A second alien, standing behind the first, took a step forward. This one was shorter and, he had the impression, weaker than the first. It also seemed to have uncovered breasts, although they looked very different to human breasts, and he decided to assume that it was female unless corrected. The male, if male it was, seemed to be in charge, but that said nothing. Human societies might have been based, more often than not, around the principle of female subordination — however expressed — but the aliens might be a matriarchy, instead of a patriarchy. Or, maybe, they were complete sexual equals and the aliens facing them just happened to have a male leader. He looked into the dark eyes, feeling a chill running down his spine when he met the pupil-less eyes, and wondered, grimly, what they were thinking.
Another of the females stepped forward. “You are welcome onboard our ship,” she said, her voice odd, but not unintelligible. Her English was precise and finely tuned, but with an odd accent that spoke, somehow, of alien worlds. Francis had half-expected to speak to them in English — they’d had plenty of time to listen to human radio signals and several groups down on Earth had transmitted entire dictionaries to them when their starship had been detected — but still, it was a shock. “We will learn from you and you will learn from us.”
The alien leader, if he was the alien leader, watched impassively. Francis was certain, looking at him, that he was the one who was calling the shots, but how much did that mean? A democracy had its checks and balances built into the system, but a dictatorship had far fewer checks on the leader’s powers… and there was no way to know how the aliens governed themselves. They could be anything from a human society to something so alien that it would make no sense to human observers.
Francis spoke, finally, his voice soft and weak. “What do you want?”
“To spread the word,” the alien female said. Francis stared at her. The answer made no sense at all. “We have come a long way to spread the word.”
Gary drifted forward, slightly. “Why did you attack us?”
“To establish our superiority and the folly of resistance,” the alien female said. Francis felt more than heard Gary’s gasp of shock. The aliens, far from bringing technology and gifts to Earth, seemed to want conquest. Why? He had thought that there was nothing on Earth that the aliens would want that they couldn’t get from the solar system, or through trade. A single one of the alien ships, offered to the great powers on Earth, would have netted the aliens an astonishing amount of trade goods. “This system will be brought into the word.”
Francis frowned. “The word?”
Sophia unbent herself from her crouch. Nakedness had forced her to try to cover herself and the aliens had just pushed her where they wanted her to go. Her voice was shaky and weak, but she managed to speak clearly, perhaps understanding that the aliens wouldn’t understand a frantic human voice.
“I am the representative of the United Nations of Earth, the Parliament of Humanity,” she said. Francis might have questioned her claim to superiority, but he was more curious about how the aliens would react to the claim. If they had been intercepting human transmissions, they probably had a very weird view of the UN, or, for that matter, anything else. The old jokes about the Fox or CNN generation no longer seemed funny. “If you want to talk to the human race, you must talk to the United Nations, to Earth as a whole…”
“We will send you to pass on our message to your leaders,” the alien leader said, cutting her off. The male spoke, for the first time, and Francis listened carefully; his voice was darker, more emotional, than the females. “You will convoy our messages to your people so that they might all be saved.”
Francis blinked. It sounded almost like a religious concept. Humans had conquered in the name of religion before; he couldn’t think of a religion that hadn’t, at one time or another, tried to convert or exterminate its enemies. The Crusades, the Spanish Armada, the Arab-Israeli Wars, the ongoing global Jihad against the secular West… all of them had been fuelled, at least in part, by religion. Had the aliens come all that way just to spark off a new religious war?
“Saved?” Sophia asked. “Saved from what?”
“Themselves,” the alien said, flatly.
* * *
Philippe, like the remainder of the humans, found the entire concept rather… unbelievable, but he suppressed the suicidal urge to laugh while he listened to the alien leader and Sophia arguing backwards and forwards. It was easy enough to dismiss the alien concept, and yet… there was no denying that the aliens were powerful enough to make their presence felt. He was pretty certain that the spacefaring powers were attacking the aliens in orbit, but the mere fact that they were still alive — and prisoners — suggested that the war wasn’t going well. The United States and Russia had the capability to launch attacks on orbital targets, but compared to what the aliens had shown, it was puny. The real question was simple enough; were the aliens telling the truth about their aims?
He mulled it over as the aliens carefully separated the humans, a pair of guards pulling him through the vast hanger bay and into a smaller connection tube, trying to ignore some of the human protests. Philippe kept himself calm and docile, for the moment; the aliens would probably punish resistance, if they really were religious fanatics. He’d dealt with more than a few human fanatics, but most of them had known — or at least had believed — that France would punish any offence to his person… and, besides, he was more use to them alive. The aliens were far too powerful for the United States to hurt, let alone France… and somehow, he doubted that the French Government would seek recompense for any harm that occurred to him. It was better, by far, to act docile… and seek to profit from the situation, somehow.
