The Fall of Night

by Christopher Nuttall

  Robinson opened his mouth to answer, and then stopped. There was something wrong; he could feel it, right on the edge of his instincts. He couldn’t have explained it to her; it was just a sense that something wasn’t quite right, somewhere. He had had it in the Sudan, just before some refugees had brought out swords – swords, for the love of God – and started to hack apart their fellows.

  “No,” he said slowly. “It’s very tranquil out here.”

  London, United Kingdom

  Major-General Charles Langford stepped out of the Convent Garden Royal Opera House with the sense that, finally, something was going his way. He had always loved the opera – not the depressing and seemingly endless Wagner operas, but the light-hearted Gilbert and Sullivan operas – and going to see a properly produced version of one was delightful. The Mikado might have run afoul of the Race Relations Board, but the sheer torrent of protest had brought the Board to heel for once; only a handful of people could be bothered to picket the first production since the edict was repealed.

  The sun was fading in the sky as he climbed onto the underground train, waving his ID card at the young Pakistani manning the barrier, who glanced around and then gave Langford the finger. The temptation to report the young man was overwhelming, but Langford forced it down; it wasn't easy getting a job these days. There were times when Langford wondered if it wasn’t just worth taking early retirement, or even leaving the country altogether. England was no longer what it once was…

  He got off the underground train – technically, over half of the network was actually above ground – and walked up the hill towards his flat. His mother had left him her house in Croydon when she had died, but it was large enough for a family and Langford lived alone in Redhill, near London, but not quite part of the city. He passed a group of grieving Indians on the way, the weeping women dressed in brightly-coloured clothes, and headed out onto the hill. He was on leave, technically, even though he didn’t really want to go anywhere. There was plenty of reading he wanted to catch up upon, but for the moment, all he wanted to do was pace. The hill was empty; most of the young men and women who used it would have gone to the community centre, even though it was turning into a haven for crime. It was starting to look if Britain was already dead, and men like him were only struggling against the inevitable.

  Trying to banish such thoughts, he sat on the bench and looked out towards the sunset. It all seemed so safe and tranquil.

  Interlude One: Tick…tick…tick…

  Tick…tick…tick…

  They waited.

  In Belarus, in Serbia, in Algeria, in Russia itself, they waited. Soldiers checked their weapons obsessively as they waited for the dawn; their commanders checked their intelligence and battle plans, some of them wondering if they would be worthy commanding officers, others, more relaxed, tried to sleep. Missile crews checked their missiles carefully, ensuring that all of them had their guidance systems locked onto their targets, hoping that nothing would go wrong at the worst possible moments. Under the waves, Russian submarines made the final GPS checks to ensure that their targeting data was up to date, while aircraft revved their engines on hundreds of runways across Russia.

  Tick…tick…tick…

  In the darkness of the European night, commandos moved closer to their targets, preparing their weapons for action. In every major European city, other commandos prepared their strikes, to unleash terror and destruction right across Europe. In hidden bases, human voices spoke hatred unheard since Cain murdered Abel, inciting a hatred that would soon burst out into the streets. In nondescript rooms, cyber-warriors prepared to hack into and disrupt countless computers right across Europe; the population would wake to find themselves trapped in a nightmare, from which they would never escape.

  Tick…tick…tick…

  Warships moved silently under the waves, closing in on their targets; Naval Infantry prepared themselves for the desperate dash across the water. Hunter-killer submarines moved closer, their targets long identified and selected; their captains waited impatiently for the countdown to reach zero. Others kept their ships well back from any risk of detection, waiting for the final moments before they moved in for the kill. They would not miss their targets; surprise would be absolute.

  Tick…tick…tick…

  Thousands of targets had been designated; thousands of separate acts of sabotage planned. High overhead, cold mechanical eyes peered down, refining the information now that it was too late, while other objects moved into firing position in the dark of space. The intelligence had been better than any Russian had dared to expect; the Europeans had taken almost no precautions for the first total war of the 21st Century. Europe was asleep…and by the time it awoke, it would be too late.

  Tick…tick…tick…

  Zero…

  Chapter Ten: Cry Havoc, and Let Slip the Dogs of War, Take One

  The war was bound to be merciless. Wars that begin with sneak attacks always are.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  London/Near London, England

  “Five minutes, Captain,” the young enlisted seaman said.

  Captain Ilya Ivanovich Mikhalkov nodded. The Akula-II-class submarine Vladimir Putin had been lurking near England for nearly a week, waiting for the firing command, and that worried him. The Putin might have been one of Russia’s latest submarines, designed to serve as both a hunter-killer and shore-assault ship, but he had no illusions as to its fate if a European ship stumbled across them. Technically, they were lurking in international waters, but so close to Europe, they might encounter more than just the Royal Navy. The Dutch might be military lightweights, but they had a navy, while the French were known to patrol these waters too.

