Invasion

by Chris James

  “How bad?” Napier spat. “Did you just imply that I do not know how fucking bad the situation is?”

  Crispin nearly choked when he heard his boss swear. He saw the other cabinet members’ mouths also fall open. The boss had been under enormous stress the last few weeks, but she’d always held her nerve in public. On the rare occasions Crispin had seen Napier’s husband, Crispin could see the man had his work cut out, but who could blame him? His wife was likely to be the last PM of England after more than three hundred years.

  From the screen, Coll seemed to be unfazed: “Of course I’m not saying that, Dahra,” she said with, to Crispin’s ears, increasing patronisation. “We will table another emergency resolution at the UN—”

  “What for?” Napier asked in apparent exasperation. The PM put her wineglass on the ornate coffee table and stood. “The Caliphate is not a member of the UN,” she said, holding her arms out. “How many resolutions has that toothless, redundant dinosaur of a forum already passed? And each and every single one of them has been ignored in the real world. The UN is neutered, rendered irrelevant by the Pan-Asian Confederation.”

  Coll shook her head and said: “We need to keep up the diplomatic pressure, especially now that the fighting has stopped. Whether we regard this announcement as a demand to surrender or not, we need to get our allies to put some real pressure on the Chinese to get the Caliph to reconsider.”

  Silence pervaded the room. Crispin glanced from the boss to the other ministers and waited for one of them to speak. Napier let out an impatient sigh, scooped up her wineglass and fell back into the comfortable beige couch. She sniffed and said: “I don’t see the point of having the same conversation again, Madelyn. Constantly repeating that we need to increase diplomatic pressure when it hasn’t made, and doesn’t make, a jot of difference, is a waste of everybody’s time—”

  “But that’s not true,” the US President said in the nasal, Midwestern half-whine Crispin had come to loathe. “We’re working very hard here to get historical allies to help us bring pressure to bear on Beijing.”

  Napier replied in exasperation: “So are we, but we both know all we are going to get is platitudes. The big global players, the countries that could and should help us, rely too much on trade with China. They’re not going to risk losing that, and we can’t offer anything comparable in return.”

  “Er, if I may, PM?” Foreign Secretary Charles Blackwood interrupted, eyebrows raised in a business-like attitude. Crispin immediately wondered if his interjection had been scripted. Blackwood said: “Madam President, while His Majesty’s government is of course extremely grateful for any and all assistance our old ally can afford us, however we now believe that diplomatic efforts have become a secondary consideration next to material assistance in the form of arms and munitions.”

  “Sure,” Coll said, nodding, “I totally get that.”

  “Good,” Blackwood said. “So, could you confirm that you have approved the commencement of convoy shipments of materiel to your NATO allies here in Europe?”

  Crispin thought Blackwood sounded like a smooth bastard, but didn’t mind if it helped to make things happen. Coll’s procrastination irritated the boss no end, although everyone knew that other, better informed, Americans were at work behind the scenes. But the President still had to sign the authorisation.

  A slim male who Crispin recognised as member of the National Security Council came into the shot of Coll sitting behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. The man leaned forward and whispered in the President’s ear. He withdrew, she looked at the screen and said: “Yeah, sure, it’s authorised. Jon will work with your people to work out the details, although from what I hear I don’t think it will be anything like enough.”

  Blackwood enthused: “Thank you very much indeed, Madam President.”

  “Okay,” Coll replied. “So we’ll stop there for today.”

  “Thank you, Madelyn,” Napier said in a more sombre echo of Blackwood.

  The standard portcullis logo replaced Coll’s image on the screen and Crispin smiled at all of the audible exhalations in the room which followed.

  “At least she’s signed the bloody authorisation, finally,” Defence Secretary Phillip Gough said, stroking his trimmed beard.

  “Let’s hope she doesn’t change her mind,” Blackwood said.

  “Thank you for helping out, Charles,” Napier said. “She’s getting very difficult to handle.”

