A Beautiful Game

Station Athena

Paige from a dream of electric locusts and termites to the insistent buzzing off her phone. Yawning she pushed her long pink hair out of her eyes and lifted the bulky secure device and pressed the button. "Hello?"

"You're offline?" The voice of her boss, Sydney Grison, was annoyed. "Turn your feeds back on Paige."

"I was sleeping." Paige complained, running one hand up her arm and pressing down on the computer tattoos there, activating her external interface. "What's... oh." News pictures circled around Paige like fairy ghosts. They showed blacked out cities, armoured vehicles on the move, tracers and laser beams reaching skyward. "I thought they were playing football together?" Paige got up, walking to the shower room to begin her morning routine tragically early. "Wasn't that the whole point, sports diplomacy? FIFA talking up their international significances and all?"

There was a pause. "That's what we need you to find out." Then a longer one. "Paige, why exactly where you sleeping?"

"I like to dream once in a while." Paige knew she sounded defensive. "Most humans sleep you know!" She always felt slightly ridiculous defending her one vice. Her bosses and co-workers always sounded vaguely like they'd found out she was smoking pot or something when they heard she'd been sleeping.

"Yes but... alright fine. Anyway, we're deploying you to Europe. Find out why exactly England and France are fighting. If you can, put a stop to it. A helicopter is waiting to take you to the space port."

"Right." Paige began to dress. "Dump all the information into my feeds, I'll process it on the way down." She walked to the window, looking at the earth below. Memories blossomed into her head as her feeds accepted the mass of data.

"What's going on down there this time?" She muttered, looking at the green and blue ball below her.

London

The truce slot that let Paige get down lasted about thirty seconds after she arrived. Even as her small flitter was taxing towards its hanger the air attack warning sounded and beams of energy from the capitals defences began to lash skywards. Paige winced, hoping no French pilot, in a defence complex deep in the Alps would end her mission so early with a guided bomb.

It seemed the French where avoiding this section of town though, the battle seeming concentrated around Whitehall and avoided the airport.

In the hanger a group of men and women in suits and military uniforms stood waiting. Paige disembarked, looking around them. "Uh, hello. I'm representative Paige, of the Orbital Combine."

One of the group, an older woman wearing a immaculate grey suit stepped forward. "On behalf of Her Eternal Majesties Government, I welcome you to London. I only wish it could be under better circumstances. I'm Sandra Smith, Foreign Secretary." She shook Paige's hand. "After this business with the football game I'm afraid everything has really gone to hell."

Paige smiled "I'm here to try to sort things out. I ask for your full cooperation."

"Of course you'll have it, but equally we must defend British interests." Smith said.

"Yes indeed." One of the assembled officers puffed, almost bouncing with fury. "Can't let those frog eating buggers get away with what they did!" He huffed.

"Well uh, what exactly did they do?" Paige asked. This was the one point that still confused her after everything she'd seen so far.

"Why! They cheated of course! One-One and everything to play for and then their striker, that devil Pepin hand balled it into the goal! Plain cheating!" In the distance there was a string of loud explosions.

"Ah-hah." Paige said, her face briefly backlit as a distant basilisk spent itself amidst a swarm of counter strobes.

"And it was off side too." Smith put in. "Come this way. We need to take you to meet the Prime Minister."

Deep Below Whitehall

The Survival Bunker, so Smith told Paige, was designed to be, if necessary, the seed that could rebuild Britain if the rest was destroyed. Connected to the surface by a special bullet train, it took only a few minutes to reach the deep crustal bunker. Paige stepped through the train doors and looked around the waiting area, done up in the twee likeness of a tube station. Several combat remotes and heavily augmented guards eyed her as she unloaded.

"Please do not attempt to connect to any wireless networks or make any external transmissions, the attack barriers will not recognize you as friendly." Smith said, leading Paige up through a field of various security scanners. Paige was unarmed, not that she really needed a gun, and so the security was just a formality. Smith continued to lead her through the base, through corridors each modelled in a way that the designers had believed quintessentially British.

Paige looked around interestedly, wondering if the decision to hang a series of James Thornhill baroques in a corridor modelled after a late 20th century council house represented humour or simple bad planning.

Smith opened the door beyond, its back elegantly carved mahogany in sharp contrast to the plywood and chipboard front. "The Space Girdle representative Prime Minister."

Paige stepped through the door and found the English prime minister, immaculately clad in an elegant navy suit rising from behind an ancient wooden desk. This room was a replica of one at number ten downing street as it had been at the height of the British empire, complete with hundreds of antique books around the walls. He was still young, with the slightly unnatural look of someone who had been adjusted for the cameras a few times too many.

He had no name of course. The one who had once worn his flesh did, but he slept until his term was up. Instead the Prime Minister was a composite, the personalities of the rest of his party distilled into a single form.

"Welcome representative." The PM shook hands with her gravely. "This is quite a situation we find ourselves in."

"Yes Sir." Paige tried to be equally serious. "I'm here to find out exactly what happened. Once all facts can be determined the orbital combine will step in and propose a solution."

"I'm afraid you don't have much time for that young lady." The PM frowned. "Due to the ferocity of the French attack and their unforgivable attack on our honour I have been forced to take stern measures. If the French do not apologies, pay full reparations and agree that England won that match for the purpose of European cup qualification, I shall order a level one response against France. Nuclear strikes on all military and industrial targets."

