Faraday said, “Well the Russians denied the ambush, as we fully expected they would, and now they deny this too. But they make a further claim about the palace attack...” The room was completely silent, save for the hum of the overhead air heating and the background noise of the office complex. Even the usual fidgeting had stopped as all present focused on his words. “I got a call on my way here from President Demenok himself, telling me this is all the work of rogue SVR agents.”
MI6 Director Colby said, “It’s an obvious move by Demenok and one has to ask why they didn’t claim this earlier in the week after the A1 ambush. Having said that though, I don’t think we should rule it out—”
“Sounds like that has some basis, Martin,” said Faraday.
He nodded in confirmation, “Yes, Prime Minister, we do have some evidence of this rogue agent claim. One of our assets in Moscow tells us there’s a lot of concern in the corridors of power there. She has at least one confirmed and one unconfirmed case of handlers reporting their British asset going dark after scheduled contacts.”
“Well, if they’ve gone rogue they haven’t defected to us, which leads to the question: who the hell are they working for if it’s true?” said Maison, her eyebrows raised, waiting for an answer from him.
He looked down and sighed. “That, I’m afraid, is something we just don’t know … yet,” said Colby.
Faraday shook his head in frustration. “There are gaps in our knowledge you could drive a tank through! We need to allocate all the resources we can to figuring this thing out. That’s Five, Six and the police and any other agency that’s relevant. You have mine and my Cabinet’s full support and additional funding requests will be looked on kindly. Now, while we’re working on solving the who dunnit we need to make sure what happened today cannot happen again. We’ve just had the worst breach of security in recent history—any repeat and the public is going to start losing faith in our ability to maintain security. I need to know—James and Anthony—what the police and military are going to change to make sure state infrastructure and officials are properly protected.”
“With all due respect, Prime Minister,” started Rose, “our SAS boys were successful in neutralising the enemy and the police evacuated the king in good time. So, although—”
Faraday shook his head and flushed slightly. “No, no, no! I saw the footage from earlier today. Those … things made the police and guards look completely impotent, even after they shot them, for goodness’ sake!”
Douglas-Smith looked to Rose as if to say, may I take this one? Rose indicated, go ahead. “Prime Minister, this is an unprecedented threat and it came out of the blue. And I think we all agree on that…” There were nods and murmurs of agreement around the table. “So it’s early days and, in fairness, we need some time to respond to this.”
This logical reasoning seemed to calm Faraday to some degree.
He’d just opened his mouth to respond when two armed police officers from the protection branch burst in.
“Prime Minister,” exclaimed the stocky, shorter one, “we need to evacuate the building immediately: bomb threat!”
The seriousness of the officer’s words impelled Faraday and everyone else to action as they rose immediately. They made their way to the door and out into the corridor.
“One’s already gone off at Vauxhall Cross and we’re not taking any chances, sir,” the officer said urgently. “Just follow us.”
The other offices and rooms were spilling their occupants into the corridor, with familiar civil servants walking but not yet running. Faraday could hear Colby trying to hail someone from MI6 HQ, but was clearly getting frustrated. The SIS Director’s voice was strained and frantic as he tried to find out how badly Vauxhall Cross had been hit. The group followed the two officers through the double doors at the end of the hallway and onto the second floor stairwell. The evacuation siren was still sounding, only adding to the sense of urgency. Taken in context after the palace attack and the A1 ambush, this was serious and Faraday was, for the first time, feeling vulnerable. It was the way the two Centurions had so easily dealt with all of those palace guards and police that had dispelled his sense of security. He was watching his feet as they moved quickly taking the steps one by one while trying not to collide with the officers leading the way. He thought of the gym, bizarrely—a place that he’d become increasingly estranged from as his term of office had worn on. He was starting to get warm and breathe heavier, not used to the exertion anymore.
