Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  Wilhelm saw; she was right. The aliens had rigged up massivetents with the help of a handful of humans wearing the remains of uniforms he recognised from television shows, FEMA-trained disaster relief experts. He wanted to hate them for cooperating with the aliens, but what else could they have done? If the aliens weren’t interested in keeping the humans alive, the FEMA experts might be the only hope they had; they’d already set up a small kitchen and shelter. Their escorts pushed them forwards into the perimeter; the alien guards noticed their arrival, caught up with each of them, and snapped a bracelet around their wrists. A second later, it tightened, just enough to prevent him from removing it with ease.

  “Do not attempt to leave the compound without permission,” the alien said, and left them alone. Wilhelm watched the aliens marching away and felt a wave of pure hatred; they’d stuffed nearly a hundred naked humans inside one compound, somewhere where there would be no discipline, or…

  “Welcome to our humble home,” a very tired man said. He wore the FEMA uniform; the only humans dressed were FEMA officers. Wilhelm wanted to tear the uniform off him and give it to Carola, but he resisted the temptation. There was no way to know how the aliens would react to that. “You have to be very careful here.”

  Carola nodded once. “We will be,” she said. “What happens if we are not careful?”

  “They shoot anyone who offers violence against another human,” the man said. He extended a bony hand. “Mitchell Sartin, FEMA.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Wilhelm lied. The name meant something to him, but he couldn’t remember where he had heard it before. “What’s happening outside here?”

  “I don’t know,” Sartin admitted. His face crumpled. “There was a group of armed soldiers around, but there went off to fight the aliens when they started to land and God alone knows what’s happened to them; the aliens surrounded the remains of my refugee camp before we could get out. Those of us who were willing to help were brought back here; the others were just left in the camp, once they had stripped us and the weapons were removed.”

  Wilhelm winced. The reminder that everyone, with only a handful of exceptions, was naked hadn’t sat well with him. “What are they going to do to us?”

  “I have no idea,” Sartin said. He looked over towards the hulking shape of one of the guards, right outside the limits of the golf course. The rain chose that moment to stop; bright sunlight beamed down on all of them, before clouds started to form again. “All I can tell you is that I don’t think it’s going to be pleasant.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Escape from Washington, DC

  Near Washington DC

  The main landing craft had been designed for more than just the rapid transport of troops and ground forces to the surface. Yatha-Soldier-Command, commander of the invasion forces (America), had insisted on the deployment of both a mobile command centre and supply base as soon as he had realised just how bad the weather was likely to become. From the centre of one of the massive landing ships, cones planted firmly on Earth by the heat of their drives, he commanded the invasion force as it spread out and secured the general landing region.

  The main computer, directly linked to him through his implant, was updated constantly by the advancing forces. Each unit larger than a single infantry soldier automatically transmitted a microburst situation report to the main computer, which promptly updated the overall tactical map. The results seemed to be chaotic, but an hour after the first forces had landed, Yatha was confident that he’d secured the beachhead he needed.

  The dangers of fighting a determined human force right from the moment of landing had been obvious; Yatha was privately delighted that the tidal waves had disrupted all opposition. There were places where the humans had fought like mad ThrillKill cultists, places where the humans had melted away at the first touch, and places where there was no opposition at all. Human civilians generally fled from the Oghaldzon; those who had been captured would have to remain in the camps until they could be confirmed free of ThrillKill and invited to take part in rebuilding their world.

  He nodded once to himself as the next set of landing craft headed down towards the planet. As the advancing infantry and armoured support cleared possible landing locations, the craft could be brought down to the surface of the Earth, incidentally reinforcing the successful advance. He had nearly a million Oghaldzon under his direct command; the reserves could be committed if they were needed, but he suspected that they wouldn’t be needed for a while. The humans, judging by their own buildings relative to their apparent population, could not have suspected just how many Oghaldzon had been brought along by the intervention fleet.

  An alarm flickered up; a human force had dug into a small set of buildings and was fighting to hold the Oghaldzon back, a futile effort as the commander on the ground called in an orbital strike. The human buildings might have held up to the tidal wave, but the direct impact of a tactical KEW shattered them; the handful of survivors either fled or were captured. Time was now all-important; they'd landed among disrupted human forces and they were jamming all human radio communications, but given enough time, the humans would have a chance to regroup and concentrate their forces against the Oghaldzon.

  In theory, any major human force could be spotted and destroyed from orbit; in practice, so far the humans had proven to be experts at placing ambushes. Some humans had retreated, leaving hundreds of booby traps in their wake; his soldiers were learning quickly, but they lacked the experience that might have saved their lives. The only real consolation was that these humans were equally unprepared to operate as an underground force; they had made mistakes because they hadn’t understood they no longer owned the skies. That, too, wouldn’t last; defeat was a good teacher.

