Invasion

by Chris James

  Chapter 54

  20.52 Thursday 1 June 2062

  “IT IS NICER now the evenings are getting longer again, don’t you think, Terry?” Maureen Tidbury said as she put a steaming mug of tea on the bench in her husband’s garden shed.

  “Thank you,” he said. He put down the mallet and fine-edged sculptor’s chisel, and sighed. He picked up the tea and blew on the steam rising from it.

  Maureen peered at the fat wooden Buddha, its base clamped in the vice on the bench, and said: “Do you think his head is a bit lopsided?”

  Terry sipped his tea and replied: “It won’t be when I’ve finished taking a bit more off his shoulders, here and here.”

  “I expect so.”

  “How were the ‘knit and natter’ ladies today?” he asked, referring to Maureen’s group of friends who met for tea, cake and gossip every Thursday morning.

  “Oh, they have their concerns.”

  “Do they expect that you know more than they do?”

  Maureen chuckled and said: “Of course, but what can I offer them, Terry?” she said with a shrug of her slender shoulders. “And anyway, ‘knit and natter’ usually becomes ‘stitch and bitch’ after the first few minutes.” She smiled.

  “Yes,” Terry said, still feeling uneasy. “I’ve been concerned recently that it could, perhaps, be a small burden on you.”

  Maureen giggled as though she were a schoolgirl again.

  Terry said: “What?” as he put his tea down and brushed some wood-dust from his partially carved Buddha.

  Maureen replied: “We’ve been married for over thirty years, Terry, and we’ve never been a ‘burden’ on each other yet.”

  “Well, these are… tricky days,” he said with caution, knowing well that the woman he’d decided so many years ago to share his life with could still wrong-foot him with the occasional surprise.

  She shook her head and said: “I—and I am sure the rest of the ladies—do not think they are ‘tricky’ days at all.”

  “That’s good then,” he answered, smiling.

  Maureen’s face softened in warmth. “Terry, we know what is happening. The worst thing about being your wife is that the ladies might feel some sympathy for me, and that would make me feel… uncomfortable.”

  “They would never make you feel like that, would they?”

  “I don’t think so; it would embarrass them too much to know that they had. But apart from that little thing, if you really think about it, it doesn’t matter so much. Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.”

  Terry said: “I’m going to be stubborn, you know. However much times change, I happen to think we should not always change with them, dear.”

  Maureen smiled at her husband. “The point is that we don’t realise we change, as we change with the times.”

  Terry left the Buddha in the vice on the bench, picked up his tea, and said: “Let’s go outside.”

  Maureen followed him into the warm spring breeze. The high cloud glowed with fiery streaks of red and orange as the sun approached the distant sea on the horizon.

  “I think it’s important we don’t change, Maureen; not now, not when things look as they do.”

  She put a hand on his shoulder and said: “So come home and have a brandy and cigar in the viewing room upstairs, before it gets completely dark. You know it won’t be long before they will want you for one thing or another.”

  They walked back to the house together, and Terry decided not to say anything more. He knew the final darkness could arrive tonight, tomorrow, or not for weeks or months. In the meantime, he resolved not to change with the times any more than he had to. His slate vibrated in his pocket.

  “Unfortunately, they already do want me.”

  Maureen frowned.

  He took his slate out and opened it. He said: “SACEUR would like to have a chat.”

  “Then your brandy will be waiting for you afterwards.”

  “Thank you, Maureen.”

  Five minutes later, Terry sat in his home office looking at the latest deployments. He felt relieved to see a further twenty Abrahams N4–1A autonomous main battle tanks had arrived to reinforce the line at Tarbes in France, bringing the total there to fifty. Battlefield Support Lasers and many batteries of missiles had also arrived at the mostly German positions to the north of Milan. In the east around the Hungarian town of Pécs, the build-up of troops and munitions impressed Terry the most, as the mainly Polish formations there were expected to bear the strongest attack.

  A thumbnail image of General Joseph E. Jones appeared in the corner of the screen. Terry raised it and said: “Good evening, General. How are things there?”

  “Not good,” Jones said without preamble. “Some high-level SkyWatchers are picking up increased activity from behind enemy lines.”

  “Anything concrete?”

  Jones shook his head and frowned: “Nope, and that’s the nervy part. The enemy’s blanket jamming is leaking more than usual, but not that much more.”

  “Are we getting anything comprehensible?”

  “Negative, just tiny fragments,” Jones said. Then he added with heavy sarcasm: “I know how much you trust our super artificial intelligence, and that’s saying the risk of assault has gone up by fifteen percent in the last two hours.”

