Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  There was a long moment of silence. “They haven’t been very vulnerable so far,” someone said, finally, from the back of the room. “Can we destroy them?”

  “Yes, we can,” General Harrison said firmly. He flipped the map over to reveal a second map, with several lines drawn on it, pointing east. “The main issue, as we have discussed over the last week, is to remain close enough to alien forces to prevent them from simply dropping kinetic-energy weapons on us from orbit. Accordingly, the main thrust of the counterattack will be carried out by light infantry and battlesuits; several hundred additional battlesuits have arrived and will be deployed as the main supporting force. We will return to the area as carefully as we can, slipping further Special Forces units into Washington over the next few days, and then launch the attack before the enemy get their act together. Heavy support, including missiles and long-range artillery, has been provided; hopefully, all of those units will be in place before we launch the assault.”

  He kept speaking, outlining all of the units that had been committed to the attack, while Fardell thought about it. Planning on the fly, he had found, was a recipe for disaster; there were too many things that could go wrong and the plan wouldn’t account for them. Friction was an endless companion of any military force, but the friction in an operation without half of the technological goodies they were used to would be terrible… and the more friction there was, the more holes that would appear in the operation when it was carried out.

  “The President has promised a week’s leave to the man who captures an alien alive, but I will have the ass of any man who compromises the mission for that,” General Harrison finished. “Are there any questions?”

  Fardell put up his hand. “What about attacking when the weather is pretty bad, not at dawn? If we have to carry out this mission, we should try to carry it out when the aliens can’t see…”

  “They can see,” General Harrison answered, his face grim. “We only caught on to this by chance; some group that believes we should conserve bats in a forest the aliens marched through had sensors out tuned to detect the bats’ sonar… and the aliens are emitting plenty of it. They fight almost as well as we do in the dark, Captain; judging from some of the footage of the early fights, they can see through some softer items, although not harder items. It might explain why they’re lousy at house-to-house fighting; the walls would muck up their sonar no end. The brass has research teams looking for ways to jam their sonar, but nothing as yet.”

  He paused. “The President has authorised the use of some tactical nuclear weapons in the fight,” he said, almost as if it were an afterthought. “You’ll be briefed on procedures later, and hopefully we won’t have to use them, but if the hypersonic missiles have to be launched, you’ll be warned. This might be the last chance we have to fight as a united country, gentlemen and ladies; I expect all of you to get out there and kick the Donkeys’ collective ass. Good luck.”

  Fardell scowled inwardly. Whatever happened, the battle was going to be costly; part of him wanted to flee, the remainder embraced the challenge. He just knew that it was going to hurt the army, hurt his unit…it was even possible it might hurt one Captain Fardell…

  He smiled. He’d known the job was dangerous when he’d taken it.

  * * *

  Thirty-seven miles to the west, Captain Wilbur Hawking was having roughly similar thoughts, although as one of the handful of USAF pilots who had met the aliens and survived the experience, his views were considered more important. The tiny base had been intended as a rich man’s private airfield at one time; it was a miracle his Shadow could be landed there, let alone that the aliens hadn’t noticed yet. There were now thirty Shadows near Washington, a tiny force compared to what Hawking knew would be needed.

  “Sir, this is unwise,” Hawking said, as close as he could come to calling the mission impossible. Fighter pilots were a proud breed; if they were given a mission, they would either carry it out or die trying. He would have taken on any mission he felt had a chance of success, but this mission looked as if it was impossible, capital-I impossible. “The aliens’ air-defence network in that part of the city is just too powerful for any aircraft to fly through and remain undetected.”

  It was only the strange weather conditions that had saved his life so far; the aliens seemed to have real problems predicting where he actually was in the middle of a storm front, but as the weather started to settle down for the nonce, it would become easier for the aliens to track the Shadows, if only by noting the position of empty spots on some of their more capable sensors and directing plasma fire towards them until the Shadow was hit, or worse. The aliens were also getting better at linking their systems together; unlike any human ECM officer, they would know what their systems were supposed to be recording… and know what wasn't meant to be there.

  “That’s not an issue,” the colonel said. His voice tried to sound firm, but there was an underlying note that Hawking really didn’t like, as if he knew something that Hawking had no idea about. “We really do need those targets hit and the men on the ground need some air support, so there really isn’t much to say.”

  Hawking glared down at the target information, such as it was; some Special Forces team had done an excellent job with the equipment they’d been given. It was apparently an alien barracks – several alien barracks, established near the centre of Washington, using part of a human warehouse and some of their own prefabricated materials. There was nothing special about it, as far as he could see; there was no obvious reason for the brass to be targeting it so specifically, or for them to be risking one of the priceless Shadows to carry out the mission.

  “No?” he asked. One advantage of all of the sensors and Special Forces soldiers running through the occupied territory was that they had a pretty good breakdown on what the aliens had deployed… and just what it would do to any unwary pilot who was foolish enough to stray into the alien fields of fire. “They have over seventy air-search radars operating on constant sweep-mode, with plasma cannons and some of their lasers to back them up. They have expanded their own sensor network to the point where even birds get targeted and blown out of the air; power is clearly not a problem to them. The fighting has even altered the terrain in some places, so most of my maps will be useless. There is actually quite a lot to say…”

  He broke off, looking down at the map. “There might be a possibility,” he said, studying it carefully. An idea had crossed his mind, but he needed more information before he committed himself. “What sort of support were you going to provide for the soldiers and the civilians on the ground?”

