Onslaught

by Chris James

  “We’re better off staying here out in the open,” Seth shouted.

  “What’s that?” Paz asked, shielding her eyes with one hand while pointing up at the sky.

  “Not sure,” Seth answered.

  Kivi looked and realised that the black dots in the sky must be ACAs, but such was her confidence she still did not sense any danger.

  Seth spoke: “I’m not getting any signal from them. Nadin?”

  “Nothing. And that means they’re not ours.”

  “That’s not possible,” Kivi said, a note of panic in her voice. “They can’t be Caliphate machines, they just can’t. They’re all in Turkey.”

  “They must be ours,” Seth insisted.

  The black dots descended out of the hot blue sky in organised waves. In some detached place in her mind, Kivi thought the spectacle beautiful. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of perfectly arranged black spots moving and changing direction and undulating as they approached the city. Abruptly the ground shuddered, and Kivi almost lost her footing.

  “What the hell was that?” Nadin asked.

  No one answered him as the group glanced at each other with nervous faces. Kivi put a steadying arm on the stonework beneath the inverted metallic pyramid of the Holocaust Memorial. The middle of Rabin Square remained busy but with fewer people than earlier. The densest crowds seemed to be pushing their way out of the square and down the adjoining streets, past the low-rise buildings which lined three sides of the square.

  A vast explosion came to Kivi’s ears and beyond the square, in the centre of downtown Tel Aviv, the circular Azrieli Center collapsed. The top section appeared to accelerate as it sank into the lower part of the building. When it did, a plume of grey dust billowed out and rose into the air. Another shudder ran through the concrete under Kivi’s feet, and indistinctly through the dust she saw another building collapse. She couldn’t believe her eyes; she couldn’t breathe. Seth and Nadin stood and swore their own incredulity, while Paz had begun weeping in low, pathetic whines.

  Then the nearest waves of machines came over the square from the north, proceeded by a surge of agonised screams. Kivi watched the ACAs narrow their focus to where the crowds were thickest, along the roads around the square. Her heart stopped as the thousands of people underneath the ACAs burst into flames. She could see no reason why this should happen: the machines did not appear to do anything, and this confusion compounded her desperate shock.

  Seth cried out: “No, no, no, they can’t do that. They can’t do that.”

  Kivi turned and looked at him, but Nadin spoke, his voice hoarse with fear and rage: “That’s impossible. You can’t have a laser on a machine that small,” and Kivi understood how the people were being burned.

  She gabbed Paz’s arm and shouted: “We have to get out of here.”

  Paz wailed and shook but took a step forward when Kivi yanked her arm.

  Seth and Nadin came close and Seth said: “Where the hell do we go?”

  Kivi stared at Seth, unable to find an answer. She could not bear to look again. The sounds of chaos and sudden death drummed the air all around her head and she fought to keep the terror at bay. The trembling from the ground told her that buildings in the downtown area continued to collapse; the added heat and smell of burning meat threatened to break her spirit. Beside her, Paz appeared as though her spirit were already broken.

  “Let’s stay here and hide behind the stonework,” she suggested to Seth, certain that Paz was incapable of taking a single step.

  He nodded. Kivi turned back to see flames flash and touch more people. The dark, evil machines flew closer to the ground in little groups. They darted and spun and arched and dived and across the length and breadth of the square. People screamed out their agony or lay still in crumpled, crackling heaps. Out towards the edges, the trees burned, the low-rise buildings burned, and the grey and black smoke drifted upwards.

  Suddenly, Paz let out a shriek of, “No!” and launched herself out from the memorial, sprinting towards the eastern side.

  “Paz!” Kivi shouted, unable to let her friend end her life in such terrified desperation. She had to try to protect her. Kivi ran after her, concentrating on following Paz’s long black hair. But burning people were everywhere, many still thrashing and shrieking in agony. Kivi saw Paz stumble and fall among the flaming ruins of her fellow citizens. Above her, a group of the machines made another pass. Paz pushed herself up on one knee, and then her hair and clothes caught fire. She brought her arms up and collapsed into a foetal position.