  “Might have something to do with her domestic problems, PM,” Home Secretary Aiden Hicks said with a shrug of his ample shoulders. “She’s deeply unpopular outside the cities, so however she feels about what’s happening now, here, I believe she’s reluctant to commit to her NATO obligations.”

  Napier sighed, sipped her wine, and said: “And all this aggravation to get some thousands of tonnes of materiel that can’t be replicated, assuming of course the Caliphate’s ACAs don’t send all of the ships to the bottom of the Atlantic first.”

  Crispin glanced at the other faces in the room and understood they’d had the same thought. He allowed himself the luxury of sharing the boss’s despair at the atrocious way the Caliphate’s invasion was going.

  Chapter 42

  10.00 Saturday 25 March 2062

  CORPORAL RORY MOORE of the Royal Engineers felt ready to explode. Three weeks inside a cramped steel tube under the Mediterranean Sea had confirmed to him that a career in His Majesty’s Royal Navy was about the worst choice any young person could make. The claustrophobia addled his brain; the appalling ‘hot-bunking’, where he even had to share the place where he slept, removed any element of privacy and compounded his discomfort. The news, which had only arrived in the Spiteful a few days earlier, that the Caliphate had paused its advance to consolidate its gains, also increased the urgency inside him: now, after all, he might have a home to return to, at least for a little while longer.

  The submariners transpired to be a friendly enough bunch if Rory overlooked the occasional weird second glance he caught from some of them, especially the chefs in the galley, who, Rory surmised, must lead lives of uniquely intense tediousness. Even the Chief Petty Officer who had grilled him and Pip after their arrival from the Caliphate-infested Spanish coast mellowed to a distant friendliness as the days passed. At one of the mealtimes on the first day, a planesman called David had struck up a conversation with Rory. With a dull monotone voice in a thick Yorkshire accent, David told Rory about ‘super-cavitation’, how the Spiteful could travel through the ocean depths at over three hundred miles an hour by projecting a thin envelope of a specific gas around the hull, thus removing the drag of liquid. Rory munched on his fresh salad, enjoying the luxury of such good food, while David enthused that Spiteful was the fastest sub in NATO, before conceding that the Chinese subs were faster still.

  On the second day, a quartermaster had given Rory and Pip a tour of most of the vessel. This had made Rory feel more claustrophobic. He found it particularly difficult to function with no indication of daylight and night time. Worse, he’d had no time alone with his beloved Pip, as the male and female parts of the crew were kept mostly separate. In addition, Rory latched on quickly to the power of gossip among such a group of people spending months trapped together in a confined space. After Rory witnessed an altercation in the mess hall that involved much mockery, he resolved to keep his feelings for Pip an absolute secret until they got back to England.

  All this combined so that after three weeks, he struggled to contain himself. He tried to find out when, finally, they would return home but each enquiry, either oblique or direct, was met with a shrug or a partially hostile ‘when the Captain says so’. Rory eventually gave up asking as he sensed that most of the submariners actually rather enjoyed being inside their giant steel coffin.

  Then, on this Saturday morning, although to Rory it could have been any period of the day or night on any day of the week, the submarine’s tannoy crackled into life. “Attention, all hands. This is the Captain. Finally
I can tell you that we have been ordered to return to base.”

  Rory couldn’t believe his ears—after all this time, they would go home. And with super-cavitation, they would be there in just a couple of days. He clenched his fists and let out a whispered: “Yes,” in delight.

  But his relief was short-lived when the Captain added: “However, we will take the scenic route as we have a short diversion of a few days. We have to escort some ladies to a dance. In addition, due to the current risk of detection by hostile forces, we shall be making way under traditional propulsion only. Altogether, we should return before the end of next month.”

  Crestfallen by the news and confused by the message, Rory tapped a passing able seaman and asked: “Hey, what did the Captain mean about ladies and a dance?”

