“If the country holds together that long,” the President said, tiredly. His eyes looked tired; he hadn’t slept properly in weeks. “Is there no way we can take down their network again?”
“Not as yet,” Paul said, and he grinned. He couldn’t tell them everything, but if the psych teams were right, the alien prisoners might be converted to human ideals. “We do, however, have the help of one of their tech experts. If we can work on the prisoners and convince them to help, we might just manage to pull off a real surprise.”
Senator Ovitz looked at him. “You trust them to help us?” He asked. “And what if it fails?”
Paul smiled. “If it fails, Senator,” he said, “we lose. If that happens, we all die. You’re part of the old government… and, as far as the aliens are concerned, you’re marked for death.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Do not confuse “duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfil obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.
— Robert A. Heinlein
Captain Brent Roeder pushed down on the remote control and the IED exploded. It had taken him nearly twenty minutes, using a mixture of children’s electronics and pre-packaged explosive, to make the device, but it was worth all the effort. The blast exploded from a pile of rubble and slaughtered the handful of alien guards who’d been standing there, watching the execution. There was no need to bark a command; his two remaining snipers, hidden on rooftops, started to fire down into the remaining aliens, forcing them to duck and dive for cover. For a few moments, no one would be paying any attention to the remains of the crowd, which was now running in all directions, and that would give him his chance. He ran forward, holding his pistol in one hand and a knife in the other, towards the stake.
Up close, it looked barbaric… and he hadn’t believed his eyes when he’d seen them bring out the poor bastard who was now tied to it. The insurgents in Iraq had had plenty of interesting and horrible ways to make a man die — and he’d sent a few of them to Allah himself in unpleasant manners — but he’d never burned a man alive, not deliberately. The aliens had been telling everyone that there would be a public punishment of someone for ‘treason and perversion,’ whatever that meant to them, but he hadn’t realised just what they had in mind, not until he’d seen the stake. If they’d lit it, the best his men could do was avenge the poor bastard’s death.
The man cringed away from him as Brent came up to him. “US Army,” Brent hissed, suddenly very aware of his appearance. Any Drill Sergeant would have thrown a fit and had him cleaning toilets for months if he’d dared to report dressed as he was, although neat freaks and anal-retentive morons didn’t tend to last long in the Special Forces. They were fighters first; posing in proper uniforms came a long way down the list. “Stay calm, understand?”
“Yes,” the man gasped. Brent checked him over quickly — seeing a thin man, slightly too pale for his build, with a week’s worth of stubble on his chest — and started to saw through the bonds. The alien material, whatever it was, resisted fiercely, but he sliced through it and unwrapped the captive quickly. He didn’t have any idea who the man was, but messing up the aliens fun and games was probably worthwhile, if only to remind them that the insurgents existed. “What…”
He came free in an instant and almost stumbled over the small pile of wood. “Never mind that now,” Brent snapped, as he caught his arm and dragged him back towards the rubble. The crowd, knowing what the aliens did when it came to counter-insurgency, had dispersed, but a handful of aliens had taken cover and were still trying to fire back. They were pinned down and effectively helpless — he hoped — unless they wanted to die, but the longer he kept his forces in one place, the more time the aliens had to organise a counterattack and slaughter his men. “Come with me!”
He keyed the second remote control and heard the series of explosions as they blasted through the alien complacency. If they were lucky, the IEDs would convince the aliens that they faced a third all-out insurgency, rather than a relatively limited strike aimed at embarrassing them. A handful of collaborators, men and women forced into serving the aliens, had risked their lives to smuggle in the devices, which would have the added side benefit that the aliens would no longer be able to trust their collaborators — if they ever had. He counted the explosions quickly, noted that one of the devices seemed to have failed, and then smiled in relief as a final explosion billowed up in the distance.
“Now, run,” he snapped, and led the charge down the street. The remainder of his men would have seen him flee and would be disengaging as well, while the aliens, still trapped, would be unable to impede their retreat. He felt, more than heard, the presence of alien helicopters swooping in from high above, but by now they were under some cover and fairly safe. “Don’t look back, just run!”
The area had been devastated by one of the earlier rounds of fighting, but there were still some families squatting in the remains, unwilling or unable to move. The aliens, for some reason, had started to move families into intact buildings, and then they’d stopped. It was a mystery, but not one he had any time to solve, not when the entire alien army was likely to be on their trail. They could simply devastate the area from orbit, but he was gambling on them not being prepared to shatter a few kilometres of the city just to kill a handful of insurgents. By the time they realised they’d been tricked, he hoped, the pair of them should be well away.
“Thanks, I think,” his rescued captive said. Brent had to laugh as the tension wore off. He might be still trapped in the midst of an alien-controlled city, with thousands of embarrassed and humiliated aliens coming after him, but for the moment they were safe. “I thought I was a goner there.”
“You pretty nearly were steak and fries,” Brent agreed. He checked the corridor quickly, and then opened the battered and looted apartment, recovering the suitcase that they’d hidden under the bed. “Strip off, completely, and change into what’s in the case.”
