds that mattered, but the diversion. In all the chaos, no one inside the Tactical Command Post noticed the rearguard in the hallway had gone silent. Only Washington screeched in panic.

  With that superhuman strength of his, Washington collared both Dore and Kat and chucked them face-first down the cavernous hole in the floor. He dived in right on their heels. Kat didn’t have a chance to struggle, but she did catch sight of a blue-suited figure, with a familiar backpack on, step into the doorway and silently sweep the room.

  In the dark below, Captain Dore pulled himself off the impaled body of an Army Ranger. Dore had lost his weapon somewhere in the fall, but he didn’t let that slow him down. He just clambered up the backside of the dead warbot, armed only with fury. Washington snagged him by the ankle and yanked him down like a stray balloon.

  “Let me go! I’ve still got twenty men up there!”

  Kat steadied herself as best as possible. All her strength spilled out of her soul, and it had nothing to do with any injury. “They’re gone, sir. You know it.”

  Dore just roared and seized a fallen alien weapon. “Not again! Not another team!”

  Nothing Kat could say would penetrate his impotent rage, so she gave up on words. She slapped him across the face instead.

  “Damnit, Bruce, I need you. Don’t give up on me now!”

  Kat hugged him. Dore worked his jaw and put his hand on the back of her head.

  Washington coughed. “Um, whatever you do, we need to get moving. You can’t launch a shuttle without my implant’s interface. I’m worried, once your Russian friend realizes that, he’s just going to blow everything up.”

  Somewhere over the Mediterranean Sea

  Kat couldn’t figure out the odd harness on the shuttle’s bench, so she just held the armrest tight as Washington fidgeted beside her.

  “Is that all your people? Are we ready to go?”

  Dore quit taking a headcount. Five times and the dismal number hadn’t changed. Only 30 survivors out of the 200 troops he’d jumped in with. Dore gripped his rifle and stood up. “Yes! What are you waiting on? Go get in the pilot’s seat and take—”

  Washington leaned back, rolled his head and blinked furiously. The dropship rocketed away without preamble and slammed Dore into his seat.

  A few seconds later, the ship leveled off and toned down the G’s to a less brain-stomping level. Washington wiped his eyes and sniffed something away.

  “I never thought I’d ever make it out of there!”

  He squeezed Kat’s hand. She ripped it away, but her voice softened. “Where are we? Why’d you stop climbing?”

  “Oh, we’re now at 18,000 meters and heading across a body of water called the Mediterranean Sea. Where do we go from here? Do you people have a base or something?”

  All eyes turned to Captain Dore. He stopped tapping his foot and rubbed his neck.

  “Does this thing have a radio? Can you make contact with any troops on the ground?”

  Washington stared off into space for a few seconds. This time Kat wasn’t annoyed.

  “No problem. I found several primitive radio stations still transmitting. They’re encrypted, so it might take a moment for the Artificial Intelligence to crack them… okay, done. Here are the English broadcasts. Which one would you like to talk to?”

  All elements: fall back!... This is Buzzard 6, May Day… Fire mission, final protective fire…

  The weak, frantic calls for help poured out of unseen speakers around them before finally settling on the strongest signal.

  Any station this net, this is General Lyons, 1st US Marine Expeditionary Division. I’m taking charge. We’re falling back. It’s an ambush. Any unit in range, rally in Cairo and we’ll hold—

  The radio went silent. No hiss, no squelch… just dead.

  “Why do you people love radio transmissions so damn much? Might as well light up a bonfire and scream ‘come and kill me.’ Haven’t you figured out how the drones hunt by now? They’re programmed to search for thermal and electromagnetic radiation.” Washington kept muttering while cycling through several more stations, but none of the panicked yelling belonged to any senior officer.

&n
bsp; The only coherent thread rising from the chaos showed the remnants of the allied armies running for the hills… and they weren’t getting far.

  Within seconds, there wasn’t even panic. Just silence across the electromagnetic spectrum.

  The world’s last cohesive army perished without a last word.

  Captain Dore chopped his armrest. “That’s enough. There’s no point in landing and trying to find survivors. We can’t accomplish anything from down there. Washington, does this ship have enough range to make it to the United States?”

  “Oh, absolutely. It’s powered by, well, you wouldn’t understand. Call it anti-gravity. So we can go anywhere you please, but the real question is do you really want to go there? Are you sure you want to hide in the middle of nowhere? America is so far away from where the action is.”

  Dore narrowed his bloodshot eyes. “Why not the US? What do you know?”

  Washington closed his eyes, but the lids fluttered with activity. “Well, I’m looking at the targeting list that was sent to the orbiting ship just before I took it out. The entire North American landmass is classified as ‘clear.’ I’m not sure what that means, but I don’t suppose anything good. Only a few sites on the planet are still labeled as a threat. Mostly in Asia, but the closest target they had scheduled for orbital bombardment was a hotspot in central Europe. Some place called ‘Switzerland.’ No details, but whatever’s there, it had top priority for destruction.”

  He blinked fast and turned a section of the wall into a map screen. Captain Dore only took a moment to compare the hundreds of meteorite and neutron bomb sites in his homeland to the unscathed valleys of Switzerland.

  “Fine. Take us there as fast as you can.”

  The small contingent of German and French survivors in the cargo bay cheered. Everyone else cussed and moaned in their native tongues.

  Kat cut the captain deep with her eyes. “Sir, hell no. We’ve been through too much. We’ve earned the right—”

  Dore silenced her insubordination with a tender caress of her knee. Despite a tear in his eye, he raised his voice and hollered at the crowded bay full of Special Forces troopers from a dozen countries.