“Very well,” he said. If nothing else, he could try and make sure that the right person got the blame for failure, if failure it was. “I shall issue the orders at once.”
* * *
The University Baptist Church had had something of a interesting history. Officially chartered in 1908, it had chosen to welcome African-Americans in 1943, becoming one of the first integrated churches in the Southern Baptist Convention. Later, it had accepted women as deacons… and then, most controversially of all, it had accepted gay men in the same role. The Committee had even spoken of accepting aliens to the Church, should they feel the call, but the Takaina had other plans.
The warriors spilled out of their protective vehicles and advanced at once to surround the Church. The procedure was well understood; everyone who came out of the Church was to be seized, and then checked to see if they were a religious official. Those that were deacons, or priests, or any other religious personage were hauled off at once to the camps, the remainder were permitted to leave, while the church was thoroughly searched. The bibles and other holy books in the church were gathered together as the warriors completed their work, left in the pews and covered with oil. As soon as the search was completed, the warriors left the building, the last one out throwing in a grenade. The explosion ignited the oil and the flames spread rapidly. Within minutes, the entire building was a towering inferno, watched by warriors and humans alike.
It wasn’t the only religious building to be attacked. The list had been quite comprehensive. Churches, synagogues and mosques were attacked, in two cases defended viciously by their parishioners, but the warriors simply called in a KEW strike and then cleared up the mess afterwards. Austin’s religious buildings, one by one, vanished in the flame. The handful of firemen who tried to put out the fires were manhandled away from the flames by the warriors.
From the apartment block, Joshua watched in horror as new flames reached for the sky. It didn’t take a genius to know what was burning… and that suggested that the aliens had come on an interstellar crusade. It sounded impossible, but they seemed to believe it… and the city was ready to explode in fury. The world had to know what had happened… and what was yet to come.
Chapter Seventeen
Diplomacy is the art of letting the other party have things your way.
— Daniele Vare
The remainder of the week onboard the Guiding Star — as the aliens informed them the starship’s name could be roughly translated into — hadn’t been as bad as the first two days. The humans had been allowed to spend the rest of their time onboard together, which they’d spent comparing notes on the aliens and the data they’d been given. The aliens had even provided them with clothes of a sort. It all made it easier to focus on other issues, perhaps more important ones.
It was impossible to speculate too much on what the aliens might be doing down on Earth, although Francis had a nasty suspicion that that’d invaded the US because the aliens kept asking questions about his country, but it could have been worse. He kept trying to talk to the aliens, if only to try and learn more, but it seemed that not all of them were able to speak English… and they’d never heard any of their own language. It was something that puzzled him; if it was a security measure, designed to stop the humans from speaking to the guards, it was a very paranoid one. He wondered, looking at the faceless guards who accompanied them from time to time, just what they thought of the humans, or the invasion.
He knew, from his experience, that cultures were never monolithic. It was easy to believe that a human group was perfectly united, but that was never the case. Imperial Japan had been as united as human societies ever became… and yet there had been good and decent people, caught up in the maelstrom of World War Two. There had to be weaknesses in how the alien society worked, if only closet atheists, but without the ability to talk to the aliens directly, it was impossible to find them. The handful of aliens who were able and willing to talk to them freely — all female, he’d noted — refused to be drawn on certain subjects.
And that, too, was odd. He’d expected, he realised, that a highly-religious society would keep the women subordinated, as most human societies had done, but the aliens seemed to place women in all ranks, except one. It was hard to tell, under the armour, but as far as he could tell, their guards were always male. That wasn’t unknown in human society — there had been a time when the status of women and homosexuals in combat had seemed like the most important issue in the world — but what did it signify for the aliens? Who was really in charge? What happened to determine how the aliens mated?
There were so many questions and so little time.
“You will accompany me,” an alien said, appearing suddenly in the hatch. She was obviously female; two guards, obviously male, flanked her. The presence of the guards always made him smile; the aliens seemed to expect them to suddenly pull a gun out of an unthinkable orifice and start shooting the starship apart. He wondered, with a sudden flicker of gallows humour, if the aliens had watched too many action movies and taken them for reality. James Bond would have had some problems finding a way out of the alien craft. “Follow.”
She pulled herself through the corridor to the same open bay. “These are communications devices,” she said, as they floated into the room. “They will provide a direct link to our ships and… diplomatic personnel. You will take them, our demands and our data to your governments and use them to open communications.”
Francis coughed suddenly. “You are prepared to negotiate with us?”
“We are prepared to discuss your race’s integration into our society,” the female said, in response, and turned to the group. “You will be returned to the ground, where you will make your own way to your leaders, carrying with you our messages. The groups that open communications first will receive preferential treatment when they submit to us.”