  The young man looked back at Rory with a mix of incredulity and contempt. He scoffed and said with irony: “Ladies? I dunno, maybe, oh, surface ships? A dance? Maybe escorting surface ships to safe harbour?”

  Rory replied, “Oh, right. Thanks.”

  The seaman said in mock sympathy: “They really don’t teach you brown-jobs a bloody thing in the army, do they?” He strode off down the metal corridor, tutting and shaking his head as he went.

  Rory leaned back against the bulkhead and spoke to himself: “Seriously, I am trapped in a giant steel coffin with five hundred missiles and one hundred complete wankers.”

  Chapter 43

  16.53 Monday 10 April 2062

  FROM HIS PRIVATE office in the War Room, Terry Tidbury addressed his friend in the screen on his desk. “I don’t understand, Suds. Why does the enemy wait? Why doesn’t he continue the invasion? He must have had enough time now, surely?”

  Lieutenant General Studs Stevens of the USAF shook his narrow head and answered: “I don’t think the issue is military, Earl, at least not wholly.”

  Terry’s bald head rocked back and he said: “You think the enemy wants to put the frighteners on us? Given that he’s already conquered half of the European landmass, I rather think that is no longer necessary. Our computers here are saying the enemy has probably amassed enough materiel by now to easily complete the invasion and dominate—”

  “Yeah, but c’mon, Earl. He thinks he’s holding all the cards.”

  “He is,” Terry pointed out.

  Stevens said: “We’re just soldiers, Earl, not politicians, and I—”

  “So let’s pretend,” Terry broke in with a sterner voice. “I’m not kidding, Suds. He could have hundreds of thousands of ACAs and warriors in the conquered territories; he certainly has at least tens of thousands. So why wait? In that first month, he lost no more than a handful of warriors, so his armies are still intact. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  The American Lieutenant General drew in a deep breath and said: “In front of the cameras, I’d say he’s trying to show some kind of moderation, maybe letting rich Chinese, Brazilians and Africans get the hell outta northern Europe. Behind the scenes, I’d say his warriors are satisfying their appetites on the local populations, but I try not to think about that too much. Publicly he can claim those people are being treated well, but we know that’s a pile of shit.”

  “He can take as long as he likes, I suppose,” Terry said. “By the way, I wanted to thank you for pushing the Atlantic Convoys despite your truculent president.”

  Studs’ face creased in confusion and he asked: “What are you talking about, Earl? I was only a small part of the organisation behind that.”

  Terry chuckled: “So please pass on my sincerest thanks to all—” but broke off when a red-level comms notification flashed in the top-right corner of the screen. “I wonder what this can be?” he said without enthusiasm.

  “Let’s find out,” Studs added unnecessarily.

  A new image covered the screen, and Terry’s heartbeat crept up when he recognised the same dark-skinned young man sitting at the same news desk with the official crest of the Third Caliph of the New Persian Caliphate. Terry knew that the young man would now speak in modern standard Arabic, and the English translation would scroll along the bottom of the screen. Terry calmed himself, slowed his breathing, and concentrated.

  The young man spoke: “Today, the illustrious Third Caliph, leader and protector of the Persian Caliphate, calls on the remaining NATO Forces to surrender.”

  Terry swore under his breath when the words scrolled past; the moment he’d known would come sooner or later had finally arrived.

  The dark-skinned announcer continued making the liquid sounds of that other language: “The illustrious Third Caliph calls on the whole world to encourage the remaining European countries to take this generous offer to avoid much unnecessary bloodshed and destruction. The illustrious Third Caliph has made his munificence plain in the last twenty-five days, pausing his great and powerful warrior armies to allow the infidels to consider their bleak future if they choose to resist.”

  “Christ on a bike, this is worse than I thought,” Terry muttered.

