ARISEN_Book Thirteen_The Siege Read online

  Miller picked up again. “Also significant stores of long-life food, water, everything else we need to stay alive and run the war, even if local supply and support break down.” He nodded toward the windowless window that let out onto the Common. “There’s a big diesel-powered generator, as well.” Ali had seen it on her survey of the Common – it sat in the open, with thick cables snaking out across the ground. “If mains power goes, we can run for weeks.”

  “Redundancy?” Ali asked.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Do you have another one?”

  “Not that I know of. But we get priority for power from the grid, anyway. Get priority for everything.”

  Ali let it go. “And the local garrison?”

  Miller looked again to the RMP, 2Lt McNiven. “Led by the Redcaps.” Even if Ali didn’t already know what this meant, she could see the jaunty scarlet beret on the British officer. The man spoke up again, sounding crisp – and proud.

  “One Seven Four Provost Company of the Royal Military Police. Originally a company-sized formation, obviously, but various small detachments got detailed elsewhere along the way. Everyone’s spread thin. And… we’ve had heavy losses.” He just nodded out at the half-trashed JOC. Ali got it. “Our original OC, a major, and his second-in-command, a captain, both fell in the outbreak – as did our company sergeant major. Lost a lot of the NCO corps as well. The explosion at the hangar…”

  Ali didn’t know what had happened, but she’d seen the hangar and it didn’t look good. “Current strength?”

  “Ninety-four men and women under arms.”

  Miller added, “But when Major Jameson and his troop sergeant were in charge, they also conscripted and organized basically anyone who had, or could find, a weapon and could plausibly operate it – and who also weren’t needed for other critical duties. They were mustered with the RMPs into a kind of local home guard. That’s another seventy-some.”

  Ali nodded. Home guard. That was definitely the idea.

  McNiven said, “‘Everyone alive and still breathing air’ is I believe how Major Jameson put it.”

  Ali looked back to him. “And you command the formation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not anymore,” she said, turning to Fick. “I’m putting my man in charge of your unit. The whole home guard. All the local defenses.”

  “Out of the question,” McNiven said. “I’m sorry – I’m simply not working for senior enlisted, or putting my men under the command of the U.S. Marines.”

  Miller looked almost amused. “About five minutes ago, you were all working under the command of a bunch of Royal Marines – some of them without a single stripe to show.”

  McNiven grimaced. “And look how well that worked out.” He didn’t add that at least those had been British. Instead, he just glanced out at the Common again. “Not doing it again.”

  “Okay, then – fuck it.”

  Everyone turned to see Fick push back from the table with his thick arms and stand up in a wave of restrained aggression and annoyance. Without another word, he strode out of the office like a colossus, then out of the JOC itself. In four minutes he came back with Lieutenant (junior grade) Andrew Wesley in tow, looking utterly baffled.

  Fick stabbed his thumb at Wesley’s collar.

  “Shiny silver bar right there. He’s an officer – put him in charge as commander. I’ll just help, as company top sergeant.” Fick and Wes looked in at each other – Fick’s look telling him to keep his mouth shut – then back at the others.

  “Lieutenant junior grade,” McNiven said, recognizing the Navy uniform. “He and I are obviously of equivalent rank.”

  “Yeah,” Fick said. “And you also obviously don’t know your ass from a hot rock. Sir.”

  Ali shook her head, but stood and looked at Wes. “You’re field promoted. To full lieutenant.”

  “Sir,” Fick said, standing to attention and speaking to McNiven. “Please have your men, every jackboot in the outfit, muster in whatever your normal parade ground is.”

  McNiven also stood, but just stared open-mouthed. Fick elbowed Wesley, who said, “Um, yes – do as he said. Please.”

  McNiven shook his head. At least Wesley was an Englishman. It was something. The three of them marched out together. But before they left, Ali could see something lighting up in Fick’s eyes. She knew he’d lost virtually all of his MARSOC Marines in this fight so far – possibly even all of them, they didn’t even know for sure. And maybe this was exactly what he needed. A new unit to command. And a new sense of purpose and mission. Maybe it was his way back.

