Aftermath: The Repulse Chronicles, Book Seven by Chris James

Author:Chris James [James, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chris James
Published: 2024-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

10.29 Friday 26 October 2063

TERRY TIDBURY SAT in his personal office in the War Room, a pair of VR glasses on his face. These placed him inside an entirely virtual auditorium at the morning’s situation report for Attack Group East, the NATO spearhead driving for Poland’s eastern border, and down towards Bulgaria and Romania.

In normal circumstances, Terry would not attend such a sitrep—he invariably didn’t have the time, and the most important developments would be relayed to him by his generals or Squonk—but this morning he wanted to see for himself the extent of the problems that the enemy’s new ACA was causing.

Rows of digital seats fanned out in front of him, with equally digital attendees. At the front stood a thin, tall soldier with his hands behind his back and legs slightly apart in the standard at-ease pose. When Terry peered at him, the man’s details resolved in the air close by: Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Wainwright, 4th Special Airbourne Warfare Regiment.

Terry sipped from his mug of tea as he glanced around the auditorium, noting the names and ranks and regiments and nationalities of the other attendees. A part of him still marvelled that so many men and women from all of the broad range of European cultures could come together and fight in unison when faced with a merciless enemy.

“Hi, everyone,” Wainwright began in a businesslike north American accent, reminding Terry that the US played a not insignificant role. “And welcome to the forty-third sitrep for Attack Group East. First, this briefing will give you a description of the enemy’s latest massed ACA tactics. Second, there will be an overview of battlefield movements in the last twenty-four hours. And after that, Group Commander General Sir Patrick Fox will be, er, available to take any questions.”

Terry sat back and relaxed, appreciating Wainwright’s easy delivery yet professional mannerisms.

Wainwright disappeared when a graphic display enlarged over him and the auditorium. On it resolved the image of an enemy Siskin, slender and more elongated than the Blackswan, with two continuous recesses around its body and a smattering of stabilisation fins. Wainwright said, “Now we’ve had the opportunity to analyse the Siskin in a little more detail, we better understand its performance parameters—which, by the way, far exceed those of our current Scythes—and our super AI has been able to mitigate a fraction of its battlefield superiority.”

The Siskin withdrew to a far less threatening distance, only for tens and then hundreds more to appear. Wainwright went on, “However, yesterday, on all contact points on the frontline, the enemy began arranging his ACAs into what we have dubbed ‘the cube’. It’s actually called that because, as you can see in the top-right of the view now, this is the first footage we got yesterday.”

In a new rectangle in Terry’s view, blurred and juddering video depicted a vast panorama of rolling hills and brown fields, over which hung hundreds of Siskins arranged in a cube that stretched at least a hundred metres on each edge.

Wainwright continued,

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