They’re learning, he thought, as he retreated back to the second base. The aliens were sweeping the entire area, building by building, and they weren’t hesitating to bring in the heavy firepower. He saw entire blocks blasted to rubble on suspicion of harbouring snipers, probably killing far too many civilians in the process. Most of the civilian population had been encouraged to leave for the outskirts — the aliens weren’t allowing anyone to actually leave the city — but there were still thousands of them caught in the firing line. He prayed for their safety, even as he imperilled it, deploying his teams of insurgents to hurt the aliens. The noise of IEDs could be heard all over the city. One of his team, an ex-Marine, had been working overtime to make them and emplace them around the city, including — somehow — in a building the aliens were using as a barracks. By now, they had to be feeling a little paranoid…
The ground crunched under his feet as he ran. It was easy to pick out the remains of hundreds of Transformer toys, shot up by the aliens. It was a complete mystery why they were there, unless the aliens had decided that they were something to do with human religion and destroyed them, and he dismissed it as he ran. The alien helicopters were coming closer and he threw himself into a lobby as they swooped past, engaging anything they saw that looked hostile. He pulled himself to his feet and started the climb towards the vantage point, hoping that he’d be able to see something of the overall situation. The office block, almost like the one they’d used as a base, what felt like years ago, was covered with broken glass and completely deserted. He hoped that the occupants had managed to escape before the war began, or maybe they’d remained in the city, maybe fighting the insurgency. It was so hard to be sure of anything these days…
Austin was burning, again. He stared out over the city as dawn rose, revealing new fires burning through the city… and hundreds of aliens on the streets. Humans were almost completely absent, the only man he saw clearly an alien collaborator, although not one he recognised. The insurgency seemed to have been defeated, again, but conventional wisdom proclaimed that a victory. They had survived another alien attempt to annihilate them. He wanted to draw his pistol and shoot the collaborator, but it wouldn’t be easy to hit him with a handgun at that range… and it would definitely give away his presence. The aliens seemed to have regained control and, for the moment, it would be unwise to challenge them again.
He looked up at the streaks of light, coming down in the distance, and shuddered.
He knew what they meant.
* * *
The tank charged forward, gunning its engine, every member of the crew knowing that the next second could be his last. There was no way of knowing just how badly the alien orbital bombardment system had been damaged, or even, really, just how it worked. The observatories swore that they’d seen the projectiles launched from the parasite ships and guided in by the orbital radar system, but how could they know for sure? The weapons weren’t perfectly accurate, but given how much power even a single KEW possessed, they didn’t have to be perfect. They just had to come down within a few meters of the tanks to destroy them.
But there was no choice. The aliens had massed a few kilometres to the south and the three-prong human force had to break through and destroy their base, and their armoured forces. If they could be destroyed, they could use infantry to continue the assault when dawn rose and the aliens got back into position, but if not… they would probably lose the war. Captain Jim McCoy peered nervously through his sensors, probing the darkness for the first signs of the alien tanks, and waited. It wouldn’t be long before they had what they’d been longing for all along; a direct clash with the alien armour, without their orbital weapons. His tank, Heavy Messing, had been lucky to survive so far, but now…
“There,” he snapped, as the first shape appeared. It was an ominous shape, even though part of him admired the design, and the flexibility it gave the alien leaders. The Americans had knocked down bridges across Texas, but the aliens had just crossed the rivers like hovercraft, which he supposed they were. They were very suitable for intimidating civilians, but against American tanks… they were about to get a surprise. “Load antitank, prepare to fire!”
“Loaded, sir,” the gunner said. The laser targeting system had the enemy tank perfectly targeted. The alien driver was bringing has vehicle around with terrifying speed, far faster than his tank could move, but it wouldn’t save them. “Ready to fire…”
“Fire,” McCoy barked. The tank shook as it fired the shell towards the alien vehicle. A moment later, they were rewarded by a billowing fireball consuming the alien craft and it’s crew. A second alien tank appeared, and then a third, turning to face the Americans. The other tanks in the force were firing now, as well, with the aliens caught out of place. The aliens lost seven tanks before the remainder could start to return fire…
But when they did, it was effective. McCoy had taken part in the invasion of Iraq and he’d come face to face with a group of Iraqi tanks that should have made mincemeat of his entire force, but instead their shells had bounced off the Abrams, while they themselves were ripped apart by the American vehicles. The aliens, on the other hand, were quite capable of destroying the American tanks and when they hit, they destroyed. Losses, now, were going to be about even.
God bless the infantry, he thought, as they engaged the alien tanks with Javelins. The aliens had to know that they’d been caught out of place and that retreat would be the best option, but the tankers had been warned not to allow a single vehicle to survive, if they had a choice. The higher-ups believed that the aliens had no way of getting a resupply from their homeworld, wherever the hell it was, and any destroyed vehicle, they lost permanently. One by one, the alien craft were destroyed and he drove forward, onto what had once been a training camp for scouts or something. A hail of high-explosive shells finished off the remains of the alien positions, leaving the entire camp in flaming ruins…
“Call in,” he ordered. They couldn’t use their radios, but now they’d managed to get a new network of field telephones set up, they could communicate with HQ. “Tell them that…”
Something moved across the sky. He had barely a second to realise what it was before the KEW came down a bare meter from Heavy Messing. There was nothing left of the tank, or of its crew.