  They all needed one.

  * * *

  After they’d gone, Miller looked at Ali. “Wasn’t that a navy uniform? Can an army officer even promote a sailor?”

  Ali shrugged. “Who knows.” She leaned across the table. “Okay. Our last agenda item for now: reinforcements.”

  Miller cocked his head. “I told you. There’s no way to get any units outside even to the vicinity of the gap in the Wall—”

  She cut him off. “Not for there. For here.”

  “What?”

  Ali blinked and breathed slowly. “That fight is already lost. The Wall is breached. London’s going to be overrun.”

  Miller stared at her wide-eyed, the reality of it hitting him. It wasn’t that he didn’t already know this, deep down. It was just terrifying to hear it said out loud.

  “And sooner or later…” Ali concluded, tapping her fingers, “CentCom is going to be the Alamo.”

  She didn’t have to point out that 170 soldiers weren’t going to be enough to defend it. Nor that, out there somewhere, there had to be some combat-effective units, ones with mobility and communications – and they had to get them, somehow, mustered inside the CentCom walls.

  Miller stood crisply. “Leave it with me.”

  He strode back out into the JOC, also with a purpose.

  Still in the Fight

  London – Government Security Zone

  Sodding Westminster Bridge.

  Captain Jake Gunn of the London Regiment shook his head as he regarded the flood of refugees streaming, shoving, and thronging, as they tried to get south across the river that bisected London at its waist. He was watching the scene through binoculars, standing six stories above the grand boulevard of Whitehall, on the roof of the hulking and majestic Treasury Building, which stretched all the way behind him back to St. James’s Park.

  He had personally shoved his way across Westminster Bridge many times, in a past life, back before he was a reservist – back even before he ran his own digital media company, and did work as a contractor for the UK’s central government web site. He’d had to cross the bridge to get to the Royal Parks where he liked to run on his lunch hour, fighting through the tourist scrum there, and then even worse behind it in Parliament Square. It had been his daily trial, but it had been worth it, especially when the weather was lovely, and the sun sparkled on the surface of the Thames.

  But on its worst day – and the tourist season in London went twelve months – Westminster Bridge had never been half as bad as it was now. Before it had been oblivious tourists, walking backward as they tried to frame shots of their boyfriends and girlfriends with Big Ben in the background. Now it wasn’t cluelessness, but rather animal panic, and something bordering on menace. People were desperate to get away. The dead weren’t even inside the Wall yet – but somehow everyone already knew which direction they’d be coming from.

  Luckily, it wasn’t really the job of Captain Gunn, or his men – Company C of the London Regiment, the biggest British Army Reserve unit in Greater London – to maintain public order. The police were supposed to be doing that; though God knows where they were now. No, C Coy had been deployed to provide security for ministers and civil servants in the GSZ – the Government Security Zone.

  But now all those people, the entire central government, had gone. Decamped. Fled. Whisked away in a fleet of shiny helicopters.

&n
bsp; And now Captain Gunn and his reserve soldiers were guarding – well, he didn’t know exactly what. He only knew that an hour ago he’d made the decision to open the barrier at the foot of Westminster Bridge, on its north end, beside the giant Gothic Houses of Parliament. Thousands of civilians had already begun streaming through Whitehall, having got in somehow on the other side of the GSZ. And they had quickly threatened to cause a riot, and get innocent people hurt, trying to climb out around the barrier and onto the bridge. Like virtually all his men, Gunn had signed up as a reserve soldier to develop his skills, to be part of something bigger than himself – and, mainly, to serve. To help protect people.

  Not stand by and see them get hurt.

  It hadn’t been his decision to make, but he was the one who had been on the scene. And it had been the right thing to do.

  So he’d opened the barrier.

  And now the bridge was thronged – and Gunn was about to have cause to regret his decision. Because when his radio went, it was their headquarters company, just across the river on St. John’s Hill in Clapham.

