by Chris James
Hours of searching for a suitable temporary refuge had ended in this dank cave. Pip hadn’t realised how much the journey must have drained Crimble. With his broken arm trussed up in a splint composed of the flattest piece of wood Pip could find on the forest floor and torn strips of his tunic, he’d appeared to manage. But on reaching the cave, he crawled to the damp, craggy rear, pulled his legs up into a foetal position, and fell asleep almost at once.
Again, Pip scanned the distant, layered ridgelines of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and thought she saw the figures of refugees shuffling far away in the deepening gloaming. Pinpricks of light crisscrossed the orange sky and the distant mechanical noise made the Caliphate’s machines sound like especially vicious mosquitoes. Confusion burned inside her, questions and potential answers flying back and forth in her mind like the enemy ACAs over their position. She shivered as a breeze of cooler air entered the cave and wondered how many ways the Spiders detected and selected targets.
“They must prioritise them,” she mused aloud. “Military hardware first, personnel second, then… civilians?” She recalled the briefings they’d had before their deployment and replayed scenes of Caliphate brutality captured in Israel, Turkey and the European capitals. Her thoughts drifted to Pratty and Rory and all of her comrades who had died, to the certain decimation of her regiment, and then to the current situation and her own likely fate. Contradictory feelings jostled for supremacy inside her: on one hand, her eighteen months in the British Army had instilled an almost-complete reliance on the Squitch Battlefield Management Support System. Suddenly cut off from all of that support created a certain terror. On the other hand, this new freedom also fired her curiosity and caused the skin on the back of her neck to tingle, which balanced with the other, raw sensation she ascribed to survivor’s guilt. A cynical voice in her head urged her to enjoy the reprieve while she could, for her odds of survival now had to be minimal.
They had a martial obligation to attempt to return to their unit, but Pip did not need her Squitch to tell her how impossible that would be. She favoured staying with the local civilians, perhaps trading survival tips for assistance. They’d probably be able to identify places offering the best cover. But in the longer term, in particular if they could not find a replicator, the problem of food would soon become acute. On the other hand—
Her thoughts stopped when, to the northwest and between thirty and forty degrees above the highest ridgeline, a group of pinprick lights suddenly broke out of the crisscross patterns she’d hitherto followed with her eyes. In seconds and without making a sound, at least fifty dull orange glows swept towards the closest ridgeline, descending in a graceful geometric pattern that reminded Pip of a theatrical light show her parents had taken her to see when she was a child. These lights erupted in puffs of explosions at various points along the ridgeline. A moment later, the dull thuds reached her ears.
Pip opened her mouth to ask the Squitch what had happened before recalling that now the Squitch wasn’t there. She knew she’d just witnessed the battle-space saturation the briefings had talked about. With all military opposition neutralised, the enemy could begin wiping out the civilian population at its leisure. An arrow of guilt stabbed deep inside her spirit because she was part of the force responsible for protecting those civilians, and now they had no defence. She shuffled backwards into the cave, the rock surface damp and cool to her touch. Distant human shrieks drifted on the still night air and a rock fall whooshed down from somewhere far away, the stones sounding like a wave of water that stopped abruptly.
Her hand traced around to the body-heat concealment—or BHC—sleeve, packed in a pocket on the right calf of her trousers. Her index finger pushed the zip down to open the pouch. She tried to believe that the Caliphate ACAs had detected the civilians trying to use tech that the enemy had jammed. From a deep, fearful part of her mind, a voice doubted her conclusion, and suggested another answer: enemy ACAs also used old-fashioned thermal imaging to detect their targets.
Pip suddenly felt naked and vulnerable; just as she had when she’d ripped off her Battlefield Management Support System. She disliked disrobing under threat. She edged back further into the cave, aware that a passing ACA might detect a flash of her body heat. There would be little room for heroics: without her Squitch, a Spider could descend, attack and blow them to pieces before they were even aware of its approach.
“Crimble,” she hissed.
“What?” he mumbled in an exhausted voice.
“We need to get our BHC sleeves on.”
“Why? No, I’m knackered. Let me sleep.”
She glanced through the entrance and half expected a Spider to come clattering through. Her muscles tensed as she told herself to get a grip. She zipped the pouch containing the BHC sleeve back up, common sense insisting they could not be detected inside this cave unless a Caliphate ACA flew right up to the entrance. However, going outside—for example to find water and food—now presented an entirely new level of risk.
She repeated to herself that those civilians had been detected by their tech: they tried to contact loved ones, the Caliphate detected the signals and attacked. But then, the enemy must have made huge territorial gains in the last two days, tens of thousands of square miles, and its ACAs had to have some kind of limits, either in number or range. A new consideration came to her: such gains must spread the enemy’s resources. Rather than having to be fearful of attack from a Spider at any moment, perhaps there might be a way to estimate the risk more accurately? Pip glanced back over her shoulder at the injured Crimble, and in her mind the outline of a plan began to form.