They were nearing the ground floor and congestion was causing the throng to slow to a snail’s pace. He grasped the handrail, aiding his left turn on the intermediate landing, when a deafening boom rocked the building, knocking out the lights and throwing him to the floor. The frantic screams and shouts were suddenly drowned out by the collapsing stairwell. A chunk of masonry fell along with hundreds of other pieces. It struck Prime Minister Faraday’s already sprawling body, leaving him motionless on the floor of the ruined Cabinet Offices.
***
Field Marshall, Sir Anthony Rose awoke in the half-light of the destroyed Cabinet offices to the sound of distant shouts and cries for help and sobs of the trapped and injured. He felt groggy and weak and his leg had been crushed under falling rubble. He was bruised and battered in other places too, but the relative pain relegated these minor injuries out of his mind. He tried to move and found himself pinned up to the pain threshold he’d so far challenged. The taste of blood filled his mouth and his tongue was sore and swollen where he must have bitten down on it as he was thrown to the floor by what—a bomb? Yes, he remembered what it was—the armed police bursting in, the urgent evacuation and then the blast. He felt dazed and the usual clarity of thought for the sixty-eight-year-old had been blunted by his concussion. He knew it was a bombing but was still shocked at how the so-far nameless enemy had struck so deep and with so little warning.
He laid his head back down on the floor and took a breath, steeling himself for the unpinning of his crushed leg. He knew this was going to hurt. A lot. He tensed his muscles … one, two, three … and yanked it free. It took two seconds for the pain to register but when it did, it was intense and deep, causing him to scream a visceral scream. He’d ripped the skin off of his trapped thigh and sliced thinly but deeply into the flesh. There was a lot of blood, but he knew that no vital blood vessels had been breached. It was more than a minute before the pain subsided to a throbbing, dull sensation. He took a minute more to get his breathing back under control and when he did, he heard a weak sobbing from behind him. He got to his feet slowly, initially using his arms to support his weight, turning his head and zeroing in on the sound. The sobbing continued—female—perhaps Diane Maison, who was near him when the stairwell fell to pieces.
He scanned the rubble and remnants of the collapsed stairwell in the direction of the cries. Smoke was coming from beyond the trapped woman. He could hear other distant moans of pain and calls for help, but he resolved to start with the nearest: the woman. He rose tentatively to his feet using a fallen beam—now vertical—to steady himself. He could look down on where the woman’s calls were coming from.
“Diane, is that you? It’s Anthony.”
“Oh, Anthony, yes I’m here … my arm!”
He saw the lighter shade of her skin beyond some rubble as she lifted her distressed face.
“I can see you. How bad is it?” he asked as he hobbled towards her, ten metres away.
“I can’t move my right arm.”
He reached her and she sat up, looking shaken, dusty, but mercifully free of blood.
“Can you stand?” He reached over the piece of ceiling and took her left hand.
“Let me try.”
As she rose and tried to stand, he aided her to her feet, noticing how her right arm hung limp.
“We need to get out of here. Come on,” he urged.
She winced with pain as he guided her over the metre-high masonry pile. They helped each other along, Rose on the left a
nd Maison on the right, arms round one another’s shoulders. She helped take the weight off his badly injured leg, while he opened the set of two double doors—the outer ones jammed partially in place—before accessing the street outside and a scene straight out of a disaster movie.
It was dark already with a freezing chill in the air. The blue flashes of police, ambulance and fire engines strobed on the collapsed offices. Paramedics attended the injured on the pavement and in the back of ambulances. A triage tent was being set up across the street. Several corpses with makeshift shrouds lay in a line to the right. A team of four fire fighters rushed past them and into the fallen building. They said nothing to Rose and Maison—walking wounded ranked down the list of priorities. Paramedics carrying a stretcher with a terribly bloodied man on it appeared from their left. He was unconscious and looked as white as a ghost.
Maison looked to Rose and forced a smile through her pain. “Thank you,” she said.