  “Captain Gunn, be advised: C Company is being redeployed.”

  “Roger that. Standing by for orders.”

  When he got them, he raised his binoculars again, realizing that he and his 300 men, and all their vehicles, were now going to have get across that same damned bridge. Because, while CentCom wasn’t due south of them, it was definitely on the south side of the river. Panning to either side, he could see the next spans over, Lambeth Bridge and Waterloo Bridge, were even worse – much worse.

  And there wasn’t going to be time to go around.

  He switched channels to instruct his platoon commanders. And he got the men and vehicles scrambling.

  * * *

  “Alpha One-Three from Alpha One-One.”

  “Send message, sir.”

  “Sergeant Ashear – you’re driving the train now. Get us in safely.”

  “Roger that, Captain. Trust in us.” Ashear pushed his chin mic down and spoke directly into the open air of the Challenger 2 main battle tank he commanded, and to the three men in his crew. “Turn it around, boys. We’re leading the column now.”

  From his tank commander’s station, he checked GPS and the digital map readout, double-checked the coordinates of the southwest gate in the ZPW, then laid them in. It wasn’t far. They had already been racing through the South Downs and around the far west edge of London, skirting the sea of dead that had the Capital hemmed in – trying to get to the north, to somehow reinforce the defense of the fallen section of the Wall.

  But now they had been reassigned, on an urgent new tasking. They were not only going back into London, back inside the Wall itself – but right to the center, CentCom HQ.

  If they could get there.

  Ashear and his men were part of D squadron, King’s Royal Hussars, an armored regiment with a proud 300-year history, and the British Army’s lead armored battle group. They regularly conducted battle-group-level training overseas, in both Canada and Poland, in the much larger open training grounds than any that could be found in the tiny British Isles. And, like most regiments in the British Army, they were extremely good at what they did.

  D Squadron itself was a formation of four troops of four tanks each – an imposing mass of mobility and firepower by any historical standard. Trouble was, the ZA was unlike any historical war, and the dead were not intimidated by the speed, power, invulnerability, and massive firepower of a main battle tank. The dead didn’t give a damn if you crushed them into roadkill underneath 62.5 tons of steel going 60kph. They just kept coming. And while armored columns could do hellacious damage to masses of the dead…

  They couldn’t stop them.

  Whereas dismounted infantry could form a solid line, there weren’t enough tanks on Earth to go shoulder to shoulder over any significant distance. There were always gaps. And the dead came right through them.

  And there were fewer tanks on the line all the time.

  In the doomed fight for the south, D’s sister squadrons had been encircled and cut off, as the outbreak blackened England’s green and pleasant land – much faster than anyone had imagined possible, or could react to. While the tankers were basically invulnerable to the dead, they couldn’t survive on their own. And while armor could punch through enemy resistance harder and faster than any other type of formation, maintaining their communications and supply lines was critical.

  Encircled and trapped behind enemy lines, the other squadrons were cut off from resupply, and so had quickly run out of fuel. Few things on the road are as thirsty as a Challenger 2. And, the climactic battle scene of Fury notwithstanding, few things more useless or vulnerable than a main battle tank stopped dead in the middle of the road.

  And, soon after that, Sgt Ashear knew, those units would also run out of ammo. And then they would be trapped and entombed in their vehicles.

  But he couldn’t think about that.

  It was only due to the quick reactions and tactical savvy of their squadron commander, Captain Windsor, that D Squadron were all alive and still on the move now. When it had all started to fall apart, the Captain had been smart enough to exercise his prerogative as field commander, disengage his formation, and get them the hell out of there, before they too were encircled and cut off. Shortly after, they’d been able to link in with a supply train, including tanker refueling trucks.

  So they were still in the fight. For now.

  Ashear peered out through his optic into the morning light over Chobham Common, then felt the rumbling beneath them change in pitch as their driver took them from grass onto gravel. They were cutting across the Common, angling toward the M3, which they’d hit shortly before reaching the Wall. This was the course he picked – while a Challenger could of course go over any terrain, it moved like a bat out of Hell on blacktop.

