Invasion

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  “Without them, we could never have gotten this far,” Paul reminded him. “We don’t have to trust them, but we need them.”

  “One week,” Gary mused. “One week… to victory, or certain destruction.”

  * * *

  “Everything’s gone silent,” Joshua complained, examining the laptop. The Internet was the same as always, on the surface, but more than a few voices had gone silent. “What happened to him?”

  Tessa shrugged from her seat, watching over his shoulder. He was very aware of her presence… and how she could break him in half without really trying. His former life hadn’t prepared him for female Special Forces soldiers, particularly ones who told him tales about how she’d infiltrated some terrorist’s harem and killed him when he’d summoned her to his bed. Her stories were so complex and strange that he really didn’t know if she was telling the truth, or merely playing games with his mind.

  “He might well have made it,” she said, dryly. “He said he’d send a signal when he made it, so… just wait and see.”

  “History is being made out there,” Joshua protested. “History… and I’m stuck here.”

  “Is that a reporter’s spider sense?” Tessa asked. “You’re stuck here because the aliens would cut off your head the moment they laid eyes on you. I’m stuck here because the Captain told us to keep our heads down for a while before we tried to make any other aliens regret ever landing on Earth. If history is being made, it’s being made elsewhere and we’re on the substitutes bench.”

  Joshua scowled as an explosion rattled the windows. “Someone didn’t get the stop order,” he said. “Was that one of yours?”

  “No one could really control the insurgency,” Tessa admitted. “The aliens will break one cell and discover that they don’t have any links to other cells. It should drive them mad.”

  “Being here is driving me mad,” Joshua protested. He knew he sounded petulant, but he couldn’t help it. “I’m bored.”

  “Something will happen soon,” Tessa assured him. “Just wait and see.”

  * * *

  “One week,” the President said, staring down at the map. The Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean was covered with little icons. “One week.”

  “We have to get moving now,” Paul said. “Once we get all the pieces in play, we won’t be able to stop, or parts of the operation will go ahead anyway and fail.”

  The President looked up at him. “And what are the odds of success or failure?”

  “Fifty-fifty,” Paul admitted. “There are some parts of the plan that might fail, and fail spectacularly, but we’d still have a chance. If both of the vital parts fail, then the aliens will have won the battle and know, exactly, what we tried to do. That will certainly draw a response from them that we won’t like.”

  “They could go after the remaining cities,” the President mused. “If we try and fail… should we cancel the operation?”

  Paul hesitated. “No, Mr President,” he said. “We should go ahead and pray.”

  The President lifted an eyebrow. “Risking the lives of every American… and indeed all six billion people on Earth?”

  “We cannot win without changing the power balance and reclaiming command of space,” Paul said. “If we let them stay up there, they can finish us off at their leisure. We might come up with new weapons and tactics, but none of them can prevent them from crushing us from orbit, hammering us into submission with asteroids, or even developing a bioweapon of their own and exterminating us. If we don’t move, we run the risk… no, we will be permanently subordinated on our own planet.”

  “And if the plan works?” The President asked. “If we have to push it right to the bitter end, we’re talking genocide. They’ll put me up there with Hitler, Pol Pot and everyone else who thought it would be a good idea to slaughter a few million people they didn’t like. I could be condemning a billion of them to death.”

  “No,” Paul said. Femala hadn’t been clear on the program for moving as many aliens down to Earth as possible, but judging from the reports, millions of aliens had already been landed in Texas and the Middle East. “They’re emptying their starship now.”

  “And the remainder will be down on the planet, at our mercy,” the President said. “Do we have the right to kill them all?”

  “Perhaps we can come to some accommodation,” Paul said. “Mr President, they’ve killed millions of us… and there are six billion of us. There are uncounted trillions of them out across the stars, but Earth is the only place where there are humans. We have to move now, or we will end up as slaves — or exterminated. What right do they have to survive at our expense?”

  “Forty-years from now, they will paint my name with red, like they did for Bomber Harris,” the President said. He had been something of a historian in his youth before he had turned to politics. “The person who made the decision to attempt to commit genocide to save a larger number of people. Do you think that that is right?”

  Paul said nothing.

  “But you’re right,” the President concluded. “The attack has to be launched and… we have to try to stop them, to force them to surrender on our terms. If we don’t, the alliance, such as it is, will come crashing down and humanity’s unity will be a thing of the past. Give the orders, Colonel, and put everything in motion.”

  “Yes, Mr President,” Paul said. “Will you be monitoring from the Situation Room?”

  “A week,” the President said. “That’s almost a lifetime in politics. If I’m still President by that time, I’ll watch. It’s time that a President took responsibility. The buck stops here, after all.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Deception in wartime is always confusing. You can deceive yourself as well as the enemy. That can be embarrassing — and dangerous.

