“Weapons online,” Sonja said. Her voice had steadied as she pulled herself together. Like him, she had probably accepted that they were both dead; it was only a matter of time. “I have a track on the incoming ship…”
“Fire,” Kane ordered. The shuttle jerked once as two missiles were launched from the open cargo bay. They didn’t have nuclear warheads, an oversight he cursed silently under his breath, but if they hit the alien craft, they would do some damage. The aliens probably couldn’t evade them at such distances, either; unlimited by concerns for human pilots, the missiles were travelling much faster than any manned ship already. “Bring up the second pod and…”
The first missile exploded, a good five kilometres from the alien ship. Kane spared the telemetry a glance and realised that the aliens had somehow shot the missile down with a point defence system, probably a laser. The second missile followed moments later, while the big alien craft orientated itself on the shuttle. Alarms started to ring in the shuttle as the forward heat shield, designed to shield the crew from the fury of returning to Earth, started to melt under the alien bombardment. The alarms grew shriller as the lasers swept across the protective covers over the cockpit windows; Kane saw red light starting to burn through as the shuttle started to spin helplessly in space.
He looked across at Sonja. “I’m sorry,” he said, reaching out and taking her hand. “I wish that…”
The alien lasers punched through the hull. A moment later, the wave of heat reached the remaining fuel in the shuttle’s tank and Discovery, one of three remaining space shuttles, exploded in a ball of fire. The alien craft moved slowly through the wreckage, paying a moment of respect to the crew, and then returned to its attack profile. The remaining satellites had to be wiped out of space.
* * *
The entire space station was shaking madly. Francis heard the sound of tearing metal as the station spun through space, the noise somehow overcoming the noise of the alarms blaring out as the space station was torn apart. The status display on the wall was showing hundreds of red icons, almost obscuring the image of the space station itself, before it blinked out of existence, revealing that the power was failing. He caught on, desperately, to the side of his chair, just as he heard the dread noise of an air leak. The habitation module had been breached.
This can’t be happening, he thought, dazed. The sudden rush of air towards the breach was pulling at him. He saw one of the space station’s crewmembers flying towards the breach and then out into space, pulled helplessly along by the rush of air… and then he saw one of the ambassadors following him. It looked like Bai Li, to him; the Chinese ambassador was merely the second victim of the aliens. This can’t be happening…
A hand caught on to his arm and he turned, automatically, to see Gary waving a mask at him. Gratefully, he took it; he hadn’t even realised that the air was racing out of the compartment, leaving him with nothing to breath. He saw Sophia, one of her hands turning black and blue in the fading light, take a second mask and breathing desperately through it; he couldn’t see the Russian or the Frenchman at all. He concluded, as the seeping cold started to filter into his system, that they were both dead. The air was starting to slow now, leaving them completely dependent on the masks and their links to the emergency air storage units; he said a silent prayer of thanks for the NASA genius who had designed the protective outfits.
We should have been in spacesuits, he thought. It was becoming harder and harder to think; his head was pounding away like mad. An hour ago, they’d been so hopeful about the meeting… and now the aliens had simply opened fire. It was crazy; had they really come hundreds of light years just to start a fight? He didn’t have any illusions as to how long he would survive the coming few hours; as long as they were using the masks, they couldn’t reach the escape pod… assuming that it was still intact. Even if they did reach it, the aliens might target it on the way down, which would mean certain death. If Discovery was still in orbit, the crew might manage to pick up the survivors, but somehow he doubted that the aliens would give them that chance. He’d read a thousand different versions of the alien invasion story in the fortnight since he’d known he was going to meet the aliens… and all of them warned that the aliens would seek to control space. Given how weak Earth’s defences actually were…
The cold was growing colder, somehow. The station was still spinning, providing the semblance of gravity, but he could see the hull buckling under the pressure. A moment later, a new rent appeared in the side of the module, tearing open and revealing the spinning starfield outside. For a moment, he saw Earth, growing larger in the growing breech in the hull… and wondered if the entire station was plunging down towards the planet. It would destroy them without any need for further expenditure of alien weapons. It was so hard to think now…
Something moved at the edge of his perception. He turned slowly, feeling his body slowly turning to ice, and saw something moving towards them, coming through the steadily growing rent in the hull. It looked human, at first, and he wondered if one of the crew had managed to don a spacesuit, but as it came closer, manoeuvring with the aid of a small gas pack mounted on its back, he realised that it was humanoid, but far from human. It was impossible to make out any features in the black spacesuit, if spacesuit it was, but all the proportions were wrong. Looking at the featureless humanoid, Francis realised that it was moving… oddly, as if it had grown up on a very different world. The alien came closer and closer… and then one hand reached out and pulled Gary’s air tube free of the wall.
