Femala kept the cruel smile she wanted to show off her face as she explained, in precise detail, what was going on and just how many things could go wrong and get them killed. If the craft had been in orbit, she could have aided the pilot in repairing the damage… but then, if they had been in orbit, one of the parasite ships would have recovered them and brought them back to the Guiding Star, the adventure at an end before it had even begun. Clearly, the High Priest and the Arbitrators had underestimated the human capability for fighting back. Anyone would think that they didn’t want to be converted to the Truth.
The researcher seemed to shake more as Femala outlined the possibilities, but at least she listened quietly, allowing Femala a chance to think. They’d been entering an orbit for a landing at once of the human airfields that had been repaired and pressed into service when the EMP had hit. The odds were that most of their systems had been knocked out. If the main engines weren’t working, they would plummet to their deaths, but if they were, they could probably land… but where? Would they still come down in occupied territory, or would they land amidst the wild humans?
“We’re going to have to go for a landing,” the pilot said. Standard emergency procedure encouraged getting the ship down as fast as possible, but the procedure hadn’t been created for a war zone. “I want everyone to remain in their chairs until we land, whereupon we might have to evacuate the ship as fast as possible.”
One of the warriors had clearly been thinking along the same lines. “Pilot, where will we land?”
“Unknown,” the pilot said. There was a long uncomfortable pause. “I’m not even sure that I can guarantee landing on the land. The beacons are all down and I can’t pick up any station to guide us down.”
Femala smiled to herself as the researcher started to panic again. The idea of coming down in the water wasn’t as bad as it seemed. The shuttle would float for a short period, although there would be no hope of recovery, unless the humans picked them up and offered to trade them for humans within the occupied zone. Judging from the researcher’s face, she was more worried about having to swim, rather than meeting uncontrolled humans, without a squad of warriors to protect her. She’d spent most of the last few cycles studying captured human materials… and she knew, probably better than Femala, how unpleasant humans could be. The thought of capture wasn’t a pleasant one. The old laws of war allowed warriors to be killed, but females were allowed to live, but the humans knew nothing of such laws. On the other hand, they probably wouldn’t kill Femala for being sterile.
“I’m firing the main engines now,” the pilot said. “Remain in your chairs.”
Gravity returned suddenly as the roar of the engines cut through the air. Femala could tell, at once, that there was something badly wrong. The sound of the rockets was rougher than it should have been, and nastier. She could hear the shuttle’s frame screaming in protest as the craft fought to avoid a fatal craft; for the first time in far too long, she found herself mouthing prayers as they plummeted towards the ground. The roar rose to a crescendo, and then suddenly faded, half of the racket simply vanishing. She knew what that meant; one of the engines had flamed out, perhaps condemning them if they were still too high. The craft seemed to shudder, again, and then the ground rose up and hit them. Dull thunder echoed through her head as the shuttle tipped, tilted towards the ground… and Femala blacked out.
* * *
Captain Andrew Stocker and the company had been on patrol in eastern Arkansas when they had seen the falling star. The alien occupation had sent hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Texas and his duty had been to find them and escort them to refugee camps, where they could be processed. Most of them were harmless, mainly men and women who were willing to work for food and help rebuild as much as they could of the state, but some were criminals and others had been forced into working for the aliens. They normally were easy to spot, but most of them tried to escape rather than surrender, although a couple had tried to shoot their way out of the trap. The ones who were captured confessed at once, admitting that the aliens had their families under their control as hostages, but they couldn’t be trusted. The soldiers sent them to a prison camp in the north and prayed to themselves that they would never be faced with the same decision.
They had seen the alien craft from a distance and it had been obvious that it was trying to land. One of the men had produced a Stinger — they’d had hundreds distributed to the soldiers and resistance fighters, in hopes of wearing down the alien helicopter force — and taken aim, but Stocker had ordered him to hold fire. The craft was definitely trying to land, hundreds of miles from the red zone… and it was clearly in trouble. It came down, a demented cross between Thunderbird One and Thunderbird Three, and he felt a moment of respect for the pilot. It was clear that his craft was in deep shit, but he was working desperately to prevent a crash, struggling with his engines to land safely on the ground.
“We need to take that craft intact,” he muttered, knowing that it might prove futile. The alien pilot was good, but if his drives cut out at the wrong moment, the craft would plunge to the ground and explode. Probably. At the very least, it would be unusable. If they could gain control of a working alien craft, it would unlock new secrets… hell, maybe they could fly it up to space and bomb the aliens from orbit. “Sergeant, I want a perimeter around the craft; I’ll lead the squad that investigates.”
He ignored the Sergeant’s comment that he shouldn’t put himself in danger. Wild horses couldn’t have kept him from meeting the aliens directly. The craft was clearly at the end of its tether — the noise of its rockets sputtered, bare meters above the ground, and failed — and it hit the ground with a thud. Stocker covered his eyes, expecting an explosion, but instead the craft tilted, slowly, and fell over. It lay on the ground, smoking slightly, waiting for them.