  — Anon

  It was impossible, both sides had concluded, for an area the size of the Red Zone to be sealed off completely. Defences, barricades and other surprises could be avoided by any advancing force, so both sides pulled back and skirmished along the borders, rather than glaring at each other over a fence. The main alien forces were held back a kilometre into the Red Zone, perfectly positioned to intercept any detected force crossing No Man’s Land, while patrols moved up and down the line, watching for human insurgents. Their crews were getting better at spotting human infiltrators and reacting to them…

  The Marines weren’t trying to hide. The oversized platoon had carefully charted out the alien patrol routes and, once the last patrol had passed, had slipped into position and deployed to meet the coming patrol. As soon as it showed itself, the Marines opened fire, slamming a pair of Javelin missiles into the alien infantry vehicles, while their snipers picked off the alien infantry as they dismounted and struggled to return fire. The handful of remaining aliens crouched behind the remains of their vehicles, screaming desperately for help, while expecting the humans to break contact and retreat, as they had done several times before. The humans had learned that maintaining contact brought helicopters and alien tanks rapidly to the scene, which meant certain death, but this time the Marines didn’t run. As the alien helicopters swooped down, two of the Marines opened fire with Stinger missiles, blowing both of the helicopters out of the sky. They crashed down, their explosions providing cover for five of the Marines, who got into firing position and dispatched the remaining aliens.

  The Sergeant made a bird call and started to retreat. The others followed, two of them pausing to rig up a pair of grenades to the remains of the alien IFVs, just to give the aliens pause. The alien engineers could rebuild some of the vehicles, as American vehicles had been repaired in Iraq, and while there wasn’t time to smash them completely beyond repair, they could be booby-trapped. The onrushing alien unit, almost the size of a Marine Company, wouldn’t have a chance to catch them, but would have to spend it’s time looking for threats. It looked like a serious attack, one alarming enough to cause the aliens to rush reinforcements to the threatened area… and take them
away from elsewhere. The Marines melted away into the darkness, leaving the aliens behind…

  * * *

  “You want me to do what?”

  “Get into the alien spaceport and steal one of their shuttles,” Captain Andrew Stocker said. Brent had read the paper report on him — it wasn’t something that could be sent over the military communications network, just in case the aliens had gained access and were reading everything passed along the wires — and had been impressed, but at the same time he would have preferred the remainder of SF34. They might have been reduced, but they were used to working together. “We already have the pilots” — he nodded to a pair of humans who might have been wearing BDUs, but didn’t look like soldiers — “and some inside help.”

  Brent stared. The two aliens stared back at him. It had been the closest he’d ever been to an unmasked alien and his instincts had screamed kill! The very concept of the aliens turning on their own kind surprised him, but was it really that unusual? Humans always saw other groups as monolithic, but he’d had enough experience to know that that was very rarely the case and you could always find someone who would turn on their fellows, for money or protection or women or just for revenge. The hunt for terrorists wouldn’t have been as effective without so many terrorists being willing to turn on their friends and allies; honour, it seemed, was alien to them.

  He looked up at Stocker. “Are you sure they can be trusted?”

  “We’re part of the American Clan now,” the lead alien said. The sibilant voice sent chills down Brent’s spine. He hadn’t realised how much the mask altered their voices. “You welcomed us when others would kill us.”

  You don’t know the half of it, Brent thought, remembering how many attacks on the aliens had been motivated by a desire for revenge. The two aliens might not know it, but they were luckier than they deserved to be, really; they’d been recovered by someone smart enough to understand the value of prisoners. The aliens were normally unwilling to allow themselves to be taken prisoner and tended to keep fighting when a human unit would have been trying to surrender.

  “Very well,” Brent said, finally. “How do you intend to get into the spaceports? They’re the most heavily guarded places in the entire Red Zone. The collaborators who go into them only do so under heavy guard.” He felt a moment of pleasure at that, because it meant that some of the collaborators the aliens had accepted had turned out to be rather untrustworthy. “Perhaps if we…”

  He looked down at the aliens. “With their help, it might be possible to get in, but then… how do we reach the spacecraft?”

  A thought blossomed out in his mind. “Perhaps it can be done after all,” he said. “How long do we have to make preparations?”

  “Three days,” Stocker said. He nodded towards one of his men, who was carrying a heavy backpack. “If worst comes to worst, we have one hell of a surprise for the aliens here.”

  “Good,” Brent said. Three days meant that there wouldn’t be time to call upon the remainder of his people. They’d have to stay on the sidelines for this battle. “Tell me the rest of the plan and then let’s start working on the practicalities.”

  The next hour was one of the strangest in his life… and that was saying something, considering all he’d done since joining the army and being streamlined into Special Forces. The two aliens might not have known specifics — it was clear that interrogation was a common feature of their treatment of prisoners — but they were a gold mine of data on how the aliens reacted when faced with specific situations. Their training, Brent wasn’t surprised to discover, had been almost entirely theoretical, although the occupation of Texas had rapidly sorted out the alien infantrymen who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, learn. Their security measures had been limited to preventing humans from breaking into their complexes, not their fellows, a blindspot that Brent intended to exploit. If they could cause enough panic…

  “It should work,” he conceded, finally. It wasn’t as if there was much time left, after all; once enough aliens had landed, they wouldn’t need collaborators any more. They might decide to start expanding the Red Zone, or perhaps they would simply slaughter all of the remaining humans. The two aliens had reacted with horror to the concept, but the humans hadn’t been responding well to The Truth and Brent rather suspected that the aliens had a time limit. If humans didn’t become Truthful — he smiled thinly at the pun — they could probably be legally massacred. “Go get some sleep. When the shit hits the fan, we want to be ready.”