  “That doesn’t mean a thing, General. All of our forces are stood to on maximum readiness around the clock anyway.”

  “Yup, but I think it would be good to know when he’s decided he’s stockpiled enough kit to wipe us out.”

  “It’s been three months,” Terry pointed out, “and he might wait another three if he thinks it will help him keep global public opinion on his side. In any case, our progress has not been too shabby of late. If he attacks, I think we can really hold him up. At least for a while.”

  “Let’s hope it can make some kind of difference.” SACEUR paused, and then finished with: “I just wanted you to know about the increased probability, General Tidbury.”

  The image of Jones vanished, replaced by the map of deployments. Terry stared at it for a moment, looking at the vast, estimated armaments the Caliphate was assumed to have amassed since March, and the defences NATO could deploy in response.

  A sixth sense began inside Terry. He reasoned: there had to be a tipping point, there had to come one single moment when the benefit of attack finally outweighed the benefit of delay. Throughout history, any army that had been massed invariably went on to launch its attack; seldom were men and weapons deployed in threat only to be withdrawn. At a certain point in the massing of arms, events gained their own momentum, and the inevitable attack commenced. The sense of premonition inside him gained strength. Terry kept his breathing even, staring at the map of deployments. He nodded and asked himself aloud: “Maybe he’s waited long enough?”

  There came a gentle tap at the door. He stood and opened it. Maureen held his snifter of brandy and stared at him with an inquisitive look.

  “Thank you, Maureen,” he said, “but I have a feeling. It may be nothing.”

  His wife tilted her head, eyebrows raised.

  Terry said: “The brandy will wait.”

  “Of course,” she replied.

  “Squonk?”

  “Yes, Sir Terry?” came the disembodied reply from the super AI.

  “I need to get to Whitehall as soon as possible.”

  “Understood. Your vehicle is ready. Journey time will be sixteen minutes. Please proceed to your vehicle at your earliest convenience.”

  Terry said to his wife: “I expect nothing will change, but I want to go there just in case.”

  Chapter 55

  23.03 Thursday 1 June 2062

  “WHAT IS IT, Aiden?” Napier asked, squinting at the image of her Home Secretary in the screen on the far wall.

  “Only the same old thing I’m afraid, PM, but I thought I’d let you know anyway. The Leader of the Opposition was in the Members’ Bar this evening bleating on about how you had ‘rejected’ him again and h
ow, in the past, we used to have cross-party governments in times of crises.”

  Napier smiled and shook her head: “And was he very drunk?”

  “Oh, yes, but I thought you should know just in case the media tomorrow gives his self-serving wittering more coverage than it deserves.”

  “Thanks, Aiden.”

  The screen went blank and Napier relaxed back into the comfortable chair in her private offices inside Ten Downing Street. She closed her eyes and controlled her breathing, counting the seconds between inhalation, pause, exhalation, and pause.

  In the darkness of her closed eyes, her lens flashed up another communication, this time from a more trusted ally. “On the screen,” she instructed.

  “Hello, my dear Dahra,” said Peter Mitsch, the Chancellor of Germany. “Am I contacting you too late this evening?”

  Napier smiled on seeing Peter’s kind face. The heavy bags under his eyes seemed to have deepened again since the last time she’d spoken to him. “Not at all, it’s always a pleasure to talk with you,” she answered. “How are you coping over there?”

  His large head tilted in consideration and his wispy white hair curled away from the wrinkles on his face. He said: “I leave a great deal to my cabinet and the soldiers, Dahra. I do not wish to complain, but my dear wife is having some problems with the… situation.”

  “I’m sorry,” Napier replied.

  “I am contacting you to thank you for the open borders policy.”

  “You’re welcome. If the roles were reversed… Well, Germany and England have been allies for well over a century.”

  “Yes. How are your preparations?”

  “As far as I know, everything is in hand as much as it can be. I had another difficult conversation with President Coll earlier today.”

  Mitsch didn’t say anything but his eyebrows rose in inquiry.

  Napier felt suddenly glad she was able to share her concern with a fellow leader. “Madelyn tried to imply that it still wasn’t too late to surrender. She thought it might be the path of least death and disaster.”

  “Ha! I expected as much,” Mitsch said with a Teutonic slap of his hand on his desk. He wagged a finger at Napier and urged: “You should not listen to her. She has that idiot—what is his name, Bradly?—whispering in her ear that the American companies will lose business to the Chinese if the US supports the European countries. If he could, he would convince her to stop the Atlantic convoys.”

