The British are Coming | Summoning the UK.

CHP1 - Cold Shock Response.

"The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances." - Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express.

--

10 Downing Street, London

It had dissipated as quickly as it had appeared. It was the only thing Stewart could think about, as all around the middle-aged Scotsman, neatly-dressed civil servants scrambled to make sense of what had just occurred.

Only minutes ago, the earth beneath them had trembled with such vigour that it wouldn't have been a far leap for someone to call it an earthquake. But an earthquake? In the centre of London? It sounded unlikely even to think it, although less likely things had happened.

"Sir!" A young woman's voice broke Stewart from the sanctum of his imagination.

"What is it?" He replied, distant, but returning to reality quickly as he turned to look over at a woman his still theory-riddled brain recognized as Mia, one of his many aides. With shoulder-length brown hair, and a freckle-saturated, but sun-kissed face, the girl was pretty enough for most of the old guard to remain ignorant of how talented she really was. Something Stewart had taken advantage of when he hired her straight from university three years prior.

"It's the Home Office, they want you over at Whitehall." 

--

Cabinet Office, 70 Whitehall, London

"Deputy Prime Minister." Home Secretary Christine Wright greeted Stewart with, the latter only nodding with a small smile in acknowledgement, his focus more upon the room she, himself, and a dozen other suited and uniformed leaders were now standing in.

This was a COBR meeting.

"You called a Cobra meeting?" He asked, not hesitating regardless to make his way to the front of the room's central long table, where he sat down to give the others their cue to follow. Christine sat across from him, like him near the front of the room, where the other top-level ministry heads and three representatives of the Armed Forces were present.

"I did." The lights in the room dimmed as the wall of interconnected television monitors in-front of the table filled the sudden void with their own, blue artificial light. 

"Did the PM sign off on this? Do you even have contact with him?" Stewart asked, frustrated with the failure of his own team to connect him to Robert while he had been on his short trip to Whitehall, under a police escort that was more hurried than usual. The wall-encompassing collection of screens beside him showed a familiar sight, statistics and red lines.

"We don't. No one does. In-fact, we don't have contact with anyone beyond British soil." 

What?

"What?" Stewart reiterated, to himself more than anyone else in the room.

"The internet is down nationwide, Stewart. Heathrow have lost the readings of all aircraft outside British airspace. The Armed Forces are unable to communicate with their satellites, and UKSA can't find anything in orbit." 

The room was deathly silent, a fact that was not lost on the Scot, his attention strained between the wholly negative facts being shown on the screens to his right, and the wholly negative facts being spoken to him on his left.

"What do you mean? What happened?" Can an earthquake do all that?

"We don't know. But we will." The Home Secretary stated.

--

Borderlands Airspace, Principality of Qua Toyne

To think his father had wanted him to go into the family business. Kolban Erata didn't stray from letting his emotions be known to all who could hear from down below, yelling happily as his wyvern gracefully rode the waves of clouds above the border-adjacent farmlands of his home country.