Invasion

by Christopher Nuttall

  “There, I knew that I was on a mission,” Fahy replied, dryly. “I knew what I was doing, even if it was just lurking under a blanket for a few days until Mullah Fat-Ass drove by, unaware that there was an American soldier ready to send him to a fiery end. Here, sir…here is surreal.”

  “There’s a vampire in the loft and a roomful of student nurses in the next house,” Sergeant Clayton Mancil offered, from his position in the corner. “What more do you want? A chance to fire automatic weapons with total abandon?”

  “You know what I mean, sir,” Fahy said. He finished working on his M16 and picked up a second weapon, running through a basic set of checks. “This whole situation feels unreal.”

  “Yes, but…it’s our duty,” Brent said, dryly.

  “So shut up and soldier,” Sergeant Tessa Wireman said. The stocky woman didn’t look like a soldier, something that she’d used to her advantage in the past; as the only woman on deployment with SF34, she had to play the role of the woman of the house. The other men had to remain out of sight, but she could be seen in public; no one would even question her presence. “Best case; we all go home in a week and never speak of this…embarrassment again. Worst case, well…”

  She shrugged as they directed their attention back to the television set. There was little point in taking up defensive position, not unless the aliens had some kind of matter transmitter…and if that were the case, the war against them would become rather more unwinnable than it already was. The remaining soldiers ambled in with studied casualness, taking their seats and leaning back to watch, knowing that their overt brethren, deployed across the nation, would be watching as well.

  There were ten minutes to go.

  Ten minutes until the world changed forever.

  ***

  NASA’s standard emergency vacuum protection suit felt hot and clammy to Ambassador Francis Prachthauser as he shifted uncomfortably within the heat, but there was no choice; it had taken hours of arguing to convince Gary to permit the diplomats to wear the protection suits, rather than a full-out spacesuit. The protection suits were supposed to provide protection against a brief exposure to vacuum, but it felt uncomfortably as if he was wearing a condom, one large enough to cover his entire body. He hadn’t spoken that thought aloud; the closer the alien starship grew, the more tense and silent the ISS felt, even to him.

  The alien starship was settling down into its orbit now, catching up on the ISS on its stately orbit around the planet. The hail of communications beams from Earth had only intensified, but still the aliens made no reply. It was almost large enough to be seen with the naked eye now, even though it was hundreds of kilometres away from the station. Francis swallowed twice as he realised just how dry his throat was becoming. The entire situation was becoming increasingly surreal.

  “If they don’t slow now, they’re going to ram us,” Gary said, softly. The ISS commander was as riveted to the display as the rest of them. Almost on cue, the alien starship twinkled with little lights, slowing the starship still further. “Impressive power source; I wonder what they use to provide their power. Those aren’t chemical rockets.”

  Francis felt his gaze straying to the display. “Perhaps they have something we haven’t even imagined,” he said. He’d read all the speculations, but now, watching the alien craft approaching in silent majesty, they were somehow inadequate. The aliens seemed to move so effortlessly in space…and still they were silent. “Or maybe…”

  An alarm sounded. “Radar sweep,” Damiani snapped. His face was very pale in the room. “They just swept space with a high-powered radar!”

  Sophia flinched. “Did they detect us?”

  “They detected everything on this hemisphere,” Damiani said. It had been a stupid question, born of fear and tension, but he allowed it to pass. The aliens would have located the ISS with a simple telescope sweep. “They’ll have picked up everything that wasn't behind the planet…”

  A second warning tone sounded. Francis saw Gary’s eyes swinging towards the radar display…and saw the icon of the alien starship slowly beginning to break up. For a crazy moment, he thought that the aliens were committing suicide, that they’d spent all of the effort to get to Earth only to die, but then he realised that the aliens were launching smaller craft. Lots of smaller craft…

  Damiani’s eyes went very wide. “Incoming,” he shouted suddenly. There was no hiding the raw fear in his tone. “Incoming…”

  And the hammer of God struck the space station!

  Chapter Six

  Is an alien attack possible? Of course it is. Statistically speaking, almost anything is possible. There is a better question to ask, which is ‘what is the probability of an alien attack?’

  -Travis S. Taylor

  Captain Markus Kane watched with increasing disbelief as the alien ships opened fire. He’d watched, enviously, as the alien starship launched its parasite vessels – hell, he wished he had one of them; each of the smaller ships was still larger than the shuttle – but then awe had turned to horror as the alien ships launched a single missile at the ISS. The station, almost defenceless, was hit and started to come apart in chilling slow motion, tumbling though space.