  Napier nodded and said: “My chief military general specifically told me not to mention the convoys in conversation with her.”

  “But she must know about them. That Bradly fool must have told her, yes?”

  “I think she knows they happen, but NATO has strong supporters in the United States military and body politic. These people are as loyal to the founding principles of NATO as they are to their own flag.”

  “Good,” Mitsch said in resolve. “We will need such people yet.”

  There came a pause between them before Napier said: “My concern increases with each passing day, Peter. Our super AI keeps telling us that the invasion could resume at any minute, or perhaps not for days or weeks or months. The stress is relentless. After so long, it can be difficult to think clearly sometimes.”

  She saw sympathy on the German Chancellor’s face. He said: “I know. Our computers say the same thing. But every day our defences get stronger, better. Me, I think he already leaves it too long. Over two months. Far too long.”

  Napier smiled at Mitsch’s imperfect English that added so much to his character. “It’s funny,” she mused, “but the lack of any change seems to me to be the strangest thing of all. He has called on us to surrender, what, ten times in the last ten weeks? And all through that time, all of our diplomatic efforts have fallen on deaf ears. The Chinese have dodged their responsibility, and I’ve lost count of the number of other leaders who have told us that we brought this on ourselves.”

  “It is all about business, Dahra. Those other countries, in Asia, Africa, South America, they are owing too much of their prosperity to China. And perhaps the intelligence reports we had recently are true? Perhaps the Chinese president really did tell the Third Caliph to stop, but now he is too powerful, yes?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And also, perhaps the others are more worried? I think they are fear for their own countries—”

  “Then why don’t they help us defeat him now?” Napier asked in frustration.

  Mitsch tutted and shook his head. He said: “I think two main reasons, Dahra. One, they not want to upset China. And two, they think once Europe is finished, he will either stop and be satisfied, or he will attack India, and everyone is thinking India can stop him. This, I think, is their concern since he stopped his attack in the middle of March.”

  “But that doesn’t help us at all, Peter.”

  “Of course,” he agreed. “But he makes a very big mistake waiting so long. We get stronger every day. Who knows, perhaps it might be enough when he finally does try to destroy the rest of us?”

  “Perhaps,” Napier replied without conviction.

  Chapter 56

  03.31 Friday 2 June 2062

  TERRY BLEW THE steam from his fourth cup of tea and thanked the orderly who had provided it. He felt relieved he had been incorrect, that his premonition had not come to pass. He glanced at the four operators manning the consoles around the main War Room, as they observed the constantly updated information supplied by computers that never needed to sleep.

  He half-smiled to himself when he recalled the looks of nervous shock on the faces of the operators when he’d arrived unexpectedly. He had done his best to calm them with words of reassurance. Terry understood that each member of the War Rooms’ personnel had concerns for the future, for their families and loved ones, and for themselves. Then he reviewed current deployments again and put himself in the enemy’s sandals. At that point, he concluded that the time was not yet right.

  “Squonk?”

  “Yes, Sir Terry?”

  “Get my vehicle ready. I think I will return home for a few hours.”

  “Yes, Sir. I will instruct your vehicle to—”

  Terry looked at the screens, knowing there could only be one reason Squonk had stopped in mid-sentence. Red icons appeared and flashed across the maps of Europe as thousands of lines of red light, each indicating a hostile ACA, emerged like a swarm of locusts from enemy-controlled territory in northern Spain, Italy, and the Balkans, and converged on the NATO defensive formations. A shrill klaxon sounded in the War Room, rebounding off the surfaces in half-second surges. The breath stopped in Terry’s throat. He frowned as he looked at the current threat probability level It had increased to one hundred percent.

  The suddenness of the assault made him pause while his heart pounded in his chest. All of the flimsiest hopes he’d harboured over the preceding weeks withered like shards of ice in glaring sunshine as the number of enemy ACAs approaching NATO positions increased to the tens of thousands. His premonition had been correct, after all.

  An unknown voice abruptly became audible over the klaxon. Terry saw on the screen that it belonged to a comms officer at Air Command HQ at RAF High Wycombe. “Urgent contact to all locations: multiple incoming hostile ACAs are about to swamp our defences. The battle for Europe has begun. I repeat: the battle for Europe has begun.”

  In the awful backwash of shock after the announcement, General Sir Terry Tidbury sipped his mug of tea and uttered: “So, now the end finally begins.”

  THE END

  Coming from Chris James in 2020

  The Repulse Chronicles

  Book Three

  The Battle for Europe

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