Michael Henry, Chief of Staff to the President of the United States, lifted his head and looked over the dim Situation Room. The video monitors had gone dark, giving off just enough light to know that they were still all turned on. He was the first to look up, he saw, with everyone else in the room still down on one knee with their heads bowed. He reached out to the President, lightly touching her shoulder.
At his touch, she broke free from whatever had held her in place. She looked at Mike’s hand resting on her shoulder and took comfort in the strength she could feel in him. The last few hours were a blur that she was trying to clear up in her mind, and his solidity was something she could lean on. She reached up to touch his hand, her light brown skin contrasting with his deep sable, and both stood.
President Torres took in the state of the room in a second – the laptops and tablets scattered on the floor and ground, the members of her staff and the cabinet still kneeling oblivious to the world, the video monitors that were supposed to be connected to leaders from NATO and a few other nations. She clapped her hands together, and the loud noise got through to the kneeling staffers. Everyone looked sheepish as they moved back to their chairs, unwilling to meet the eyes of the President. At least I’ve got that, she thought to herself, glad that she could at least appear to be the first to regain their senses.
Nodding to Michael, she turned to the screens. “Someone get them back, now. Something has happened, and I need to know what. Michael, take care of it.” Michael nodded, already on his phone and attempting to reconnect with the other world leaders. “General Vickers, I want anything you can give me in five minutes, and it better include the state of things in Kashmir. Cutter, I need you to find out who that was and how they commandeered the airwaves.” The national security advisor nodded as he rose and left the room, typing furiously on his phone as he went.
Torres sat down in her chair at the head of the table, trying to come to grips with the last two hours. From the moment the screens changed to that talk show, everything was a surreal mess. At this point, she wasn’t even sure what was real and what wasn’t – she kept thinking she saw an ad for a vampire running for President, and it didn’t seem like a movie trailer. “Michael – find out what happened. Was this a targeted attack on just the White House, or has it covered more of DC? And get the medical staff down here. We probably need them to take some blood tests to determine what we were hit with. And we have control back, right? Why aren’t we back on the call?”
Michael said, “I’ve sent messages to the medical staff, but no response yet. I’m concerned this means it was a more widespread attack.”
The senior intelligence analyst in the room, Mariko Okahura, spoke up, “Madam President, I’m not sure it was an attack. I think –”
Torres cut her off. “I don’t want what you think right now, I want facts. We can get to conclusions later.”
Mariko waited a half second to see if she would go on, then continued. “The facts, then. I immediately attempted to contact bureau chiefs in Europe, Japan, Australia, Russia, and India. I am getting nothing but static from India, and I get open channels where no one is answering in the rest.”
Before Torres could respond, one of the video monitors lit up. The camera showed Canada’s Situation Centre with a flurry of activity, various members of the Prime Minister’s office clustered around a computer while aides dashed in and out of frame. Prime Minister Blaine Wilson looked up from the computer at the screen, his face pinched with worry. “Ah, President Torres. We’ve had some technical difficulties here and have been unable to contact anyone. It seems that we still have a few issues, as we haven’t been able to get online with anyone but you.”
“Can you describe the technical issues?”
Wilson hesitated, then said, “We would prefer not to get into details, as we believe it was part of an attack of some sort, although we are not clear on the purpose yet.”
Torres swore under her breath, but the quality microphones in the room carried it to the Prime Minister. “Prime Minister, it seems this may have been a wider spread attack than either of us knew. We have recently had all our video monitors hijacked by someone and replaced by a late-night talk show.”
“Tonight!?” Wilson asked. When Torres nodded, Wilson continued. “Was there a woman on screen making outlandish claims?”
“There was. I think we can assume this means we all experienced the attack.”
“Madam President,” Mariko spoke up as soon as there was a break in the conversation. “This doesn’t appear to be localized or even directed solely at governments.”
On screen, Wilson turned to focus on the analyst. Torres spoke first, asking, “Do we know the extent?”
“We do not have confirmation yet, although I’m working on it. Best estimate right now is everyone.”
Torres did a double take at that. “Everyone? Everyone where?”
