Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Thank you all for coming,” President Siegfried Gerwulf said. Cardona nodded once; the Europeans had taken two of the alien invasion forces on their soil, although it was questionable if the aliens had actually known that that was what they were doing. Had they landed near Washington because they knew it was the American capital, or had they intended something entirely different? “The situation is grave. Desperate measures must be taken.”

  President Cardona winced inwardly. It was going to be bad.

  “Grave is a strong word,” President Aleksandra Zakharova said. The Russians were also at risk; a major alien invasion force had landed to the south of Moscow and was advancing on the capital, despite all the Russians could do to stop it. “The war has not been lost.”

  “Two of our normal comrades have been lost,” Gerwulf said sharply. He waved a hand at where the blank screens would be in his apartments. The President guessed that he was in a bunker somewhere in Norway, Sweden or Finland; there was plenty of European hardware scattered across Scandinavia, and the former nations’ rugged terrain would make the area defensible. “We face collapse in North Africa and France; our ability to reinforce the French is limited because the aliens have blasted much of the transport network.”

  Cardona listened as Gerwulf continued. It wasn’t that much of a surprise; the Europeans had a fairly small professional armed force and several national military forces that now acted as a version of the American National Guard. The downside of such an arrangement was that local support wasn't always possible; the European Army had been largely based in the east – because of Russia – and the Mediterranean, because of the African Exclusion Zone. Any attempt to move large forces back to Europe would almost certainly be smashed by the aliens from orbit.

  “And there is the question of just what they will do if they cross the Suez Canal,” Caliph Baha Ihsan said. Egypt had joined the Caliphate, suspicious that otherwise Europe would have gobbled it up and imposed its own peace on it. It had to be defended, but, like every other Great Power, the Caliphate was woefully short of combat power now that the alien-caused tidal waves had swept across the country. The Caliphate had suffered badly; Russia was the only Great Power that had been spared tidal waves. “What happens if they move on Tehran, or perhaps come west from their landings in India?”

  The discussion ranged for a while before it found a new topic. “The matter of their broadcast remains an interesting one,” Aleksandra said. She fixed the Caliph with a look that would have stunned a charging elephant. “Can we take them at their word?”

  Cardona smiled. “We have analysed both of the recordings that Director Hussein made for them,” he said. There was a small, but vocal minority in the United States calling for her to be hung without trial as a traitor, although it would be difficult to determine who exactly she had committed treason against – if she had committed treason. The entire human race, perhaps; as she wasn't an American citizen, she could hardly be charged with crimes against America. “They think she was doubtful about the first message, but believed much of the second message; in particular, she doubted the concept that our surrendering soldiers would be unharmed. Without actual direct access to her, there is no way to cross-examine her and find out just what she doubts, or why.”

  “We have some reports from Lyon and a dozen other cities that have fallen under alien authority,” Gerwulf said. “The aliens at first took prisoners; a day or so later they started merely ignoring the civilian population, apart from feeding them water and ration blocks. We had one smuggled out of the Occupied Zone and examined it; it’s basic algae-grown foodstuff, edible, healthy, and practically tasteless. The black market is apparently doing a roaring trade in sauces and other condiments.”

  There were some chuckles. “The aliens are doing pretty much the same in the Russian Occupied Zone,” Aleksandra confirmed. Cardona nodded thoughtfully. “Its basic occupation strategy; feed the population and they very rapidly become dependent on you when you start to tighten the screws. My guess is that we’ll start to see them registering humans to assist them and maybe, in a year or so, an alien-controlled human army.”

  “All they’d have to do is head south, into the Exclusion Zone,” Gerwulf said.

  President Cardona injected his own comment into the discussion. “The aliens have taken far fewer American prisoners, mainly because the areas they occupied were swept clean by tidal waves; most of the population was already on the move out of the area when the aliens landed. I don’t know if they have started to feed humans they haven’t added to their camps, but if they break into a more populated area, they might just start attempting the same thing. Incidentally, they have been using some heavy robots to clear bodies, which are then destroyed by laser fire; most human occupiers would put the prisoners to work.”

  “With all due respect, that is not the main problem,” bar Ellis said. His English was unusuallyaccented, as if he had studied in an upper-class English university. “This is the main problem.” He displayed an image; a tower reaching up into the sky. “It will come as no surprise to you to know that we have… agents within Egypt, in particular interested in the remnants of the Muslim Brotherhood and other such organisations that have ties to the Exclusion Zone and might one day move against Israel. One of them took it into his head to have a closer look at what the aliens were doing along the border and snapped this picture.”

  The President scowled. Something about the image reminded him of something, something he’d seen a few years ago. “I see,” he said. The elusive memory failed to form. “What is it?”

  Bar Ellis’s face was sombre. “We believe that it’s a space elevator,” he said. “We used telescopes to check up the line and found one of the alien spacecraft, holding station in a powered orbit above the endpoint; the…elevator, or whatever it really is, is being built up quite rapidly. The process, I am assured, is quite fascinating.”