Paige had forborne from vocalizing her thoughts up till now but was now forced to express them: "Prime Minister, don't you think this is a bit much for a football game?"

The PM blinked at her owlishly "Huh?"

Paris

Paige felt the flitter buffet slightly as a pair of French interceptor drones hurtles past overhead, heading for the battle over the coast. The news, both local media and the classified reports from orbital intelligence was full of reports of invasion: Royal Marine Commandos had made landfall at Calais, and where now engaged in a fierce battle with French first response forces of 1er Régiment de Hussards Parachutistes and 2ème Régiment Étranger de Parachutistes. In return for this assault on French honour, French commandos had raided Plymouth and dropped the Seven Bridge with plasma charges. French aircraft where attacking all across Southern England, the French boasted that so far none of Perfidious Albion's planes had penetrated to the interior.

The flitter dropped down towards the airport, touching down quickly. Several cars waited and French security agents quickly whisked Paige into one, then the whole motorcade was off, hurtling through the blacked out streets of Paris at a quite unsafe speed. A few minutes later they arrived at the Élysée Palace. More dark clad security agents and robots ushered her into the Presidential Palace. Unlike her British counterpart, the President of France had not retreated to a bunker but elected to live or die with the residents of the Capital.

President Meyer cut a striking figure, in a dark skirt suit, extensive genetic engineering letting her not look her sixty years. She stood, smiled and shook Paige's hand. "Oh! Paige. I had hoped they would send you. Now perhaps we can sort out this dreadful war."

"I'm glad to see you too Madam President." Paige never had any clue how to handle the old lady. "Though I wish it was under better circumstances."

"Of course... I hope you see I had no choice though. The British where planning to strike by surprise." Meyer showed Paige to a seat. "We had no choice but to strike first. After what they did there was really no alternative."

"Uh, what did they do Madam President?" Paige asked. "Why, they cheated! One-One and then their striker, that animal faced Wigeon fouled poor Roland and allowed them to score!" Meyer was practically grinding her teeth. "No state in the world could possibly put up with such an assault on their honour!"

"Okay, stop right there!"" Paige held up both hands. "Do you happen to have films of this game of football?"

Meyer blinked. "I'm afraid not, it is exclusively owned by FIFA, you cannot record it, it is a matter of rights management."

FIFA HQ Zurich

Zurich's space defence sensors had a few seconds warning of the attack as temperatures in the Orbital Combine owned laser constellations above them spiked suddenly. The early warning systems sent a message to other organs of command and began to activate the ASAT batteries hard wired into them.

The former response proved futile as the Swiss Command system began to fall apart under a wave of electronic warfare and cybernetic attacks. Orbital Combine hackers took advantage of several machines in the Swiss defence system. Long ago espionage had minutely changed the manufacturing process of the components inside, allowing the Orbital Combine's electronic warriors to affect them. Now, taking advantage of a microsecond of vulnerability as a new update installed, the attackers chopped the Swiss Command system into its component parts.

Beams of energy lashed downward, striking at air defence weapons, radars and barracks across the city. A moment later the Swiss ASAT stations began to respond, getting off only a few missiles before defence suppression missiles from the Orbital Combine aircraft coming in low over Lake Zurich took them out.

Paige stood at the door of the lead transport, a dozen heavily armed Orbital Combine commandos behind her, looking down at the city below. The aircraft's augmented reality systems rendered the door conveniently transparent for her eyes. The low, glass building that was FIFA's HQ was coming up under them now, lit up by flashes of fire as the gunships escorting the transports prepped the area for the troops.

"Five seconds!" The Transport said, and the door opened. There was a whip of air and then it said "Jump!"

Paige jumped out, aiming for a particular patch of roof, the commandos dropping behind her. She set her feet and switched on her force shield, blasting through the ancient building's concrete and landing in a crouch in the office beyond. It was a well appointed place, large shelves filled with books and trophies, tasteful carpet and pictures of numerous football squads. The Commandos landed behind her, raising their weapons to aim at the man behind the desk.

John Basil, head of FIFA had allowed himself to age, and was now mostly bald and rather decrepit looking. He laughed "I wondered how long it would be before you'd come."

Paige glared at him. "Your plan is in ruins old man. We know what you did and now the French and British have been informed they'll stop fighting. We only need the original details of the basilisk you used to clear up any lingering side effects. . . and to know why. We know your connections to extremist Swiss nationalism and to extremist Negentropist groups. Are you attempting to destroy Britain and France to allow Switzerland to dominate Europe or in some kind of misguided quest to reduce the longterm entropy generated by them?"

"Oh it's nothing like that." The Basil smiled "It's simple! This is my revenge!" He rose, pouring himself a drink and ignoring the heavy weapons and hovering microgunships following his every move. "You don't follow football do you?"

"No. I'm not a sports fan." Paige tapped one foot.

"It's a shame. Young people these days don't follow the game much. In orbit at least." He sniffed. "I should have managed England for the 2567 World Cup! Me! Not some Smarmy Spaniard! They won but it was my team! My ideas! So what if I said a few things wrong! So what if I took a few bribes! It was my dream!"

"So you almost caused a nuclear war because . . . you where mad that you didn't get to manage a football team?" Paige looked at him, slowly raising one arm.

"Of course." Basil looked at her strangely. "Football is important you know."

Paige dropped her arm. The room was briefly lit by the flashes of the commandos weapons.