* * *
“They’re getting slaughtered out there,” the aide said, in growing dismay. The first parts of the assault had worked so well, but now… now, the aliens were counter-attacking and they’d moved up more orbital bombardment platforms. The passive sensors, tuned to detect alien radar sweeps, were warning that they were deploying more space-based radars… and, in slow inevitable motion, the armoured forces were being destroyed. “Sir…”
General Ridgley closed his eyes. “Call them off,” he ordered, and knew that the aliens wouldn’t let it go. They’d known more about their operations than he’d realised; they’d picked off, almost casually, several bases they weren’t supposed to know about, including the dummy ones. They hadn’t used dummy weapons either. “Call them all off and terminate the offensive.”
It hadn’t been a complete loss, he knew, as the further reports came in. They had hurt the aliens, sometimes badly, and they had managed to get a few thousand civilians out of the firing line, but overall… they had lost. The aliens had managed to make the red zone completely impregnable, as long as they retained their command of space, and yet… getting at the aliens in space seemed impossible. Perhaps the captured ship would provide some clues, or maybe… maybe, they had lost. Maybe it was the end.
“Get the post-battle reports in as soon as you can,” he ordered, finally. “Once everyone is debriefed, we can decide what to do next.”
* * *
The President looked a broken man. “Operation Lone Star failed,” General Hastings admitted. “I take full responsibility and…”
“Enough of that,” the President said, bitterly. The guilt in his voice made the listeners shiver. “I ordered the attack,
after all. What happened?”
“They kicked our asses,” General Hastings said. “We had some successes, but once they brought up more parasite ships, they pounded everything of ours that they could see. I don’t think that there’s an active tank left in Texas or the surrounding states. The insurgents hurt them worst, but without our support, the aliens gave them a beating as well.”
The President didn’t want to ask, but there was no choice. “How many dead?”
General Hastings hesitated. “Around two to three hundred thousand,” he admitted, reluctantly. The President blanched. America hadn’t taken so many losses in a single battle since… well, ever. “We massed every fighting man we could who wasn’t needed elsewhere, with all of the armour and supporting units that we could muster, and deployed them against the aliens. The assault failed. The figure might be too high, Mr President; the guards at the border have been discovering hundreds of stragglers trying to make their way out of the red zone.”
“Thank you,” the President said. He looked over at Paul. “We caught some prisoners, right?”
Paul winced inwardly. The President sounded as if he were coming apart. “Yes, Mr President,” he said. “We took eight prisoners alive. We had a ninth prisoner, but he died on us while the medics were trying to save his life. We’re still not sure why. Two of them speak English and are talking to us, the remaining six don’t speak English…”
“Unless they’re playing possum,” Deborah growled. Paul had to admit that she had a point. They knew so little about the aliens, let alone the difference between real illness and faking it. The doctors would certainly refuse to try drugging the aliens with human truth drugs. “What sort of information are we getting from them at the moment?”
Paul frowned. “They’re still a little in shock,” he said. “The two females — those are the ones who speak English — are rather stunned by being captured. One of them seems to be a researcher into humanity; the other… we’re not sure what her role is, yet. The males appear to have been their escort.”
“Find out what they know,” the President ordered. Paul suspected that the aliens would know very little that was tactically useful, but the President was right; they had to find out what the aliens had in mind. “If only what will happen now.”
“They’ll attack northwards,” General Hastings said. “There’s fuck-all left to oppose them now, apart from the militias and the survivalists. It’s going to take weeks to rebuild the shattered force from the survivors. They knew we’re weak, so they might come after us…”
“Then we have to go nuclear, now,” Deborah said, firmly. “What other choice, young man, do we have?”
Paul had no answer.
“Find one,” the President ordered. “Do whatever you have to do.”
He left the room, a broken man.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nations do not have permanent allies, only permanent interests.
— Anon
Ambassador Philippe Laroche tried to remain calm as the F-15 raced over the Atlantic Ocean towards Europe — and France. The American fighter might be the first aircraft since the invasion had begun to actually fly over the sea; the aliens had picked off every aircraft that had been in flight since the war began and then tried to keep the remainder of the human aircraft firmly grounded. No one dared to fly, he’d been told, apart from very short trips, although there were plenty of American daredevils willing to risk sudden death from above in making flights across America. The death rate was apparently high; a handful of people who’d tried to fly into the alien-controlled red zone had disappeared without trace.