The alien guards finally pulled him into a smaller room. Despite the absence of gravity, it was set out as if it was normally used in a gravity field, with none of the modifications the ISS had had to take advantage of the lack of gravity, which suggested that the aliens would spin up the ship to generate gravity, sooner or later. It didn’t help him now — and it was a good thing that he’d recovered from his bout of space-sickness after a day on the ISS — but it was interesting to note. The aliens were advanced, sure, but they weren’t magicians who could generate gravity on tap. Everything they’d shown so far could be explained, or even matched, by human technology. The aliens pushed him over to a table, pushed him down on the table surprisingly gently, and secured him down with straps. Philippe felt, despite himself, panic stirring at the back of his mind; the aliens could do anything to him…
…Suddenly, all those stories of alien abduction and medical experimentation seemed very real…
“Remain calm, please,” an alien voice said. He found himself looking up into a featureless alien face. The aliens seemed to have far fewer differences between themselves than a comparable number of humans, although maybe they thought the same of humans; the only thing he could see to distinguish this alien from the other alien females — he was sure that the breasts meant that it was a female — was a tattoo mark on her hairless forehead. Name? Rank badge? Fraternity pledge? Or merely the alien version of ‘mom?’ There was no way to know.
He caught his breath as the alien moved a set of ominous-looking medical equipment over his naked chest. It would have been easy to speak to the alien in French, to see if she understood, but if not… why give up a possible advantage? Two of the other ambassadors spoke French as well as English and Sophia, he was sure, would have some French herself. He resolved to keep speaking in English until he was with the other humans.
His voice caught in his throat as he spoke. “What are you going to do to me?”
The alien didn’t answer at first. “We must know how your race works,” she said, finally. It had the air of a brief answer intended for a child, not a serious answer, accurate and yet entirely useless. There was little point in vivisecting a live human — the odds were that they had recovered bodies from the remains of the ISS and perhaps the American space shuttle — but he doubted i
t was going to be pleasant. “We must know if we can live on your world safety.”
“Odd,” he observed. “You’ve started a war against us and you don’t even know if you can live on our world?”
The device lit up before the alien could answer. She moved it, carefully, over his body, paying careful attention to the implanted plate he had in his forearm, where he’d broken his wrist years ago while showing off to a girl. He couldn’t even remember her name now — she’d married someone from the army, if he recalled correctly — but at the time, impressing her had been much more important than it should have been. The alien spent an hour studying him through her sensors, the medical technology displaying a hologram in front of her of his insides, and then moved on to more invasive procedures.
“Ouch,” he said, as she started to draw a little blood from his arm. She either hadn’t heard of anaesthetic, or, more probably, she hadn’t wanted to risk an alien drug on a human. God alone knew what an alien painkiller would do to him. A normal blood sample wasn’t painful, even though most humans maintained an irrational fear of needles, but the alien either wasn’t gentle or simply didn’t have the right tools. It hurt. “Can you stop doing that, please?”
The alien female ignored him, examining the human blood through a microscope, picking it apart for information. The tests grew more invasive — she probed into each and every one of his orifices — and painful, but he tried to keep the protesting to a minimum. He would have sold his soul for another human in the room, even someone he disliked personally, but he was alone. It was another example, he suspected, of alien paranoia. They didn’t want their prisoners comparing notes.
Idiots, he thought, eyeing the alien out of the corner of his eyes. They would probably have learned more from what their prisoners said to one another. Instead, they’d separated them, just to keep them meek and helpless. Did they really think that they would break free of the alien guards and attack the crew?
“You will come with us,” the guards said finally, as the doctor — although that wasn’t a title he would have willingly given to the alien medical expert — released him from his straps. The aliens seemed to have plenty of people who understood English. The guard caught his arm as he drifted into the air and pulled him out into the corridor, through a twisting maze marked only by alien writing, which looked like a dyslexic’s attempt at joined-up writing, and propelled him into a small cabin. It was almost empty, with only a sleeping pallet, a small toilet, water tap and a constant flow of air, blown through the ceiling to keep the air in motion. The door closed with enough force to send little shockwaves through the air; it only took a moment to check it and realise that it was locked.
Trapped, Philippe thought, and wondered what had happened to the others. He hadn’t seen them as the alien guards pulled him through the corridors. They had probably gone through the same examination as he had and then… then what? What did the aliens intended to do with them? Would they be given a message and sent back down to the planet, or would it be worse than that, or… what? Humans had done horrible things to prisoners of war in the past and the aliens might have worse things in store for them.
The wall lit up and revealed itself to be a display screen, showing an image of Earth taken from space. “You will answer our questions,” an emotionless alien voice said. It seemed to come from everywhere. “You will give us full and complete answers to our questions. Where on your planet do you come from?”
Philippe sighed and started to answer.
Chapter Nine
Honour? There ain’t no honour in this war. The machine guns killed it. And if the machine-guns didn’t, then the artillery did. And if the artillery didn’t, then the chlorine gas sure as hell did.