  Three days later, the insurgents were lurking along the remains of a road. The aliens swept it regularly for IEDs and other surprises, assuming correctly that the insurgents would mine the road just to cause a little disruption and chaos, but this time there was a different surprise. The truckers working for the aliens were transporting alien supplies from the spaceport, but heading back empty. The aliens didn’t bother to provide any proper escort for the returning vehicles, knowing that the insurgents knew that there was nothing in the trucks, and that the truckers knew that their families were under guard. It had only taken a pair of executions to get the message across.

  “I’ve got an IFV and two outriders,” Jack muttered, from his position. The aliens had provided just enough escorts to make matters complicated. Brent was almost relieved; if there had been no escorting units, he would have smelled a rat, and if it had been heavily escorted, mounting the attack would have been impossible. “Orders, sir?”

  “Take out the IFV as soon as it gets within range,” Brent muttered back. The other insurgent units in the area should have received their orders to stay well clear and prepare for the assault on the spaceport, but not all of the units were under direct command, from Fort Hood or anyone. There were too many loners out there taking pot shots at aliens and their collaborators. Like most advantages, it was a disadvantage at the most irritating times. “Matthew, Luke, are you ready?”

  “Yes, sir,” the sibilant alien voice said. They’d chosen new human names, for reasons that made sense to them and little to him, but it was still difficult to tell the difference between them. “We’re ready.”

  The LAW lit up the night as it was fired directly into the IFV. The alien vehicle, caught by surprise, exploded into a billowing fireball, while the trucks skidded to a halt, knowing that it was useless to run. Some of the truckers would probably be wishing that they’d been allowed to keep their weapons, just to save their vehicles from the insurgents and their families from the aliens, but others would almost welcome the attack. The aliens dismounted rapidly from the outriders, firing into the darkness, only to be picked off quickly and efficiently by the snipers. So far, at least, the attack had been textbook perfect.

  Brent winced. Now came the real challenge. “Follow me,” he snapped, and ran towards the lead truck. The driver was already opening the doors, although it wasn’t clear if he wanted to fight or beg for mercy. “You, what are you carrying?”

  “Nothing,” the driver said. Brent looked into his eyes and read his story; his family hostages, his truck used against his country… and the relief that came with knowing that there was no longer any need to make the terrible choice. “They’re all empty.”

  “Just get back into the driving seat,” Brent snapped. They ran through the remaining seven trucks, checking that they were empty — the aliens had ambushed them before with ‘empty’ vehicles — and then returned to the original cab. “You need to drive on to the spaceport, understand?”

  The driver didn’t. “But…”

  “But nothing,” Brent snapped. He drew his knife and held it to the driver’s throat. It would have been much easier if one or all of the drivers had been insurgent sources, but there had been no way to make sure of that. “They’re going to think you’re in with us, so do as I tell you and your family will have a chance to live, understand?”

  “…Yes,” the driver said, finally.

  “Good,” Brent said. He looked across at Luke. “Do your stuff.”

  Luke put the ali
en radio, recovered from one of the outriders, to his mouth and started to talk. Brent had never heard the alien language before, apart from a handful of shouts from dying aliens, and merely listening to it made him shiver. No wonder the aliens were so confident of their security; human mouths simply couldn’t make the same sounds, no matter how hard they tried. The die was cast now, whatever else happened; the aliens would know that at least one of them had been taken prisoner and had gone over to the human side.

  The driver blinked as Luke finished speaking. “What did he say?”

  Luke’s voice was softer than normal. “I told them that we’d been attacked, but that we’d beaten the attackers off and the survivors got into the trucks,” he said. The driver gave the alien a sidelong look as he put the truck into gear and moved back onto the road. “They should buy it long enough to reach the spaceport.”

  “All the bullet holes will be very convincing,” Brent agreed. It was a shame they couldn’t risk a radio transmission — he wanted to check in with the rest of his team — but he was prepared to move. If the assault on the spaceport went in as planned — and, all of a sudden, it seemed like the stupidest idea he’d ever had — they would have their chance. “I’m sorry about the danger, but…”

  “Man, if you can do something about my family, I’d help you blow the spaceport up myself,” the driver said. “How much explosives have you put in the trucks?”

  Brent smiled, but said nothing. A pair of alien helicopters flew past, probably examining them, but much to his relief, they didn’t insist on the convoy pausing for inspection. He would have done that, if he’d been in command, but that wouldn’t have been safe. The priority would be to get the trucks back to a properly secured location and then search them, just in case. The spaceport was the closest secured location… and, although the aliens didn’t know, it was about to become a great deal less safe.