They’re learning, Francis thought, feeling his blood run cold. He’d had the impression, listening to the aliens, that they’d been surprised to discover so many governments on Earth. Sophia’s representing the United Nations had only confused them further. Perhaps, if they’d all agreed in advance to maintain that the UN was the real Earth government… but that was impossible. Too many governments were quite happy to ignore the UN and its edicts could never be enforced. It would just end up with the impossible task of converting the Earth to the Truth…
But if the aliens worked to manipulate human powers on Earth, they would eventually knock down all of their opponents and take over the planet. If there really were a billion of them, as they claimed, they’d be the most powerful race on the surface of the planet instantly — hell, they already were — and by playing the human factions off against one another, they would remain on top. It was a devious, if obvious, offer… and he wondered, bitterly, who would be the first to accept the alien trick. Which nation would be the first to swear allegiance to the aliens?
“Follow,” the female said, and led them down another long corridor. The design seemed to be changing all around them, changing from a stylised — if understandable — set of corridors, orientated to have a deck… to a compartment that seemed to have been designed like the International Space Station. It was clearly intended to remain without gravity, permanently… and, watching the aliens moving through the area, he understood why. They used the area to prepare and launch their spacecraft.
The massive hatch opened as they approached, revealing the interior of a vaguely conical spacecraft. They found themselves escorted in to discover a set of chairs that had obviously been designed for the human form; the guards, silent as always, pushed the humans into the chairs and secured them down with straps. The escort checked the straps, nodded once to the humans, and floated up back through the hatch. A moment later, it slammed closed.
“I wonder if we’re alone on this craft,” Gary said, suddenly. Francis silently cursed himself for forgetting the closest thing to an expert they had. “It looked like a basic SSTO design from the out
side, but I don’t think that there was enough room for the pilot, not inside.”
“Perhaps it’s on remote control,” Stanislav suggested, absently. “We have used remote-controlled spacecraft to resupply the space station before and there is no reason why the aliens might not use a similar tactic. I wonder if…”
A series of bangs and shocks ran through the craft. “They’re launching us,” Katy said, her voice shaking. Francis understood her feelings; it was rather like being about to take a roller-coaster ride. There were more shocks… and then everything stopped. “Boss…”
“I don’t think we’ve been launched,” Gary said, calmly. He sounded perfectly calm; Francis couldn’t hear any tension in his voice at all. “It sounded more like they were attaching something to the craft, perhaps the piloting section. Two-stage SSTOs have been discussed for years, but no one actually produced a working model. The aliens would certainly need something like that unless they actually managed to develop some magic…”
Francis winced as a new sensation, that of endless falling, swept through him. The SSTO didn’t seem to have changed at all, but he was suddenly convinced that the craft was finally moving, flying down towards the planet. A dull hiss echoed through the craft, and then another, pushing them back down to Earth. Brief moments of pressure built up in the craft and then dissipated; he wished, suddenly, for a porthole, some way of judging their progress. The aliens had sent them on a ride without any way of knowing what was going on, apart from the sensations they could all feel. None of them, except perhaps Gary, could read them… but it felt as if gravity was finally reclaiming its hold on them.
The pressure on his body was growing as the SSTO’s engines started to fire. There was no mistaking the roar as they fought to slow their fall, saving them from crashing into the planet like a KEW, or from burning up in the atmosphere. His ears ached as the noise grew louder, but he didn’t dare cover his ears, even without the straps. They’d been warned, back before the aliens had arrived and the world had looked bright and full of promise, that doing so could prove fatal… and he had no intention of being wounded, not while it would leave him under alien care. The noise grew to a crescendo… and then stopped.
A dull thump ran through the SSTO and gravity caught up with them permanently. It felt, suddenly, as if he were carrying a crushing weight, one he hadn’t even been aware of while in orbit. It was all he could do to raise his head, cursing himself for not asking for an exercise machine or something while on the alien ship; they had to have known about the problem. Two weeks — it felt like much longer — in zero-gravity… and it felt as if all of his muscles had atrophied to fat and bone.
“The feeling will pass,” Gary assured him, as the aliens opened the hatch. Air, warm dry Earth air, wafted in. Despite an unpleasant smell tickling his nostrils, he had never tasted anything so good. “It takes longer than two weeks for real problems to kick in, although we should all rest before we actually go anywhere.”
The aliens seemed to understand. Surprisingly gently, they helped the humans out of the ship and down to the tarmac. Francis looked around, suspecting that they were somewhere in the south by the air, but he didn’t recognise the small airfield at all. A handful of other SSTO craft dotted the field, patrolled by heavily-armed aliens; there were no sign of any other humans at all.
Philippe looked up at him from where he was trying to stand on wobbly legs. “Do you know where we are?”
Francis laughed. “I suppose you know everywhere in France, right?” He asked. “You Europeans; your countries are so small. It can take days to get across America!”
“No,” Philippe said, reasonably, “but the aliens wouldn’t have dumped us somewhere we couldn’t get out of, would they?”
They looked towards one of the aliens. “Where are we?” Francis asked, wondering if the guard spoke English. “Where do we have to go?”
