by Chris James
“That’s great, Geoff,” Alan said. “We’re running your feed out on numerous platforms.”
“I want a percentage,” Geoff said.
“Check your contract, you’ll get a bonus.”
“Jesus, you’re so generous.”
“Still better than market average… Pan left, what’s that commotion?”
“Not sure,” Geoff answered, unwilling to speculate. The sense of chaos and the fear of newly hurt victims remained raw. He said what he saw: “There appear to be individuals doing something to the front of the train.”
“Hijack?” Alan asked in incredulity.
“Impossible,” Geoff replied at once. “Encrypted management is insurmountable. It must be something else.” He ducked when a volley of shots rang out. “Christ,” he said.
“Get out of there if you feel threatened,” Alan said.
Geoff smiled at the qualification despite the pain he felt from his face. He observed: “How long before the ‘breaking news’ novelty wears off and the top stories go back to the invasion fronts?”
“Already happening,” Alan replied at once. “We’re getting a general release from the French Interior Ministry of an attempted takeover—”
“Hijack? Seriously?”
“Yes. Looks like coercion—”
“Yeah, I’m getting the details in my feed now,” Geoff said, feeling a brief return to times past, when a breaking story broke and then advanced in a logical manner until its conclusion. Local super-AI civil pacification units had resolved the misguided adventure likely undertaken by citizens who were already on society’s margins.
“Initial estimates say fifteen dead, forty injured. I like it, Geoff: you’ve still got your talent of being in the right place at the right time.”
“No shit,” Geoff answered as the numbness in his head spread. “I feel like shit, now, you know?”
“Maybe, but those were some great pictures.”
“So I can go somewhere quiet and write up a one-thousand word opinion piece now, yeah?”
Alan laughed and said: “Nice one, Geoff, good joke. No, right, there’s a medi-point close to your location. I’ll try to get you VIP’d from here so you don’t have to wait. Get your arse to your next transport. I’ve got a good feeling about you now, Geoff.”
Geoff replied: “I’ll try to live long enough not to disappoint you.” He walked away from the terminus. Outside, the piercing yellow streetlights of Toulouse stung his eyes. He recoiled in pain when he foolishly touched the side of his damaged head. He wished Lisa had been right and this was only going to be as bad as Nairobi, instead of being far worse.
Chapter 27
21.58 Saturday 25 February 2062
SERENA RIZZI LOOKED into the young girl’s pale blue eyes and tried to reassure her: “They will not harm us further.”
“But, but how do you know?” the girl whined, her terrified face conveying a horror Serena also felt.
Serena considered before answering, glancing at the far wall of the prison cell. The single white light in the ceiling made the cell look sterile, although she felt completely violated. She had to balance honesty with helping the girl cope with the trauma. “Because,” she began, “we are more valuable to them in… a better condition.”
“So we still look pretty when they violate us again?”
“What is your name?”
“Liliana.”
“What did he tell you?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t understand him. He was just an animal—” she broke off and sobbed.
Serena stroked Liliana’s soft, matted hair and whispered: “Please try not to make a noise.”
The young girl didn’t respond so Serena simply held her as they sat on the single bench in the cell, which was the only surface for sitting and sleeping on. A deadening clunk sounded outside in the corridor and the light went out. Serena felt Liliana’s slight body tense so she shushed her and said: “Do not worry. It is ten o’clock so they have switched the lights off and now we should sleep.”
“I am scared.”
“So am I.”
“What will happen to us?”
“I do not know,” Serena answered, recalling the violence she had already witnessed as well as endured. “We have to stay strong, that is all I can tell at this moment.”
Liliana whispered: “I am ashamed because I am bleeding.”
“Is it the normal time of the month for you or is it because of what he did to you?”
“I do not know, to be honest. I am sorry.”
“It is normal for us to bleed when we are in such danger.”
“But I am frightened they will want to violate us again and be angry if we are bleeding.”
As vague details of the ceiling above them began to form in the darkness, exhaustion swept over Serena. She wanted to reassure Liliana as much as possible but also needed to rest. The stress of the last two days and her own experience had also left Serena bleeding. Images flashed through her tired mind of the warrior who had claimed her in the apartment, of how he had found the kitchen knife strapped to her thigh and debated, she felt certain, whether to slit her throat with it after he’d raped her.
She whispered: “We should rest. We should preserve our strength. We cannot know what we will face, child, but we can be sure we will need strength.” Serena used the word ‘child’ but suspected that Liliana was only a few years younger than her. Serena gently pushed so they both lay down on the unyielding bench.
“I am afraid I will have nightmares,” Liliana said.
“So am I,” Serena replied, unable to keep her eyes open any longer. She said: “So we will be here for each other if we have a bad dream. Agreed?” but fell asleep before she heard Liliana’s positive reply.
Serena slept through Liliana’s fitful rest. She felt her compatriot’s shifts and moves as distant events, relevant but temporarily disconnected. At a deeper level, Serena’s body decided when it had rested sufficiently and then increased its level of awareness. Serena’s spirit rose to a semi-waking state where she could accept the injustice and funnel the anger so she might use it to work for her, not against her.
