12th June, 2063

London, Associated Points of the British Isles

[Taking up the entire thirty-fifth floor of what was formally known as 'Twentytwo', or 22 Bishopsgate, al-Madi Hospice is a slice of the old world in the new one, for those who never quite adapted. There is not a single gate-spawned artifice in sight, no signlights or heating shards, no organic fixtures, or even the most basic warding. What they do have is solar electricity, 'modern' appliances, and a local intranet loaded with pre-cascade cultural touchstones and entertainment.

Walking through the halls, surrounded by the sort of decrepit elderly that only exist among a population that refuses rejuvenation treatment, I feel at once pity and a measure of disgust. The last remnants of a decadent society, decaying inside a tower that is itself expected to collapse within the decade. On an island dotted with castles and palaces that have lasted for centuries, 'Twentytwo' is emblematic of how pre-cascade society was never built to last.

I am here to see one of the defenders of that way of life, Lt. General John C. Williams. He looked old at the age of 56, back during his command of coalition forces during Three-Four and the subsequent defense of Paris. Surprisingly, he does not look much older despite the forty-two years and three battles with prostate cancer since his last public appearance. He has lost muscle mass but is still able to stand and greet me wearing full regalia for an army and a country that no longer exists.

The Lt. General has agreed to give his first interview since 2023, an interview that is almost certain to be his last given his advanced age, on the condition that he be given final approval of any edits made to his interview.]

They fucked us.

They?

The media. Fox, CNN, Huffington, Breitbart. You name it. There wasn't a single media organization that was actually on our side come Four-Four. Every single one of those cocksuckers were-

Lt. General, as we discussed. The language.

Right, right. Forgot how much of a problem your generation has with...

[The general briefly speaks to himself, then regains his composure and returns to his point]

You asked why I didn't want to talk to you, to anyone, and that is why. Every good officer who served with coalition forces during the Siege of Paris saw his career go down in flames, not because of anything they did, but because the media crucified us for doing what needed to be done.

Arm-chair generals, we called them back in the day. Civilians who wouldn't know which end of a rifle to hold if you explained it to them. Politicians who wanted the situation dealt with fast, safe and cheap, as if that were ever possible. And those bleeding heart environmentalists actually worried about-

Lt. General Williams, if I may. I understand you have very strong opinions on the matter, but perhaps we can wrangle things a little? Try and bring it to a starting point and work from there to make for a more digestible narrative.

Digestible... Hmm. Alright, fine. Where do you want to start?

Let's start with a simple timeline of your involvement.

Okay.

On April 3rd, 2021, I was acting commander of Ramstein Air Base when we received a formal request from the French government for US and NATO assistance in the rapidly developing Paris situation, what later became known as Three-Four or the Siege of Paris.

I and my staff were already well aware of the incident by the time the request was received and approval was given. This would have been... I believe 18:00 local time.

Nearly a full day after the gate opening in Saint-Germain.

Yes. And I'd like to go on record that the delayed response from Coalition forces had absolutely nothing to do with me or my men. I had planes sitting on the runway fully fueled and ready to fly from 12:00. We had medical, logistical, and ground operatives in the air and on their way to Paris within ten minutes of being given the go-ahead.

What do you think was the cause of the delay?

What do you think?

Everyone ragged on the French, on the US, on NATO, on the whole, damn system for dragging our feet, but we mobilized an air and ground invasion in under twenty-four hours. That in and of itself is impressive. And against aliens?

The M-Beasts aren't-

I know that now! But at the time? Six-legged, 10,000 lbs monstrosities appear out of nowhere in a quiet French town?

Just stop and think about it. When was the first serious news report that it was anything but a blackout? 01:30? 02:00? They were so busy gorging on the population that we didn't see them start showing their faces until three or four hours after the power went out. And with no idea what they were dealing with, the French were still rolling squad cars into the blackout zone and losing them when their power steering and onboard computing went to crap.

Then these things come loping out of the darkness, and what are the cops going to do about it? A Beretta isn't even going to piss one off unless you're the luckiest son of a bitch in the world. They rip through them like butter, and the cops are all reporting back claims that sound like absolute nonsense over the radio, which just further delays and complicates matters.

The only saving grace was that Division Chief, what was his name?

Foucault?

Him, yes. Up in the middle of the night for who knows what reason. He hears the report and unlike everyone else he takes it seriously. If you don't have them reconstituting the National Guard back in '16, and if you don't have that one guy, up late and just crazy enough to throw together a delaying force on Seine Bridge, then you probably don't have a Paris today.

In all fairness, we don't have a Paris today.

Right. Well, it doesn't last until '43 then, at least.

He put five hundred guys with APCs, some ANF1's, some MAGs, and all the other goodies on that bridge. He cleared it of civilian traffic and just let the critters come right to him. If they were fighting something natural [He scoffs.] If they were fighting something natural it wouldn't have even been a fight. They'd have just slaughtered the damn things.

But the M-Beasts aren't natural. Conventional weapons hurt them, but unless they hit one of the cores[1], which at that point would be pure dumb luck, they don't put them down. You've got panicked soldiers mag-dumping some horror from beyond the stars, sometimes literally cutting them in half with a .50 cal, only to watch half decompose into smoke and the other half regenerate and start crawling after them like they're Saturday brunch.

As it was, they gave a good showing of themselves. They held the bridge for three hours until they ran out of ammunition, which again, there was no way they could have reasonably expected that they'd run dry in a turkey shoot on open terrain against literal animals. They even retreated in good order like a bunch of brass-balled heroes.