The distinguished officer and gentleman, though ruffled, still looked unmistakeably like the head of the British military. The veteran of the second Gulf War, Afghanistan and the War Against IC smiled warmly. “It’s my pleasure and duty,” he replied. He felt a strange sense of protectiveness towards his MI5 counterpart. Shared experience does that, he thought.
It was the last thought of his sixty-eight years of consciousness as the supersonic slug of lead entered his skull. It sliced through his grey matter and exited the other side, taking brain and skull casing with it.
***
Friday, February 17th, 2045 6:00pm: Severalls Industrial Estate, Colchester, England
The same auto-truck that arrived four days earlier had just left the warehouse. It was slightly heavier than before, the container—already present in the corner of the warehouse—emptied of its contents. The robotic troops of forces unseen were now active and untethered inside. Each of the five racks inside carried forty-eight Centurions; two-hundred and forty humanoid killing machines—about the size of two and a half companies’ worth of troops. Except these were no ordinary troops and each had the combat effectiveness of at least five human equivalents. Two kilometres to the south was one of the three garrisons charged with controlling the new robot army and projecting Britain’s newly minted power.
18
Friday, February 17th, 2045 6:00pm: Near Pen y Fan, Brecon Beacons, Wales
The premature MI6 attack was unfortunate, thought Becker as he directed the auto-truck with the touch of a finger. They’d be on a state of heightened alert if the news had gotten out of London already. More auto-trucks were reaching their targets all over the country, but he had taken personal charge of the three most important: the three destined for Colchester, Catterick and Aldershot garrisons. The other Faithful in the control truck in the middle of the Welsh nowhere each controlled a dozen more. If they thought the bombings were bad, they ain’t seen nothing yet! Becker smiled to himself.
***
Friday, February 17th, 2045 6:05pm: Colchester Garrison, Essex, England
Warrant Officer Danny Dyer had received the alert five minutes ago and waited in the chill of the February night with a section of two fire teams. Patrols had been increased around the perimeter and the floodlights put on full power after what had happened in London and, seemingly, all around the UK. There’d been no attack on Colchester Garrison, so it was probably just for precaution’s sake. The eight soldiers, in full BDUs stood at ease a few metres back from the guardhouse and barrier. Buried in the road were four stainless steel, retractable bollards across each lane, which now blocked ingress and egress. Dyer had personally checked all of the deliveries they’d received that week. A total of 42,000 Centurions and 3,500 Sentinels now stood like a vast legion in the warehouses of the Robot Storage Facility. He’d been putting in the hours this week and it wasn’t likely to ease up as full scale training of operators ramped up.
A large, black auto-truck with United Logistics emblazoned on the side slowed on the main road. It began making a left turn onto the main gate approach road. Dyer squinted as its headlights—for some reason on full beam—dazzled him from hundreds of metres away. He’d grown used to seeing these trucks coming and going all week, but it was strange that one was coming at this time. There were no further deliveries scheduled this week, although it wouldn’t be the first time someone had forgotten to tell them.
A cab was stuck behind the auto-truck. Probably the garrison CO or another officer, returning after the alert, thought Dyer. “You lot can wait here. Just gonna sort this truck out,” he informed.
He walked over to the guardhouse.
“Private, let me handle this—looks like another loadout from BDS, although it’s not on my list,” he said to the young British-Indian private.
“Yes, sir. Not on my display here either,” he replied, looking to his counterpart still inside the brick guardhouse. The other guard shook his head in confirmation, looking down at the glow of the display.
Dyer remembered the car behind and sighed. “Let the truck pull into the lay-by over there. We can’t go upsetting our elders and betters now, can we?”
“Yes, sir. Butch, let them in,” said the guard to his colleague inside.
The barrier lifted and the bollards retracted slowly into the road. Dyer went to the auto-truck and opened the panel to the comms display. The face of a dark-haired woman appeared on the display as it fired up with the panel opening.