“Come on,” he hissed, and led the way down to the craft. Up close, it was massive, but somehow they would have to camouflage it and hide it from the aliens. He’d sent for a camouflage team, but they’d have to be incredibly lucky — if Lone Star hadn’t blinded the aliens, they’d already be scrambling a response. The craft was rapidly cooling, but the waves of heat would probably be noticeable from orbit. They swept around the craft and located a hatch, set within the cooling metal, and he knocked. There was no response.
“There,” the Sergeant said, pointing to a smaller section within the hatch. Stocker realised that it was a control of some kind and pulled it. The hatch unlocked, but it took the combined strength of three soldiers to pull it open and lock it in place. A wave of hot air, smelling of something indefinably alien, struck them in the face, but Stocker pushed forward anyway, shining his torch ahead of him. It was a disaster area; the entire interior of the craft had been torn to pieces, but he could see some bodies. The alien engineering had held up, barely; he barked an order and the soldiers started to recover the bodies. There were nine live aliens, in total, including two with very noticeable breasts. He had to remind himself that they might not actually be female. “Sir, what do we do with them?”
“Get them to the hideout and have the medics work on them,” Stocker ordered, after a long moment’s thought. If they could take the aliens alive, they’d have to give him a proper combat role, rather than patrolling the rear. “Check them for any kind of weapon and then move them out, carefully. We need to get them well away from here before dawn.”
The sense that the aliens would be taking steps to prevent them escaping with this treasure trove forced him forward, exploring the higher reaches of the craft. It had once stood on its end; now, lying on the ground, it was hard to reach the cockpit, but when he managed to climb inside, he found two more dead aliens. He examined them quickly, trying to determine what had killed them, but there didn’t seem to be any kind of real damage. They had cuts and scars from damaged consoles, but… there didn’t seem to be any real reason why they were dead. It was a complete mystery.
“Get these bodies as well,” he his
sed, as the camouflage team arrived. Moving the alien craft before dawn would be impossible, but if they could hide it, they could break it up and move it, piece by piece. “Sergeant, get a couple of others up here and strip the craft of anything we can carry; books, files, whatever…”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said.
Stocker managed to climb back to the hatch and out into the cool air. Lights were twinkling high above him and he could only hope that one of them wasn’t an alien KEW, coming to ensure that no alien secrets fell into human hands. If they could hide the craft…
“Sir, look at their foreheads,” one of the junior lieutenants said. “They’re marked!”
“Yeah, so?” Stocker asked coldly. The priority was getting the prisoners away from their craft, not discussing their tattoos. They’d be discussing the alien breasts next. “What about them?”
“They destroy religious buildings and they have marks on their forehead,” the lieutenant pointed out. “It could be the Mark of the Beast. They could be demons, or the servants of the antichrist…”
Stocker stared at him for a long moment. “You’ve been reading Left Behind too much,” he said, dryly. “This whole war is quite bad enough without adding supernatural elements to the problem, don’t you think? They bleed and die when we shoot them, so they’re not demons, are they?”
* * *
Femala felt her head swimming as, slowly, she returned to awareness. It took her time — it felt like entire cycles — to remember what had just happened. The shuttle had crashed, but somehow, she was still alive. They had to have come down in occupied territory, then, and the warriors had recovered their craft. The gravity was slightly heavier than that on the Guiding Star’s habitation section, which meant that they were still on Earth. The field medics had probably insisted that they remain on the planet until they were fit to return to orbit.
She opened her eyes and got the shock of her life. She knew, instantly, that she was lying inside a human room. The bed wasn’t designed for her race — it was softer than any that they would have used — and the proportions were all wrong. Sprawled across the bed, she struggled to sit up, only to discover that she was strapped down. A massive black shape leaned over her and she cringed back, convinced that he was a demon and had come to drag her to the shadow pits for her disbelief. Cold logic asserted itself, eventually, and she realised that she was looking at a human. It took her a moment to realise that his dark skin tone was his natural colour, rather than a dread disease, and that he was smiling at her.
His voice was soft, but still too loud for Femala’s ears. “Can you understand me?”
She winced from the pain. “Yes,” she said, softly. She’d had to learn the human language to talk to their captives, but she hadn’t imagined being a captive herself… and stark naked into the bargain. The air was really too cold for normal clothing, let alone nakedness. Females might have bared their breasts as a matter of course, but they didn’t undress completely unless they had chosen a mate… and a father for their children. “What do you want?”
“We’re going to try to make you better,” the human assured her. His voice had softened, revealing that he had realised her problem, she hoped. Human medical science might be better or worse than that of the Takaina, but they wouldn’t know how to treat any of them. They might kill her with the best of intentions. “Once you’re well, we’ll discuss what’s going to happen to you next. Perhaps you can help us bring the war to an end.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.
— Anon
“What do you mean, they’re attacking us?”