Gary thrashed, desperately, as he started to run out of air. The alien ignored his struggles and carefully pulled him away from the wall and into an inflatable bubble, leaving him floating in the middle of the room. Francis stared, convinced that the alien intended to kill them all personally, and then he realised that Gary was breathing normally, inside his bubble. A moment later, the alien pulled Sophia free of her chair and added her to his catch, seemingly unconcerned or unaware that she was female. A second bubble inflated and the alien pushed Philippe into its warm confinement, and then added Stanislav and Damiani’s body to the catch. A third bubble inflated and Francis cringed as the alien reached for him, breaking the air hose with one hand and pushing him forward into the bubble. He fought to prevent himself from breathing, irrationally terrified that the aliens breathed poison, but in the end he had to take a breath. The air was hotter and dryer than the ISS had been, almost like being in a desert, but it was breathable. A wide-eyed Katy Garland, one of the scientists on the ISS, joined him; the alien left the remaining bodies behind, perhaps for later recovery. Damiani and the remainder of the crew had to be dead.
Damn you, Francis thought, staring at the alien shape. The alien’s features were completely hidden, but he tried, desperately, to gain a sense of how his — or her — body language worked. It was impossible and he gave it up after a few moments of struggle, choosing instead to lean back and watch as the alien started to tow his — he decided to think of the alien as male until he knew for sure — human captives out towards the rent in the hull. A moment of insane panic swept up in his mind as the alien tugged them out of the hull and into space, Earth glowing below them as they were dragged towards the alien ship. The parasite vessel, a blocky shape reminiscent of Thunderbird Two, awaited them.
“No,” Katy said, her voice breaking with shock. “Sir, look…”
Francis followed her gaze back towards the ISS. The station had looked fragile when he’d first seen it… and now, all of his fears seemed to be coming true. The ISS was slowly tearing itself apart, spinning in space and flickering with light as the solar power panels came apart. The once-neat modules were torn and broken; he felt a bitter lump in his throat as the alien pulled them through a hatch into a small chamber. It was as featureless as the alien helmet and protective spacesuit, but there were seven other aliens in the chamber, watching emotionlessly as the humans were escorted forward.
Of course, they could be gloating, Fran
cis thought, bitterly. He’d given up most science-fiction because of its reliance on space barbarians… and an hour ago, he would have sworn that they didn’t exist. Of course, the Soviet Union or the Communist Chinese had managed to accomplish wonders, despite having a very unfree society… and the more repressive states on present-day Earth could simply buy most of the items they couldn’t produce for themselves. It seemed impossible that the aliens could have so much without developing democracy, but they might have somehow accomplished it… or maybe they were a hive mind, or… endlessly, he contemplated the problem, using it as a way of avoiding the real question. What were they going to do with their captives?
Reality intruded as the lead alien pulled out a sharp knife and started to cut the bubble open. Katy screamed as the alien pulled her out and left her floating in the room; Francis, more sedately, followed her a moment later. An alien stepped forward, somehow walking on the deck despite the lack of gravity, and caught him. He saw a second flashing knife and feared the worst, but all the alien did was slice all of his clothes away from his body. The protective outfit might have protected against the vacuum, but it was no protection against the knife, which cut through it sharply and left him floating naked in space. The aliens showed no interest in their human captives once they were naked, transferring out the remains of their clothes and various electronic gadgets through a tube, leaving the humans floating helplessly in the middle of the room.
Bastards, Francis thought angrily, trying not to look at either of the two girls. They’d taken four men captive and two women, and they’d stripped them all. It made a certain kind of sense — the aliens might not recognise a human weapon on sight, so they’d removed anything that could possibly be a weapon — but it was inhuman. The thought made him smile, bitterly. They were in a very inhuman position. The aliens just… watched them, unconcerned by their protests or attempts to talk. Francis tried to speak directly to one of the aliens, but got no response, not even a sign that the alien could even hear him. It was like dealing with robots, or automations.
He met Gary’s eyes briefly and saw the hell in the former ISS commander’s eyes. He’d lost his command and almost all of his crew… and, now, he was a prisoner. The aliens had him under their thumbs and there was no way out, not without weapons. Francis lifted an eyebrow, wondering if the far more experienced Gary had any idea what was going on, but the former commander merely shook his head. They were trapped.
A dull rumble ran through the alien craft. Francis felt the craft shift under silent acceleration and felt himself wafting towards the wall. The aliens ignored their struggles and allowed them to grip hold of handles set into the wall, while the craft shivered slightly as it moved on in its orbit. Francis hoped, despite knowing that it would mean their certain death, that they were under attack from the ground, but he knew that that was unlikely. The aliens were probably safe from anything that the human race could throw at them.
The rumbling grew louder. They were on the move.
* * *
Philippe Laroche was not a man given to panic. Unlike most of his contemporaries — and his fellows who’d been onboard the ISS — he was used to being in stressful situations in his roving brief as the President of France’s special representative. He’d been held hostage in terrorist training camps, threatened by armed militants in countries where France had ‘interests,’ and fired upon by one side or the other in various civil wars. He knew enough to be fairly certain that the aliens didn’t intend to kill them outright — they could have destroyed the ISS completely or merely left them to suffocate or freeze to death — and that meant that, sooner or later, they would be talking. It was a power game, like those played by human militants; they would do what they had to do to show that they were The Boss… and then they would talk. Being naked didn’t bother him, much; he’d been stripped naked before, by at least a dozen highly suspicious factions.
