The thought distracted him from his walk as he skirted all human or alien contact, walking northwards. The aliens had been balked from expanding further into America, but that wouldn’t deter them forever… and there were plenty of weaker countries out there. They’d landed in the Middle East, which couldn’t put up much of a fight against their capabilities, and that gave them access to most of Africa. There were plenty of people in Africa who would have welcomed their arrival, if only because it might actually give them some safety. The Janjaweed couldn’t stop the aliens for a moment… and if they were duly slaughtered, as they would be against any halfway decent military force, the aliens would make one hell of a lot of friends.
…And then the aliens wouldn’t need the United States anymore.
He saw a set of lights down on the road and detoured around them, spying the alien patrol from a distance, wishing for a pair of night vision goggles. The aliens seemed to be more on alert — this close to Fort Hood, they were probably terrified of IEDs and the human soldiers who were covering them — and operating on a random schedule, but there was no way to be sure. He didn’t need to be noticed, at least not by them, but if they saw him, they would certainly want to know what he was doing in the area. The Internet had claimed that thousands of refugees had tried to make it to Fort Hood, or out of the Red Zone, and by now he had dumped his ID card. He wasn’t going to be stopped now.
A flash of brilliant white light lit up the sky, followed by a rising explosion and a burst of shooting. It sounded as if the alien patrol had run into trouble. Fighting down the urge to go see what had happened, Brent picked himself up and ran, running as fast as he could over the road and into the sealed area, avoiding the aliens as they moved to respond to the attack. Fort Hood was so large that they couldn’t hope to guard the entire border and, if the reports were to be trusted, they weren’t even trying. He should have passed their forces now, heading into the trees and thickets of the training area, scrambling over the remains of a fence as if the devil himself was after him. Lights and sounds flickered through the night, the noise of alien helicopters — giving Fort Hood a wide berth, he noticed — sending shivers down his spine. He was used to fighting in an urban environment; it had been too long since he’d been to Fort Hood…
“That’s far enough,” a voice drawled, seemingly out of nowhere. A red dot, barely visible, settled on his chest. “Hands in the air, if you please, and don’t touch any weapons.”
Brent mentally kicked himself as he raised his hands. A moment later, three soldiers materialised out of nowhere, their weapons raised and covering him. He was impressed with the ambush, although hindsight told him that they’d simply been watching for anyone trying to get into the area with night-vision gear… and he’d been fairly obvious during that final sprint. A pair of strong arms searched him roughly, removing the pistol, his rucksack and a knife.
“All right,” the soldier growled. Brent was suddenly aware of just what sort of sight he presented. He could have taken one of them in a fight, but all of them? They had every right to be more than a little paranoid of strangers. “Who the hell are you?”
“SF34,” Brent said. He didn’t have to give out anything else, not yet. “Who the hell are you?”
“They told us to expect you,” the soldier said. He sounded a great deal friendlier now, but Brent was still very aware of the red dot, now dancing around his heart. “Who was the instructor in unarmed combat during your time at Fork Polk?”
Brent almost panicked. There were several possible answers. “Sergeant Corso,” he said, finally. The gruff man looked completely harmless… and had thrown soldiers twice his size around as if they were children. “He reported to Captain Harmon, who in turn…”
“Ok, ok, we got you,” the soldier said. “Come on; we don’t have all day.”
Fort Hood’s interior felt… freer to Brent. It was certainly a far cry from Austin, where the insurgency had fought the aliens. Here, there were defensive positions everywhere, with tunnels and fallback positions carefully woven into the terrain, backed up by artillery and even a handful of tanks. The men — and a handful of women — looked as if they would never pass another inspection, but they were united by their determination to hold out indefinitely. They were proud of what they’d done, he saw, and he couldn’t blame them. The best the insurgency had done was bleed the aliens badly.
His guide told him some of the stories as they reached a hidden door, leading down to a bunker complex. Fort Hood had been on alert since the aliens had separated their ship and most of the buildings had been abandoned… and the aliens had barely dented their capabilities, even if — his guide assured him — there had been a lot of very convincing weeping and gnashing of teeth on open channels. They’d come in expecting an easy occupation, ambushed and chased back out again, after which the fighting had settled down to the occasional savage confrontation between the two sides and plenty of insurgency. The bunker system, something that wasn’t discussed publicly, had kept Fort Hood alive… and kicking.
“So that’s what they’re doing,” Colonel Osborn said, when Brent had finally finished his story. He’d regained a little of his own pride when he’d realised that the soldiers were in awe of his own accomplishments, even though neither side had really harmed the aliens enough to make them give up and withdraw. “They’re settling here.”
He scowled. Brent had been a little surprised to discover that a mere colonel was commanding the defence, but it had turned out that the original commanding officer had been killed by the aliens, although so far it seemed that they didn’t know that.
“We’ll forward this off to Washington,” he added. “You might have to go with it later. Until then, get some rest. You’ve earned it.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it.