The guard said nothing, but pointed with one long hand towards a small group of aliens, waiting for them at the edge of the field. Francis placed his trust in his legs and started to walk towards them, feeling his legs grow stronger as his body got used, again, to the Earth’s gravity field. The aliens waited patiently for the humans and their guards; he suspected, watching the way their faces twitched, that they were finding their progress funny. The aliens should have been used to bodies that had been in space too long, but instead… they were laughing! He was sure of it.
“Welcome to Earth,” the lead alien said, with hopefully unintentional irony. “You will take that vehicle there and head to your people’s lines, outside our area of control.”
Francis followed the alien’s gaze and saw a large SUV, carrying a white flag on the hood, fluttering in the wind. It would be very visible from space, he realised; the aliens were taking no chances on a friendly fire incident from either side. It would be fairly easy to drive once he got his strength back — and Gary or Katy would be able to drive it as well — and it should have enough fuel to get to friendly lines, wherever they were. Gary went over to check the vehicle out as Francis continued to speak to the aliens.
“Thank you,” he said, dryly. The aliens probably wouldn’t recognise sarcasm. “Where are the friendly lines?”
The aliens produced a map. It was a fairly basic roadmap of Texas, one that might be used by any driver planning a road trip, and someone had written on it in green ink. If the map was accurate, the aliens controlled the state as far north as Waco, although the area that represented Fort Hood couldn’t be that firmly under their control. He would have bet good money that Fort Hood was currently the site of a nasty little war. He might never have been in the services, but he was confident that Third Corps could hand out one hell of a beating to the aliens if they were confronted on their own ground.
“Your military has formed a base here, outside of Dallas,” the alien informed him. Francis felt his blood temperature start to plummet again. If the aliens knew that the base was there, how long would it be before they decided to hammer it from orbit? He had to get there first to warn them before they got hit. “We advise you to drive there. Our forces will not interfere with you provided that you do not attempt to enter the cities. Once you have reached your people, convey our messages to your leaders.”
“Of course,” Francis said. He was starting to get sick of being given alien orders. “It shall be done, superior sir.”
The joke was lost on the alien, but Gary cracked a smile. “Come on, sir,” he said. “We’d better get moving if we want to get there before dark.”
Looking at the map, Francis doubted that they would get there before it got dark, but he held his peace. They had a long way to go before any of them would feel safe. The columns of smoke, rising up all around them into the clear blue sky, would see to that. He hoped, desperately, that they meant that the fighting was still going on.
* * *
Philippe took the backseat and watched as the two American men took turns to drive through what had once been a prosperous American state. He had never been to Texas before, but somehow he suspected that it hadn’t always looked like this, not even when a hurricane had blown through it. The Americans said little as they drove on and even the others kept their thoughts to themselves; none of them had been prepared, really, for the reality of alien invasion. Texas had been wrecked overnight.
The Interstate highways had been torn apart. Hundreds of cars, vans, and even trucks had been abandoned, or had been shot up in the fighting by one side or another. Near civilisation, there were mercifully few bodies, but further away from the towns and cities they were everywhere, mostly just civilians who had been caught up in the fighting and had been mown down by one side or the other. They passed through the remains of a town that looked as if a bomb had hit it, the handful of survivors watching them bleakly as they passed. Philippe had thought himself a hardened man — he’d seen more of the misery that humans could inflict on one another than most — but there was something truly soul-crushing about seeing an entire country
laid so low. The aliens seemed to have occupied the land, but outside the cities, they saw little of them. They just didn’t care.
They passed, as quickly as they could, groups of refugees, trudging along to the north. They saw no other moving vehicles on the roads, although there were plenty of abandoned or burned-out vehicles. It wouldn’t have taken long for the aliens to have… convinced the civilians that vehicles should be abandoned; the odds were that they had decided that cars might be used as weapons, or worse. Katy and Sophia wanted to pick up a handful of refugees, but Philippe and Stanislav disagreed with them and Gary and Francis agreed; they couldn’t take the risk. A lot of refugees had to be completely desperate and willing to steal a vehicle… or at least to rob them of everything they had.
An hour after they started out, they came across the first sign that there had been a battle. A collection of destroyed or burned-out military vehicles littered the interstate, facing a handful of oddly-shaped piles of wreckage, surrounded by hundreds of bodies. It took Francis a moment to identify the bodies as National Guard… and Gary a few moments longer to realise that the oddly-shaped wreckage was in fact the remains of alien vehicles. The National Guard had made a stand and hurt the aliens… and had then been brushed aside from orbit. Gary insisted on picking up a handful of dog tags, if only to identify some of the dead, and collecting some of their weapons, just in case. They might be attacked along the way.
The signs of devastation grew less as they headed north, the sky becoming overcast as darkness started to fall, but they stayed away from the cities. They could have headed up to Dallas or Fort Worth, but the Americans wanted to head directly to the military base. They were still arguing about the decision when a shot rang out and several soldiers appeared from nowhere, pointing their weapons at the SUV. Gary braked to a halt and grinned as the soldiers surrounded them.
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