  Kivi took one more step towards her dying friend when another running, screaming, burning victim crashed into her and sent her tumbling to the ground. On her back, she looked up into the bright blue morning sky mottled with flying black shapes. She felt suddenly weak, too weak to move. A hazy irritation began on her skin as four of the black shapes passed overhead. Altogether, she thought, the sky looked like it was filled with locusts. Yes, many locusts, buzzing around looking for food. The heat on her body increased until she couldn’t breathe. She tried to pull her arms and legs together against the increasing pain, but her limbs wouldn’t move. Kivi closed her eyes, accepted the sudden, overwhelming weakness, and waited for the burning sensation all over her skin to end. When it did, she would help her friend.

  Chapter 17

  12.43 Wednesday 8 February 2062

  THE TALL, SLIM form of Rear Admiral William Rutherford stood up as a waiter showed Sir Terry Tidbury to the expansive table.

  “Good of you to agree to lunch, Bill,” Terry said as the waiter slid the chair underneath him, and Terry requested freshly squeezed orange juice.

  “My pleasure, Sir Terry.”

  “I think we can dispense with the formalities,” Terry said. “Especially in the current circumstances. Are you up to speed with the situation in Israel?”

  Rutherford frowned, “Oh, yes. Dreadful business. Apparently the Israelis attacked first, is that right?”

  Terry nodded, “And they didn’t tell anyone, not even the Americans, until they’d launched—”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Fischel must have had his reasons.”

  Rutherford unscrewed the cap of a bottle of water and asked while pouring: “And will he tell us what they were?”

  “I don’t know. The US sent in a rapid-response team from Naples to get him and any other VIPs out, but that was over two hours ago and there’s been no contact with them. In addition, Caliphate Forces deployed another new ACA we haven’t seen before.”

  Rutherford nodded, “Yes, I thought lasers were still too bulky to be mounted on an ACA,” he said, and picked up a long menu card.

  “So did everyone else, at least until today.” Terry said, picking up the menu next to a glass. Silence settled over the table as the two men considered the dishes. The waiter returned with Terry’s drink and took their orders.

  “In any case,” Terry said when he’d left, “I wanted you to know I’m grateful you chaps in the Senior Service are sharing what you’ve found out.” Terry looked at the Rear Admiral. “I’m sorry your people had to bear the brunt of that, Bill.”

  “Nonsense, old chap. His Majesty’s Royal Navy has always been in the vanguard of England’s, shall we say, ‘adventures’, and none of us expects that to change not only in the foreseeable future, but, in fact, at any time, ever.”

  Terry smiled. “How’s the rest of the service holding up?”

  Rutherford’s saturnine expression and shadowed eyes gave Terry a hint of the damage the loss of the Mediterranean fleet had done, but the Rear Admiral said: “Oh, I think the Americans got it a lot worse than us. Forty percent of their carrier groups lost in one engagement.”

  “What’s your personal opinion on what the Caliphate hit us with?”

  “You’ve seen the summary report?”

  “Of course, but I wanted to hear your appraisal, Bill. I’m hoping the Third Caliph only wants Turkey, and now he’s neutralised Israel he’ll either strike down i
nto India or go into Russia’s underbelly, but if he is thinking about Europe, we’re going to need everything we’ve got.”

  Rutherford asked: “What do the computers say regarding the likelihood that he is going to attack Europe?”

  Terry frowned, “Damn things will tell you anything you want to hear depending on what you ask them, Bill. Their total failure to see this coming has crushed what little trust I had in them. The problem is that the youngsters can’t seem to cope without them.”

  Rutherford smiled and said: “But they grew up with them, and besides, are we really so different? I can remember the first artificial intelligence devices quite well. At Charterhouse, I and my chums developed an AI app as an end-of-sixth-form project. Do you remember those old apps? Things were so much simpler then.”

