Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  Samra lifted an eyebrow.

  “When a force wants the overwhelming advantage, they will act to ensure that they have it, even if that means dominating the area and killing or suppressing all resistance,” Reynolds said. “Maybe they considered it their safest approach to contacting humanity; contact very firmly on their terms.”

  She found it surprising that he was trying to be optimistic. “Maybe,” she said, unconvinced. She’d read a thousand stories where First Contact had gone bad and few of them had covered anything like their situation. “Maybe…”

  Reynolds grinned and lay back. “Or maybe they’re just bastards,” he said, and closed his eyes.

  Samra laughed despite herself. Being naked with a man who was still very much a stranger wasn’t as bad as it could have been. “Goodnight,” she said.

  Chapter Fifteen: Backs to the Wall

  Washington DC

  President Cardona sat in his office staring down at the stained wood of his desk. The video-telephone on his desk had finally fallen silent; there had been no time to call a proper meeting of the United Nations Special Security Council, or even recall Congress and the Senate to Washington for an emergency debate. The nation was panicking – the world was panicking – and there was little time. He found it hard to grasp; he was a politician, not a religious leader, but any politician who wanted to remain a politician had an instinctive grasp of grand strategy.

  The aliens had fired on the welcome fleet.

  No, he corrected himself, with the brutal honesty that had kept him from falling by the wayside – in his business career, as Governor of Kansas, and then during the vicious Presidential election of 2096; the aliens wiped out the welcome fleet. The Neil Armstrong, as far as they could tell, had been damaged, perhaps destroyed; the remaining ships had been destroyed with nuclear warheads. The fleet had been utterly destroyed by the aliens; if there were survivors, like Sergeant Reynolds, they were under alien control. Perhaps Reynolds could find a way to do some damage before the aliens smashed him, or perhaps he was already dead; there was no way to know. His low-powered transmitter could hardly be used without being detected.

  “Mr. President?”

  Cardona looked up into Admiral Nelson Oshiro’s eyes. “Admiral,” he said, slowly, “just what happened?”

  “We’ve been collating the date ever since the connection went terminal,” Oshiro said. It took him a moment to realise he meant that the spacecraft had all been destroyed. “We had a constant uplink coming in from all American craft in the fleet, including the Neil Armstrong, and the other nations have been sharing data with us. The aliens definitely opened fire first, launching a spread of missiles towards the welcoming fleet…and they intended, we suspect, to capture the Armstrong. We think that they launched some kind of KEW at the Armstrong’s fusion tube; the other ships were all hit by nukes, eventually.”

  He scowled. “I rather wish that we hadn’t done such a good job when we built the Armstrong,” he admitted. “A weaker ship might have shattered under the impact of the alien missile; instead, at the last signal, smaller alien craft were preparing to board the ship. If prisoners were taken…we don’t have any way of knowing…they had to have been taken on board the alien ships. The Armstrong was definitely beyond repair.

  “There’s little to add about the other ships,” he continued. “They were all targeted by nuclear missiles, following roughly comparable operational patterns to our own, although the aliens fired more than we would have done; that’s going to have to change, by the way. The point defence network worked fairly well, but given the inherent limitations of the systems and the alien advantage of surprise, it wasn’t enough to cover the fleet long enough for it to build up any real speed and make it’s escape.”

  President Cardona put his head in his hand. “Is there any good news?”

  “Firstly, the alien nukes that we saw have less power than ours, although that may be just because of the limited scope for operations,” Oshiro said. “The second point is that we definitely took out one of their warships and damaged a second, although we have no data at all to deduce just how badly we hurt the bastards. It’s bad – we can expect them to assault Earth as soon as possible – but it’s not a complete disaster. We took a hit, Mr. President, but not a complete disaster.”

  The President met his eyes. “So, what now?”

  “I think that they will head towards Earth at once,” Oshiro said. He tapped the display to make his point. “The Earth-Moon system is the centre of political and economic life in the solar system; note, sir, that Earth not only provides a great many components to other colony efforts, but most of the colonists as well. If they knock out most of the industrial stations in orbit around Earth, they will cripple us, even if they do nothing else…and we cannot expect them to do nothing else.”

  “No,” the President said. He stared at Oshiro. “God damn it, Admiral; what the hell do they want?”

  Oshiro held his eyes. “The analysts believe that the aliens want, in our terms, to establish themselves as the masters in this system,” he said. “Why? We don’t know; they could be governed by economics, or they might find the human form disgusting, or…we don’t know, but their logical next move is to lay siege to Earth and prevent us from launching resupply missions to the remainder of the solar system. If we lose the ability to funnel people to Area 51, for example…”

  “Tell me something,” the President said. “Exactly how confident are you of this information?”

  “Unless they’re too alien for us to understand, they have to understand that we have more productive capability than they have in this system,” Oshiro said. “Destroying or capturing as much of our capability as possible will tip the balance in their favour, the more so because we have the time they lack…unless they ensure we can’t use it. Once that happens…they may intend to land on Earth, they may intend to simply seal us off from space and hunt down the Rockrats one by one, or they may intend to exterminate the human race.”

