Repulse: Europe at War 2062-2064 (19 page)

Kartal’s concern for his own survival causes feelings of guilt, which becomes apparent in his entry for 21 July: ‘I dare not let myself be distracted by the other refugees.  I walk on past them: unkempt children, weary mothers, elderly people who hobble along.  I feel awful.  Some of them are young like me, but often they are part of families, obligated to move at the pace of the slowest member.  At each town I must decide: do I queue for hours for some fried food from an old replicator, or do I keep walking and stay ahead of the invader?  I cannot do without water, and queuing for that takes long enough.  A part of me would feel safer in a group, but another part of me reacts badly whenever I fall into conversation with other refugees.  All I see are dead faces, like my own family.  If I am to survive, I cannot give anything to those around me.  But, then again, what will be left here even if I do survive?  I no longer know why I keep walking, day after day.  I no longer know why I want to survive this war.  I no longer understand what has happened in this world.  I am so very tired.’

By 27 July, Kartal has improved, possibly because of better food.  He reaches the outskirts of Hamburg and exclaims: ‘What a journey!  My soul weeps for those poor people who have been caught in the Caliphate’s grasp, but I have arrived in Hamburg and have some hope of getting a boat or ship away from Europe.  As everywhere, there are more refugees than can be counted, but today I walked the length of the city and there are also more boats and ships than can be counted.  A forest of cranes for unloading surrounds every wharf; some lean into the wind like drunken men, some have been smashed into others or the ground by an unknown explosion, and all are covered in rust.

On 31 July he relates how he managed to gain passage on a container ship: ‘I spent several hours helping with others to load equipment and stores on to a huge vessel called
The Honour of Ankara
.  The work was heavy but made a good change from the endless walking.  Everyone was very nervous.  Rumours ran around us, translated into every language I had ever heard, of how enemy forces were closing in on the city.  People argued, I found out later, because some thought the last ships to try to escape would be death traps.  The port is a long way from the open sea, apparently.  The German military police kept shouting at people.  I think the ship’s captain must have had some Turkish blood in him, as his eyes showed sympathy for everyone who wanted to get away.  I am in a windowless cabin now with many men, some of whom stare at me as I write.’

The Honour of Ankara
began its long journey down the Elbe to the North Sea on 4 August, the largest of hundreds of vessels seeking to escape.  The manifest shows it carried over a quarter of a million refugees.  Unlike the local authorities in Paris, Berlin and Warsaw, those in Hamburg made no attempt to seal the city and maintain a defence, trusting that the volume of marine craft would be sufficient to allow the majority to escape.  The sheer number of refugees ensured this would not be the case.  Advance Caliphate units interfered, with Blackswans and Lapwings causing great loss of life in and around the city, which G. K. Morrow detailed with precision in
The Great European Disaster
.  Nevertheless, as Kartal’s journal subsequently describes,
The Honour of Ankara
docked safely in Oslo three days later.

V. EUROPE SUCCUMBS

Kartal and his fellow passengers had good reason to count themselves among the fortunate.  At 05.45 on the morning of 12 August, contact with the Paris resistance was lost.  Previous communications had given no indication of any immediate threat.  The last message to London repeated agreed protocols, detailed a series of training activities underway in the artificial caverns under the eighth arrondissement, and listed some ninety injured refugees who had died during the day.  Concern among NATO leaders increased when communications with Berlin ceased at 06.31.  Warsaw followed suit at 07.43.  As one operator at GCHQ in England later described it: ‘These were solid, reliable EM comm links.  For all three cities to go dark within two hours really stank of foul play, though just how foul we wouldn’t find out till later on, the poor bastards.’

Despite this mystery, which would be resolved during Operation Repulse, as the month of August wore on a hitherto unknown stability descended over the battlefront.  For now, the English Channel had indeed played its historical role of last line of defence.  Within another week, the entire coastlines of England, Scotland and Wales bristled with innumerable batteries of Falaretes.  With each new battery deployed, so the security of the British Isles increased, unless and until the Caliphate attacked again with improved weapons.  Meanwhile, NATO leaders marshalled the best scientists from numerous disciplines to enhance the development of their own weapons.