“Everyone, everywhere, Madam President. I am compiling information now, and things are starting to come in, but we have a gap in everything since the inciting event. So far, I have been unable to identify anyone unaffected.”
Torres rubbed her temples before responding, a sign to Michael that a stress headache was incoming. “God I hate terms like ‘inciting incident’. Can you define that a bit clearer?”
“The gap goes back to the beginning of today’s episode of Tonight!, immediately after we lost the connection.” Faces began appearing in other monitors as more leaders came back online. Mariko continued, “Logs indicate we lost connection at 0436 Zulu.” Torres checked the clock, noting that it was now 0628 Zulu, or 2:28 am in D.C. Just shy of 2 hours lost, and she still didn’t know the situation in Kashmir.
Mariko continued, “There are a few bursts of traffic around the commercial breaks in the show, although they are tiny and scattered. Nothing of note scraped from any of them – they all boiled down to a variation of questioning if this was real.”
The newest additions to the call all began to speak over each other, then cut themselves off abruptly. As everyone paused, the Japanese Prime Minister, Nomura Toshio, broke in. “President Torres, we just came online – what are you saying? We have been forced to watch a comedy show here.”
“Everyone, please,” Torres said, “we’re trying to figure it out. We don’t know what is going on yet. Can we begin to connect some resources here, see if we can get things together?”
The other leaders hesitated, long engrained resistance to sharing information even with allies kicking in. The seconds dragged on, and Torres began to question why she was talking with them. She was close to cutting the call off with excuses about needing to address the nation when Sam Morrison, Prime Minister of Australia, spoke up. “Has anyone been able to contact India? Since we got communications back, we’ve been attempting to contact them and Pakistan with no response. We did get a response from Beijing, but it was to tell us to go away.”
Torres looked at the wall of screens and saw that everyone was accounted for except the representative from India. A chill ran down her spine as she considered this in light of the purpose of the call. She looked over at the communications group, arching one eyebrow questioningly, and got shaken heads in response. “We have not, and it doesn’t look like anyone else has.”
General Vickers returned to the room and approached the President. Kneeling beside her chair, he whispered to her, “Madam President, satellite imagery has come in, and we need to move to DEFCON 1 immediately. I recommend ending this call and getting the Joint Chiefs assembled.”
Torres glanced up at the screen bank and saw that the German, British, and Japanese Ministers all had their own military officer giving them information as well. As the reality sank in, she felt paralyzed, unable to decide the right thing to do. The general was still there, looking at her questioningly, waiting for her to decide. Her instincts told her to share everything with the other leaders, her decades of training in handling government information told her to end the call and assemble the JC, but with everyone looking at her, she didn’t know which to trust.
It was taken out of her hands after a long five seconds, when the British Prime Minister spoke. “President Torres, thank you for your time. I will contact you later today.” The German PM nodded and said much the same, giving Torres a clear out.
“Thank you, everyone. We will remain in contact as we learn more.” She signaled the communications group, and the screens went dark. “General, bring in the Joint Chiefs.”
Torres left the Situation Room to head to the Oval Office, looking to refresh briefly before the Joint Chiefs assembled. Michael followed her in and closed the door behind them. “Shit, Mike, what the Hell is going on?” Torres said as she sat on one of the couches.
Michael took a seat opposite her. “We’ll find out soon enough, Maria.”
“’Soon enough’? I’m the President of the United States, there’s no such thing as soon enough.”
“Let them get together and tell us what they know.”
“Damnit, Mike, they know enough to say we should be at DEFCON 1. My top general just came up to me and said we’re in a nuclear war, and you tell me soon enough.”
“Maria, we’re not in a nuclear war! If we were, they wouldn’t be waiting, they’d have brought the football out immediately and we’d be returning fire.”
“Jesus Christ, Mike, the football? We’re in the White House, and we were specifically in the Situation Room, we wouldn’t use the football here.”
Mike nodded at her, his attempt to distract her playing out as he expected. As she stood up, he knew she knew that it was a distraction, but it worked, so he was fine with it. He watched her pace the room, waiting for the word that everyone had assembled.
When the knock at the door came, Mike quickly rose and opened it, seeing the Secret Service standing guard and the colonel who was there to get them. “Madam President,” the colonel said, “the Joint Chiefs have gathered in the Situation Room to await your orders.”