He’d barely listened to the pilot’s occasional chatter, lost in his own thoughts. The American assault on the aliens had failed — and badly. The loss of so many American soldiers and their equipment was going to have a serious effect on their ability to continue fighting. At worst, it might even prove fatal. The aliens would, everyone expected, start expanding the red zone soon… and there was very little to stand in their way, but partisan resistance. They’d done something that no one had done for a very long time and beaten an American army in the field.
And, by doing so, they had scared hell out of the rest of the world.
The flight from Washington to France had been carefully planned, but the F-15 was on its last legs when it finally started to descend over France, towards a little airfield in the west. The French Air Force, like almost every other air force in the world, had taken a beating and lost all of its tankers, leaving the American fighter completely dependent on its drop tanks for the flight. If the aliens had engaged them, despite the message informing them that one of the ambassadors was going to convey their message to his government, no one would ever have known what had happened to the aircraft. They would have been lost somewhere over the Atlantic. According to the pilot, the aliens had not only taken out the satellites, but most of the beacons as well, leaving him to compute their course by dead reckoning. Philippe could only hope that he was being teased; the thought of losing their course somewhere in the cold waters and vanishing wasn’t a pleasant one.
“There’s the airfield,” the pilot said, suddenly, breaking into his thoughts. “We’ll have you down on the ground in a moment.”
France looked dark from high above. Like Britain — they’d flown over the south coast of Britain — the cities, towns and villages looked dark, the power permanently out. The aliens might not have invaded, but with a few hundred carefully-targeted projectiles, they’d brought Europe to a standstill. From what he’d seen on the Internet, or what was left of it, railways, motorways and power stations had all been destroyed, crippling Europe. The shortage of power and fuel meant that the continent would have a very cold winter… assuming, of course, that they lived through the summer. They might not have invaded Europe, but they’d caused quite enough devastation, simply by closing down most of the transport network.
The F-15 touched down on the tarmac and screeched to a halt. A set of ground crewmen appeared at once and helped them move the aircraft into a small hanger, one that would have normally held a private business jet or two. Once inside, they began the task of preparing the aircraft for its return flight, while helping the pilot to a bunk and providing him with a good meal. Philippe almost envied him; while the pilot was eating, drinking, and sleeping, Philippe would be reporting to the President of France himself. It wasn’t a meeting he was looking forward to having.
“Mr Ambassador?”
Philippe nodded. “That’s me,” he said, too tired to say anything else. “I trust that transport is laid on?”
“Yes, sir,” the army Captain said. “If you’d like to follow me?”
Transport, as it turned out, was a black security car, armoured against all reasonable contingencies. It was soft and sinfully comfortable inside, so Philippe leaned back and started to doze while the car, and its military escort, drove off into the night. He awoke when the car entered Paris and looked around, unable to believe the change. French paratroopers were patrolling the city, their weapons and equipment in full view, and armoured vehicles were everywhere. It looked like he was driving though one of the more unstable countries in the world, not France; he wondered, despite himself, if someone had tried a coup or uprising or something. France had changed… and, he decided, not in a good way.
There weren’t as many destroyed buildings in the centre of the city, but it wasn’t a surprise when the car was rerouted to a secured building, rather than the more normal residence. Philippe was escorted out of the car, where his papers were checked by a tough-looking paratrooper who examined every line carefully, and helped into the building, where he was shown to a room. A change of clothes sat on the bed, so he showered, got dressed, and almost felt human again. That, given the nature of the war, was a profound irony. He skimmed quickly through the television channels, but, unsurprisingly, there was nothing on at all. The aliens had shut that down as well.
That probably did us a world of good, he thought
, in a moment of humour. He had never been a big fan of watching everything on the television, regarding most of it as trash. There had once been a big campaign to have American trash removed from French television, but in his view they had merely replaced American trash with French trash. Politics was so much more interesting if you had the insider view, but the newsreaders and talking heads could suck the excitement and real news out of anything. When the escort arrived, again, he went with them quite willingly.
“Welcome back to Earth,” the French President said, as soon as he was shown into the small meeting room. They were alone, without even an aide or one of the President’s many mistresses. President LePic had had more than his fair share of scandal. “I trust that you had a pleasant journey?”
Philippe bit down the comment that came to mind and started to talk, carefully outlining everything that had happened from the moment the aliens had opened fire to the failure of Operation Lone Star. The President listened carefully, asking a handful of questions from time to time, while looking almost vague and uninterested. Philippe wasn’t fooled; LePic was known for looking unconcerned… until he revealed that he had been thinking hard all along. Governing France wasn’t an easy task and even knowing, as he did, where many of the bodies were buried, it wasn’t a task for a weak man.
“And so they’ve come for us all,” LePic said, finally. “Some of my advisors believe that they only wanted to attack the Americans and don’t intend to attack us.”
“No,” Philippe said, flatly. LePic was testing him, pushing forward a viewpoint that might have been shared by advisors, or perhaps his own. “They picked on the Americans, we think, because the Americans were the greatest — well, certainly the most powerful — nation on Earth. Having beaten the Americans, they will use the time they’ve won to come for us. We have to prepare for them landing here.”
Invasion Page 22