Chapter 10
14.23 Tuesday 21 February 2062
TURKISH ENGINEERING STUDENT Berat Kartal stared in disbelief at the ragged people slouched by the side of the barn, part of a makeshift refugee camp. Unshaven men languished and their dishevelled women appeared gaunt. Young children languished in the women’s arms and on their laps, while unkempt youths glanced at their parents for reassurance, or perhaps in a longing for food. This far south, the winter sun still burned with a heat that made frightened people sweat.
A flabby, belligerent Greek waved a stubby finger at a younger, dark-skinned man, who looked to be Turkish, and declared in halting English: “You do not know what you are saying. Of course our devices will come back—the government cannot let those κακό do what they like.”
The younger man shrugged and answered in flawless English: “And you do know what you’re saying? It’s over. They’ve invaded and we’re in more trouble than you realise.”
A bearded man flanked by two teenagers shouted: “We should get to the coast and get a boat to Italy. It is only a few hours that w—”
“That is shit,” shouted the Greek in increased dismissiveness. “We should do what our government told us. We do not need to run away—”
“You are a crazy old man,” the bearded man responded with a contemptuous wave of his hand. “Come on,” he said to the two teens. “Get your mother and aunt. We will continue.” The two boys obeyed.
The obese Greek held his tongue, and Berat sensed that the man had decided to avoid inflaming the confrontation further. The younger man with the flawless English spoke to the Greek: “Our governments are finished. It’s no use waiting for them to do something.”
The Greek sniffed and said: “You are wrong. They know we are alone.” He shrugged, which made the flesh on his arms wobble, and added: “Without data, we know nothing. We cannot be expected to cope in such situation.”
The young man shook his head and replied: “Then shouldn’t we assume the worst? Why do you think there is anyone left who might help us?”
The Greek nodded at his interlocutor and answered in a sarcastic tone: “Ah, so you are one of those young people who will always think that they know better, yes?”
“My age has nothing—”
“So I agree with you. Of course our very well defended governments are completely destroyed after only a few hou
rs. You must certainly know that there is no hope left for any of us—”
“I spoke to some of your countrymen not one hour ago, and they insisted that they found a number of uniforms—police and fire-fighter—suggesting that the members of those services have decided to dress as civilians.”
“Not true, not true!” the Greek man insisted after an offended gasp.
Berat’s gaze drifted to the rest of the camp as the conversation droned back and forth between the two men. Hundreds of refugees lay resting or milled about the stream that wended and bubbled along at the lowest point in the valley. On either side of the unofficial camp, hills of green forest rose up to terminate in slate-grey rocky outcrops.
He shook his head at the incongruity of the scene about him. Whenever in his life he’d been in a large group of people, there had been a reason: his university campus; the electric atmosphere of a football match; the joyous noise of a music concert. Now, the individuals constituting this group all suffered, whether from thirst, hunger, injury, a lack of regular medicine, or simple fear. They languished, sullen and scared of what the future held. Berat’s memory recalled his incredible journey so far: the first realisation that the Caliphate must have attacked when key components in his personal tech were burned out in the middle of the night; the desperate flight through his own country, struggling to keep ahead of the erupting storm; the boat from Turkey to Greece, full of refugees and the stench of claustrophobic fear; then the terrifying attack on Athens.
Without thinking, Berat patted the part of his rucksack that held his leather-bound paper journal. Of course it was still there, and he made a mental note to find a quiet place and describe this day’s events before the light faded in a few hours. His determination to record as much as possible represented the core of his indignation and fury at what was happening to his country and Europe. With the Caliphate having disabled all modern technology, and apparently able to destroy anything its madman leader wished, Berat feared a complete rewriting of history. If the Caliphate overran and dominated Europe—which appeared to his engineer’s brain to be a certainty—then he had to do something, however ultimately futile it might transpire to be, to satisfy his urge for defiance.
Berat’s looked up the blue sky and his mind moved on to more immediate and practical issues. He estimated he was one day’s good walking from the border with Albania. Like the bearded man and his family, many of the refugees had decided to head for the coast, close to the island of Corfu, and to attempt to get a boat to Italy and, they assumed, safety. However, Berat found it inconceivable that the Caliphate had only invaded on a single front—from out of Turkey—and believed they must also have opened fronts in Italy and probably other locations as well. The single fact of the lack of any international assistance for Greece’s plight seemed to be more than sufficient confirmation that the countries closest to them must be enduring similar attacks.
The people around him, cut off suddenly from their technological crutches, did not appear to grasp the true extent of the disaster. To Berat’s logical mind, one action allowed the supposition of other actions, then the construction of a web of reactions and the probability of them having occurred. He would have preferred to have had access to accurate data in real time, but he did not see its abrupt cessation as a sufficient reason for any kind of panic.
His stomach yawned, a vast bubbling contraction that caused him substantial discomfort and brought his mind back to his current situation. Again without thinking, he took out his bottle and poured some water down his throat, using liquid in place of food to try to fool his body into believing it was nourishment. Instead of refreshing him, he felt another stab of pain as his empty stomach contracted more strongly in protest at the absence of anything substantial. Over the last twenty-four hours, this discomfort had increased to actual pain, and he realised he needed to find some kind of sustenance.