Torres followed the colonel, with Mike tucked in close behind. He watched her as she walked, noting the confidence in her stride, and was glad to see it. It wasn’t always there, and he worried what could come during a crisis if it wasn’t.
“Generals and Admirals,” Torres said as she took her seat at the head of the table, looking at the six men and two women assembled, “what’s going on?”
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Marcon, straightened the papers he was looking at before calling up a satellite image of the Indian subcontinent on the screen. The image was frozen and had a time stamp of 0436 Zulu. “I’ll give the briefing myself, in order to keep this as close as possible. This was the last image we had before the incident with communications occurred and we lost connection with the satellites.” He paused briefly, looking around the room to see if anyone was inclined to challenge the statement. “When communications were restored, the first image we saw was this.”
He pushed a button, and the screen was filled with an eye staring at the screen. The color of the iris seemed to shift, going from blue to green to brown and back, before finally settling on red. The eye then slowly closed, long lashes coming together like a Venus flytrap. It was clearly a wink, and as it ended the screen faded to black.
“We are still receiving data from the satellites, but that darkness is all we see. This is the same image we get on every satellite, no matter the location.”
“But we still have communications through the satellites, right?” Torres asked. “We’ve connected with the leaders of NATO by satellite since.”
“Yes, that is true. All satellite functions tied into communications seems to be working just fine, military and commercial. GPS seems to be functioning as well, although there has not been much information about that yet. But no surveillance at all, and some of our more exotic satellites have not responded to anything.”
Torres tapped a pen on the table a few times as she thought, then set it down. “Important later, but let’s focus here. What do we know about Kashmir?”
The Admiral tapped his tablet, and the screen changed back to the initial view over Asia, still frozen at 0436. The land was bathed in sunlight, and the Himalayas could be seen along the top of the screen while a corner of the Arabian Sea could be seen at the bottom left. Marcon worked the tablet, and the image zoomed in until it was mostly focused exclusively on the Kashmir region, including territory claimed by India, Pakistan, and China.
“The satellites continued to gather images the entire time communications were down, so we can see what has been occurring. I would ask that you wait until I pause the recordings before asking interrupting,” Marcon said to the room. Torres nodded, and he caused the images to start moving.
Immediately after starting, a bloom of light appeared near the center of the screen. It was bright enough to overwhelm the pixels in the area, and was just starting to recover when the image paused a dozen seconds later. “We’ve analyzed this and are confident that it is a nuclear detonation, although we still have questions about who detonated it. Based on the debris kicked up, we are confident that it was a surface detonation. Based on the size of the fireball, which was slightly over 300 meters, we have estimated it as a 30 kt device.”
General Redding, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, broke in. “Did we not detect any sort of launch?”
“We did not. Which leads us to conclude that this was not a launch but was the detonation of a device at ground level.”
Michael listened to them talking, thinking all the while that they were ignoring the important part. As the Chiefs covered the details of the detonation and started to move on to whatever the video would show next, he decided he couldn’t keep quiet and jumped in. “Are we going to ignore the important part here? The satellites showed Her eye, for Christ’s sake. Why are we not talking about that?”
All the Chiefs stared him down for a couple of long seconds before Marcon answered. “Investigation into the hacking of systems is currently ongoing. We have locked down systems and are currently purging them. When the holes in the security have been identified and patched, we can force the systems to reboot and load the new software, and we’ll recover access. This is more important.” He turned away from Michael, focusing back on Torres. “Madam President, as I was saying –”
“That’s where you’re going with this? You think it’s a hoax, or a hack by someone? How in the –”
“Watch your tone with me, son.” Marcon stood up and loomed over the table, showing that he still had the physical power of his youth even in his late fifties. “Madam President, perhaps it would be best if your Chief of Staff was excluded from the rest of the meeting?”
Torres thought for a moment, tapping her pen against the table as she did. “No, Admiral, I don’t think so. I think I agree with him here, that the lack of communication and failure of the satellites needs to be addressed now. If you are correct, and this is a hack by a bad actor, what does that mean for us? Because I’m pretty sure it means that we have no way to know if anyone is counterattacking after this, because we need those satellites to detect launches. Or are you somehow confident that there are not missiles in the air right now?”