  Terry nodded his agreement, happy to allow the Rear Admiral a moment’s nostalgia after the disaster he’d had to cope with. Rutherford continued: “But it’s changed so much since then. How did we not see China’s inevitable rise to such complete dominance of global affairs? Because whatever they say in public, it’s the Chinese and their meddling that’s brought us to this disaster.”

  “I don’t know, Bill. I’m not too keen on picking apart the politics behind the how and the why. I want to know if the Caliphate is going to invade Europe, and if it does, how the hell we can defend ourselves.”

  “Thus far, the only thing we’ve got is coherence length variation.”

  Terry nodded. “That’s one of the reasons I asked you to lunch, Bill. I’ve read the summary report, but I want to know what you make of it.”

  “Not sure I can add that much. Wexley on the Hyperion had the idea—”

  “But it was his idea, not something the ship’s super-AI suggested?”

  “Definitely, yes. He saw what was happening to the American ships and knew they didn’t stand a chance, but tried to find a way to delay the inevitable. Once the ship’s computer realised that a slight increase in each laser shot’s coherence length meant it required fewer shots to knock out one of their machines, it obviously developed that.”

  “And what were the limits?”

  The two men paused to allow the waiter to put the food on the table. Terry looked down at his braised ribs and compared them favourably with Rutherford’s rigatoni with ham and cheese in a tomato sauce.

  Rutherford extracted his cutlery from the folded linen napkin and said: “Quite restrictive. The tech bods know the fine details, but the trick appears to be randomisation within the available range. The decisive issue during the engagement wasn’t so much their swamping of our defences—that’s been an understood naval tactic for decades—but the strength in the shielding around their machines. That was quite outrageous.”

  “If and when an invasion comes, NATO isn’t going to have much to hold them back with, and that coherence length variation could play an important role.”

  The two men shared a glance. Rutherford said: “If the randomisations were sufficiently frequent and sufficiently… random? it would be extremely difficult for any computer to anticipate and react to them, to overcome them.”

  Terry nodded, “That’s interesting: a development which super artificial intelligence would not be able to negate.”

  “Let’s keep that to ourselves for now.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Damn.”

  “What?”

  Terry reached into his trouser pocket and took out a small, oblong device two centimetres long. He pressed an edge of it and it splayed out into a circle seven centimetres across. The space within the circle appeared empty, and then an image resolved. It had a blue background and the words ‘Urgent, return to HQ’ appeared in white.

  Terry sighed. “It seems I have to go back.”

  “Before you go,” Rutherford said, “there is one thing I wanted to mention to you.”

  “Certainly.”

  “I realise that these ACAs will draw much attention, but we’re going to have to replace those ships, and that will cost money.”

  “Bill, I don’t have any—”

  Rutherford put a hand out and said: “I understand that, old chap. But at the same time, I don’t think we can let these damnable machines end four hundred years of Royal Navy history, do you?”

  The waiter returned and with deference said: “Excuse me, Sir. Your vehicle is waiting outside.”

  Terry nodded his thanks, the waiter left, and Terry answered Rutherford: “I’ll support any requests you make, Bill, but as you might expect, we’ll be relying on the Americans for all kinds of support.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Sorry I have to go so soon.”

  Rutherford shook his head and said: “I’ll finish this and then I must go as well. I have many widows to visit.”

  Chapter 18

  19.28 Wednesday 8 February 2062

  THE ENGLISHMAN LOOKED out at the Beijing skyline and a familiar thrill shivered through him. He stood at the centre of the world. Beijing simply owned all of the superlatives. It was the capital city of the richest and most powerful country; the biggest, the most populous, the place everyone who wasn’t here wanted to visit, the city envied and emulated by every other city in the world. It was his natural environment, and every minute he spent here dripped in the vitality of existence itself.

  A spark of patriotism flashed and burned inside him, and he wondered if people had felt like this about his home town of London two hundred years earlier. He could imagine a foreign diplomat looking out at St. Paul’s or the newly rebuilt Houses of Parliament in the 1860s and marvelling at British supremacy, at how that little island race had conquered three quarters of the world. But so much had changed since then.

