Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Into the tunnels, now!” Sergeant Cady snapped, dragging him as fast as he could towards one of the tunnel entrances. Colonel Garth opened his mouth to protest, knowing that the aliens had fucked them in so many unimaginable ways, but it was too late; Cady dragged him into the tunnel and pushed him down into the sewers, just as the temperature started to rise rapidly. “Sir…”

  “Don’t bother,” Colonel Garth said, grimly. There was no way that a human, or an alien, could escape now. “It’s too late.”

  The walls glowed red and melted, sending a torrent of superhot molten material falling down on the two men, killing them both instantly in a moment of searing agony. The fusion flame continued to burn, melting and ruining the entire bunker complex. Further down, protected by bedrock, the humans in the remaining bunkers had been utterly trapped – unable to escape or summon help. Seeyah swept over the remains of the city twice before he had to return to the spaceport for more Helium-3; by then, the damage had been done. The attack had failed.

  * * *

  “Keep your heads down!” Mitchell Sartin shouted. The noise of combat was growing louder; the population of the camp, naked and alone in the midst of the alien population, was on the verge of panic. “Don’t look out of the camp; keep your heads down and pray for your lives.”

  Markus Wilhelm joined in the prayers as best as he could. The aliens had hustled him and Carola back to the camp as soon as the attack started; the alien they’d met had assured them it was the safest place for them. In the midst of what sounded like World War Four, there seemed to be no safe places; a missile had landed far too close to the camp and shaken it hard enough to bring down some of the jury-rigged structures that had been erected to help save lives. They’d seen what looked like thousands of alien soldiers, running at a speed that had astonished him – no wonder that no escapees had made it – and heading towards the front, followed by lines of tanks and other fast-moving ground-effect vehicles. The noise of combat was growing louder; he held Carola close as a dreadful screech came, followed by an explosion on the side of one of the alien buildings. Smoke was pouring from the building; he was suddenly aware of just how flimsy the camp was, just how much damage a shell would do if it landed on their heads.

  “I’m scared,” Carola whispered, her body shaking. Wilhelm had to admit that he was scared as well; unlike the last battle they’d seen, they were much more likely to be killed accidentally by their own side, rather than the aliens. “Markus, hold me…”

  He held her as close as he could, but he couldn’t resist looking out, as best as he could, through a slit in the side of the camp fence. He could see signs of fighting in the distance, from massive plumes of smoke to the strange trails of weapons reaching up into space and coming down from space. Flashes of light burst out in the distance; he looked away… and another flash, much brighter than anything they had seen before, turned the entire scene white for a long terrifying instant before it dimmed and a thunderous shockwave shook the entire camp, a noise like the wrath of an angry god battering at their ears. Tents collapsed, jury-rigged structures fell apart… and a shadow fell across the camp. He looked up and saw…

  …A massive mushroom cloud, glowing an ugly evil orange-red as it reached up towards the sky.

  Chapter Forty-One: Counterattack, Take Five

  Near Washington, DC

  “That was a nuke, sir,” General Harrison’s aide said. “It came down somewhere near one of the larger alien bases.”

  “I saw,” Harrison said. Inwardly, he was horrified; for more than one reason. The United States had grown used to using nukes in space, where even the largest nuclear blast was a pinprick, but on the surface of the planet a nuke could destroy an entire city; New York had been a grim example of that. He’d given the order to fire hypersonic nuclear-tipped warheads at known alien staging posts and the anchor for the space elevator… and only one had detonated. “Do we have any information on the other warheads?”

  The aide worked his terminal for a long moment. “No, sir,” he said. “Tracking suggests that the missiles were all shot down.”

  General Harrison knew, for one moment, just how frustrated the Wreckers must have felt during their homemade cruise missile offensive; most of the cruise missiles they’d built from off-the-shelf components had been easy to bring down. Today the humans had fired nearly a hundred missiles, with thirty nuclear warheads, into the combat zone… and the aliens had either downed twenty-nine of them, or the warheads had malfunctioned. Warheads did not, in the General’s view, simply malfunction; odds were that the aliens had killed them. Large bodies of alien troops remained intact.

  He scowled. “Is there any evidence that the aliens are preparing to regroup?”

  “Alien forces are regrouping and consolidating,” his aide said. General Harrison nodded; it was good sound tactics when an enemy assault had been launched, unless he missed his guess, they would have a counteroffensive under way pretty soon. The growing number of KEW strikes was wearing down his people; the aliens had started to call down strikes at ‘danger close’, far too close to their own people for comfort. “Sir, several units are requesting orders…”

  * * *

  The alien counterattack had materialised out of nowhere. Just as the battlesuits had started to deploy forward again, they had run into a line of alien tanks, which had promptly opened fire with laser cannons. They either didn’t carry or weren’t using the fission ball – or whatever they called it – they were merely trying to sweep through the human lines with their lasers. Captain Fardell could see some of the beams, hot and vivid to his infrared view, and knew they were in trouble.

  “Antitank teams, front and centre,” he snapped as the battlesuits ran for cover. He cursed the lack of plasma cannon – this close to the tanks, surely they wouldn’t risk the use of a KEW on them – but there was no helping that now, he had to kill the enemy armour before it was too late. “Take the bastards out!”