  He mentally reviewed the sealed orders he had been given before the nuclear-powered submarine had been sent out from its base in the north. They had been simple; head to a predetermined location, or as near as practical, and then wait. At a certain time, they were to listen for instructions; if they received the command, they were to fire their cruise missiles at the targets and return to base, sinking any European shipping they encountered along the way. If they received no command, they were to maintain radio silence and wait until they ran short of supplies; the mission would only be cancelled by shortages. There had been no provision for a recall command; it was too easy to fake.

  They’d taken up position, far enough from most shipping to be fairly certain of avoiding detection, and waited. The Putin was a new ship, built to new specifications, and tested, but there was always something for the crew to do. The design had been vastly improved, ever since several of the class had been built for India and China; the Russians had quietly built a new one for themselves for every one they had exported to foreign buyers. Iran had bought several before the Americans had closed them down permanently; Algeria and Libya had expressed interest in purchasing some for their ambitions in the Mediterranean. He had every confidence in his ship.

  Two days ago, they had received the order; a simple ‘go’ command and a time. They’d had their targets selected already; it had surprised him to discover that the targets were all within the English capital, London. He had assumed, at first, that they would be making a point to the British – like the new government had done from time to time by sending a Backfire or a Blackjack into British airspace to remind them that they had the capability – but instead…they had real orders to fire. It made him proud; a long career in the Russian Navy had finally given him a chance to fight for his country.

  “Confirm our location,” he ordered. The seas around them were surprisingly empty; the antenna was almost impossible to detect under normal circumstances, but he knew from the ballistic missile submarine captains that they had to be very careful. The GPS position check had to be perfect, or they might miss their targets; the die had been cast and the Putin would not be found wanting. “Make sure that the targets are perfectly locked.”

  “Targets confirmed,” the weapons officer said. If anything, he was more
nervous than Mikhalkov himself; the cruise missiles had been tested time and time again before they had left harbour, but it was too late for them to replace a malfunctioning missile. The Putin carried thirty missiles in its bays, but a delay could be fatal; the British ships would come boiling out of their harbours with blood on their minds, the minute they launched the first missile. “All missiles report ready.”

  Mikhalkov’s hand shook slightly as he pulled the key from around his neck. “I confirm that all of the targets have been locked,” he said, glancing down at the display. Thirty targets glowed red in the dim light of the submarine. “Mr Exec?”

  His first officer nodded. “Target’s locked, Captain,” he said. There was a minute left to go. The first officer inserted his key and twisted it once. “Armed and ready.”

  It was not as elaborate a procedure as launching nuclear missiles from a ballistic missile submarine, but Mikhalkov knew that it was important; an accidental launch from the Putin could have disastrous consequences. The Russian Navy was full of stories about missiles that had accidentally been fired, or storage dumps during the bad old days following the end of the Cold War, where a single spark had triggered an explosion that had set off nuclear warning sensors around the world. The Putin Government had started a long-term program for reforming and repairing the worst of the damage; the new President had completed the program. The Russian Navy was again one of the most dangerous in the world.

  Mikhalkov watched as the weapons officer inserted his key and twisted it. He wanted to say something dramatic, but words failed him; he inserted his own key and turned it, activating the firing sequence. Thirty missiles, packed into tubes, ready to launch in a rapid-fire sequence. His breath was coming short as the display changed again; one single tap and the missiles would be launched.

  The countdown reached zero.

  “Firing,” he said. He pressed the firing key and held it down for the precise number of seconds. Moments later, the first of the missiles was launched…and the war began. “May God have mercy on us all.”

  ***

  There was one station in PJHQ that was manned at all times; the ballistic missile warning system. The British Government might have shared the general opinion that the threat of all-out nuclear war had ended with the Cold War, but the threat of a rogue state remained in existence. The possibility that North Korea might launch a missile towards America if the war went badly – as it might well – was ever-present, and the British government needed the most up to date information. Besides, it was at least theoretically possible for terrorists to produce homemade cruise missiles.

  Captain Katy Harland was on duty when it happened; the links to the orbiting European satellites began to go down. She instantly activated the emergency procedure, linking several other radars into the main warning network, before trying to establish what had gone wrong. The European military satellites, boosted into orbit by the ESA, had been problematic right from the start; she, like many of the other staff in PJHQ, regarded them with some suspicion, even if the ESA kept claiming that all the bugs were being worked out of the system. Moments later, alarms started to sound…

  For a long moment, Katy just stared at the display; hundreds of red icons were flickering into existence. Out of habit, she glanced at the console to ensure that someone wasn't playing a training tape; it wouldn’t be the first time that someone had accidentally started a training program that had been mistaken for the real thing. The new icons were appearing from the sea and were being picked up now by conventional radar systems, heading in towards London. Entire sections of the command network were starting to fail; Katy realised that it was not a drill.