  “Those Europeans in the conquered lands have willingly agreed to be assimilated into the Persian Caliphate, and are even now beginning to enjoy improved, fulfilling lives. After blindness and ignorance, the infidels have been shown the Truth and now their eyes are open. However, the annexation of Europe has so far cost many innocent lives. The illustrious Third Caliph now calls on the governments of Europe and the world to ensure no more innocents have to be sacrificed to the petty vanity of Europe’s leaders, who are too blind to understand how the world has changed in the decades since they passed their apogee, who would rather condemn to painful deaths those civilians they falsely claim to represent.

  “As proof of his mercy, the illustrious Third Caliph announces that he will graciously allow the infidels time to consider his instruction. He urges them to acknowledge his generosity and thus act wisely. He gives the leaders of Europe the power to prevent the needless deaths of millions of their citizens, and allow their societies a peaceful assimilation into the welcoming arms of the New Persian Caliphate. God is great.”

  A placement image of the Third Caliph’s crest replaced the view of the young man and Terry heaved a sigh. The face of his friend Studs Stevens then enlarged and he said: “Now I think we can guess the way the political storm is blowing.”

  “I don’t think there’s any doubt what our political masters will do, but that bastard really wants to bring the heat down on them from the rest of the world.”

  “Like you said, Suds, we’re the soldiers and we do what we’re told. But on the plus side, at least that means the Atlantic Convoys should be safe.”

  Studs’ face creased in uncertainty. “You think?”

  His friend’s reaction made Terry stop and consider. He batted the question back: “You believe they won’t be?”

  The Lieutenant General shook his head and said: “I dunno, Earl, but we should remember this guy’s word ain’t worth shit. He could attack our ships, resume the attack on the mainland, tell the world it’s not happening, that’s it’s all NATO lies, and if China backed him up, at least half the world would believe him.”

  Terry nodded his understanding. “Good point,” he said. “Let’s be in touch when our political masters have had a chance to cluck over this.”

  Chapter 44

  15.29 Tuesday 11 April 2062

  OPERATIONS SPECIALIST ANDREW POWELL stroked his trimmed, white beard and paced around the large central command station in the tactical management area of the bridge on the USS George Washington. The hologram projected by the central command station described his ship at the centre, flanked by four destroyers, and trailing in their wake the seventy merchant ships laden with power units for SkyWatchers, PeaceMakers, and Battlefield Support Lasers, as well as thousands of other parts whose construction was too complex for replicators to reproduce. Twelve more destroyers flanked them further out.

  Although the green hologram displayed one of the most modern groupings of naval power, Powell couldn’t help being reminded of a brood
of lean, lithe hens shepherding their clutch of fat, lumpy chicks to safety. The US Navy was there to defend the merchantmen. The fierce pride he took in this ship and its crew shone more brightly now a real war had broken out. And as luck would have it, it had erupted only a few months before he was due to retire from the service, too.

  His legs detected the slight movement in the massive battleship as it cut through the moderate Atlantic swell. He went over to a junior rating on monitoring duty at a station at the edge of the bridge. He looked at the display’s light-graphs and asked: “What does Chester have to say about it?”

  The young man answered: “The probabilities have been stable for awhile, Sir. Here and here,” he said, indicating part of the image, “have shown the greatest variation over the last twelve hours, but that has not affected the overall numbers a whole lot.”

  “And we’ve still got seventeen hours to go.”

  The junior rating gave out a nervous laugh and said: “Hell, Sir, if it stays this quiet for the rest of the voyage, that’ll suit me just fine.”

  Powell was about to give the rating a gentle reprimand not to tempt fate when one of the graphs changed from green to orange, and then to red. “What is it?” he asked.

  The rating cleared his throat, all humour gone, and replied: “SkyWatcher zero-one-seven reports that it has detected—Ah, no, it is in fact under attack. Chester is already calling it as the beginning of an attack on the convoy, Sir.”

  Powell announced: “General quarters.” He put a hand on the rating’s shoulder and spoke over the sound of the klaxon: “Give full tactical command over to Chester and link to the main display.”

  “Aye, Sir.”

  Powell returned to the central console and tapped a lit panel. “Sorry to wake you, Captain—”