At the beginning of August most people involved in the conflict, as well as those in the wider world, assumed not unreasonably that the Caliphate’s domination of Europe had reached its endgame.  By the end of the month, however, a new reality had emerged.  The Third Caliph dithered for forty-eight hours, which proved a sufficient window for the democracies to dam the flood, ensconced on those ‘little islands’.  More setbacks and disasters would dog NATO throughout the autumn and winter of 2062, but in the background the urgency to create new and better weapons would eventually override all other considerations.

The Race against Time

I. PLANNING A STRATEGY

Throughout August 2062, the British Isles continued to transform until many considered it one vast military training camp.  The government requisitioned storage facilities to hold the enormous quantities of infantry weapons and ammunition now being replicated and manufactured.  Between March and November 2062, some three hundred and twenty-nine new barracks and other training facilities sprang up, and the British Army expanded more than tenfold.  Many long-disbanded regiments came back into existence as the ranks swelled.  But with temporary security achieved and the number of trained personnel increasing, public opinion began to ask what it was all for.

On Wednesday 16 August, NATO leaders convened a meeting to decide strategy for the following twelve months.  Held at Aldermaston for improved security, the Chiefs of Staff were joined by representatives from all branches of the British Armed Forces.  The remnants of European governments-in-exile sent their most senior surviving military personnel; the Americans attended remotely, their group containing researchers and advisers from ten branches of the US military, including new weapons’ research and development.  English Prime Minister Napier opened the meeting by introducing Field Marshall Sir Terry Tidbury.  In a hushed silence, he delivered a situation report with a range of statistics.  These painted a bleak picture.  As he wrote in
In the Eye of the Storm
: ‘The PM and I decided before the meeting to begin by laying out the facts, the full extent of the disaster, before I moved on.  I’d sounded out a couple of the Americans, because nothing was going to happen unless we kept them on board.  After the Marines’ exoskeleton balls-up, the US media had been making noises about not sacrificing any more American lives, and both the PM and I knew the war would likely need a lot more of them.  Then I introduced the outline of a plan to drive the Caliphate out of Europe, called Operation Repulse.  I didn’t expect to hear quite as many gasps as I did.’

Sir Terry’s outline caused ripples with its simple audacity.  It is important to recall the context in which this meeting was held.  Many participants still struggled to believe the British Isles had somehow delayed its inevitable destruction against an apparently undefeatable foe.  As Carson Myers, an assistant to the US Secretary of State, wrote in his memoirs after the war: ‘Everyone attending from Washington and the rest of the States really caught their breaths.  We were expecting only a plan for stabilization and build-up.  The English general looked like a tough soldier, durable and solid, but when he described Operation Repulse, he did so like he wanted to understate his authority.  He said it was the English government’s intention to expel Caliphate forces from mainland Europe.  He hoped England could rely on support from its historical allies.  He didn’t sound like the King of England, but his words were clipped, and he spoke as if removing the Caliphate from Europe was on about the same level of irritation as fixing some dry rot in the roof of your house.  Quite a few of the others shook their heads as if to say, “Who does this guy think he is?”  Later, when we’d talked it through, we realized it was the only way to go and our respect for him went up a few notches.’

At this stage, the outline for Operation Repulse specified a start-date of 1 October 2063 - over a year hence - and was built around realistic expectations of how the new Scythe ACAs would perform, and what countermeasures the Caliphate would or could take.  Additionally, a tactical imperative was to force the Caliphate to fight during winter.  Although certainly not an advantage, it was considered the greater disadvantage for warriors raised and trained in hot climates.  More importantly, Repulse required that all new weapons be either replicated or manufactured by trusted contractors whose loyalty (and ultimate ownership) could not be in doubt.  At a stroke this removed a number of US weapons’ suppliers whose shares were held by Chinese parent companies.  In addition, all regulating software had to be developed from scratch on isolated systems by independent super AI.  NATO’s entire communications systems would also require replacement, again without the knowledge of or assistance from any supplier with a Chinese connection.  Finally, the new weapons must not be used until the day Operation Repulse began.  Caliphate forces could not be allowed any foreknowledge of what NATO would counterattack with, as the imbalance between NATO’s and the Caliphate’s information on the other’s military capabilities had been identified as a major cause of the catastrophe Europe had endured.