He left the other refugees and headed north towards the Albanian border. His experience in Athens had taught him that crowds were best avoided in the event the Caliphate’s machines fell on them without warning. As he followed a well-trodden trekking path into a sparse forest of young oaks and spruces, he tried to control the memories of pain and suffering he’d seen on the faces of the other refugees.
A shuffling noise caught his attention, and an old, thin man emerged ahead of him from the trees and shrubs. Berat assumed the man must have gone there to relieve himself.
The man called out: “Why are you going that way, little boy?”
Berat stopped and turned back. “Because I want to stay ahead of the invading forces?” he offered, unmoved by the look of contempt on his questioner’s weathered face.
The old man gave a mirthless smile that revealed brown, rotted teeth and retorted: “And how will you do that, eh? Nothing works anymore. You cannot know even the time of day, except by guessing by the position of the sun. How can you find your way? How will you know anything, little boy?”
Berat couldn’t decide how to reply. The man’s odour rankled worse than most of the refugees, but his blank, simplistic conclusion left Berat nonplussed. The young engineering student shook his head and answered: “It is not possible to cope without our devices?”
The man scoffed and replied: “Look at them,” he said, waving a withered hand at the makeshift refugee camp. “Lost, fat, struggling even to get the water from the stream, never mind food. What makes you think you can, eh?”
Berat decided to move on. He said: “I don’t think the coast is the correct place to go,” turned away and trudged on.
From behind him, he heard the old man call out: “What is better, little boy? The fear of uncertainty, or the certainty of knowing that we will die?” but the young Turkish engineering student ignored the question.
Chapter 11
07.34 Wednesday 22 February 2062
FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD Penka Genkova ran as fast as she could, her trainers crunching on the gravel pathways that separated the animal enclosures in Sofia zoo. She knew how to avoid the keepers, who were in any case few at this hour; she knew where to find her beloved Sasho, the one creature who never questioned her, who never demanded anything of her. A sudden crosswind blew strands of brown hair across her face and she sucked a few into her mouth as she gasped in the next breath. She pulled the hairs away and tried to tuck them behind her ear as she skirted an ornate water fountain which sat, dry and neglected, with only a few of the previous year’s autumnal leaves in its basin.
The pain from yet another tumour burned inside her head, but she put that down to the abrupt stress of the invasion everyone had been talking about. She’d left her alcoholic mother in their dank, rundown flat in the notorious Mladost 3 district and caught one of the early trams into the city centre. Instead of going to the hospital for her treatment, she’d come to the zoo. If what everyone said was true, then Penka could forget about her treatment. At least that’s what Penka’s mother seemed to think, when she’d shouted at Penka through another drunken haze the previous night. Penka shook her head to dispel the unpleasant images. She wished she could help her mother, but it seemed her mother did not want to be helped.
She slowed to a jog as familiar pain began in her knees and hips, deep inside the ample flesh on her limbs. The chill morning air stung the split lower lip her mother had given her the previous evening. There was much Penka did not fully understand, foremost why her mother drank so much rakia when all it did was cause upset and anger.
Last week her physics teacher, who used to be kind to her, thrust his hand between her legs and told her she needed to ‘give something back’ for all the help he had given her. She’d quickly pushed him away and humoured him with a joke and a half-promise on which she intended to renege, just like she’d heard the other girls in her class do with their boyfriends. No boy her own age had ever shown an interest in Penka because her illness made it difficult for her to control her weight. It didn’t matter: Penka had developed a resilience. She read romantic stories—just to know, sh
e always told herself, to have an inkling of what other people enjoyed but which, like so many other things, had been denied to her. These stories allowed her an escape with none of the real-world complications that she’d heard the other girls complain about.
She also could not work out why fate had decreed her to be one of the first to develop one of the new ‘super cancers’ which fought back against the all-conquering Geno-Fluid nanobots. As the increasing pain made her slow to a fast walk, recent memories surfaced in her mind’s eye, of doctors and consultants shaking their heads at the rarity of her case, of their surprised and shocked looks that cells could still mutate so radically, even when surrounded by nanobots that were supposed to manage the sites. Penka’s young body had become a microscopic battleground as micro-tumours grew in every limb and organ inside her. The nanobots chased them down only for more to spring up in different areas of her body. Specialists from around the world suggested that responsibility rested with a leak of a secret, synthetic biological weapon years previously, which had finally found its way into the food chain. She recalled one doctor, with very dark skin and an intense stare, who looked at her keenly and said that cancer had been ‘eradicated’ but now it had returned, a new and voracious strain in Penka and a few others like her around the world. But none of the experts could really answer why. The doctors helped her, they said her chances were good. She was young and strong. Then this morning, at last, Penka knew the nanobots—and therefore she—would lose. The invasion would destroy the hospital and the doctors.
Finally, she reached the primate enclosure as her ears noted new and strange sounds in the distance. A chill breeze blew her hair out from her head. She wished again that the lens in her eye worked and fought down her earlier confusion and panic when it had abruptly gone dark late last night. Of all the things that had happened to Penka in her young life, being cut off from society so suddenly had frightened her almost as much as the super-cancer.
