Outside Context Problem: Book 03 - The Slightest Hope of Victory

by Christopher Nuttall

  ***

  “Little bastards,” Edward Tanaka muttered, as he scraped the insects away from his shoes. “Lousy little fuckers.”

  “Language,” Lieutenant Markus Heimlich said, mildly. “I don’t think that helps reassure anyone.”

  Edward gritted his teeth. The aliens had, naturally, brought along elements of their own biosphere from their homeworld to Earth – and it had started to spread outside the areas they had colonised. He wasn't sure if the tiny creatures – they looked like crosses between spiders and crabs – were poisonous or not, but they definitely seemed to find humans tasty. The scorpions they’d had to endure in Iraq looked positively friendly by comparison.

  He stamped on one of the little creatures and smashed it into the earth, only to see it scurry off moments later, apparently unharmed. The blue creatures – pinchers, the men had started to call them, rather unimaginatively – were tougher than they looked. They weren't the only alien creatures roaming the countryside either. He'd heard reports of buffalo-like creatures being spotted in the wild further to the west, or giant reptilian camels being sighted in the Middle East. It looked as though the aliens not only intended to take the Earth, but to adapt it to suit themselves.

  “I’m not reassured,” he said, looking towards the alien base. Even in twilight, it was apparent that the level of activity hadn't slowed in the slightest. The aliens could definitely see in the dark, like cats. It had been a nasty surprise for several resistance groups before they’d wised up and realised that they had to take precautions. “And nor should anyone else be reassured.”

  Years ago, back when he had been preparing for a career in the military, he’d read an article that suggested that if the introduction of rabbits to Australia had been planned as an act of ecological warfare, it would have been the greatest success in history. Rabbits had caused no end of trouble for the Australians; lacking any natural predators, their population had expanded rapidly and devastated the countryside. He couldn't recall what the Australians had done to cope with the problem, but he had no idea if their solution would apply to whatever new species the aliens had introduced. Even if mankind forced the aliens to accept a stalemate rather than humanity’s submission, the planet would never be the same again.

  He watched the tiny pinchers as they scuttled away. They were tough, seemingly indestructible, and thought nothing of attacking humans, who were much larger than themselves. It was easy to imagine them attacking ... well, rabbits, along with everything else, and he honestly wasn't sure if there were any animals that could stop them. Given time, they might be able to bring down a dog, a sheep or even a cow. God alone knew how they bred.

  “Never mind,” Heimlich said, dryly. “Are you ready to go?”

  Edward nodded. It had taken several days to slip a major resistance force through the checkpoints and up to the alien base, but it had all paid off splendidly. There were over two hundred men, most with current military experience, lurking near the alien base, ready to attack. And, not too far away, there were a handful of others who would launch diversionary attacks on the other alien installations and checkpoints in the region, If they were lucky, the aliens would have no idea which one was the real target until it was far too late.

  According to intelligence – which had been so unusually precise that Edward was suspicious on general principles – the alien breeding complex wasn't actually a civilian installation, or what passed for a civilian installation in the alien caste-based society. He had no idea how intelligence had deduced that, but assuming that they were correct, the aliens should be more worried about the attacks on the nearby city rather than the breeding complex. It was odd to realise that the aliens might have their own version of the home defence first complex, yet it seemed to make sense. Alien civilians would surely bitch and moan as much as human civilians if they seemed to have been abandoned to the tender mercies of the enemy.

  “Everything is in place,” he said. “All we need to do now is wait – and keep one ear to the radio.”

  He gritted his teeth as the seconds wore onwards. The alien patrols didn't seem to come far away enough from the city to spot them, but they definitely varied their patrol routes every so often, a touch of professionalism that Edward would have admired under other circumstances. Every fool knew that a routine patrol route, followed slavishly every time, was just asking for someone to hit the patrolling troops at the most vulnerable moment.

  “Two guardhouses, I think,” Heimlich said, studying the alien complex through his night-vision binoculars. “And plenty of guards.”

  “The snipers should take care of most of them,” Edward muttered back. “And the missiles will take out the guardhouses.”

  The snipers had been issued with heavier ammunition, just to ensure that the alien warriors were either killed or crippled when the fighting began. It was damn hard to kill the bastards with conventional bullets, almost as if they had been engineered for fighting. Having seen something of what the aliens were capable of doing, Edward was inclined to believe that was exactly what had happened. The aliens just didn't fight fair.

  And any of us could be an unwitting spy, he thought, sullenly. How the hell do we defeat someone who can do that?

  His radio buzzed. “Tango! Oscar! Charlie!”

  Edward smiled. The first attacks were underway – and the aliens would be reacting, scrambling forces towards the installations that were under attack. Given the speed they could move, he had no doubt that they’d be on top of the resistance fighters before they could break contact and escape, but it might give them a few nasty surprises. A new shipment of MANPADs had arrived from Canada, complete with the latest developments in seeker heads. The aliens might lose a few craft before they realised what they were up against and adapted their tactics.

  “Go,” Heimlich ordered.