When Sir Terry concluded his presentation, a number of European leaders applauded.  After the war, ungenerous commentators speculated that the British Isles may have manoeuvred to secure a separate ceasefire with the Caliphate.  However, no evidence has come to light to support this allegation.  The channels of diplomacy between Washington and Beijing, through which any such initiative would have passed, remained frozen shut after the SPI compromise which caused Operation Foothold to fail so spectacularly.  The only reasonable conclusion was the strength of antiwar feeling in the United States at this time.

For many Americans, the loss of life among the crews of the Atlantic Convoys began to represent a disagreeable burden when it appeared that, even despite Britain’s tenacity, the war should be over.  As the senator for South Carolina, Steven Ortiz, put it in an opinion-editorial piece for the
Summerville
media outlet: ‘It is time to quit the European theatre.  We have to assess the Caliphate risk to America, not Europe.  The only answer we have to their aggression is a full-scale nuclear attack, and there’s no use baying for blood when we consider what happened to Israel.  President Coll needs to ask herself some tough questions.  Does Europe really need our help if the Brits can defend their islands by themselves?  This rearmament program is going to cost upwards of two quintillion dollars - how can we finance that?  Where can the government raise that kind of money, when even Wall Street experts agree it can’t be done without Asian or South American backers?  The mainland US is currently not at risk, and we need to be progressive and accept that the time when our military could project its power around the world has passed.’  Despite the Senator’s staggering lack of foresight, this is a fair example of the general feeling in the US at that time.

President Coll was indeed asking herself and her advisers these very questions.  The day after the announcement of Operation Repulse, Coll and Napier had one of their most brittle virtual conferences of the whole war.  Coll wished to place an upper limit on the volume of material and troops the US would provide for the operation.  The records show that Coll repeatedly questioned Napier on the true potential of Operation Repulse, until Napier confronted Coll with the latter’s concern for Congress’s backing.  Coll admitted that with a Republican majority in Congress, her plans to finance support for Europe would face severe hurdles: Democratic presidencies often wilted under Republican domination of Congress.  As Napier’s aide Crispin Webb later recorded in his diary: ‘The boss really had to fight to control her temper.  Coll didn’t have an election coming up; she only had to twist a few arms to keep the Atlantic Convoys going.  Shit, we could replicate most of what Repulse needed.  The Yanks only had to deliver some heavy metals’ materials which still couldn’t be replicated.  A few thousand of their much-vaunted troops wouldn’t go amiss, either.  But Coll was seriously bitching about the money.  The boss held her own tongue at the time, but straight afterwards she mused to me how it could be that the US was as poor as a church mouse.’

It is remarkable that Napier and her aide failed to understand the basic tenants of international financing in the 2060s.  As mentioned above, replication technology was still in its infancy and the industry of war-making required vital components which were not always available cheaply.  NATO had many members who could - and indeed did - pool their resources in innovative and effective ways.  In particular, the Canadians would make a modest yet vital contribution to Operation Repulse.  The democracies could manufacture their way to improving their economic strength, but even when combined their economies were dwarfed by the might of China, India, Brazil and a number of other countries, thus rendering the US Dollar feeble on international markets.  Therefore, raising finance on these markets was no longer the relatively straightforward option which it had been for all of the democracies a few decades earlier.

There came a moment of black comedy in early October, when a group of Russian businessmen brought a claim for compensation in a Moscow court.  The suit accused the English government of failing to protect Russian-owned assets, mostly property, in and around London.  As war had not been declared, they argued, the compensation clause in a free trade agreement signed between the countries in 2056 still applied.  In a rare show of unity, Napier and every other English parliamentarian roundly condemned this attempt at extortion.  The comedy ended, however, when the Russian government proceeded to seize British business assets in Russia to enforce the claims, a step justifiably interpreted in the West as a positive if somewhat ineffectual sign of approval for the Caliphate’s actions.