  Ashear smiled as they picked up speed.

  He loved being a tanker. He loved the feeling of safety, of invulnerability, of being buttoned up inside their unstoppable and unbreachable Challenger 2. He was self-aware enough to know why he’d chosen the Royal Armoured Corps – that it was at least in part because of his past. He’d grown up in the carnage, insecurity, and helplessness of the systematic destruction of the city of Aleppo, eventually being lucky enough to be accepted as a Syrian child refugee to the UK. His family hadn’t been so lucky.

  But the Royal Hussars were his family now.

  And it was well and good that Ashear’s tank and its crew were now the leading edge of the formation – nothing could stop his armored nomadic tribe, roaming Salisbury Plain instead of the Paleolithic plains of East Africa, hunting to protect the greater clan, and not just to eat and survive.

  This was what early hominids had been waiting for, Ashear thought happily, feeling the thrumming power and strength all around him. Just imagine how quickly genus Homo would have conquered the planet if they’d had armored columns…

  And then, just like that, there it was, rising ahead of them on the horizon: the Zulu-Proof Wall. The first thing Ashear could see was the huge tower for the southwest gate, and that made him smile again – because he had a friend inside of it.

  But then his smile faded away to a grim look of resolve. Because between them and that tower, flowing in great black waves out from, beside, and all along the Wall… was the ocean of the dead, lapping and flowing around, like the ZPW was some kind of breaker or sea wall. And D Squadron was about to go crashing into those waves, prow-first, hoping their hulls weren’t broken by the surf.

  But Ashear wasn’t worried. If anyone could get there, bashing their way back to safety, it was them. And with a little luck, they should even be able to clear the area around the gate enough to get back in to the secure zone.

  And who knows, he thought, with a little more luck, maybe I’ll even get to see Abs…

  He could already see her smiling face.

  * * *

  “Beat the dead bastard to death with your Conspicuous G
allantry Cross, mate? Ha ha ha!” The sarcastic sons of bitches were keeping their voices down. But his men just couldn’t keep from taking the piss.

  “Very fucking funny,” muttered Sergeant Major Pradup Sun.

  In fact, he had used his khukuri, the long knife with its distinctive inward-curved blade that had been used by the Nepalese, both as a weapon and a tool, at least since the sixteenth century. Later, it had become the characteristic weapon of the Nepalese Army, the Gorkha regiments of the Indian Army – and, most recently, the Royal Gurkha Rifles of the British Army.

  Now, Sergeant Major Sun carefully wiped it clean of black gunk. It had still been the right tool for this job, when he slipped out from their lines to take down a single persistent deader who had clambered over the four-foot-high pile of bodies that ringed their position. Despite being company sergeant major, Sun had gone out and done it himself. He like being hands-on. And he was bored. They’d been in this position too long.

  They were hunkered down in a dense copse of trees in the Kent Downs – so far behind enemy lines at this point they might as well be in France. The 180 men were arrayed in all-around defense, at the inside of a destroyed ring of dead fifty meters out in all directions. The dead had forgotten them now, and just flowed around their improvised meat wall, heading north to devour England. So the Gurkhas were cut off, safe, hunkered down, waiting for orders – but no orders had come.

  Sun’s section was part of B Company, second battalion Royal Gurkha Rifles (2 RGR), itself part of 16 Air Assault Brigade, and based out of Shorncliffe – basically a close suburb of… Folkestone.

  In other words, they had started this campaign at ground zero of the breach of Fortress Britain. For most of the time since then, they had been cut off, on their own, fighting and just surviving. But they hadn’t had much trouble surviving. If any unit was going to stay alive at the epicenter of the fall of Britain, it was the Gurkhas – known the world over as some of the toughest, bravest, and most tenacious fighters in the history of warfare. The British had fought a war against the Nepalese – and been so impressed with their opponents on the field of battle that the guns had hardly gone silent before they were back. This time to recruit young men into a Gurkhas-only regiment.