Marcon clenched his jaw as he bit back a retort. He took his seat and straightened his uniform before answering. “Madam President, the satellites are our primary way to know whether anything has been launched, yes, but not our only way. We have solid information that Russia has also lost control of their satellites, and we are currently in communication with their military.”
“That’s Russia. What about China or North Korea?”
“North Korea remains a wild card, yes, but at worst them have a dozen missiles that can reach US soil, and their expected failure rate is over 80%. In addition, all intelligence indicates they would focus on South Korea as a target. We will be covering China shortly.”
Torres nodded at the Admiral and said, “Mike, keep quiet for a minute.”
Michael sank back in his seat, still sure they were making a mistake, but willing to wait. Marcon started the video up again, the time stamp flashing quickly forward. “Nothing else of note for 23 minutes, when we get this,” he said, as the video paused again showing a flare of light coming from the screen. “That is a launch, and we know what it is. The launch profile and location all mean that is a tactical nuclear weapon from India’s arsenal. The 23 minutes is confusing to us – we have yet to come up with a reason why they would delay that long in striking back, while still striking.”
The Chief of Staff for the Army, General Arden, spoke up. “Could they have had similar communication issues?”
“That’s the best guess our analysts have at this point. Although whether that means it took that long for authorization to reach them, or if that’s how long before the local commander took matters into their own hands, we don’t know. Regardless, it was the only missile launched at that time. It took 8 minutes to travel to its target before detonation.” The video sped forward, pausing again at the bloom of detonation in the Pakistani held territory.
“That was a 20-kiloton explosion, detonated above ground. Based on positioning before we lost communications, we estimate that that resulted in 50,000 casualties which is almost 10% of the Pakistani Army.” He adjusted his tablet again and the screen pulled out, showing the entirety of the subcontinent.
“At this point, we know that India, Pakistan, and China all had at least some communications running, because the rest of it couldn’t have happened without some coordination.” He tapped the tablet one more time, and the time started to advance again. “We have added in some tracking lines here to make it possible to see what is going on.”
As he finished speaking, the first flare on the screen showed up from deep in Pakistan. It was immediately followed by a launch from India, which quickly grew into what appeared to be a full-scale attack from both sides. Before they could all be launched, it grew worse.
A launch bloom was seen coming out of the Chinese held territory in Kashmir, and three missiles separated traveling to different areas in the region, two controlled by India and one by Pakistan. Without hesitation, more missiles from those countries were launched towards China, who followed it up with more launches of their own. As the minutes quickly ticked off on the screens time stamp, no one could look away. The missiles were traveling a long way, so even at their highest speeds there was a long delay before they reached their targets. The first of the Chinese launched missiles arrived at its target, and the screen froze as the blast began.
Torres looked at the time stamp, realizing it matched up with the end of Tonight!, when Anastasia rose into the air. “The time,” she started, but had no way to finish.
“Correct, Madam President. If we roll any farther forward, we get the winking eye. It has been proposed that the entire sequence is a hoax perpetrated by the attackers. We have as yet been unable to contact anyone in any of the nations in question. We have been able to contact their ambassadors here, and none of them are forthcoming with information about the current state of the region. Our allies with satellite coverage have reported the same images, including the wink.”
Michael had been staring intently at the screen, feeling sick to his stomach. If that was real, he had just watched the deaths of billions of people. And he knew deep down it was real. “How many?”
“We have no way of knowing, and remember we do not have independent confirmation. Russian seismologists are probably going to be the first to know, and Russia may already have the knowledge, but we don’t yet.”
Torres asked, “Why Russian? Don’t we have a global seismology network?”
“We do, but the data relies on the satellites to be transmitted back to us. The Russians should have people on the ground who would have detected the impacts.”
“So all we can do is wait?”
“Wait, and raise our alert level to DEFCON 1. Madam President, I know that it would be the first time we have reached that state, but I think we have to be prepared for anything that might come.”
Torres nodded, then said. “Do it. And while we wait, I’m with Mike – we need to address the Anastasia situation.