  Two missiles launched from the antitank teams as the alien tanks smashed onwards, one going wild and detonating in a warehouse that had been abandoned a long time before the aliens had landed, the other destroying an alien tank in the now-familiar blinding white glow. Alien soldiers, wearing strange new uniforms, ran forward at impossible speed; Fardell cursed as he realised that whatever disorientating effect the music had been having had been countered. The aliens moved like soldiers, covering each other as they moved forward, the flicking light of their lasers cutting through cover to strike at the battlesuits.

  He lifted his hand cannon and sprayed a long burst across the battlefield, cutting down two of the aliens in a gout of blood and strange alien gore, leaving a mess that couldn’t be completely incinerated by the alien technology. He made a note to come back and recover the alien DNA as quickly as possible, but he didn’t think he would have the chance; the aliens were pouring reinforcements out as quickly as they could move… and, with the hovertanks, that was very fast indeed. He glanced down briefly at a small compartment of his HUD; it showed nothing but bad news. Every unit along the line was engaged with the enemy’ reserves and trying to set up a fallback line, but there was no time to make a proper series of defences. In minutes, the aliens were going to force them back or destroy them through sheer weight of numbers…

  Something moved, high overhead, and he rolled on instinct, avoiding a scything burst of plasma fire as it poured down from an alien drone, high enough not to be heard over the racket of the battle even by the advanced audio-discrimination software embedded in his battlesuit. He lifted his hand cannon and took aim, relying on the battlesuit’s sensors to guide his aim, and fired a long burst into the sky; something sparked, high overhead, and the drone exploded, chunks of flaming debris falling and crashing close to their position. Fardell scowled; he had hoped that the wreckage would fall on the aliens, or perhaps somewhere where it might do some real damage.

  More explosions announced the arrival of a larger alien force. “I think we may have to fall back
,” someone gasped over the communications link. Fardell couldn’t argue with that logic; their position was becoming more and more untenable with every passing second. A force without battlesuit armour would have been wiped out by now; as it was, several battlesuits had been ripped apart and others damaged by alien weapons. “Captain, we are being outflanked.”

  Fardell cursed. An infantry division had broken; the aliens were pouring though, heading to outflank, cut off, and destroy his force. They would almost certainly make it unless the humans fell back now, and even then it would be chancy. The battlefield internet was reporting that one reserve force was moving to try to keep the line of escape open, but there would not be enough time for such a deployment before it was too late. They would almost certainly be destroyed…

  “Launch plasma missiles, targeted at the ground,” he ordered. The unit had only two plasma missiles left; he heard the astonished mutterings over the command internet and ignored them. It might seem like a waste of missiles, but they had to blind the aliens long enough to make an escape; if they were really lucky, the noise of the plasma missiles would deafen the alien sonar as well. “Fire!”

  Massive slow-moving blasts of white fire appeared… and expanded at the speed of light. Shocked and stunned aliens fell back in horror; Fardell smiled coldly as he realised their armour wasn't as capable as his battlesuits. It was the first sign of any real human tech advantage and he welcomed it with real delight. There was no need to bark an order; the battlesuits ran for their lives, augmented legs thrusting them forward; a man in a battlesuit could run much faster than any normal man, at least while the servos held out. He’d run his equipment ragged in the last few hours of heavy fighting; he hoped that it would last long enough to get them through the area, across Interstate 95 and back to what he devoutly hoped would be safety.

  “Alert,” his battlesuit’s computer intoned. “Enemy aircraft in pursuit.”

  Fardell cursed. The aliens used helicopters, not unlike human ones, for close-in support of their forces. They were also tough; he didn’t know what the aliens used to build them, but they had survived long bursts from the hand cannon and one had even survived an antiaircraft missile. A second had only been destroyed because the blades had been taken out by a missile and it had fallen out of the sky. A plasma cannon or missile would have done in the helicopters for certain, but he had none of either, not any longer. Silently, he cursed the aliens; the army was almost certainly in full retreat and possibly a rout.

  He saw streaks falling from the sky, hitting the ground bare kilometres from his position, and wondered who was being targeted. There were several units in that area; an alien commander somewhere had been calling KEW strikes down on them. Fardell had heard, once, of a former American officer who had called down an expensive KEW on a Wrecker position that had been irritating him; he doubted that the aliens were that wasteful. Unlike the officer – who had spent the rest of his truncated career in a pointless assignment in the Antarctica region – the aliens knew they were in a war for their very survival. Moments later, he heard the noise as more KEW strikes slammed into the ground; the aliens were handing out a pounding to someone…

  “Browning, Fredrickson, you’re with me,” Fardell ordered, as he lifted his hand cannon once again. He selected explosive bullets, knowing that they wouldn’t be enough to penetrate whatever the aliens used for armour; they had to use armour-piercing bullets to break through the body armour the Donkeys wore. Fardell wanted some of that material; it made American body armour look useless and childish. “Get ready to give our friends a surprise.”