  “Trigger the alert, now,” she snapped. It was a simple task, but one difficult to actually accept doing, except in drills; she hit the command and hoped that she wasn’t too late. The alert command should have warned the handful of TMD batteries around London that they would be needed, but she saw now that it was too late. One of the missiles – two of the missiles – was heading right for the PJHQ. The air raid alarm was sounding and staff were beating feet towards the bomb shelter, but it was too late. There were only moments left as the supersonic missiles raced closer towards their targets.

  Katy closed her eyes.

  ***

  Nicholas Donavan had never quite gotten used to his position as Prime Minister. He had never seriously expected that the Liberal Democrats would become the party in power, and indeed, some of its power was only maintained through an alliance with the Greens and the Socialists. Labour might have been pretty much discredited by the failures of both Blair and Brown – the disaster in Sudan had only put an end to that particular government – but the Conservatives had been going from strength to strength recently, as had the BNP. Donavan knew that the economic crisis was growing worse; people were starting to look towards the more extreme parties for government…

  It didn’t seem fair. Donavan had once had ideals, but government work had drained most of them out of his soul. He had had hopes of turning Britain into a truly progressive society, but Britain had proved very resistant to change; his hand had been forced or held back on dozens of occasions. He had wanted to create a land with social justice for everyone, only to discover that people wanted social justice for themselves, but not necessarily for everyone else. There were times when it seemed like the news was a constant funeral dirge for Britain; racism, sexism and worse stalked Britain's streets…

  Europe didn’t make matters any easier. Didn’t they see, he asked himself, that Europe was the only way forward? America couldn’t be depended on any more; Pakistan had learned that lesson, even after an American serviceman had raped a British girl. The world needed a counterbalance to American power, and Europe was the only real contender, but…didn’t they see? It seemed as if even the Euro-Socialists didn’t realise the dangers, while the other local governments were proving resistant to greater integration. A United States of Europe still seemed like a dream…

  An alarm rang. He started, and then flinched as two armed men raced into his room. He opened his mouth to protest, but they grabbed him and pulled him to his feet, half-carrying him down the stairs to the stares of astonished civil servants. Donavan had been due a meeting with the Home Secretary in an hour; the Home Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister were in Parliament, addressing a packed house on the measures that the government intended to take to resolve the Falklands Island Crisis peacefully. Surely, if Britain gave up something…

  He forced his mind back to the present. “What are you doing?”

  “There’s an incoming attack,” one of the men said. He was one of Ten Downing Street’s security staff. “We have to get you into the shelter!”

  The alarm was making it hard to think. “An attack?” Donavan asked. “Who’s attacking us?”

  “I don’t fucking know,” the man snapped. Donavan didn’t know who he was; in all the years of government, he had never bothered to talk to any of the security staff, viewing them as holdovers from the day that a British Prime Minister was among the top ten targets for assassination. “We got a warning that there was a cruise missile incoming and we have to get you into the bunker…”

  They had reached the top of the second set of stairs, leading down into the basement and the bunker below. “I can’t just…” Donavan protested. His legs seemed to refuse to move; he cursed his lack of exercise even as the two guards picked him up and carried him down. “I can’t…I need to talk to my family!”

  “You must,” the man snapped. “There’s no time and we’re being jammed and all hell is breaking loose…”

  The first missile struck Ten Downing Street. It had been designed as a bunker-busting warhead; it punched through the façade of the normal, civilian, house and buried itself in the masonry before exploding. The blast tore through the complex, sending shockwaves down into the tunnel system and collapsing many of the tunnels; for those in the bunker, the roof caved in and crushed them before they even had a moment to know t
hat they were dead. The second missiles struck moments later; its warhead was different, a compressed fuel-air explosive mixture that detonated just before hitting the ground, sending a wave of super-hot flame blasting out across Whitehall. It was almost like being at ground zero of a nuclear detonation.

  No one ever found a trace of Nicholas Donavan.

  ***

  The skyscraper apartment was luxurious; Zachary Lynn loved it and so did the girls he brought back to the apartment on a fairly regular basis. He had a habit of relaxing by picking up girls in the nearby nightclubs; one of them, Faye Martin, lay on the double-bed, quite naked. Lynn would have liked to have spent more time with her, but duty called; only the cold awareness that tomorrow might be his last day on Earth had prompted him to pick up Faye. She had been a good lay, but there had been an understanding; there would be no permanent relationship.

  He stared down over London and saw them coming; the first of the missiles. His hackers had gone to work already, attacking the computers that made up the most important and vulnerable part of the defence network; it looked as if they had succeeded, although the fact that the British hadn’t been on war alert had certainly played a role in the success. He knew very little about the overall plan, but he did know that thirty missiles had been targeted on London…and they were coming down like rain.