II. AMERICA INUNDATED

The complexion of the war changed irrevocably again in the early hours of Friday 13 October 2062.  The
USS George Washington
, returning to active duty after suffering damage during the passage of a previous convoy, was escorting Atlantic Convoy SE-117 when its super AI informed it of hostile ACAs approaching.  Captain Mitch Taylor later told the post-war US Congressional hearing held to investigate the events of that fateful day: ‘We obviously assumed they were coming for us.  We were protecting a lot of important freight.  I ordered battle stations and sent up a silent prayer for the Pulsars to do as good a job as they had a couple of months earlier.  Then I - and I’m certain all of my crew - had one of the most profound mixes of emotions of our lives.  There we were in the middle of the Atlantic, and the Caliphate’s ACAs were continuing right on by us.  We weren’t their target.  The whole ship heaved a sigh of confused relief, which terminated in a sudden, shocking gasp of terror when the super AI told us they were heading for the eastern seaboard of the United States.  As I remember it, I actually stopped breathing for quite a while.’

Captain Taylor at once ordered his ship to make every effort to engage the passing Caliphate ACAs, but the speed differences rendered the attempt futile.  All of the ship’s communications went live in an instant and began relaying the news back to the US.  Washington dryly informed the
George Washington
that satellites were already tracking the approach.  The department of Homeland Security had to wake President Coll to seek authorisation for the use of tactical nuclear defence.  Coll deferred, correctly assuming that fallout in some measure could or would drift back towards the American mainland. Lacking any equivalent of the Falarete, and having estimated that Caliphate ACAs did not have the range, eastern US cities now endured a sample of what the Caliphate had delivered to Europe over the preceding eight months.

Some seven hundred and fifty Caliphate machines approached New York in a bullet-head configuration at Mach 8.  A formation of Lapwings took the vanguard; many more Blackswans flew at their flanks, and all of them shielded a formidable group of the ACAs which had performed so well on the Delta Works in the Netherlands.  American author Hayden Fisher, whose post-war history
10/13
remains the definitive account of the day’s events, described the reaction: ‘Emergency protocols kicked in and all security systems came into play.  Fifty miles from the mainland, the approaching craft began to fan out, and the defensive super AI sent alerts out to the targeted cities: Philadelphia, New York, New Haven and Providence.  Each of the Emergency Defense Committees for these cities approved the USAF’s request to deploy PeaceMaker ACAs over their territories.  The first attackers would arrive at a few minutes before four in the morning, and those involved did not need a super AI to tell them the primary targets would be the sea defenses.’

The authorities elected not to issue a general warning to the affected populations.  The reasons given afterwards were twofold: there remained only minutes before battle was joined, during which time few citizens would be able to reach safety; and if the defences did not perform adequately, having roads full of fleeing people would add to the confusion.  (It is worth noting that in the US at this time, autonomous, super AI-controlled freeway systems only existed in the densest conurbations; much of the country’s road network could still be used by individuals controlling their own vehicles themselves.)  Although this decision was correct, and probably did save lives on the night, it also did much to fuel the numerous conspiracy theories afterwards.

In
10/13
, Fisher describes the first city to suffer: ‘The Pulsar batteries located on the Carter Dam and sluices separating Lower Bay and Upper Bay opened fire at ten after four.  The Caliphate machines knew exactly what they needed to do.  For ten years, the Carter Dam had kept the rising sea out of New York City while managing the flow of the Hudson.  Now flashes and explosions lit the sky and ripped the night air.  The formation broke apart and fifty Spiders from a single Blackswan smashed into the Pulsar canons, destroying them.  The following waves of Blackswans released their Spiders at five-hundred yards’ distance from the main dam wall.  These dove into the water - the blue glow from their shielding could be seen under the waves - and dispersed to form three diamond patterns across the width of the wall at three-hundred-yard intervals.  They detonated against the dam wall in this formation, causing numerous cracks.  The subsequent new ACAs also dove into the sea, where they descended to the centres of the diamonds and exploded.  The third wave finally broke the wall, and the Atlantic Ocean rushed in to inundate New York.’