  The alien helicopters either didn’t notice the three battlesuits breaking off from the group, or didn’t care; they came onwards, their lasers swinging as they fired at targets of opportunity. They swept over a building, lasers setting it afire, and closed in rapidly; Fardell issued his orders and the three battlesuits fired as one, targeting the alien rotor blades. If they were very lucky – and Fardell found himself praying under his breath – they might just destabilise the enemy…

  Fredrickson screamed as an alien laser struck his suit; Fardell saw the suit glow bright red before melting away, slaughtering the occupant without any form of mercy. It was a terrible way to die, but they’d already had an effect on the lead helicopter. Something exploded… and the alien helicopter fell out of the sky, hitting the ground with a noise like thunder. The second helicopter beat a hasty retreat.

  Fardell knew what that meant. “Run,” he snapped. There was no time to recover what little remained of Fredrickson’s body; he silently hoped that his former comrade would forgive him. They were sworn to bring each other’s bodies home but there was no time left, none at all. It wouldn’t be long before…

  Something hit the ground, only just outside lethal range. His battlesuit’s computers screamed warnings, red icons popping up in his HUD, as the force of the blast picked it up and tossed him almost casually towards a rock. Fardell landed hard enough to hurt, even through the suit; it took everything he had to force his body to move again, triggering the emergency systems in the suit. Standing and fighting was no longer possible; his hand cannon had been lost in the blast. He glanced around, dazed, and saw it lying broken on the ground. For a moment, he wanted to laugh; a weapon that an unarmoured man couldn’t hope to lift had been broken as if it had been a toy gun, like the strange weapons the aliens used. There was no sign of Browning.

  Slowly, Fardell turned to the west and started to walk. The alien noose was tightening; if he didn’t get out in time, he would either be killed or scooped up and dumped in an alien POW camp. He’d heard that the aliens treated their captives well – there had even been jokes made about being shoved into a camp full of naked women – but he was in no mood to find out. One way or another, he was going back to rejoin the remainder of his unit… and find a way of wiping the aliens out, whatever it took. They did not deserve to live.

  * * *

  Yatha-Soldier-Command had been almost as horrified as General Harrison when the nuclear warhead detonated…and shared one of the reasons with the human soldier. The nuclear blast had caused considerable damage to one of the staging areas for the upcoming assault; only the fact that the buildings had been constructed of very strong material had kept most of them from suffering major damage. Everything directly under the blast had been destroyed, including nearly five hundred tanks and ten thousand soldiers. The losses had been massive.

  He sent orders clicking through the command network as the Oghaldzon counterattack started to bite. The humans were beginning to suffer badly, just as his own force had suffered; the attack in orbit had been beaten off… and the KEW network was pouring more and more firepower down from orbit. The War Commander had even authorised the use of small warships to support the KEW platforms… and the additional firepower was already having an effect. Several human units had been struck from orbit and then the Oghaldzon soldiers had moved in, killing or driving the humans away. There had been some nasty moments; a handful of soldiers had surrendered to ThrillKill and massacred human prisoners before being disarmed by their saner comrades. The Oghaldzon were unused to battle of such intensity; the mere use of the nuke had stunned many of the soldiers.

  Yatha himself tried to keep his thoughts dispassionate; it wasn't easy. He had kept abreast of the researchers’ examination of humans and their behaviour, and knew that the humans actually had permanent mating partners. It was a strange alien concept, but somehow the humans built their closest relationships around sex as opposed to something reasonable. The closest the humans had to anything reassembling Oghaldzon behaviour was prostitution…and that was apparently looked down upon by most of the human race. The Oghaldzon didn’t mate in such a strange manner; families tended to be composed of Oghaldzon who had similar ideas, or served in the same units, or even just had compatible political ideas. There would be soldiers on the ground out there who had just lost their families to the human nuclear strikes; they would be on the very verge of ThrillKill if
they hadn’t passed that line already.

  “Have the prison camps guarded with the new soldiers from the elevator,” he ordered. That had been a dreadful risk; if the humans had cut the elevator, it would have either sent the soldiers into a decaying orbit or sent them crashing down to Earth. There was no choice; the new soldiers would not have had a chance to form families down on Earth. They would have no reason to go mad and slaughter humans at random, as bitter and alien as that thought was; such behaviour had been almost unknown before they had come to Earth.

  He clarified his orders. “I want them to ensure that it remains safe from everyone.”

  He cursed the human commander under his breath. Was there no end to their President’s madness? His forces were being cut apart now that the Oghaldzon had recovered from their confusion; the odds were no longer in their favour, but more inclined towards their total annihilation. He’d sent thousands of tanks and hundreds of thousands of soldiers into the counterattack; the forces he had carefully husbanded for the advance into the more populated regions of the human nation had been deployed and ordered to slice the human attackers apart. The battle would make the later conquest easier, but he still regretted the massive bloodshed, even though the humans had swatted thousands of Oghaldzon with one blow.

  The battle was progressing at remarkable speed; he watched as contacts were reported and then either destroyed on the ground or stomped kinetically from orbit. A kind of madness seemed to have overtaken both sides; he was accepting horrendous losses to hurt the humans, and they had done the same, accepting losses just to hurt his forces. The death toll was mounting and he knew that many more would die…