The man seemed inclined to object. “But…”
“But nothing,” Brent snapped. “Those bastards are tricky. Ten gets you twenty that you have a tracer somewhere on your clothes and if they start looking now, they’re going to find us.”
That, he noticed, got the man’s clothes off quicker than a teenage boy faced with a naked and ready girl. His body was pale, like his face and hands, but there were bruises everywhere. It didn’t look as if he’d been tortured, but the alien guards had probably worked him over once or twice, just to make the point that they could do whatever they liked to him. The alien concept of treachery and perversion might not be the same as a human concept, but they clearly took it seriously; he hadn’t seen them trying to burn anyone before.
Doesn’t mean they’re not doing it elsewhere, he thought. They’d invaded the Middle East, according to their tame humans, and so far the Arabs had just prostrated themselves before them. Brent suspected that the aliens were lying; he’d been in the Middle East and fought there, in some countries that it would have surprised the general public to know that American troops had ever fought, and he knew that defeating them wouldn’t be a pushover. Their armies were crap, commanded by poor leaders who got their jobs because of their contacts or lack of competence, but as insurgents, they were formidable. The US had killed off thousands of the incompetent insurgents, and the Iraqi Army had been completing the process, but hundreds of very experienced bastards had fled Iraq, into Saudi or Iran, where they’d started to cause trouble for the established rulers. The aliens might be having more difficulties than they were prepared to admit…
“Good,” he said, finally. The man now wore a pair of jeans, a shirt that looked as if it had seen better days, and a baseball cap that concealed his hair. “What’s your name?”
“Joshua,” the man said. He looked as if he was going to f
all dead at any second, but his eyes were bright with determination. “If they had a tracer on me, shouldn’t we move?”
“Yep,” Brent said, and quickly stuffed the remaining clothes in the briefcase. The aliens would probably be able to track the tracer through the cloth — at least, he hoped they could — but when they found the briefcase, the thermite grenade he’d rigged up as part of the case would detonate, hopefully in their faces. He dumped the handgun and his coat in the case, returned it to the bed, and activated the trap. “Come on… and remember, act casual.”
“I could go back to my apartment,” Joshua said, sounding as if he were coming down from a high. He’d probably never had such excitement in his life before. “If we split up, they would still be looking for two men…”
“And then you’d be picked up again when they checked that,” Brent said, as they stepped out onto the street. Automatically, he lowered his voice. “The aliens aren’t stupid, buddy, and your face and fingerprints are known to them. Given time, they’ll check out everywhere you could go, but if you come with me to a safe house, you should be safe for the moment.”
Joshua winced. “There’s really nothing else left, is there?” He asked. “Existence as I know it is over?”
“And resistance is futile,” Brent agreed gravely. “On the plus side, you won’t have to repay any money you owe.”
The aliens, much to his relief, hadn’t managed to get a proper cordon up in time to catch them both. He still had his ID card, the one that they’d issued to him, but it wouldn’t save Joshua, whose card was lost somewhere in the alien headquarters. He reminded himself not to take anything for granted, but it looked to him as if the aliens hadn’t yet realised the target of the attack, or perhaps thought that Joshua, whoever he was, had been killed in the IED blast. Their object lesson to the human population had been foiled… and, given how he suspected they thought, they would be more concerned with finding a second victim than chasing down Joshua.
The question nagged at him as they slipped into the outskirts, past a group of aliens who paid them no heed, and into their street. It was fortunate that there had been so many people moving around the city in the days and weeks following the invasion; no matter what the aliens did, tracking it all was going to be a major pain in the ass. In time, he was sure, they would lock down Austin and the remainder of the Red Zone properly, but until then, the insurgents could move relatively freely if they were careful. The last house had had to be abandoned — one of his men had been wounded and fallen into alien hands — but the new one was suitable for the purpose. He hadn’t wanted to bring Joshua here, but given how little time they’d had to plan the snatch, there had been little choice.
“Stay back,” he said, as he opened the outer door. The inner door had been rigged with all the ingenuity of a pack of Special Forces soldiers, free to use some of their more advanced training at last, and would be rather… dangerous for anyone opening it without special precautions. The string had been exactly where they’d left it, but the slightest misstep would detonate the claymore they’d rigged up and blow them both to pieces; carefully, he dismantled enough of the trap to allow them both to enter. “This place is rigged, so stay on the upper floor unless you want to kill us all.”
He showed Joshua the stairs and the washroom and waited, patiently, while he had a shower and a shave. He almost looked human again when he emerged, although the remainder of the bruises wouldn’t fade until he’d had time to sleep and perhaps been taken someplace where humans still ruled themselves. The remainder of his group — the five who were left after nearly six weeks of constant fighting, hiding and fighting again — had arrived in the meantime and it was a thoughtful, but elated group that met up again in what had once been the master bedroom. The previous owner of the house, Brent had decided long since, had either been filthy rich or owed some banks a great deal of money.
Enough greenbacks to carpet the moon, he thought, as he took a beer and relaxed.
“So,” he said, finally, once he’d caught up with his people. “What did they get you for, eh?”
“I’m a reporter,” Joshua admitted. “I used to blog a lot about life under occupation. They didn’t like it.”