— Robert A. Heinlein
“It’s confirmed, then?”
Paul nodded. The sight of the massive engineering bay, covered with engineers moving, welding and slowly building the spacecraft, awed him. He’d been a frustrated spaceman long before he’d passed his tenth birthday, learning far too quickly that very few people flew the fantastic space shuttles… and that they never went anywhere, and part of him envied Gary Jordan, now a General, beyond words.
“Yes,” he said, grimly. “They’re landing in Australia.”
Gary nodded slowly. “And it’s still going to be a week before we’re completely ready to move,” he said. “At least that should keep them busy somewhere on the other side of the world.”
Paul scowled. The aliens had fallen on Australia one morning and, according to the handful of reports, were securing their landing zones now in the centre of the country. The Australian Army had put up a fight, but the aliens had stamped on them from orbit with the same power they’d brought to bear on America and the Middle East, forcing the remainder of the army to go underground and carry on an insurgency. Australia was hardly as disarmed as Europe, but with far fewer people and far fewer sources of supplies, he didn’t know how long an insurgency could last. They would have made the same kind of preparations as other armies had been making, even since the lessons from Texas had started to sink in, but would they be effective? No one knew for sure.
He cast his gaze around the dissembled spacecraft. “A week?” He asked. It seemed implausible somehow. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes,” Gary said. “Really, the guy who invented these things was a genius who didn’t have to work for a bunch of idiots who knew nothing about risk and cared only for pork barrel funding. A few hundred parts, each one easy to make with the right equipment… and all we have to do is put them together like a jigsaw to build a flying spacecraft. It’s far more impressive than I can say; if part of one spacecraft went down, we could cannibalise parts from another to keep it flying, without much in the way of compatibility issues.”
He led the way over to a set of strange-looking modules. “Th
e shuttle that crashed in our territory was a cargo and passenger ship,” he explained. “They were actually capable of carrying quite a bit of cargo and we’ve replaced all of that with weapons. It’s going to make landing a bit more dangerous than it would be for them, but with the parachutes in the nosecone, we should be able to get back down safely. Of course, if we don’t actually win, our chances of survival will be about the same as a meat-eater at the annual tofu-munch convention, but…”
Paul grinned. “How many volunteers did you have?”
“Thousands,” Gary said. “Pretty much every surviving USAF pilot wanted in, along with the remaining astronauts, navy and Marine flyers. We put them all through the training period — it’s lucky we have your lady friend; simulating flight was actually quite difficult without her help — and put the best ones to work, simulating attack vectors. So much needs to be done carefully — we can’t really plan this too much — but if luck is with us, we should be able to hurt them.”
Paul nodded. “And the remainder of the gear?”
“I’ll show you,” Gary said, leading him out of the underground hanger and into another large room. A pile of newly recovered alien equipment lay on the table, being sorted out by a group of young engineers, while a second table had several alien suits lying on them. Gary nodded towards the pile of equipment. “Looks crude, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Paul said. “Why…?”
“You’ve never been in combat, have you?” Gary asked. Paul said nothing. It was shameful, at least to him, to admit it, but he’d spent his whole life in the military and had never been shot at or fired a bullet in anger. “Trust me; the Pentagon buys a lot of crap that promises the heavens and the earths, but is hell on the battlefield users. The guys in procurement tell the designers to fuck off and they bitch loudly to their congressman, who takes a large bribe and orders the army or the fighter jocks or whoever to accept it. Oh, they’re not always that bad, but… most of them tend to have flaws that need to be edited out, somehow.”
His eyes lit up with the glow of enthusiasm. “Now, take the AK-47, preferred weapon of rag-headed punks from one end of the world to the other,” he continued. “It’s simple, easy to learn and can take one hell of a lot of mistreatment by illiterate ditch-diggers before it craps out. This technology, Colonel, is an alien version of the AK-47; they could build handheld lasers and other really nifty shit, but would it be usable on the battlefield? This stuff may be crude, but it works.”
“But it can be countered, right?” Paul asked. “We can get around their tech.”
“Oh, of course,” Gary said. “Some of their weapons are actually inferior to ours; the handful of their sniper rifles are far inferior to ours, but don’t let that fool you. In the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing, a blunderbuss is a lethal weapon. Their night-vision gear is also inferior, but we’ve actually had reports that they’ve been improving theirs or deploying newer stuff… and they have the distant advantages of not needing to worry about how much damage they do to their surroundings. Who cares? It’s all going to be knocked down, right?”
“So it seems,” Paul said, tightly. The images from Texas were far from reassuring. “If they keep expanding at their current rate, they’ll be knocking down Austin before too long.”
“I bet that will make the people unhappy,” Gary said, lightly. He grinned as he paced over to the other table. “Now this” — he lifted up one of the alien suits — “is sheer genius. There just isn’t any other word.”