  “My God,” Sonja breathed. She sounded stunned and Kane didn’t – couldn’t - blame her. The aliens had opened fire. Without any communications, without any provocation…they’d simply opened fire. They hadn’t even transmitted a surrender demand! The ISS was doomed – that was inevitable – and it was only a matter of time before the aliens turned their attention to Discovery. The shuttle had been flying a few dozen kilometres away from the space station, watching and recording everything that happened…and the aliens had to know where it was. Escape was probably impossible. “Sir…”

  “Focus,” Kane snapped harshly, as he brought up the weapons console. The shuttle had never been intended as any kind of warship and it had been a new addition, but they might manage to take a bite out of the aliens before they were blown away. The alien ships were spreading out, taking out satellites with some kind of rail gun-like weapon…and he knew that Earth was rapidly being knocked out of space. The aliens would take and hold LEO…and further resistance would become almost impossible. “Concentrate on your duties!”

  The shuttle orientated towards the lead alien ship, now boosting towards them with effortless ease, not even making any attempt to hide from the shuttle’s sensors. It was a gesture of contempt for the human race, Kane was sure, and one he intended to ensure cost them. The alien ship was the size of a small wet-navy destroyer, larger than anything humanity had launched into space, and yet…it wasn't doing anything impossible. It was bound by the same laws of physics as Kane and his own ship.

  “Weapons online,” Sonja said. Her voice had steadied as she pulled herself together. Like him, she had probably accepted that they were both dead; it was only a matter of time. “I have a track on the incoming ship…”

  “Fire,” Kane ordered. The shuttle jerked once as two missiles were launched from the open cargo bay. They didn’t have nuclear warheads, an oversight he cursed silently under his breath, but if they hit the alien craft, they would do some damage. The aliens probably couldn’t evade them at such distances, either; unlimited by concerns for human pilots, the missiles were travelling much faster than any manned ship already. “Bring up the second pod and…”

  The first missile exploded, a good five kilometres from the alien ship. Kane spared the telemetry a glance and realised that the aliens had somehow shot the missile down with a point defence system, probably a laser. The second missile followed moments later, while the big alien craft orientated itself on the shuttle. Alarms started to ring in the shuttle as the forward heat shield, designed to shield the crew from the fury of returning to Earth, started to melt under the alien bombardment. The alarms grew shriller as the lasers swept across the protective covers over the cockpit windows; Kane saw red light starting to burn through as the shuttle started to spin helplessly in space.

  He
looked across at Sonja. “I'm sorry,” he said, reaching out and taking her hand. “I wish that…”

  The alien lasers punched through the hull. A moment later, the wave of heat reached the remaining fuel in the shuttle’s tank and Discovery, one of three remaining space shuttles, exploded in a ball of fire. The alien craft moved slowly through the wreckage, paying a moment of respect to the crew, and then returned to its attack profile. The remaining satellites had to be wiped out of space.

  ***

  The entire space station was shaking madly. Francis heard the sound of tearing metal as the station spun through space, the noise somehow overcoming the noise of the alarms blaring out as the space station was torn apart. The status display on the wall was showing hundreds of red icons, almost obscuring the image of the space station itself, before it blinked out of existence, revealing that the power was failing. He caught on, desperately, to the side of his chair, just as he heard the dread noise of an air leak. The habitation module had been breached.

  This can’t be happening, he thought, dazed. The sudden rush of air towards the breach was pulling at him. He saw one of the space station’s crewmembers flying towards the breach and then out into space, pulled helplessly along by the rush of air…and then he saw one of the ambassadors following him. It looked like Bai Li, to him; the Chinese ambassador was merely the second victim of the aliens. This can’t be happening…

  A hand caught on to his arm and he turned, automatically, to see Gary waving a mask at him. Gratefully, he took it; he hadn’t even realised that the air was racing out of the compartment, leaving him with nothing to breath. He saw Sophia, one of her hands turning black and blue in the fading light, take a second mask and breathing desperately through it; he couldn’t see the Russian or the Frenchman at all. He concluded, as the seeping cold started to filter into his system, that they were both dead. The air was starting to slow now, leaving them completely dependent on the masks and their links to the emergency air storage units; he said a silent prayer of thanks for the NASA genius who had designed the protective outfits.