  The President blinked. “How the hell did we miss this?”

  “We’re not quite prepared for an alien invasion,” Gerwulf said dryly.

  “It is recommended that all of you check for other space elevators that might be being constructed in the other occupation zones,” bar Ellis said. “It is quite possible that once the aliens have completed the towers, they will bring down the remainder of their army and then they will expand forwards and hit us again. As President Gerwulf said, desperate measures must be taken.”

  Cardona glanced at each screen in turn. “What exactly do you want to do?”

  It was Aleksandra who spoke. “A coordinated assault on all five known alien landing zones,” she said. Cardona guessed that there had been some private discussion between she and Gerwulf before the meeting had been called. The Eurasian landlines, away from the pressure of asteroid-caused shockwaves in the ocean, had remained largely intact. “We know now what the aliens can do; we also know that they are far from invincible.”

  “They may not be invincible, but they are very powerful,” President Cardona said. “Hitting them the way they are, at the moment, is playing to their strengths. Any way you want to look at it, that’s a disaster.”

  “We already have one disaster,” Gerwulf snapped. “The moon has declared independence. If we don’t have even one victory to our name, there will be no room for negotiation.” His voice darkened. “The aliens may have offered to talk with us, but they have time; once they have all of their elevators up and running, they can mass their forces and launch the final offensive against us. They’re stalling; they know they can be hurt and if they can be hurt, we can make them… amiable to our point of view.”

  Cardona said nothing. If the information the aliens had transmitted down to the planet, or learned from the handful of prisoners that had been taken out of Occupied Zones, had been accurate, it was humanity’s point of view that the aliens had an issue with. They really needed an alien prisoner, and there seemed to be no way of taking one; the aliens took care when they patrolled along the front lines. Their bodies simply
burned to ash moments after they had died; whether that was field rites or a precaution, no one knew.

  “Maybe,” he said, stalling for a moment. “I would have to discuss it with my military officers. The issue does remain, however; can we deter them from using their overwhelming advantage against us?”

  “There are two issues,” Aleksandra said. “First, we propose the use of tactical nuclear weapons against the alien ground forces, evening the score a little. Second, we have a little surprise to share; for various reasons, we were hiding a small force out in the Lenin Cluster of Near-Earth Asteroids” – they’d been claimed by the Russians, Cardona remembered – “and that force will be deployed against the aliens in orbit, backed up by all the ground-based missiles at our command. The force will launch a two-pronged attack; un-powered missile strikes against the alien orbital weapons platforms, and a powered strike against the alien motherships. There are only ten Russian ships out there, but they can give the enemy a bloody nose before retreating back towards one of our asteroid bases.”

  The President wondered, for a moment, if the Russians had a version of Area 51 hidden out somewhere amidst the Belt. They’d done well if they had managed to keep the force unnoticed so close to Earth, but apart from a series of probes, the aliens had paid little attention to the asteroids. He wanted to talk privately to Aleksandra, to ask her to hold back whatever ships she had until they could be merged with the force from Area 51, but it was already too late. The other world leaders were grasping what she had offered them as if it were a lifeline…

  …And it was, President Cardona realised; she might even be right. If they could just bloody the aliens a bit, it might even be a start down a road that would lead them to the bargaining table. But… the alternative was worse; the aliens might not be able to hunt down every human settlement out in the Belt, but they could certainly exterminate the human population on Earth. How far could they provoke the aliens before they started targeting cities?

  Aleksandra looked at him. Her voice was sharp; the President realised that his mind had been wandering down dark corridors. “James?”

  Cardona gathered himself. “As I said, I will have to talk to the Joint Chiefs,” he said. “However, I believe that they will certainly consider the plan workable… unless the aliens bring some other surprise of their own into play.” He made a show of glancing at his watch. “Shall we reconvene in twenty-four hours?”

  One by one, they said their goodbyes, logging out of the conference. In the end, only the President and Prime Minister Tim Keck remained. The President looked at his old friend. They’d known each other for a long time before Keck had become the Prime Minister of Britain – and, through the strictly fair rotation, first among equals of the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth. “Tim?”

  “They’re desperate,” Keck said. “So are we; India and Australia are both wrecks, while New Zealand took a beating that might destroy the entire nation eventually. I don’t like it very much, but it may be our best opportunity to force the aliens to the conference table before the entire global system falls apart.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four: The Camp

  Near Pittsburgh, USA

  The scene had been one of complete chaos when the battlesuits – or the remains of the force – had stumbled into the camp; two weeks later, the camp was still in chaos, with thousands of soldiers running everywhere and few people knowing exactly what they were doing. General Harrison – he had been promoted in the chaos – had been trying to get the entire area under some kind of control, but the panic that had struck the civilians had threatened to keep the situation eternally on the boil.