  Edward lifted his flare gun into the air and pulled the trigger. The flare detonated high overhead, casting an eerie pearly-white light over the scene. Moments later, the snipers opened fire, picking off the aliens who were visible in front of their base. Several aliens dropped before the remainder realised that they were under attack and dived for cover, moving at terrifying speed out of the line of fire. They could run, at least for short periods, far faster than any human, even an athlete.

  There was a loud roar as the two missiles were launched towards the guardposts. Edward tensed as the missiles, designed to take out tanks, slammed into the buildings. No one was entirely sure of what they would do to the material the aliens used for their constructions; most of the reports had suggested that it had the weight of plastic and yet it was stronger than concrete or steel. Edward wasn't sure how that was even possible, although he’d read the suggestions online by countless chemists and structural engineers. Some of them had even wondered if the aliens had developed a binding field that simply held the material together, even though if they’d had such technology surely there would be other signs of its existence ...

  He smiled as one of the guardposts disintegrated with a thunderous explosion. The other was luckier; the missile detonated against the wall instead of punching through it and detonating inside. Even so, the aliens were clearly shaken; he saw several alien warriors evacuating the guardpost before other missiles could take it out. Several of them were firing back towards the snipers, although they couldn't quite make out their positions. Most of the blue-white flashes of light were missing their targets.

  “Go,” he snapped, and led the assault force down towards the alien base.

  Overhead, an alien craft snapped into position and started spitting fire down towards the missile firing position. Two Stinger missiles rose up to challenge it, one slamming directly into its drive field and sending it careening over and over until it slammed into the mountainside and vanished in a blinding flash of light. The other Stinger had vanished, somewhere. Edward formed a mental picture of it flying upwards until it acquired one of the orbiting alien craft, but he had to admit that it was unlikely. It was re
latively easy to avoid a MANPAD if the aircraft stayed high in the sky.

  Alien warriors loomed up in front of him as they charged out of the base, desperate to drive the humans back as mortar shells started impacting the rear of the city. Edward took aim and fired, blasting two of them down before the others started returning fire. In the confusion, it seemed hard for both sides to coordinate their operations; he saw a pair of alien warriors running towards him before they were gunned down, their comrades starting to fall back to more defensible positions in the complex. Blue-light lightning left spots dancing in front of his eyes as the aliens sprayed fire, seemingly at random. Unlike human weapons, theirs made ‘spray and pray’ a valid tactic. No one had ever observed one of their weapons running out of ammunition.

  Another explosion billowed up from the city as the mortar shells hit something that detonated when they struck it. Edward cursed as he saw the alien warriors taking up position in a building that looked like a half-melted burger made of plastic, sniping back at the humans through the exposed windows. He barked orders and the resistance fighters launched grenades into the building, sweeping the alien warriors out of existence. The explosions shattered the building, sending it crashing down into rubble. He caught sight of a honeycomb like structure before it fell apart. It reminded him of a beehive ...

  ... Or an anthill, he thought, as the aliens fell back. They seemed more inclined to bleed the humans than actually stop them, although it was impossible to be sure what they had in mind. All that really mattered was that the fighting was being driven away from where the human captives were being kept. They had to break them out. He glanced upwards as another alien craft scythed overhead, bolts of brilliant light sweeping the mountainside, but ignoring the humans in the alien base. They had to be worried about accidentally calling fire down on their own position.

  “Group one, keep driving the aliens back,” he barked, hoping that they could hear him over the racket. They couldn't use their radios any longer, not when they would have advertised their presence for the aliens to come kill them. “Group two, with me!”

  The eeriness of the alien city reached out to touch him as they advanced down towards the heart of the complex. Edward had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the culture had produced radically different buildings to America, but the alien city was a nightmare. Everywhere he looked, he was reminded of the inhuman nature of its designers; the doors that seemed more for children than grown men, the complete lack of decoration or street signs ... part of him just wanted to turn and run.

  But there was no time to waste.

  “This way,” he ordered. The sound of shooting was growing louder as the resistance pushed its offensive. “We have to get them out of here before it's too late.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Alien Base, Near Casper, Wyoming, USA

  Day 238

  Dolly started awake as she heard the sound of shooting. It was a sound she had become intimately familiar with, during the battle for Chicago, but she hadn’t heard it since she’d become an alien captive. She'd dared to dream of rescue, yet she had realised that wherever they were, it was very secure. It was even possible that they were on another world.

  But the sound of shooting was unmistakable.

  Somehow, staggering slightly under the weight of the baby in her womb, Dolly stood up and headed towards the door. If the resistance was attacking, it would be a good opportunity to escape and flee as far as she could from the aliens. And if she was cut down as she fled ... somehow, the thought didn't seem to bother her very much. Maybe it was the drugs, but still ... survival no longer seemed a concern, not really.

  Outside, she heard the sounds of panic from some of the other girls. From chatting to them, during her more lucid moments, she had discovered that none of them had any background in fighting. They’d never been in any real danger, either, until the aliens had arrived. Some of them seemed to have adapted quickly to their new status as brood mares, seeming almost relieved that the aliens had a use for them. Dolly shook her head in disgust and staggered away, heading down towards the garden. They could save themselves, if they realised the danger in time.