— Harry Turtledove, Great War: American Front
Bastards, Joshua Bourjaily thought, as the live feed from the ISS showed the alien starship approaching the station. There’s no one going to profit from this, but NASA.
A moment later, the alien starship opened fire. Joshua came to his feet, shocked out of his complacency and cynicism by the sudden attack, as the alien weapons started to fire… and the live feed from the ISS cut off sharply. He’d seen something like it before, when watching live feeds from combat zones around the world, and that could only mean that the source of the live feed had been destroyed. The camera had been mounted on Discovery, if he recalled correctly, and the unarmed space shuttle would have been a sitting duck to alien weapons.
“They… they opened fire,” the talking head said, sounding shocked. The image switched to the live feed from a commercial satellite orbiting near the ISS. The alien starship was breaking up into an entire armada of smaller ships, spreading out from their mothership to attack the planet below. There was a graceful inevitability about the hazy images coming through the network and then the image vanished as the satellite was destroyed. “We seem to have technical problems…”
“They took out the satellite, you stupid bitch,” Joshua yelled at the screen as it switched back to the talking head. The blonde-haired girl looked stressed out of her mind. “They destroyed the system and you’re calling it technical difficulties…”
The television fuzzed once and failed. A single line of red writing appeared on the display. NO SIGNAL. Joshua stared at it in disbelief; ever since he had been a child, there had been literally hundreds of channels available to the discriminating viewer, more than anyone could have watched in their entire life. The growing presence of satellite television had only added to the constant barrage of news, entertainment and boredom from the media, but now… now it was dying, fast. He cycled the television through a set of channels and watched as, one by one, other stations vanished off the air. The BBC vanished in the middle of a stunned discourse by a professional astronomer on how the aliens couldn’t possibly be hostile; Al Jazeera flickered into nothingness during a live feed from a ground-based observatory.
His telephone rang once. When he picked it up, there was nothing, not even a dial tone. On impulse, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and examined it, unsurprised to discover that there was no longer any link to the satellite. The modern make of cell phones used satellites rather than ground-based stations… and they were all going to be destroyed. High overhead, the aliens were blasting them out of space… and suddenly Joshua’s horizons shrunk to the four walls of his apartment. He checked the radio quickly and discovered that it was still working, barely.
“This is an emergency broadcast,” someone said. Despite the static, it didn’t sound like the President or the Governor. Joshua didn’t recognise the voice at all… and yet, it sounded vaguely familiar. “The aliens have opened fire on orbital targets. Remain in your homes. Do not go onto the streets. Do not place yourself in danger…”
A wash of static echoed through the machine. When it cleared, a different voice could be heard. “We speak now to astronomer David Berkinshaw,” it said. Joshua couldn’t tell if it was male or female. It could have been either. “David, you predicted that the aliens were friendly. How does this tie in with the current state of affairs?”
“They could have been provoked, somehow,” the astronomer said. Joshua smiled briefly as he heard the stunned disbelief in his voice. Few had considered the possibility of the aliens being hostile, as far as the news media was concerned; they had preferred to focus on how the world would change once the aliens arrived and brought the new millennium. “Science-fiction is full of wars starting by accident. I would ask you all to broadcast messages of peace towards the alien craft…”
The ground shook, violently. A thin layer of dust shivered down from the ceiling. “My God, they’re attacking,” Joshua gasped, and dived under the table. A moment later, the building shook again and a flare of light spilled up through the window. He pulled himself up and headed for the door, catching his camera in one hand and his recorder in the other, and ran up the stairs. If Austin was under attack, he was in the perfect position to record the images for future distribution. He passed
a handful of his neighbours, all looking as stunned as he was, as he ran upstairs, ignoring their shouts to remain down under cover.
He ran out onto the roof garden and stopped dead. The starry night was ablaze with light. For a moment, he thought he was staring at fireworks, then he realised that there was a battle going on, high above the world. Streaks of light seemed to be flaring through space, rising up to challenge the aliens high above, while the aliens moved in their stately orbits around the planet. He lifted his camera and peered through the zoom function, but he couldn’t see enough to tell who was winning… and then he saw the fires.
The Austin skyline was marred with towering flames. They came from the direction of the airport and he remembered, with a sudden burst of guilt, that he’d reported on the deployment of a Patriot missile battery to the airport. The aliens had hit the civilian airport — they’d hit civilians — and had he somehow encouraged them to target the men deployed to defend the location? Had he betrayed them to the enemy? Cold logic suggested otherwise… and yet, cold logic wasn’t very reassuring, not now. The entire towering furnace had to be the fuel and aircraft going up in flames; what had the aliens done to it to cause such devastation?
“I should go down to the bank and take out the rest of my savings,” a voice said. Joshua turned suddenly to see Mr Adair from the flat below his. He was watching the conflict in space through a telescope and wincing as more bursts of light sparkled out high above. “They have to give me my money, right?”
Invasion Page 8