  “Missiles and long-range artillery fire,” the Colonel said. Hawking muttered a curse under his breath; the aliens would notice the incoming hail of devastation, shoot most of it down with their lasers, and be back in position to repel any attack before anyone could react. Their orbital weapons platforms would drop a KEW on each of the imprudent launchers and guns and that would be that. “We would be combining it with considerable jamming and remote spoofing of their equipment.”

  Hawking thought about it. If the alien broadcast, telling the Earth about themselves, hadn’t been complete propaganda, it was possible that the aliens would be just a little inexperienced when it came to modern warfare. They might even not recognise the jamming for what it was in time; they might just…

  “It might be possible,” he said, and outlined his idea. It was crazy and it would require some fanatical flying, but he was confident that he could handle it. He was the best pilot he knew, after all; all USAF pilots shared that belief, although he was certain the others were wrong. “Would that be acceptable?”

  The Colonel nodded. “All that really matters is getting those targets taken out,” he said. “There are people depending on it.”

  Hawking blinked. “There aren’t alien prisoners under there, are there?”

  “No…well, not exactly,” the Colonel said. There was a curious note to his voice, as if Hawking had stumbled on som
ething important, something he should never have noticed. “It’s just important that those targets be taken out.”

  Hawking nodded, feeling that he’d pushed the colonel to the limits. “This attack is going to be coordinated with the other Great Powers,” he said. The briefing had been long on words and short on details. “Did they have anything useful to add about alien weapons and tactics?”

  “Nothing that we didn’t already know for ourselves,” the Colonel said. He paused, just for a moment. “You mentioned prisoners earlier; in both Africa and Europe, the aliens have started to feed the civilian population without bothering to pen them up in prison camps. What does that suggest to you?”

  Hawking studied the map for a moment. “That there’s a limit to how many people they are willing to imprison,” he said, carefully. He knew almost nothing about the logistics of holding prisoners; it wasn’t often a USAF concern. “Why would they have such a limit?”

  “At a rough guess, they have nearly five thousand Americans as their prisoners,” the colonel said. He met Hawking’s eyes. “If they expand much more, they will run into populations we can’t move, people who will end up being far too close to the aliens when we fight them…you can probably work out the consequences for yourself.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hawking said. The colonel had been trying to guilt him; it had worked, to some degree. America as a whole was being ground down by the mere alien presence; if the war went on for long enough, there would be no need to worry about the future of the country, because it would no longer exist as a single coordinated whole. “I won’t let you down.”

  “That’s good, Captain,” the colonel said. “The future of the country may depend on how you carry out your mission… and I do not exaggerate. The attack goes into full flow in a week, Captain; get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Who Dares Call It Treason?

  Seeker for Truth, Earth Orbit

  The shape of the human spacecraft was very visible on the display.

  Dataka-War Commander-Fleet studied the image, his sonar clicking through the image – which was of course transparent to his sonar – and resounding with the sonar from the other members of the council. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the human ship; it resembled, unsurprisingly, a comparable Oghaldzon design. Humans might look strange, to Oghaldzon eyes, but they were bound by the same laws that determined how the Oghaldzon could move from star to star.

  The humans were brave, he acknowledged without particular concern. The Oghaldzon would not have sacrificed themselves for nothing – or what they saw as nothing – but they had their own share of brave soldiers and cowards. It was possible that the humans merely intended a deception that would destroy the Seeker for Truth, but even so, it would only destroy the Seeker if they let it get anywhere near their position. Some humans had been quite reasonable when confronted by the Oghaldzon, others had thrown their own lives away in an often-futile attempt to kill individual Oghaldzon soldiers, often in ways that wouldn’t have affected the overall situation. It was a puzzle, he knew; it was already causing endless discussion among the soldiers down on the surface of the planet.

  He’d delayed calling the council meeting in the hope that new information would arrive, but nothing new had been detected. The researchers and the intelligence crews had been trying to put together a picture of human habitations in the solar system – and the human political bodies that supported them – and even though the task had gotten easier with direct access to human research materials on the planet below, they had been having real problems understanding the politics. It looked as if, far from a cooperative endeavour, the human factions had divided the moon up between them… except, far from agreeing to any dividing lines, they had then started to argue about who would have access to most of the resources, with their own settlers caught in the middle. The Oghaldzon had not been surprised when they’d realised that the settlers had overthrown the leaders appointed to them by their governments – that was par for the course when MemeKill-infected factions were involved – but they had been surprised by the communication from the moon.

  “The question is simple,” he said, addressing the council. In theory, they were all equal, but in practice the decision was his. They were in a war zone and that left no time for debate. “Do we accept the human representative on board our ship or do we order him to return to the moon?”

