Repulse: Europe at War 2062-2064 by Chris James

Author:Chris James [James, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Chris James
Published: 2016-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

III. THE CALIPH DITHERS

In addition to the swing in NATO’s military fortunes, its scientists made a number of breakthroughs in August. A prototype muon-catalysed fusion power source for the next generation ACAs began initial tests in the Arizona desert. Some of NATO’s brightest minds at NASA’s JPL facility in California set to work to design and produce an ACA capable of defeating the Caliphate’s machines. Senior assistant Janis Bagget recalled the atmosphere: ‘At first we didn’t think the war would last long enough. We all thought Europe would be finished in days so we were mulling the potential threat to the mainland US, but then it changed, and it looked like the British Isles might be able to hold out for a while. The request from the armies was simple: they wanted a machine that was faster, better-armed, and with stronger shielding than any of the enemy’s devices. This gave us a lot of problems to fix. How do you trade manoeuvrability with armaments? Do you go for Mach 9 and have a little less punch, or call it quits at Mach 7 so you can cause more destruction? We also needed to make sure the weapon could react more quickly when in battle with a Caliphate machine. Analyses of how the enemy’s machines moved had everyone scratching their heads - we needed to improve on their acceleration and deceleration rates by at least 5% on all axes. Finally, we had to power up the shielding to the absolute max, which also gave us yet more weight and manoeuvrability conundrums. The real issue at the time was that this was the first muon-catalysed fusion unit we’d developed, and we had no room to get it wrong. We had to design the best, right from the start. So, what the armies ended up getting was two versions of the same ACA: one armed with a laser, the other with smart missiles. During the design, our director came up with the codename “Heat Ray” but then someone high up in NATO decided it would be called the “Scythe”.’

Finalising the design, constructing and testing prototypes, then refining and retesting the battle-ready Scythes would take many months, while the key concern at SHAPE centred on the Caliphate’s ability and willingness to reinforce. David Benn in The Rise of the New Persian Caliphate wrote: ‘August 2062 saw a gradual decline in the Caliphate’s attempts to subdue the British Isles. Washington and London made positive public statements that the islands remained unbowed, but sensibly stopped short of gloating. The Third Caliph, having already expended some two million ACAs on those “little islands” and not having a single warrior afoot them for his efforts, dithered as global public opinion shifted towards a position which can best be described as “enough is enough.” The world’s most important indices in China, India and Brazil stabilised as the fighting died down, and rumours began to sweep around the largest economies that the conflict would soon be over.’

To a degree, Benn is correct.

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