Paul studied the garment thoughtfully. He’d seen images, pictures and videos, of the alien stormtroopers, but it was the first time he’d actually seen one of their outfits. It seemed to be composed of slinky silk, something that just shimmied over his hands, like liquid oil. It felt weird to the touch, as if he wasn’t touching anything at all, almost as if it wasn’t really there.
“I give up,” he said, finally. “What the hell is it?”
“Buggered if I know,” Gary said. “We had a few dozen materials experts, scientists, even a pair of fashion designers in here and they took two of them to pieces, only to discover that it’s something well beyond our current capabilities. You want to know what this baby can do?”
Paul lifted an eyebrow. “Show me.”
“Watch,” Gary said. He made a fist and waved it in front of the alien garment in a threatening style. “Take that, you… illegal alien.”
He thumped the garment, which made a metallic sound. Paul stared as Gary rubbed his hand. “That always hurts,” he said. “Somehow, you hit this thing with enough force, it hardens instantly, hard enough to repel the attack. You can cut it with a knife, if you try, but come in too hard and it just hardens. We’re lucky they didn’t manage to get the tech even tougher; this stuff is better than our body armour already and if it had been better… well, invincible alien warriors would have kicked our butts all over the world.”
“But they can be killed,” Paul protested. “I mean… the wearer of this one doesn’t need it anymore, does he?”
“No,” Gary said. “Bullets do get through, mainly headshots, although the armour is far from perfect. The interesting thing is what else it does. It provides near-complete protection from chemical weapons, for one thing, somehow filtering them all out before they can reach the alien inside. There is a breather here” — he pointed to a spot under the mask — “that filters out anything dangerous, or merely irritating. I imagine that some chemical weapons, the basic ones if nothing else, will work on unprotected aliens, but so far no one has let us test them on the alien captives.”
“I don’t think that that would be a good idea,” Paul said, dryly. “If we take one of their Inquisitors alive, feel free to do whatever you like to him, but we need the others.”
“Sooner or later, someone is going to pull off a chemical strike on one of their settlements,” Gary said. “They don’t wear the armour all the time; hell, their women go around topless. Something simple is going to have an effect, but what?”
“Knowing our luck, it will probably give them superpowers,” Paul joked. “Anything else that’s come out of R &D?”
“Microwaves,” Gary said. He smiled thinly. “There is a school of thought that believes that we can use microwaves to really mess up their day. The designers are currently working on something we can test in the field, as the President has banned testing them on any of our prisoners, and when we have a working model, it’ll be tested. Just imagine a group of alien infantry, running along, when suddenly the liquid in their legs starts to boil. It’s based around a crowd-control weapon, one that can drive entire crowds away, so it’s workable… but we don’t know how much protection their suits will provide. We’ll just have to test it and see.”
He put down the suit and scowled. “That’s something that we won’t have for the offensive, I’m afraid,” he said. “It’s going to be at least two weeks before we have it ready to go…”
“Never mind,” Paul said. It wasn’t a weapon that could be used on all of the aliens at once. The real priority, now, was weapons that could be used against the spacecraft in orbit. If they could be destroyed, despite the vast damage inflicted on America, they could liberate Texas in fairly short order. “Have you prepared the special suits?”
Gary nodded. “There’s one rather small problem with them,” he admitted, as he led the way into yet another way. “We don’t move like the aliens. The first three will be alright, as they will be worn by aliens, but the minute they see the others moving, they will smell a rather large rat. How do you intend to solve that?”
“Leave that to us,” Paul assured him. The fewer people who knew that, the better; no one knew how far the aliens might have compromised their security. There were far too many people who had had relatives in Texas, perhaps now in alien hands. “Are you sure that you can have all the craft ready to fly on schedule?”
“Yep,” Gary said. “Hell, we could fly in twenty-four hours, if you want. It’s just a question of fitting
everything together and then we can fly.”
“Good work,” Paul said. He paused. “Are you sure that you want to fly the mission in person?”
“I’m the most experienced spaceman the United States has left,” Gary said. “I did think about taking one of the aliens along with us, but that… might provide too much temptation for them.” He paused suddenly. “Do you really trust them?”
“I think so,” Paul said. “You know, in all of the skirmishes along the Red Zone’s border, not a one has ever surrendered? That fits in with what Femala told us; they kill male prisoners without mercy.”
“They took prisoners from us,” Gary said, thoughtfully. “Have you considered that?”
“They’re being worked to death,” Paul said. The images taken by the insurgents had been spread across the world, awakening a new desire to fight on, whatever the cost. The aliens had been doing the same in the Middle East and probably Australia, working the human prisoners to death. The soldiers, sailors and airmen might have been in the best of health when they’d been captured, but after nearly three months, they’d be dropping like flies. “I don’t think that that counts as the softly-softly approach.”
“No,” Gary said. “Still, they’re not human, and so… I don’t trust them, not completely.”
Invasion Page 39