At six o’clock the next morning, the overhead light clunked back on again, searing like a spotlight into the two women. Liliana woke up and both women stood and stretched, Serena insisting that they had to be ready as soon as possible. She noted how the rest had seemed to refresh Liliana, who still looked worried but who agreed with Serena more readily.
The sound of heavy footsteps thumped along the corridor outside. Serena held Liliana, who whispered a prayer for both of them. Serena sensed the stress increase as the doors to other cells were opened and spoken orders mingled with fearful moans and heavy steps.
With a dull, electronic beep, the heavy metal door swung open. In the doorway stood a tall, thick-set man and a dark, thin, robed man. The smaller one indicated that the women should leave the cell. In accented English he ordered: “Out. Go upstairs to outside space,” and moved on. The tall man sneered at them.
The women left the cell and joined the others shuffling along the corridor. Serena led Liliana in the queue of women. They went up some stairs and then left along another corridor. They queued for a few minutes. Serena looked ahead to see, at the exit, three guards processing each woman. One man placed a device on each woman’s right upper arm, held it there for a second, and then muttered something official. Next to him, another guard said in English: “You are now the property of the merciful Third Caliph.”
Serena also kept her head lowered to avoid making eye contact with the guards. She felt a cold sting on her arm and heard the incomprehensible words, and then the English words, and reflected that they meant nothing to her. She glanced behind her to see Liliana follow with a terrified expression on her face.
Ten minutes later, Serena and Liliana stood next to each other in a line of a hundred or so women, which constituted the front row of five such lines. They had emerged from an expansive police sta
tion in a large town which Serena did not recognise. They faced a vast open space that Serena assumed must have been the original town square. Black smoke wafted from office and residential blocks in the distance. She breathed the cool, early-spring air and looked at the grey sky above. The first spats of rain hit her head.
When they had been standing there for some minutes, the rain seeping into torn and dirty clothes, a small group of robed men appeared and began walking past the front row. Serena kept her head down but could sense the menace in them.
Suddenly, a voice spoke inside her. She could hear the words as though she were thinking them herself. She looked at the group of men to see one of them speaking. The voice inside her head said: “Listen, all of you. You should count yourselves extremely fortunate.”
With horror, Serena realised that the man speaking from the small group in front of them could project his voice directly into her head. If the implant they had all received allowed their captors to do that, what else might they be able to do? Whimpers and sobs from around her told her that all of the women suffered this same, new violation.
The man continued: “You are infidels. You should die. But, in his mercy, the Third Caliph has decreed that some of you may live to serve him and his empire. You have been chosen because—”
The voice stopped when a cry went up from somewhere behind Serena. A young woman rushed out screaming defiance at their captors. Serena thought the girl had a kind face and a few weeks ago was probably a teacher or a care worker or a—
The young woman abruptly stared back at the rest of the women, almost into Serena’s eyes, it seemed, put her arms out either side, stopped breathing, and flopped onto the ground.
Serena froze, wondering if the young woman was actually dead. Nothing happened. She glanced at the man who had spoken, who gave his audience a satisfied half-smile. Two armed guards trudged into view. They each picked up one of the young woman’s arm and dragged her body away.
Again, the voice spoke inside Serena’s head: “You each have an implant that any Caliphate citizen can use to kill you at will.”
A few gasps and sobs came from around her, but Serena regarded this announcement as merely another test on the road to the task she had been set. Conversely, with each setback, with every new violation and affrontery, Serena felt strengthened, emboldened to continue on this path, her path.
The man continued: “Do any more of you have anything to say?”
Silence unsurprisingly greeted his rhetorical question.
He went on: “You may now bid farewell to your former home. You will be taken into the Caliphate, there to serve Caliphate citizens. And I warn you: you must obey your new masters. Any failure to do what is required of you will result in your immediate death.”
From the sky above them, a vast Caliphate transport ship descended with a hissing buzz that belied its massive size and weight. As soon as it touched the ground, slits opened in the body, revealing darkness inside.
The man said: “The first row shall proceed in an orderly fashion from the right, and enter the transport.”
To Serena, this aircraft appeared to be the same design as the first one she’d seen land in Rome on the previous Saturday night at the hospital; six days past, which now felt like six decades ago.
The line moved off. Serena glanced at Liliana and a touch of hands reassured Serena that her compatriot could cope for now. She followed the women in front of her and mounted the steps into the transport. She fought the urge to glance behind her and look at her home country for what she knew would be the last time. Serena stepped into the transport knowing that her journey was only now beginning.
Chapter 28
14.23 Sunday 26 February 2062
CORPORAL RORY MOORE sipped from the mug of hot, sweet brown tea he held in both hands, savouring every drop of the malty flavour. In the seat next to him sat Pip, blowing gently across the surface of her tea to cool it.