  He marvelled again when he recalled the previous night in bed with Marshall Zhou, as his lover had spoken of his family history, and then they’d talked about their countries’ histories. In the warm, intimate glow which follows mutual climax, Zhou told the Englishman that, today, five thousand years of Chinese history were at last coalescing in the centre of the ‘Middle Kingdom’, so that it would finally dominate the world and guide it to a bright, peaceful future. No race on Earth was as patient as the Chinese.

  Now, the Englishman scanned the glass and metal towers in the bright morning sunshine, smiling and shaking his head in awe at Sinopec’s new headquarters; a vast, spear-like tower which had been designed as an elongated pyramid stretching hundreds of metres into the sky. He saw the canyons between the buildings, and imagined the millions of people down there, from the meanest coolie to the politburo members, from the shady dealers and traders to the thousands of billionaires who maintained a property in the most important capital city in the world, from the thieves and drug addicts to the doctors and charity workers.

  The Englishman stood in apartment 4715 of the new Kempinski six-star hotel, opened a mere two weeks previously. He had checked in with his second identity as a seller of English wines to select restaurants, and he’d chosen the Kempinski because his super AI gave this hotel the lowest probability of being discovered. The Chinese government was known to monitor, and attempt to de-encrypt, all quantum comms traffic emanating from the city, but this was a huge undertaking, and when his super AI gave him a low enough probability of detection, the Englishman trusted that he would remain undiscovered. But this risk itself only heightened his pleasure at the life he led.

  He strolled the length of the spacious living room and entered the bedroom. He let himself collapse on the wonderfully smooth and soft duvet, puffed up the pillow under his head, and twitched the muscles in his eye so that his lens would encrypt his words. He slowed his breathing and collected his thoughts.

  When ready, he spoke aloud: “The Englishman reporting from Beijing. Time of report: nineteen-thirty-two, Wednesday the eighth of February, twenty sixty-two. Report begins. I spent last night with Z. again. We used a notable amount of alcohol and Z. took his usual narcotic, while I feigned taking it, also as usual. I questioned him about the Caliphate and
what’s happened to Turkey and Israel. To provoke him, I emphasised the sense of shock and fear in Europe, and hinted that few believed China did not know what the Caliphate had been planning, and probably had done for years.

  “Z. displayed an element of cynicism allied with more than a trace of indifference. Z. knows his history, and berated Europe for always thinking it was the centre of the universe. He repeated one of his favourite stats, that more Chinese were killed in the Taiping Rebellion in the 1850s than in Europe in the whole of the First World War. Thus feeling that he’d given me a ‘better’ perspective on global historical events, he went on to concede confusion in his immediate military circle. He wondered if the Chinese intelligence services might have known, but he insisted that no one in the army knew or even expressed an opinion. Up until last Tuesday morning, the Caliphate was a minor subject in Chinese military affairs.”

  The Englishman paused and admired the ornate cornice above him. He continued: “It is difficult to say with certainty, but I believe Z. was being truthful. The tailored narcotics I gave him should have seen to that. However, irrespective of what the Chinese military did or did not know about the Caliphate’s intentions, the future is of most importance now. But when I tried to question Z. on what he expected the Chinese government to do next, including whether they would try to rein the Third Caliph in, he became frivolous and changed the subject. I carried on a little longer, but I could not draw him on what the future might hold. I will try to find out more in the nearest future. Report ends.”

  Chapter 19

  13.21 Wednesday 8 February 2062

  IN THE EMERGENCY meeting room at Ten Downing Street, Terry looked at Crispin Webb as Webb whispered: “Jesus Christ,” and wondered what on earth this mousy publicist had expected. Terry got little pleasure out of civilians suddenly finding themselves out of their depth in a military emergency, but it mattered significantly that they could adapt. So far this week, shock was the dominating force.