“Good evening, this is United Logistics, Shauna speaking.”
“Hello Shauna. We weren’t expecting any further deliveries from BDS for the time being. Assuming this is from BDS...”
“Oh, I have here that it’s your final delivery—”
“Ok, direct it to the lay-by just to the left of the guardhouse. Can you see it on your map?”
“Yes, immediate left then about ten metres long?”
“Yep, that’s the one. Just park it there as your truck’s blocking access at the moment.”
“Oh, sorry about that,” she said, pausing a moment while she did something. “Ok, all programmed to go to the lay-by. Speak to you in a minute.”
“Sure, speak shortly.”
He closed the panel, stood in the guardhouse entrance as the truck eased into the base, and turned sharp left towards the lay-by. The lights of the three story brick admin building facing the guardhouse backlit his troops. They waited around at ease, looking bored. One was leaning up against a tree, another two beside the brick bicycle shed between the admin block and the guardhouse. Two cabs had been revealed now the truck had cleared off the access road. Dyer left the guards to check out the occupants while he walked the short distance towards the truck, now coming to rest in the lay-by.
It was a cold night, with the day’s limited energy escaping back into space. He looked up, trying to catch a glimpse of some familiar constellations, but to no avail due to the light pollution from the base’s floodlights. He knew his wife wouldn’t be too pleased. Their house adjoining the base was right in the path of one of the perimeter floodlights. She nagged him last time saying it interfered with their two-year-old’s sleep. He’d explained that he had no control over it. She’d countered that they should’ve bought the blackout curtains she’d been in favour of. It all seemed so trivial in light of today’s events. He was just glad they were safe next to a garrison full of thousands of British soldiers—both human and robotic.
He neared the comms panel at the front of the auto-truck, ready to engage with the dozy-sounding Shauna sitting in some call centre miles away. As he placed his hand on the panel ready to open it, he heard an electrical whirring sound. He looked up towards the side of the truck where the noise was coming from. It was joined by other renditions of the same sound as the first set of bolts clicked open. The unlocking noise of the sliding side panels was familiar to him but no one had initiated the opening. Unless the operator, Shauna, did. He opened the comms panels expecting to see the display light up showing the woman’s face. Instead, nothing happened—no pi
cture, no sound. He watched as the black concertina siding of a trailer slid open. What it revealed he found unbelievable.
The Centurions inside were untethered and some were moving. What was more disturbing still was that each one he could see was armed. Some with handguns, others with assault rifles, but all were carrying weapons.
“Shit! What is this?” he muttered. He was scared after what he’d seen at Buckingham Palace on the news. He wasn’t going to take any chances. “Boys, look lively, these bots are active!”
The eight troops raised their assault rifles covering the now exposed robots, which seemed to be getting more active with every passing second.
“Griff, contact Security and let them know we have a possible threat. Tell them we need everything that’s available.”
“Yes sir!” Private Griffiths replied, immediately calling through to base security.
Dyer backed away from the truck towards the admin block and his troops. “Take cover, guys, just in case,” he said in a measured tone. As Sergeant Major Instructor of Remote Weapons Systems, he was well aware that his section was no match for an entire truck-full of two hundred plus Centurions. If the entire base mobilised right then it’d be one hell of a fight. No, what they needed were two things: heavy weapons support and to fight fire with fire. At the same time, he didn’t want to appear foolish and call out the base’s armoured detachment on a whim. Things like that lived long in the memory and he’d never be able to live it down if he was wrong. He watched the first Centurion turn its head, as if scanning the scene. Its gaze rested on him and his men. As it did, he made another decision: they needed to call in the trained-up robot operators and get them down to the underground command centre ASAP. If this threat was real then the only way to stop it was by using the thousands of robots they already had. He understood that with only one-hundred and fifty operators there in barracks they could control no more than that number of bots. But they had essentially unlimited substitutes, which the truck-full of potential enemy did not.
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