By long-standing tradition, the High Priest was never woken during his sleeping periods unless it was an absolute emergency. It was something that he had learned wasn’t the great advantage of high rank that it had seemed, back when he’d been a lowly under-priest at the mercy of his superiors. No high-ranking priest could avoid his duties, not even the High Priest… and if he started to neglect them, the lower-rankers would start sharpening their knifes.
“They have launched a major attack against us,” the War Leader said, as a display of Earth appeared in front of them. “Submarines have launched missiles against us and their EMP has blinded some of our systems. Their ground forces are engaging our forces on the ground and human insurgents are making reinforcing them difficult.”
They timed their assault perfectly, the High Priest said, as the display updated rapidly. The space-based radars had been knocked out, almost completely, and the parasite ships had been given too many problems of their own to contend with. The Takaina had honestly never thought of the possibility of using submarines to launch missiles, so while the orbital bombardment units had fired back at once, it was quite possible that the human submarines had escaped and lurked somewhere under the water. Do they know us that well?
He shook his head. It didn’t matter at the moment. “We were too gentle with them the first time,” the Inquisitor said. “We should have moved at once to convert them, rather than…”
“Quiet,” the High Priest said, firmly. He didn’t have time for recriminations, particularly not from the Inquisitor. “War leader, where are the remaining parasite ships?”
“In orbit,” the War Leader said. “They have not been engaged.”
The High Priest thought rapidly. The other human powers weren’t important, not as long as they could only kill their fellow humans, but if the human Americans managed to destroy the occupied zone, the Takaina would lose over two hundred thousand warriors and their supporting units. It wasn’t a real choice; they had to leave the Chinese and Russians without surveillance, just to maintain their whole.
They didn’t cooperate with the Americans, he thought, vaguely. In their place, he would have involved the Chinese and Russians in the attack as well. It might even have been decisive, but instead, both powers remained quiet. They’d sent a Russian ambassador back down to Earth, but they’d accidentally killed the Chinese representative when they’d boarded the human space station. In hindsight, that had been a mistake, but not one that could have been avoided.
“Order the parasites to swarm over to the occupied zone and punish the humans for their imprudence,” he said. “Surge the secondary occupation forces into their landing craft and prepare to insert them into the occupied zone.”
The War Leader hesitated. “Your Holiness, the secondary occupation forces are not prepared for a landing under fire,” he said. “If the humans win on the ground, we will be throwing them all away, for nothing. If not… if not, the forces we have on the ground should be capable of maintaining their control, with support from orbit.”
The High Priest nodded slowly. The deployment of the secondary occupation force would limit their ability to secure a second beachhead on Earth, let alone a third. The researchers were studying the human religions now, locating the places that were of religious importance to the human race. The human religions, in some ways, were rather like the Truth, although a junior version of its truthfulness. It was suggested, deep in the sealed files, that at one time the Takaina had had several religions and the Truth had been a merger of them, but that was the foulest blasphemy. Once the human religions were crushed, they would be ready for the Truth.
“Hold the secondary forces in reserve, for the moment,” he ordered. “I want this assault defeated before the end of the day.”
“Of course, Your Holiness,” the War Leader said.
* * *
The alien tanks drove right down the centre of the road, their guns firing at anything that looked even the slightest bit suspicious. It didn’t save them; the mines that had been carefully hidden in the sewer detonated, suddenly collapsing part of the road and disrupting their path. They crashed into each other, suddenly brought to a helpless stop, as bullets started to rain down on them from the surrounding buildings. The alien soldiers, buttoned up in the IFVs, remained within the vehicles, trying to return fire with the weapon
s mounted on the outsides. Trapped, they couldn’t bring them to bear on their tormentors.
“Now,” Brent snapped, and seven Molotov cocktails were thrown into the alien position. Intact, the alien craft could have shrugged them off and kept coming, but broken as they were, the burning fuel would really ruin their day. The snipers picked off a handful of aliens who were trying to escape, while others watched for signs of an alien response. It wasn’t long in coming. “Run!”
The aliens had sent in a much larger ground force since the first insurgency. They had managed to tighten security around the Texas State Capital to the point where Brent couldn’t get anyone back inside the secure zone; humans, even collaborators, weren’t allowed into the building. It helped that most of the collaborators were helping the aliens under duress and were quite willing to help the resistance, but they weren’t allowed inside the secure zone. A handful, broken and defeated, had offered to carry bombs, but there was no point. They couldn’t get anything important.
He keyed his radio once as he ran. “Fire the rockets,” he ordered. “Now!”
There was no response, but then, he hadn’t expected one. The rockets had been assembled using basic components that could be found everywhere, built by rocket-enthusiasts who were, one and all, furious at the aliens for taking away the stars. They probably weren’t very accurate — he would have compared them to the old Russian Katyusha system, which he had actually seen in action — but they would definitely upset the aliens. The scream of the rockets could be heard all over the city as the teams launched them towards their targets and then fled. The alien helicopters were coming. This time, the helicopters remained high above, firing tiny rockets of their own towards the launch teams, rather than coming in low where they could be attacked by Stingers.
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