  He studied the human political map, such as they had pieced it together; researcher teams would be coming down as quickly as possible to search through human libraries, maybe even computer systems when they were located. The humans who called themselves Americans – a strange concept for the Oghaldzon to grasp; they had always been one nation, apart from the cultists…but then, they’d had to fight wars to prevent the cultists from winning – had the centre of their nation in the city called Washington. Apparently, there was a human sub-region called Washington as well; the researchers had become very confused before asking their human prisoners about the mismatched names. They were still wondering where Old York was.

  He clicked in irritation. It didn’t matter, not while victory was in their grasp. Once Washington fell, the human state would fall apart and they would be able to purge America of the ones who were infected, offering the humans a chance to change their ways though exposure to the Oghaldzon society that would be established on Earth. It would take time, cycles and cycles of time, but the Oghaldzon were patient. Once they destroyed the human forces on Earth – a certainty, now that they had taken control of space – they would have the time to do the job properly.

  He developed orders in his mind and issued them through the computer network. He had established and secured major footholds to each side of the human city; now, it was time to expand his control, seal the city off, and then take control of it directly. The tidal waves had already devastated large sections of Washington; all his forces had to do was smash the remaining human defenders in the area and take the city. The main priority would be capture of the American leader, their "President;" if he remained true to his MemeKill beliefs, would remain in the city, secure in the self-delusion that nothing could kill him or his ideas. Oddly, the mere act of fleeing could shatter his followers’ faith in him; Yatha almost hoped that the President would flee for his life.

  He finished issuing orders and sat back. All he had to do now was wait; his soldiers knew what to do.

  * * *

  Five Shadows had flown into the combat zone around Washington since the alien invasion had begun; three had been shot down directly and the fourth had been damaged by the alien weapons. Captain Wilbur Hawking was grimly aware that his airc
raft was the last in the region; other Shadows had been called from other air bases, but several had been destroyed on the ground by the aliens. Sooner or later, the aliens would track down the hidden airbase and destroy it, leaving him trapped in the sky…or one of their near-misses would be close enough to actually destroy the aircraft. He had no illusions; if he tried to eject, the odds were not in favour of survival.

  He hummed the words to Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child” under his breath as he swept in, barely above ground level, leaving what he hoped was a line of very unhappy aliens and broken windows behind him.

  Well, I stand up next to a mountain.

  Chop it down with the edge of my hand.

  The aliens themselves had been distributing more of their radars and sensors systems around; a helicopter that had somehow taken off from Washington had been speared with a burst of laser light and disintegrated when the fuel tanks had exploded. He suspected that the more they linked their systems together, as the United States and the other Great Powers did, they’d eventually manage to track the Shadow well enough to destroy him and any other pilots who tried to fly near them. The aliens were spreading out; passive sensors had tracked alien landings as far west as Richmond, the alien floating tanks making predicting their movements much harder, while the damaged ground infrastructure made it almost impossible for a serious defence to be mounted. He'd been briefed that Continental Command was attempting to pull together the surviving forces for a defence of Washington, but with the aliens overrunning Philadelphia and advancing towards Maryland, the capital would be caught in a pincer. The USAF – which effectively meant him and any more Shadows that joined the fight in time to make a difference – had to delay them.

  An air-search radar lit off, bare kilometres from his position; he accelerated towards it even as he selected a modified HARM missile and launched it towards the alien radar, following up with a series of cluster bombs launched towards the alien ground forces. The aliens hadn’t known he was there, he realised; their hasty attempt to shoot him down missed by several kilometres, literally. He swept into a course change and powered up the plasma cannon; the aliens would be somewhere around, and when they appeared, moving up the interstate, he intended to hurt them.

  Missiles, drives blazing rapidly, appeared, heading towards the alien positions; he hoped that some of them actually found their targets. The aliens were good at shooting down missiles; the targets, bridges and known alien landing sites, were very well defended. He squeezed the trigger as he passed over a bridge with a set of alien vehicles positioned to cover it; explosions shattered the aliens and sent them scattering for cover. He almost laughed…

  “Here come the drums!” he shouted, and shot an alien drone out of the sky. He cursed the limited weapons he carried; the plasma cannon was a good weapon, but it wasn't the easiest system to aim. The weapon didn’t always fire in a straight line; no one had ever been able to provide understandably outraged pilots with an explanation, or a fix. “Here come the drums…”

  He swooped low over a ruined town, and then made a rapid course change, giving the alien landing craft a wide berth. The missing Shadows had all been piloted by good men, almost as good as he considered himself to be, and they had all done well…until they had flown too close to a landing craft. The aliens had gone a little crazy with the defences surrounding the landing craft; the massive cones had been very – very – easy to find and almost impossible to attack once they were on the ground.