  Cardona closed his eyes. “What now?”

  It was Vice President Calista Eloida who spoke, a tall Hispanic woman with cynical eyes.

  “The population is panicking already,” she said. There had been no way to prevent the news from getting out; Spencer O'Dowd’s dramatic death on camera had ensured that everyone would learn quickly. “Our priority is to prevent a panic and prepare for a war. Admiral, do you believe that the aliens will land?”

  “We would be foolish not to prepare for the possibility,” Oshiro said.

  “That’s not quite an answer,” Calista snapped. “Is there any way that you can provide a definite answer?”

  “They have the capability to do so, unless they are somehow unable to land because of the effects of living permanently in a low-gravity environment,” Oshiro said, placidly. “As we don’t know just what they want…”

  Eloida turned to face the President. “James, the panic must be prevented,” she said. “It was barely manageable before, even with thousands of people heading into the countryside, but now there will be thousands more heading out and trying to find a place to hide. There have already been hundreds of unpleasant incidents; we have to prevent more from happening, or we will be completely unavailable to oppose the aliens at the same time.”

  “The exodus has already started,” Casper Henderson said. The National Security Advisor sighed loudly.“We have to order people to stay in their homes, now, because otherwise the panic will prevent us from making any kind of military manoeuvres without running into civilians.”

  “I should point out that if the aliens do intend to bomb cities, more people would die if we kept them in the cities,” General Denny said. The President gave him an icy look; his old friend wasn’t normally given to hiding his thoughts, but pushing in such a manner was almost calculated to undermine someone’s authority. “The only real advantage gained by keeping people in the cities is in keeping the roads clear, and frankly that's not that much of a problem at the moment.
”

  “It will get worse,” Henderson predicted.

  “I’ll address the nation,” Cardona said. He leaned back and forced himself to take a few breaths. “I have been in conference with the Russians and the Chinese. Once we got over the random ungrounded panic, and the more grounded panic that followed, we made some quick agreements. Overall command of the combined defences of Earth will be placed in the hands of Admiral Thompson of the British Commonwealth; descent afterwards will be by seniority. We chose him by randomly pulling a name out of a hat – although the official record will tell everyone how great Thompson is – and the command of ground forces will remain with the various governments in the area.”

  There were nods. It was possible – just – to coordinate every independent space-based defence network, particularly in the panic caused by the alien attack; coordinating operations on the ground would be almost impossible. If the aliens landed, the defence of any particular area was best left to the locals, who would know what they were doing. Later, perhaps, some additional cooperation might be required; the aliens might land along the Canadian Border, or in Mongolia, or even in Egypt, somewhere where two or more great powers met. How many invasions could they launch at once? There could be billions of aliens in their fleet?

  “Once the aliens attack, I expect that we may well need to prepare for what happens if we lose control of LEO – we in the sense of the human race,” Oshiro said. He gazed around the room. “We may face an invasion of both Earth and the moon; the moon, in fact, might be a more logical target for the first invasion, although they might be reluctant to wreck devastation on the facilities there that they will need in the future. If that happens…”

  Eloida scowled at him. “Will it happen?”

  “It’s something we have to prepare for,” Oshiro said. “Once the aliens blockade Earth, we will be unable to ship anything to the asteroids, the moon, Mars, Venus…or even into LEO. In the long run, such a strong alien position will strangle us. The blockade will have to be broken. That will not be an easy task…but it is one that we can handle, given time. I propose, therefore, that our orders to Area 51 are that they go into deep cover and continue to churn out warships, ones that will be updated by what we saw yesterday and what we will see when the aliens reach Earth.”

  He pushed on before anyone could interrupt. “The ships that are currently ready on Area 51 will not be enough to turn the tide in their own right,” he said. “There are forty-seven ships designed for fighting and thirty converted ships in Earth orbit; the nine ships at Area 51 won’t make that much of a difference. We have around a week, at least, before the aliens reach Earth; we should use that time to get as many technicians and supplies out to the belt and the moon before it’s too late.”

  “I see,” the President said. “And then?”

  Oshiro took a breath. “We think that the aliens are very limited in what they have with them,” he said. “In a week, we could build a warship; how quickly can they establish the plants to build more ships of their own? We build up in the belt, using Area 51 as a base, and then return to Earth with those ships, break the blockade, and threaten their motherships. If they’re not insane, we might be able to use that to force them to surrender…”

  “And if they are not?” Vice President Eloida asked. “What do we do then?”

  “If they are not, we may have to destroy the motherships,” Oshiro said, unflinchingly. “This is not a war between human factions, but a direct unprecedented clash with another race, one that has started the war. We talked sometimes about a war of extermination over the last hundred years, we claimed that it was them or us, but the truth was that we didn’t have to exterminate Islam to win. Now, we may face the same question, against an enemy of overwhelming power and unknown resources. We don’t know who they are, we don’t know how many there are, and we don’t know what they want.”