Besides, it’s not as if the aliens are interested in human bodies, he thought, and concentrated on acting harmless. Stanislav looked as if he was furious — he might even have jumped the aliens if they’d been kept in gravity — and the American representative looked to be on the edge. Sophia, the UN representative, was shaking madly, her eyes wide with panic and fear. Naked, she was pretty… and almost completely helpless. Philippe watched with a certain private amusement as she clutched the handles and waited for death. It would be a long time in coming.
The pressure pushing them against the wall suddenly eased. Like Francis, Philippe had considered the possibility that the craft was under attack, but it wasn’t something he could do anything about. Chances were if the craft was destroyed, they would die before they knew what had hit them, but in any case there was nothing they could do about it. The aliens would talk to them, in time, and when they did, he would be prepared to open a line of communication. Perhaps he could even convince them that Earth was harmless and attacking the planet was hardly productive.
He turned his attention, briefly, to the aliens. They were as featureless as ever, but the more he studied them, the more he could pick out slight differences in height and, he suspected, weight. If they were alien soldiers, they would be fit and healthy, but he couldn’t tell how strong they were, relative to a human soldier. Philippe had more experience with the military, particularly the French covert operations unit, than he cared to admit… and he found himself studying the aliens from a tactical point of view. It was a shame that he couldn’t see their weapons in action, but…
Another dull thump echoed through the ship. A moment later, the aliens started to pull the humans off the handles and escort them through a door that had just appeared in the featureless hull metal, down towards an unknown destination. Philippe forced a smile onto his face as an alien started to pull him along. If he were right, the alien ship had just docked with their larger mothership… and they were being taken to their leader. Philippe could talk to him then…
And see what advantage he could draw from the nightmare.
Chapter Seven
Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
— President Roosevelt, Dec 8th, 1941
The massive display fuzzed once and blanked out.
The President stared in horror as the display flickered and then reset to its default position, showing the military might of the United States of America. One moment, the alien craft had been approaching the International Space Station, the next… the aliens had opened fire. Paul glanced at the President and wished that he hadn’t; the President looked like a man who’d just discovered that his loving wife had been cheating on him for years, shocked, helpless and terrified. The entire chamber was filling with voices as everyone started to talk at once, trying to make their opinions heard over the racket… as new alarms rang in the air.
“We just lost Andrews,” one of the technicians shouted. A new red icon, then another, then another, appeared on the display. Paul watched as dozens of icons blossomed into existence, climbing rapidly into the hundreds, each one covering the location of a major airfield, civilian or military. The aliens — and it had to be the aliens — weren’t discriminating; every air base or civilian airport in America was coming under attack. “Sir, the entire air base is off the net!”
“Quiet,” General Hastings bellowed. Silence fell, broken only by a chain of incoming reports. “Mr President, the country is under attack!”
The President looked up from his chair. He appeared to have aged overnight. “General… are you sure that it’s the aliens?”
Paul had no doubts. “If they were the Russians, or the Chinese, we would have had plenty of advance warning,” he said, as new red icons flashed up on the display. The Atlantic Fleet, he saw through a haze of disbelief, had just lost contact with the Ronald Reagan. A space-based weapon — a kinetic energy weapon — could have sunk the massive carrier within seconds. “Sir
, the aliens fired on the space station…”
“The satellite network is failing, sir,” one of the technicians shouted, into the silence. “All satellites; civilian, military… ours, the Russians, everyone… they’re going down!”
The display altered as, one by one, the satellites started to wink out of existence. The entire network of radars and observatories was falling apart as powerful radars were targeted from orbit and destroyed, but enough remained to show the alien craft as they encircled the Earth, firing constantly down on the surface of the planet. Radars that could track billiard balls in orbit had no problem tracking the precisely targeted kinetic energy weapons — they couldn’t be anything else — as they slashed down and destroyed their targets. Bases, airports, ships… all were being targeted and destroyed.
”Mr President,” General Hastings reported. “We have to engage the enemy!”
“We have to get the President out of here,” Deborah snapped. Her face had tightened sharply. “They might go for Washington next!”
“It has to be a mistake,” Spencer babbled. “They… they can’t do this to us!”
“It’s happening,” General Hastings growled. “Mr President, do I have your permission to engage the enemy before we lose everything?”
The President seemed to stagger inwardly. “Yes,” he said, shaking his head hopelessly. Paul realised, with a sudden moment of fear, that the President was almost beyond his limits. He couldn’t deal with the steady destruction of America. “General, hit them. Hit them hard!”
“We just received an update from the Russians,” someone shouted. “They’re engaging with everything they have!”
Or so they claim, Paul thought coldly. Russia was actually more vulnerable to precise orbital bombardment than the United States. The Russian ABM and ASAT weapons had never been tested under such circumstances, any more than the American weapons had been tested. God alone knew how well they would perform… and how long the enemy would allow them to maintain their missile bases on the ground. The aliens would track the weapons as soon as they were launched and destroying the bases would be one certain way of limiting their deployment.
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