“Oh,” Joshua said. “Why is it that half the time I can’t tell if you’re telling the truth or lying through your teeth?”
“I’m a very dishonest soldier,” Brent said, with a wink. “That story about the General’s daughter, the Swedish woman’s naked badminton team and the six vats of hot custard was all true, as I live and breathe. Besides, if it weren’t for all the tall tales, terrorists wouldn’t get so scared and do something stupid when they hear we’re after them. Did I ever tell you how I managed to get a terrorist cell to kill itself?”
“No,” Brent said. “Does it have anything to do with those Iranian girls you were telling me about?”
They rode onwards, towards the alien landing sites. Joshua fell silent as the scale of the invasion became clearer, with destroyed vehicles and houses everywhere, as far as the eye could see. Someone, probably work gangs, had cleared the roads of vehicles, but otherwise there had been very little clean-up work done, even removing the bodies. Most of them had been picked clean by now, probably by animals — he didn’t think that the aliens would eat human flesh — but the white skeletons seemed to mock him. They had died, perhaps bravely, perhaps shot in the back… but they had died.
The sight was a bitter reminder. The soldiers had charged that Joshua and other reporters had gotten fat on the carnage caused by fighting, but that hadn’t happened in America, not since the Civil War. The United States had had internal troubles, but there had never been a danger of an invasion and its population had been allowed to forget how unpleasant the world could be. Now, war and devastation had torn the United States apart, with the population fleeing burning cities, carrying what little they could with them.
“We’d better be careful,” Brent warned, as they detoured around a particularly large cluster of destroyed buildings. “I thought they were burying all the bodies, but if they’re leaving them here, they’re probably Club Med for diseases now. We might even catch something really nasty.”
“I would, you mean,” Joshua said, absently. “You’re too tough for any disease.”
The sounds of alien activity had been growing louder, loud enough to convince them that they were close, so they hid the bikes and proceeded on foot, seeking a vantage point. A pair of alien patrols, armed to the teeth, passed them, but seemingly missed picking them out from their surroundings. Brent led the way up the ridge, and then swore softly under his breath. Joshua followed him, careful to keep his head, and peeked over the top. What he saw shocked him.
As far as the eye could see, the aliens were building, constructing strange buildings from the remains of the massive conical craft that had landed on American soil. Aliens, thousands of aliens, were everywhere, directing the construction process as hundreds of massive robots established their cities. A small army of human prisoners, chained and shackled together, were carrying massive containers around, aiding the aliens as they built their base.
No, Joshua realised, as terror sank into his mind. That’s not a base, not any normal base. That’s a city.
His eyes caught a rising puff of smoke. A human town was being demolished by the robots, smashing the remains of the town and pushing them aside. He’d never seen activity on such a scale before and so he had no idea how long it would take them to complete their city, but it had barely been days since they had landed. The city already seemed kilometres wide… and it was still growing.
Brent caught his arm and nodded towards a group of aliens. For a moment, Joshua didn’t see what was different about them, and then he saw the breasts. He almost laughed, despite himself; topless alien women were prowling the streets of the alien city! The aliens hadn’t set any clothing rules, he remembered, although they’d banned openly religious clothing, and it was very hot… but looking at them, he wondered if it was a cultural thing. Did bare breasts mean the same to them as they did to humanity?
“You could use your charm on them,” he muttered, barely above a whisper. “Perhaps you could seduce them into joining our side.”
“I think that needs Captain Kirk, or maybe Captain Sheridan,” Brent replied. “I don’t know if I could… perform with any of them.”
“You did see some of the girls Kirk had it off with, right?” Joshua pressed. “That girl with the skull-bone in her hair was pretty hot…”
“Focus,” Brent muttered, pulling a small device out of his sleeve. Joshua had seen the camera back in the safe house and had admired it; Special Forces really did get all the best toys. It was tiny enough to pass completely unnoticed, and yet provided excellent images for later analysis. The images of the alien construction work would come in handy for someone, although at the moment, Joshua wasn’t sure who. How could they even get them back to independent human territory? The Internet was unreliable at the best of times. “Keep an eye out for any alien patrols.”
Joshua looked. The aliens seemed to be almost unconcerned about the possibility of danger, although they had at least four patrols orbiting the construction site, and probably others that he couldn’t see. They had been lax to allow the two of them so close to the construction, although they might have let them through, just to show off their work. Paranoia, never far from his mind these days, blossomed; the aliens might have allowed them close to show the human race that they weren’t going to leave. The thought was maddeningly taunting.
“Got all we can,” Brent said, finally. Joshua, who had been feeling a growing tingling between his shoulder blades, allowed himself a sigh of relief. “I think we’d better make tracks before they realise we’re here.”
“They may already,” Joshua said, and outlined his reasoning. “What if they let us this close?”
“After Washington, they have to be worried about someone like me sneaking up with a suitcase nuke,” Brent said. “It’s piss-easy to hide a nuke of you know what you’re doing, so unless they have something we don’t have, they would have to intercept us well short of the city. Hell, I might volunteer to come back here with a nuke and blow them to hell.”