That puts us at what 07:00? Sun is coming up which is our advantage, but they've also swung around following people fleeing down D113 and into Nanterre. The French are starting to get their shit together, but they're fighting a seemingly never-ending horde of M-Beasts with nothing but small arms fire. Because even though it ended up being the only thing that could do the job, absolutely no one in the chain of command was anywhere near the point where calling in an airstrike to defend Paris seemed to be a good idea.

That came later.

Instead of getting something with guns in the air, we have news choppers, police surveillance, and recon flights trying not to hit each other in the suddenly dense morning airspace. And now that the sun is up, they can actually see the extent of the damage. Saint-Germain is completely engulfed in flames, in part because no one knows to tell them to stop flying low over the goddamn blank zone. Most of the outlying zones between there and central Paris are in varying states of fuckedupedness, and short of a small salient of M-Beasts heading north-west, almost the entire swarm of them is charging down the damn freeway toward a city of two million people.

And it is such a big swarm. What did it number, something like fifty to sixty thousand? They didn't show up on thermal imaging used by flyovers, so we didn't have even the slightest idea of the extent of the problem until you saw that tide of chitin tearing through homes.

It took me and mine five hours to put together a comprehensive response force to that. Hell spilled over onto the streets of Paris, and it took us five hours to get men, materiel, and morale together and ready to fight. Do you want to blame someone for the fact that we didn't get off the ground until 18:00? Then blame the French politicians who were so far up their own asses that daylight was a myth to them.

How long did it take until you were ready to fight?

Longer than I'd like. Even I have to cop to that.

Ramstein to Paris is like most things in Europe, with a flight time similar to that of a gently lobbed Frisbee. This wasn't some twelve-hour continental flight, it was about an hour in a C-130. Some of them landed at a place I can't even begin to pronounce[2]

with overflow at Charles De Gaul. It was south of the city, which gave us a good angle of attack. If we had to fall back we had comparatively unpopulated areas to retreat back into, whereas the bulk of the French Guard and Gendarmes were fighting in the urban centers themselves.

Rule of Engagement were simple on their face, shoot anything moving on more than two legs, but complicated by the fact that we had to be more than soldiers. The M-Beasts were immune to the fires[3], didn't need to breathe, and were delighted to have civilians in the theatre. We were not. We spent as much effort in those first few hours playing firefighter and evacuating civilians as we did trying to stem the tide.

And yes, we were still limited in our weapon choice. We had tanks on the ground that couldn't fire their main guns, riflemen with wonderfully effective M-249's that had to stick to plinking away. This was the first major handicap to go at the reality of the situation set in. By midway, through the 4th it was weapons-free.

And that had an effect?

Absolutely.

There is a common misconception that M-Beasts are invulnerable to conventional weapons that I think stems from that first day of combat. I can tell you from experience, they are not. If overwhelming violence isn't solving your problem, you just aren't using enough of it.

The media thought we were losing the battle for Paris on the 4th. All these stories about this neighborhood falling, this many casualties, that amount of property damage. But by the end of the day, anyone actually in the know could tell you that the battle was a foregone conclusion, absent some new supernatural upset.

Really? The battle carried on for another nine days.

And a grandmaster can have you in checkmate fifteen moves ahead of time. We bombed Saint-Germain-en-Laye late on the 4th, just flattened the city to the ground, and in the process we completely, though unintentionally, covered the gate entrance with enough rubble to prevent any more M-Beasts from joining the battle. Meanwhile, our OoB[4] was growing by the day.

We had most of the civilians out by the 5th, and apart from one breakthrough on the 8th, they didn't take another human life after the 6th of April. Four days to completely encircle and neuter a completely unforeseen threat I think we did a hell of a job.

Congress disagreed. As did the media, given your earlier statements?

[Williams' jaw visibly tightens for several seconds before he continues.]

Excessive force, they said.

If there were a hundred people level alive in Saint-Germain when I ordered it bombed, I'd be shocked. And I can't imagine a single person in that city surviving until the theatre was clear even if I hadn't. Yeah, we leveled a suburb, but it was that or Paris.

No one in congress was reading the reports I was reading. No one in the French government was willing to give the go-ahead for their own troops to do the job. I'd been given operational control, and they called me a war criminal for doing what had to be done.

Like restricting the flow of civilians out of certain areas in order to lure M-Beasts into more easily assailable positions?

We can just end this interview now if you're going to repeat debunked accusations from forty years ago. I never gave any such orders, no soldier under my command ever gave such orders and no soldier under my command would have obeyed such orders.

Apologies, I was just repeating one of the more well-known accusations, not making it myself. Despite the charges, you never saw the inside of a courtroom over the issue, did you?

No. My resignation from Ramstein was requested and given, and I was honorably discharged within the year. Most of my direct subordinates ended up taking an honorable, or in one case an other than honorable discharge. It was the 'happy middle ground', as the SecDef explained to me. The public wanted to see heads roll, so it was either slink away or get cut.

Funny thing was, it was the American public that hated us so much. The French were too shell-shocked about what could have happened to quibble about the details of what did happen. It takes a uniquely American perspective to see someone do the impossible, then complain that they didn't do it better.

Well, an American, or one of those fucks at the UN.

[1] This is an oversimplification. Destroying an M-Beast with conventional weapons requires destruction of all vital points, rather than a 'lucky shot' on one. Damaging or destroying any vital point will deal crippling short to medium term damage, however.

[2] Vélizy – Villacoublay Air Base

[3] Another common misunderstanding. M-Beasts are damaged by fire, though their rate of regeneration means that anything short of standing in a significant open blaze is unlikely to cause long-term injury or death.

[4] Order of battle, the amount of the forces committed to a specific theatre