  ***

  Edward barely saw the alien workers before they came lunging out of the shadows and threw themselves on the advancing humans. The tiny creatures had never fought before, as far as he knew; they tended to make themselves scarce as soon as the shooting started, leaving the warriors to fight to defend them from harm. This group, however, fought; he barely managed to fend one of them off before another sent him flying backwards with a punch he felt even though the body armour. The alien workers were strong.

  He lifted his rifle as the worker advanced on him, cyborg claw clicking menacingly, and shot the alien through the head. It’s oversized dome shattered as the bullet struck it, sending it falling backwards to the ground. Edward shot two more in quick succession, rallying his own forces before advancing into the garden. If the workers had been armed, he realised suddenly, they would have wiped him and the rest of the force out before they reached their destination.

  They crashed through the alien garden, shooting down another pair of worker drones who had hidden in the plants, waiting for a chance to dive out and attack the humans. According to their intelligence, the breeding complex was the building dead ahead, although it was hard to be sure. The alien complex was just too alien. Shaking his head, he kicked down the door and jumped inside, searching for possible threats. There was nothing in the corridor, but a handful of doors.

  “Get them open,” he barked, as he tore at the first door. “Hurry!”

  Surprisingly, it opened at once; he’d expected it to be locked. Inside, there was a black-skinned girl who appeared to be midway through pregnancy, staring up at them with fear in her eyes. The quarters were so drab and bare that he had difficulty in believing that the girl was anything but a prisoner. Surely, she would have wanted something other than momentous grey walls.

  “We’re here to take you out of here,” he said, reaching for the girl’s arm. She drew back, clearly unable to speak. “Don’t worry; we’ll get you to a proper hospital ...”

  The girl hesitated, then stumbled forward. She was naked under the sheets, Edward realised; there was no sign of anything she could use as clothing. Cursing, he ripped the sheet free and passed it to her, motioning for her to use it to wrap herself in and provide some protection from the elements. He took a long look at her belly, wondering just what was growing in there, then pulled her towards the door. Outside, where the sound of shooting was louder, the girl flinched backwards. She was frightened half to death.

  And she might have been implanted too, Edward reminded himself. There was no logical reason for the aliens to bother implanting the humans they’d selected as brood mares, but they might just have decided that controlling them might be useful when the time came to take the children away. But the girl had been in the complex longer than the new brand of Walking Dead had been in existence, hadn't she? It was impossible to know.

  He gently pushed the girl towards the garden, where a handful of other girls were waiting. Several more refused to leave, even at gunpoint; Edward briefly considered taking them by force, then dismissed the thought. They didn't have time to flee the combat zone while carrying unwilling captives. The girls who didn't want to flee would have to take their chances with the alien warriors when they surged forward and recovered the base.

  There was a blinding flash from outside, followed by an explosion so loud that Edward felt his ears ringing for moments afterwards and a earthquake that shook the entire base. One of the MADPAD teams had downed another alien craft, he realised, and it had plummeted right into the base itself. Flames were now spreading through the complex, threatening to cut the resistance fighters off from their lines of retreat. At least the complex would have been crippled and most of the alien doctors would have been killed. The orders from higher up the resistance food chain had been very clear. They were to kill as many of the al
ien doctors as possible.

  “Start pulling out of the city,” he ordered, briskly. The soldiers might have to carry the girls, if there was no other choice. “And keep the girls moving!”

  ***

  Dolly flinched as she ran into the soldiers, experiencing flashbacks to the moment she had been captured by the Arab soldiers the aliens had used as expendable. They’d raped her, repeatedly, before they’d dumped her into a POW camp, expecting the aliens to dispose of her in short order. Instead, they’d turned her into a brood mare ... she held up her hands, hoping the newcomers wouldn't shoot her on sight. What would they do if they knew she was carrying an alien baby?

  “This way,” one of them said, gruffly. “Keep your head down and do as you’re told.”

  He passed her a sheet, which she wrapped around herself gratefully. She hadn't really cared about modesty while she’d been a prisoner, but now being naked bothered her. The sound of shooting was growing louder and louder; she walked in the direction they indicated and found herself back in the garden with the other girls, several of whom were clearly in shock. They were staring at the flames tearing the complex apart, melting it down into scrap. The alien base would take years to repair, she hoped.

  “All right,” someone barked. There was a note of command in it strong enough to make her stand to attention and listen. “I want you to head down this street and straight up into the mountains. There are people there ready to grab you and keep you moving in the right direction. Don’t worry about anything you hear or see behind you; just keep moving.”

  Dolly had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Two alien craft were swooping high over head, flames were consuming the city and – it seemed – half of the mountainside and she could hear both human and alien weapons spitting out fire behind her. And he thought that they weren't to worry about it? She couldn't help thinking about one of the fighters drawing a bead on her back and blowing her into the next world.