Joshua looked back down at the strange buildings. They seemed utterly alien, a strange mixture of pyramids, oblongs and pointy spires, blended together into a very alien mass. The aliens had sometimes had problems with human buildings, he recalled, but if merely looking at their buildings made his head hurt, he didn’t want to think about what it would do to anyone living inside for any period of time. The slaves had to be going mad down there, or perhaps they had gotten used to it.
“Yeah,” he said, thinking. “I reckon that that’s going to be one of their first major settlements on our world. If we could blow it up…”
“We’ll lose another city,” Brent said, grimly. “I think I need to take this one upstairs.”
Somewhat to Joshua’s surprise, the trip back to the city was accomplished without incident, even passing through the checkpoints. The aliens didn’t seem interested in what they were doing outside the city, although they did remind them to report to the meeting hall the day afterwards for a new briefing. The real collaborators would have to go in, find out what the aliens wanted, and then report back. There was no way they would allow either Joshua or Brent into the meeting. The resistance had blown up two previous meetings and security was tight.
“We can’t send these over the Internet,” Brent said, once they’d finished outlining what they’d seen. The images had been downloaded to a laptop, but they were not only huge, but easily recognisable. “The government needs them, but we can’t get them to them, not directly.”
Joshua frowned. “How do we get them out, then?”
Brent winked. “I guess I’ll have to start walking,” he said. He winked at Joshua and grinned at the others. “It’s only a few kilometres to the human lines.”
“It’s over two hundred kilometres to the human lines,” Joshua burst out. “You won’t stand a chance!”
“Of course I do,” Brent said. “It’s the last thing anyone in their right mind would expect, so they won’t be prepared for it. There are plenty of peo
ple who do make their way out of the Red Zone without my training or advantages, so…”
“You’re mad,” Joshua said. The very thought struck him as completely insane, even if there weren’t any alien patrols watching for people doing just that. “You’re completely loopy!”
“And that’s why we will win,” Brent assured him. He opened one of the cupboards and started to pile up the contents. “We once had to force-march five hundred kilometres merely for the hell of it, all around Fort Hood. Damn sadists thought it would help us build character.”
He winked again. “Don’t worry; I’ll be sipping Coors a week from today,” he said. “Besides, when I get back, you get the exclusive interview.”
Chapter Forty
Governments vary. A monarchy protects the interests of the people through the interest of the state while a democracy protects the interest of the state through the interests of the people.
— Anonymous
“The President is losing it.”
Deborah Ivey lifted her eyebrows at the bald statement. The bunker was surprisingly luxurious for its size, but then, it did play host to nearly a third of Congress and the Senate. The government had been dispersed across the United States, although one of the bunkers, in Texas, had been converted into a resistance headquarters, and it had been a surprise to be summoned from the President’s bunker to a very different facility. She had suspected anything from a session in front of a Senate Committee to another round of recriminations, but instead…
She leaned forward. “In what way is he losing it?”
Ovitz met her eyes, unflinchingly. “He hesitated to unleash nuclear weapons against the Redshirts,” he said. Far be it from a major politician to use the Redskin label. “The result of that failure was the alien landing and successful occupation of Texas. He refused to use them in Operation Lone Star…”
“Nukes were deployed against targets in orbit,” Deborah said, carefully. “They generated the EMP pulses that helped to blind the aliens.”
“But not completely,” Ovitz reminded her. “If they had been deployed against ground targets, Operation Lone Star would have gone the other way. Instead, they were not deployed and thousands of our best fighting men were killed. Worst of all, when the aliens started their advance, he did use nukes… and the result was the loss of Washington, with hundreds of thousands dead or seriously injured.”
“I advised the President to deploy nukes, as did you,” Deborah said, dryly. “One must argue that the President was right. At best, we would have turned Texas into radioactive glass, with the remainder of our cities open to alien attack. I don’t think that anyone would consider that a plus.”
Ovitz frowned. “I was under the impression that you supported harsher measures against the aliens,” he said. “We know, now, that they have very few nukes, certainly no more than fifty. Our prisoners have confirmed that for us. We could have traded nukes with them and come off the winners.”
Deborah steepled her fingers. She loved arguing and debating… and this one promised to be interesting, spiced with the taste of possible advancement.
“First,” she said, “we don’t know for sure that they really do have only fifty warheads, of which three have now been deployed on Earth. The alien prisoners might be lying… or they might have been lied to by their leadership. An old intelligence trick is to do just that, knowing that the person doing the lying is under the impression that they are actually telling the truth. Second, they have easy access to thousands of asteroids and other pieces of space junk; they don’t need nukes to mess up our cities. Third… I don’t think that anyone in America would take the exchange of forty-seven cities for burning out Texas.”
Ovitz smiled at her. “Are you taking his side?”
“I think that we’re not in a position to start rocking the boat,” Deborah said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but really… what do you want?”
“I want Texas freed from alien control and America restored to its former heights of glory,” Ovitz said. “I will do whatever is necessary to achieve those goals.”