  The aliens hadn’t bothered to pursue once they’d sealed off Washington and broken into the city; Captain Fardell could only be grateful. A pursuit would have been a disaster, but he had other worries just by being so far from the alien positions; the aliens could drop a KEW on them from orbit if they caught a sign of them. They’d said, in the transmission their mouthpiece had transmitted, that they would respect surrendering soldiers – provided that their own were given the same courtesy – but Fardell wasn’t keen on testing the theory. Rumour had it that they had captured wounded soldiers, but no one knew for sure; they hadn’t bothered to inform humanity of just who they had captured… if they even knew.

  He paced angrily around the camp; their positions had been carefully camouflaged to prevent the aliens noticing them from orbit, but he knew better than to trust to too much camouflage. The aliens kept launching their drones overhead, hunting for the remains of the human forces; those forces that were massing, mainly light infantry, would be extremely vulnerable if they were detected. It was one reason they were forming up so far from the alien lines; it would give the humans a chance to get themselves organised before meeting an alien assault, assuming the aliens launched an assault. Rumour had it that the brass was planning an offensive right into the teeth of the alien forces; the arrival of a handful of older heavy weapons from some militia stockpile suggested that there was some truth in the rumour. Units arrived at the camp, received their orders, and then headed out again, apparently to different operating bases nearer the aliens.

  That, at least, made sense; it was important to spread out as much as possible to prevent a single enemy weapon from destroying the entire force, but it was frustrating. He knew of places where the woods were alive with American soldiers, but it was easy to forget when the communications network had either broken down or had been devoted only to commanding the ground forces; they might have made contact with the remainder of the internet, but using it for anything other than official business had been forbidden. Fardell understood, and he had written quick letters to his family, but it grated on him; his relatives wouldn’t even know if he was dead or alive… or a prisoner.

  A whistle blew; he picked himself up and strode over towards the command tent, neatly hidden under the trees from prying alien eyes. Camouflage nets had been placed among the branches and he’d been assured it was all but invisible from above. He passed a handful of medical vehicles and logistical trucks, nothing obviously dangerous; the aliens struck anything that looked dangerous from orbit. An armoured division from Fort Hood, he had heard, had started out on a journey somewhere – he assumed Washington – and hadn’t moved more than ten miles before the aliens destroyed most of the vehicles from orbit. It was a strange way to fight a war.

  The interior of the tent was surprisingly warm; the strange weather lately had caused them to go through periods of heat, matched with freezing cold and heavy rainfall, sometimes all at once. The asteroid’s impact had started to lose some of its effects, but it had rained like a bitch over most of North America, if not the world. Floods and dams breaking had caused heavy damage all over both Americas; he’d heard that the Panama Canal and other waterways had been rendered completely useless by the effects of the tidal waves and the flooding. The handful of other soldiers gathered together still felt strange; the Army had grown far too used to meetings that involved video conferencing and hardly any face-to-face contact. He felt as if it were dangerous; with the aliens and their power around, it hardly mattered. No suicide bombers would get though the battalion out patrolling around the camp… and the aliens might be able to track a videoconference.

  “TEN-HUT,” the sergeant-major at one end of the room said. It was another sign of how far they’d fallen; once again, a paper map from a school had been pressed into service for the soldiers. They stood to attention.

  “At ease,” General Harrison said, his voice weaker than Fardell remembered from their last meeting. Everyone relaxed slightly, but remained standing until he saluted them back and waved them onto the benches; they too had been removed from one of the schools nearby. The entire civilian population of the area was supposed to have been evacuated, but Fardell knew there were still tens of thousands of people in the cities. “As you know, we have accomplished wonders in securing the general area, moving out the wounded to hospitals further inside the country, and org
anising our reinforcement by light infantry and light armoured units from the various National Guards. The reserves were, of course, already called up; many of the reserve units are already preparing to enter the war.”

  He tapped one part of the map, coloured red with a crayon, with one long finger. “There are also several Special Forces units and civilian resistance units operating within the known alien occupation zone,” he continued. “The Donkeys” – the name had been coined by some REMF who’d never had to face the aliens, but it had stuck – “have been patrolling heavily, but we seem to have a slight advantage in insurgent warfare; it helps that we know the entire area much better than they do. The Donkeys have been using their drones to cover their own flanks; we have not been shooting the drones down because this serves as a way of leading us to their forces. The Green Berets and others have used this to launch hit and run raids; striking the aliens, getting in a few blows, and then scattering. We have some reason to believe that this has been pissing the aliens off.”

  There were some laughs.

  “Regardless, the aliens have been happily establishing themselves in Washington and the surrounding area,” General Harrison snapped.

  The laughter died.

  “They have been trying to establish an orbital elevator to their ships in orbit, rather like we used artificial piers back during the Second World War. One of those is already working in Egypt, along the border with North Africa; the aliens are using it to ship tens of thousands more of their soldiers to the surface. Once the elevator over there” – he waved in the direction of Washington – “is completed, they will do the same…and come heading this way with additional troops and equipment. At the moment, they have a beachhead – an incredibly vulnerable beachhead. Our job is to destroy it.”