There was a long pause. “Well, fuck me,” Sergeant Mancil said, finally. “Are you telling me that I risked life and limb to rescue a fucking reporter?”
* * *
Joshua hadn’t been expecting rescue at all, let alone in such a dramatic manner, and he was grateful to them for their timely appearance, but there was no way that he was going to let that pass.
“Tell me something,” he said, acidly. “Is there something wrong with being a reporter?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sergeant Mancil said. “Only countless missions compromised, lives put at stake, reputations ruined, minor and isolated incidents blown out of all proportion… I’d say that there’s a lot wrong with being a reporter.”
“I must have been doing something right,” Joshua countered. He’d had similar debates before and they’d always ended up as screaming matches. It might have been childish, but there was a part of him that would never abandon an argument. “They wanted to kill me… and not just kill me, but make an example of me.”
“And there are others who sing the praises of the enemy,” Sergeant Mancil hissed. “In every war we have fought, people like you have served as a fifth column, sapping the morale of our side and encouraging the enemy. Do you have any idea how much damage you do with a single unquestioned report from the enemy? Do you even care if the facts are right, provided that the story is hot enough to get you a promotion and some fame?”
Joshua’s eyes glinted. “And you don’t think the public has a right to know?”
Sergeant Mancil matched him. “You think the public has a right to know everything? Do they have a right to know that an operation is kicking off well in advance of its start? Do you have a right to tell the world everything about our damn deployments?”
He leaned closer. “And don’t you have an obligation to at least tell them when you’re printing shit the enemy gives you?”
“Don’t the American people have a right to know what is being done in their name?” Joshua demanded. “Shouldn’t they know when the CIA is backing the latest unsavoury bunch of oil-rich fucks in a nothing state? Shouldn’t they know when America is being used to prop up dictatorships… and then acts all surprised when the people of that state decide they hate us?”
“And so you sell them shit?” Sergeant Mancil asked. “Are you so surprised that no one trusts a reporter?”
“Was it shit when the CIA decided that it would be a good idea to back the Iranian Shah against a democracy?” Joshua asked. “Was that really such a hot idea?”
“And who was it who convinced the public that the war in Iraq was so immoral? Who is it who convinces the students who have never worked a day in their lives that ever tin-pot dictator is a good and kind ruler?”
“If you two would both shut up,” Brent said, angrily. “You both need to blow off some steam, but if you shout any louder, the neighbours will hear. It only takes one call to bring the aliens here and then we will all die.”
He waited for them both to simmer down. “The argument doesn’t matter to us,” he continued. Joshua felt the words as a slap… and, judging from his expression, Sergeant Mancil felt the same. “For the moment, we have a common enemy and something of a problem. Joshua, how did they find you?”
“I was betrayed,” Joshua said. The pain of the memory resurfaced as he remembered that final look. “I don’t even know why!”
“We can visit him and… teach him the error of his ways,” Sergeant Mancil said, when he’d explained. Joshua recognised it as a peace offering of sorts, although not one he wanted. “There are too many people like him out there, betraying their fellows just to get some reward from the Redshirts. Once we make an example of him, perhaps there’ll be a lot less willingness to betray people.”
“Perhaps,” Brent a
greed. He looked over at Joshua. “Are you sure they didn’t track down your Internet connection?”
Joshua blinked. “I don’t think so,” he said. The very thought seemed crazy. “They couldn’t have mastered our Internet so well, could they?”
“Perhaps,” Sergeant Mancil offered. “Their weapons work on the same principles as ours, so why not their computers? For all we know, they have the same collection of porn and dating sites that we do.”
“They’re religious,” Joshua protested. “They wouldn’t do that.”
“What sort of reporter are you?” Brent asked, amused. “It’s the religious lot and the moral majority who spend most of their time on the net, looking at naked babes. I remember bursting in on this jackass of a terrorist in Iran — ah, forget you heard that — and you know what he had on his computer? Spanking movies!”
Joshua found himself sniggering. “Spanking movies?”
“The latest and best from Lombardi Productions, so I’m told,” Brent said. “Can you imagine him? Going to the mosque, leading his bunch of merry women-haters, gay-bashers and general scumbags in prayer, and then coming home and jerking off to the images of pretty western sluts getting their butts beaten.”
His face darkened suddenly. “But if we can hook you up again, we can use you to put out propaganda of our own,” he said. “Welcome to the resistance.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Doesn’t anyone know? We hate the French! We fight wars against them! Did all those men die in vain on the field at Agincourt? Was the man who burned Joan of Arc simply wasting good matches?
— Blackadder
The Channel Tunnel, Philippe Laroche had been surprised to discover, had survived the alien attack, even though picking it off from orbit wouldn’t have been that difficult. The train links from Paris to the French side of the Tunnel, and then from the British side to London might have been destroyed, but the tunnel itself remained intact. He took a car from Paris to the tunnel, rode through on a train that remained firmly under cover, and then picked up a second car in Britain. International trade might have almost ground to a halt, but there was still enough petrol for government requirements, even though every government in Europe was restricting petrol for emergency use only. The British motorways, once packed and heaving with traffic, were silent and, somehow, eerie in their desolation.
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