The door to the meeting room slid open and a tall, diffident woman stepped over the flange, ducking a little so her Royal Navy cap did not snag on the doorway. She walked up to the table and introduced herself: “Chief Petty Officer Pettifer,” and then added: “Julia Pettifer,” and Rory realised he must have failed to keep a straight face at the alliteration of her rank and surname. She continued: “Welcome aboard HMS Spiteful. Now, I know you’ve been asked a few questions already, but I’d like to clarify some things if that’s okay?”
Rory nodded and heard Pip answer: “If you keep giving us unlimited tea like this, you can ask as many questions as you like.”
Pettifer smiled and said: “Good, no problem. Right, Private Clarke, first question: Are you sure the special-ops soldiers you encountered were Spanish?”
“Yes,” Pip answered at once. “The insignias on their uniforms definitely included the Spanish flag, but as I told the debrief officer, I didn’t get close enough to them to see any more details, and at no time did they mention or offer to tell me their regiment.”
“Right, okay,” Pettifer said, looking down at a handheld screen. “Corporal Moore, you said that when you arrived on the beach, the engagement was over and there was nothing substantial left of the special-ops’ unit, yes?”
Rory began to wonder when the Chief Petty Officer would get to the difficult questions she must have come to ask. He and Pip had been debriefed immediately after their medical when the submarine had picked them up. In the intervening hours, Spiteful must have been in touch with London, and someone there wanted more answers. He said pointedly: “Yes, when I finally caught up with Pip—er, Private Clarke—the engagement had been over for at least two hours. I know this because, as I mentioned during the first debrief, I heard the engagement taking place and took cover outside the town.”
“So we only have the Private’s word for what happened on the beach?”
Rory shrugged and said: “Why wouldn’t that be enough?”
“Because both of you discarded your Battlefield Management Support systems,” Pettifer said, all of her initial friendliness vanishing.
“Yeah,” Rory answered, trying to contain growing frustration, “because if we hadn’t, we’d be just as dead as all of the other NATO troops in Spain.” He saw Pettifer glance down so he said: “Pity you subs couldn’t have given us some support instead of hiding under the sea out here, eh?”
“Steady on, Corp.,” he heard Pip mutter.
Pettifer’s face hardened. She said: “London wants to know exactly how two lower ranks such as the pair of you managed to be the only NATO troops to escape from behind enemy lines. Especially when we consider the number of extremely well-armed NATO special-ops inserted with the sole objective of causing disruption behind the lines, none of whom have shown up for extraction by us or any of the other submarines off the Spanish coast.”
Rory said: “I don’t believe for a minute that we were the only ones to work out what you had to do to survive.” Anger and irritation fused inside Rory before burning out to leave only exhaustion in their wake. Now they had secured safety, he struggled to comprehend why anyone should doubt answers that he regarded simply as common sense. The claustrophobia caused by the small, sterile meeting room made his head hurt. Too many recent memories played on a loop in his mind. He knew, as he suspected did Pip, that this was survivor’s guilt, but identifying a problem was only one step to resolving it, not the whole journey.
“Okay,” Pettifer said, “let’s go back a little further—”
Pip broke in: “Must we? Do you really need to ask these questions now?”
Rory glanced at her and silently thanked her.
Pettifer pulled down the cuffs of her pressed white blouse and answered: “London needs all the information we can gather. The invasion is going very badly for us, all of us. So far, you are the only two individuals to have seen combat with enemy forces and lived to tell the tale. Your superiors—and mine, by the way—have considered the responses you gave during your initial debrief after you came on board, now
they’d like you to answer these questions, if you feel up to it, of course—”
Pettifer broke off when Rory scoffed.
She continued: “However, your CO understands the urgency of the situation and has approved this Q&A.”
Rory said: “I just don’t know what more we can add.”
“Okay,” Pettifer began, “when did you, Corporal Moore, first realise you would stand a better chance of survival without the use of your Battlefield Management Support System?”
Rory looked at the Petty Officer and asked: “Look, are you sure you don’t have records of my last conversation with the Squitch?”
Pettifer shook her head and said: “Enemy jamming disrupted too many relays from the in-space SkyWatch—”
“How?” Rory asked in exasperation. “We’re supposed to have the best tech. What the hell did the enemy hit us with?”
“You’re not the only one asking those questions, Corporal. That’s why I and the people in London just want to go over what happened to the pair of you again. Now—”
“It really was a very simple, logical choice. The first Spider I destroyed required one Stiletto and over twenty, I think it must have been at least thirty, smart bullets to destroy. The Squitch told me the battle space was saturated with enemy targets and no NATO presence left. It actually kept telling me to take cover—”
“Yes, but when did you decide to deactivate and discard it?”
“I’m not sure exactly. Transports were being shot down, other troops were getting hit, but the enemy had deployed none of its own troops, as far as I was aware. So, obviously, they were hitting us only with super AI, and that had to identify and locate us somehow.” He frowned and asked: “Isn’t this all really bloody obvious?”
“And you stand by your conviction that the BHC sleeve kept the Spiders from seeing you?”