“And take the credit as well,” Deborah finished, dryly. It wasn’t a question. “How exactly do you suggest that this miracle is to be achieved?”
Ovitz said nothing. “I understand your desire to rid your state of the aliens, but at the moment… it’s not possible,” Deborah said. “The former might of the Army has been effectively destroyed. There are barely more than a hundred active tanks left in the entire United States. Levels of other vehicles and equipment are also low; certainly, anyone driving a military vehicle anywhere does so at risk of his life. We have gone from possessing an army that could go anywhere and beat anyone to a force that can barely delay the aliens if they decide they want the remainder of the United States.”
“The gun nuts are happy, at least,” Ovitz growled. He’d been a loud opponent of any form of gun control before the aliens had arrived and now, with civilians the only form of resistance in many areas, had been watching the gun control lobby disintegrate under the pressures of war. Several Governors had unilaterally revoked all gun control legislation, allowing their citizens to arm themselves to the teeth, while others had discovered that no one was listening any longer. “They’re the last line of defence.”
“You’re forgetting the League of Woman Voters,” Deborah said, just to watch his reaction. Ovitz wasn’t their most favoured politician. “Don’t they get a say?”
She cleared her throat and continued. “The aliens have deployed weapons systems that make it impossible for us, even if we had the full pre-war might of the United States concentrated in one place, to recover Texas,” she warned. “We lost several units, including some of our best, before they even had a chance to shoot up some of those floating tanks. Senator, I’m sorry to put this to you, but… Texas is beyond our ability to recover.”
“And yet, the President is on the verge of a breakdown,” Ovitz said. “I have been reading the reports from his doctors. He’s stressed, is developing an ulcer, and hasn’t been sleeping enough. What happens if he decides he wants to surrender?”
“I don’t think that he is on the verge of deciding anything of the sort,” Deborah said, icily. She’d forgotten that Ovitz, fourth in line to the Presidency, would see those reports as a matter of course. “Yes, he’s not in a good state, which is hardly surprising. How many Congressmen and Senators are in the same state?”
“They’re suffering from a sudden loss of importance,” Ovitz said, with a quick grin and a wink. “They don’t like the damage that is being inflicted on their states and they really don’t like the way that power is devolving down, more and more, on the Governors. Why, dear Jacqueline was all upset yesterday because her people weren’t listening to her any more.”
Deborah rolled her eyes. Jacqueline had been a Senator who made most left-wingers look like the reincarnation of Genghis Khan. She’d been a fervent proponent of gun control, climate control, multiculturalism, homosexual marriage and everything else that tended to send right-wingers into a frenzy of rage. She had represented San Francisco, secure in the knowledge that she would never be voted out, until the aliens had arrived and destroyed her comfortable world. She’d been one of the loudest voices demanding no military preparations for First Contact… and, after the first attacks, she had continued to demand peace, not war. Her people, suddenly powerless and with an alien occupation force in Texas, only a few days away, hadn’t agreed. The only reason she hadn’t been recalled was the difficulty in having her travel back to California… and, probably, no real desire to have any further dealings with her. When — if — the next elections took place, she would probably lose by a landslide, screaming about right-wing plots and conspiracies all the way.
“But some of them want to impeach the President,” Ovitz continued. “They think that he is not living up to the role.”
“They say that in every war,” Deborah said, angrily. She had a sneaking suspicion — more than a suspicion — about who
was behind it. “Did any of them seriously believe in aliens before we detected the mothership?”
“Jacqueline probably did,” Ovitz said, wryly. “They want the President to get rid of the aliens, post haste.”
Deborah thought fast. It was hard to tell what was really an impeachable offence; generally, it was whatever Congress thought it was. Every President since Nixon had faced the possibility of impeachment, although proceedings hadn’t always gotten underway. It was used more as a club to beat the President with rather than a serious threat. They didn’t have a case… but if they were angry enough, they might be able to impeach the President anyway.
“And how much better would anyone else do?”
“They just think that someone else could do a better job,” Ovitz said.
“That’s what always happens,” Deborah said, frustrated. “We have a war… people start second-guessing the President and the Government. We should be doing this, no, we should be doing that, no, we should never have done that, yes, we should have bombed there instead…”
She leaned forward, genuinely angry. “The President cannot fix the country with a wave of his hand,” she snapped. “No one can do that!”
Ovitz smiled. “You don’t think that the President should be held as accountable as everyone else?”
“You think that merely sitting in the White House confers omnipotence?”
“There have been Presidents who have believed that,” Ovitz countered.
“They were morons,” Deborah snapped. Her voice grew sharper. “The President might be the most powerful person — the most powerful human — in the world, but he was always far from omnipotent. He had power and leverage, but using half of that power would only make the situation much worse. The entire world system was based on America and damaging it would have damaged America.”
Ovitz smiled. “Are we better off now?”
“I doubt the dead or unemployed would agree,” Deborah said. Millions had died in the war and millions more were completely out of work. “We cannot be anything, but sneaky now, if we want to win.”
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