  He stood up. “My suggestion is this: we make plans, we make our preparations, and when the time comes, we hit as hard as we can,” he said. “We may not get a second chance. This is war.”

  * * *

  There was a photograph of a handsome young American – although the angle had been specifically played to ensure that the young man looked arrogant, unpleasant, cowardly, perverted, dead, or sometimes all five at once – substituting for a dartboard in the base; the soldiers in the small base used it to remind themselves of how much could go wrong. Colonel Nathan Hackenback had been an intelligence officer back during Operation Infinite Justice; his methods had been brutal, disgraceful, and above all…useless. All intelligence types these days had had to come to terms with the use of torture to extract information from suspects, but Hackenback had been a freak; he had enjoyed the sessions and had used his authority to interrogate people who could not possibly have known anything useful, purely for kicks. His field court martial, followed by death by firing squad, had been a useful lesson, not just for Americans.

  “The orders haven’t been changed,” Captain Christopher Fardell said, briefing his lieutenants. The reserves had provided him with a company of one hundred battlesuits and access to additional reserves scattered around the area, although they were mainly light infantry and light amour. “If the aliens land, we are to engage them as soon as possible, operating under stealth protocols.”

  He scowled. One reason for stealth protocols was that everyone was certain that most bases on the ground, particularly the big obvious USAF bases, would be hit from orbit as soon as the aliens broke into LEO. He couldn’t dispute the concept – and nor could the Pentagon, which had been reassigning units as fast as possible to get them away from their bases – but it struck him as somehow defeatist, as if they were certain to lose the bases.

  “And if they don’t land?” Lieutenant Browning asked.

  Fardell scowled; it was a good question and he had no answer.

  “What if they just blast away from orbit?”

  Fardell favoured him with a sly smile. “Then we just sit tight under here and wait to die,” he said. The bunker had been rated nuclear-proof, unless the bomb detonated right on top of the bunker, they should be safe from orbital attack. If the aliens did start bombing at random – and it would have to be random unless someone really fucked up and transmitted a betraying emission – he wasn’t sure if it would be worth coming out of the bunker. If that happened…

  He pushed the thought aside. “I want everyone to remain in the bunker,” he said. There really was no way to know just what the aliens could see from their position, or if they hadn’t inserted some stealth probes into Earth’s atmosphere, or something so…alien that no one human would have thought of it. “From today, we go into a total lockdown; no visits out, no training sessions in the open, all training to be done in the simulators and so on, and so on. If the worst happens, I want to be ready, understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Browning said. The others echoed him. “What if we were to…”

  A soldier shouted, interrupting him. “Captain, sir, it’s the President,” he shouted. Fardell was on his feet and heading towards the communal mess hall before his mind had quite caught up with the words. He knew it had to be important because they had been interrupted. “He’s about to address the nation!”

  The mess hall was larger than Fardell had expected, buried deep under the ground; the five hundred men under his direct or indirect command needed plenty of rest and relaxation. The room was packed, but soldiers made room for the senior officers as they looked up at the big display, which normally displayed the Super Bowl or another sporting event. Now, it displayed the President; Fardell couldn’t help but think that President Cardona looked as if he had aged radically over the last few days.

  “My fellow Americans,” the man said. A small tag at the bottom of the screen said LIVE; that was something that showed it was really important. Most media programs these days, whatever they were, were recorded and dumped onto secure areas of the internet; subscribers could access them whenever they wanted, at cost. “It
is with a heavy heart that I come before you to confirm the destruction of the Neil Armstrong. and the remainder of the welcome fleet, at the hands of the aliens.”

  The room let out a long gasp. They had known, but it had suddenly become very real.

  “I have been in communication with the other human nations and we have agreed to stand shoulder to shoulder against this new threat,” the President continued.

  Fardell thought about it; he had trained with Commonwealth and European soldiers, but knew nothing about Russians or Chinese. The Caliphate had a bad reputation, mostly unearned, for military matters; the other powers were too small to bother about.

  The President went on with, “We have united our orbital defences and we possess the power to drive the aliens back from our home planet and force them to come to the conference table. We do not know what they want, we do not know who they are, but we know that they will pay a heavy price for their acts.”

  He paused. “There is nothing that the human race cannot do if we stand together,” he concluded. “We will face this new threat and emerge triumphant; goodnight, and God bless America…and the human race.”

  Chapter Sixteen: Life Among the Aliens

  Seeker for Truth, Deep Space

  There was no rhyme or reason to the conference room, no suggestion of symbolic authority or of a hierarchy; the seven Oghaldzon in the room were scattered around, kneeling on their forelegs as they studied the image that was rapidly building up in front of them. By nature, the Oghaldzon were a consensus-building race; the seven members of the Fleet Council represented each of the main different departments, which in turn were families of specialists and students, the closest thing that the Oghaldzon had to proper families. The scent of mating season – one of the subsets had come into season – was heavy in the air, but the Oghaldzon ignored it; it just wasn’t important to them.