  Takalak-Researcher-Seeker spoke first. “We believe that this is the first sign of sanity that we have seen among the humans,” he said, his clicking echoing through the room. Dataka could almost taste the honesty with which Takalak spoke. “This may represent the first of many human powers coming to us and joining us, as happened during the MemeKill Wars. Free of the influence of their comrades down on Earth, they may become worthy allies.”

  “And they are aliens,” Reata-Soldier-Command said. She represented the interests of the soldiers to the council. “They don’t think the way we do; sometimes their behaviour is almost Oghaldzon, although that of an insane or infected Oghaldzon, sometimes they just don’t behave in any way that matches our own experience. They cannot be trusted to integrate with us properly.”

  Dataka scowled. The Oghaldzon didn’t fight many wars; their society was too loose for that. Most Oghaldzon wars happened because an Oghaldzon became infected with MemeKill and proceeded to spread it everywhere, heedless of the possible consequences to the people. That was bad, right on the verge of disastrous, but it was understood; MemeKill forced its victims to behave in a certain way that made stopping them, putting them down, unpleasant, but possible. The old nightmare was that, sooner or later, a MemeKill faction would grow so powerful that it would be impossible to stop, shattering the bedrock of Oghaldzon society and sending them back to barbarism. It was quite possible that this had happened in the past; records were scarce.

  But what tended to happen was simple. The core of the MemeKill faction would be destroyed, or proven rather spectacularly to be in the wrong, and the spell would break. The other factions – nations, back when the Oghaldzon had had other nations – would break ranks and seek terms…which might just be what had happened on the moon. Or, as Reata suggested, something completely different might have happened… and, because the Oghaldzon thought in terms of their own society, they might misinterpret it.

  “Regardless, it is our duty to force them to integrate,” Gafalae-Speaker-Seeker said. Dataka had encountered a human word for his duty; priest. The Truth could not be said to be a religious understanding of the universe, but those who considered themselves Truth-seekers were very important in Oghaldzon society. “We cannot come to terms with them on anything less than us possessing control over what they do in space, unless they prove themselves to be completely trustworthy.”

  He paused, sonar clicking reprovingly. “If this is an opportunity to at least talk to a human faction, to prevent further bloodshed, for we have killed – or at least played a role in the death of – millions of human civilians,” he continued. “If they talk to us, and they demand more than we are willing to give them, then we can occupy the moon ourselves; we will have lost nothing in the experiment.”

  Takalak clicked for attention. “My colleague Oolane has asked the humans we have on board this ship for advice,” he said. Dataka wondered just how a human would have interpreted that comment; it was possible that Oolane’s children had been sired by Takalak, something that was of enormous importance to the human race, but purely an academic matter, if that, to the Oghaldzon. “Their response was not pleasant; the female worried that the other humans would take revenge, while the male wanted the other humans to take revenge. They were both in agreement that the lunar faction should not be trusted.”

  “We could protect the lunar faction from their… former masters on Earth,” Gafalae said. “It gives us leverage over them. We do not know, yet, what they are offering.”

  Reata clicked in agreement. “Some of the soldiers on the planet below are wond
ering if we can ever guarantee defeating the humans,” she said. Dataka shivered; the ground occupied by the Oghaldzon seethed with resentment and armed soldiers, striking out at individual or small groups of Oghaldzon, hurting them. It might cost the humans dearly, but it was still hurting his people. “A successful agreement with one human faction might lead to the others agreeing to join us on reasonable terms.”

  “If nothing else, we could certainly help them rebuild,” Gafalae added. “We certainly played some role in the crisis that has killed millions of humans.”

  Dataka clicked for a vote. There were only two dissenting opinions. “It has been agreed,” he said, finally. “We will take to the human rebels and see what they are prepared to offer us in exchange for recognition and support.”

  “A suggestion,” Takalak said. “The delegate from the human moon should not be permitted to meet the prisoners on board this ship.”

  There was a brief hum of agreement. “It shall be done,” Dataka said. “Bring the human ship on board.”

  * * *

  Tony Jones had never felt more naked in his life, even though he was wearing a standard ship-suit with a mask hanging by his side, providing limited protection in the event of an air leak. The inter-orbit ship was completely unarmed; under normal circumstances, it would have made the run from the lunar stations to Orbit One, where it would have transhipped passengers to each of the destinations. Orbit One had been blown out of the sky by the aliens; almost all of the human constructions in orbit had been destroyed, replaced by a massive fleet of alien ships. He’d seen some of the reports from stealthy spy probes; the aliens had been building orbital elevators down to the surface, something that would alter their logistics beyond calculation.

  It almost made him sick. Humanity had experimented with the concept of an orbital elevator, but no one had actually built any on Earth, although one was planned on Mars. Who knew what would have happened if a single elevator had been operating for ten years before the aliens arrived? The moon might have swelled with people…although that wouldn’t have necessarily been a good thing. Bova’s coup would never have come off if half the population hadn’t been firmly on his side and another quarter sitting on the fence. Their opinions might not matter, he realised, as the alien ship took shape and form in front of him; if the Oghaldzon decided that they wanted the moon, they could take it and Bova’s coup would come to nothing.