  “We need some artillery,” he muttered. Missiles, from MLRS to single-shot weapons, were easy for the aliens to shoot down. The problem was that if they detected such weapons, they would drop a KEW on the source from orbit, killing the crew and certainly destroying the weapon. Was there anything that could stop the aliens without taking LEO back from them somehow? Any major attack force would be noticed forming on the ground and smashed from orbit. “We have to find some way of getting at them under cover…”

  He launched a missile towards an alien convoy, and then flew low over it, spraying the entire force with plasma fire. The aliens struck back with their strange plasma weapons, the eerie glowing balls of light that seemed to creep through the air, but they were easy to evade. The sight still sent a shiver creeping up his spine; he’d never seen anything act like that, not even ball lighting. From the reports on the ground, the balls punched through whatever they struck, shattering them and perhaps even causing limited fission – it had to be limited, or the blasts would be far more dangerous – but they could be dodged. His final missile struck the launcher and he flew as low as he dared, heading back towards the base and hoping to rearm before the aliens hit Washington.

  He had a score to settle.

  * * *

  The big display was changing every few moments, but no one was sure just how accurate it’s information was; the tidal waves had caused more disruption than anyone had expected, before the war had begun. Information suggested that the aliens had surrounded Philadelphia, but there were rumours that suggested that they were going to launch an attack on the city by main force, or that they had merely sealed the city off and demanded its surrender. President Cardona stared at the board, wondering if he could pull some information from it by sheer force of will, but there was nothing he could do. He had once been the most powerful man in the world – although the other Great Power leaders would have disputed that – but now, all he could do was watch his country disintegrate under the alien pounding.

  He looked up as there was a knock at the door. “Mr. President, we have to get you out of here,” General William Denny said. “The aliens are approaching Fredericksburg and heading up towards Waldorf; those damned tanks of theirs can actually glide across the water like a hover boat.”

  The President felt cold. No one had invaded Washington since 1814, when the British had invaded and burned the city. Judging from some of the reports, the aliens had destroyed the city – or at least large sections of it – before they had even bothered with the invasion; the chaos in the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay was proof enough of that. He wanted, desperately, to remain in the bunker, but Denny was right; the bunker was no longer proof against attack.

  “I understand,” he said, standing up. Several heavily-armed soldiers, wearing the uniform of Tomb Guards, although the combat dress that had replaced the more formal wear that had been required for the post before armed terrorists had come to Washington, appeared at the corner of the door. “What’s the current situation?”

  “You’ve inspected the Tomb Guards before,” Denny said, nodding to one of the soldiers. By long custom, Tomb Guards carried no rank insignia, just to ensure that none of them outranked the Unknown Soldiers buried in Arlington. Most of the custom had survived the Wrecker War intact, but some details had changed; if Washington was attacked, the Tomb Guards were granted leave to leave their posts and join the defence without any stain on their record, although the men in the bunker were more likely to be the off-duty soldiers at the time. “Captain Schaefer will get you out of here or die trying.”

  Captain Schaefer, a big burly man, saluted him; Cardona awkwardly returned the salute. “William, you’re coming with us,” the President said, seriously. “You can’t stay here…”

  “Most of the staff are going out through the roads,” Denny said. His voice was very grim. “Someone has to remain here to coordinate as best as we can, because the remaining soldiers out there are going to hold the line for us as long as they can. That's my post, Mr. President; I’ll leave with the final group if the situation calls for it, but if we are lucky, we might be able to keep operating the bunker right under their very noses…if they have noses.”

  Cardona refused to be distracted. Whatever the humour inherent in the alien appearance, there was no disputing the fact that they might have killed over a billion people on Earth already and were crunching their way through human defences at several different locations. It might be hours at most before the aliens broke into Washington and took the city; one of their
pincers would surely break through into the city and almost certainly locate the bunker. There were enough links to the bunker from the remains of the White House for any careful survey to locate the bunker…and, once the aliens had sealed off the city, escape would become almost impossible.

  “You have to come with us now,” he insisted. “Please…”

  Denny shook his head. “Please don’t make it an order,” he said. “You have to trust me on this one; without what little coordination we can manage, the aliens are going to march right in to the city. They’re already moving faster than we can move and acting to reinforce their success; you have to get out of here to keep the country together, understand?”

  James Cardona held out a hand. “I understand,” he said. “Keep yourself safe, understand? That’s an order.”

  “I’ll do the best I can,” Denny assured him. “Captain Schaefer, keep the President safe; you know the extraction route and the procedures. Good luck.”

  Captain Schaefer didn’t salute; he merely nodded once and encouraged Cardona to follow two of his team out into the main control room, which had darkened. Half of the consoles were now unmanned, the remaining handful that were manned occupied by grim-faced experts who were trying desperately to reach command networks that were failing, or had failed, almost certainly signifying the destruction of vast quantities of command hardware by the aliens. He wondered what was happening on the other side of the world; the aliens had landed in at least five separate locations, something that chilled him. There would be no way that any of the Great Powers could help one another…