  We should have been in spacesuits, he thought. It was becoming harder and harder to think; his head was pounding away like mad. An hour ago, they’d been so hopeful about the meeting…and now the aliens had simply opened fire. It was crazy; had they really come hundreds of light years just to start a fight? He didn’t have any illusions as to how long he would survive the coming few hours; as long as they were using the masks, they couldn’t reach the escape pod…assuming that it was still intact. Even if they did reach it, the aliens might target it on the way down, which would mean certain death. If Discovery was still in orbit, the crew might manage to pick up the survivors, but somehow he doubted that the aliens would give them that chance. He’d read a thousand different versions of the alien invasion story in the fortnight since he’d known he was going to meet the aliens…and all of them warned that the aliens would seek to control space. Given how weak Earth’s defences actually were…

  The cold was growing colder, somehow. The station was still spinning, providing the semblance of gravity, but he could see the hull buckling under the pressure. A moment later, a new rent appeared in the side of the module, tearing open and revealing the spinning starfield outside. For a moment, he saw Earth, growing larger in the growing breech in the hull…and wondered if the entire station was plunging down towards the planet. It would destroy them without any need for further expenditure of alien weapons. It was so hard to think now…

  Something moved at the edge of his perception. He turned slowly, feeling his body slowly turning to ice, and saw something moving towards them, coming through the steadily growing rent in the hull. It looked human, at first, and he wondered if one of the crew had managed to don a spacesuit, but as it came closer, manoeuvring with the aid of a small gas pack mounted on its back, he realised that it was humanoid, but far from human. It was impossible to make out any features in the black spacesuit, if spacesuit it was, but all the proportions were wrong. Looking at the featureless humanoid, Francis realised that it was moving…oddly, as if it had grown up on a very different world. The alien came closer and closer…and then one hand reached out and pulled Gary’s air tube free of the wall.

  Gary thrashed, desperately, as he started to run out of air. The alien ignored his struggles and carefully pulled him away from the wall and into an inflatable bubble, leaving him floating in the middle of the room. Francis stared, convinced that the alien intended to kill them all personally, and then he realised that Gary was breathing normally, inside his bubble. A moment later, the alien pulled Sophia free of her chair and added her to his catch, seemingly unconcerned or unaware that she was female. A second bubble inflated and the alien pushed Philippe into its warm confinement, and then added Stanislav and Damiani’s body to the catch. A third bubble inflated and Francis cringed as the alien reached for him, breaking the air hose with one hand and pushing him forward into the bubble. He fought to prevent himself from breathing, irrationally terrified that the aliens breathed poison, but in the end he had to take a breath. The air was hotter and dryer than the ISS had been, almost like being in a desert, but it was breathable. A wide-eyed Katy Garland, one of the scientists on the ISS, joined him; the alien left the remaining bodies behind, perhaps for later recovery. Damiani and the remainder of the crew had to be dead.

  Damn you, Francis thought, staring at the alien shape. The alien’s features were completely hidden, but he tried, desperately, to gain a sense of how his – or her – body language worked. It was impossible and he gave it up after a few moments of struggle, choosing instead to lean back and watch as the alien started to tow his – he decided to think of the alien as male until he knew for sure – human captives out towards the rent in the hull. A moment of insane panic swept up in his mind as the alien tugged them out of the hull and into space, Earth glowing below them as they were dragged towards the alien ship. The parasite vessel, a blocky shape reminiscent of Thunderbird Two, awaited them.

  “No,” Katy said, her voice breaking with shock. “Sir, look…”

  Francis followed her gaze back towards the ISS. The station had looked fragile when he’d first seen it…and now, all of his fears seemed to be coming true. The ISS was slowly tearing itself apart, spinning in space and flickering with light as the solar power panels came apart. The once-neat modules were torn and broken; he felt a bitter lump in his throat as the alien pulled them through a hatch into a small chamber. It was as featureless as the alien helmet and protective spacesuit, but there were seven other aliens in the chamber, watching emotionlessly as the humans were escorted forward.

  Of course, they could be gloating, Francis thought, bitterly. He’d given up most science-fiction because of its reliance on space barbarians…and an hour ago, he would have sworn that they didn’t exist. Of course, the Soviet Union or the Communist Chinese had managed to accomplish wonders, despite having a very unfree society…and the more repressive states on present-day Earth could simply buy most of the items they couldn’t produce for themselves. It seemed impossible that the aliens could have so much without developing democracy, but they might have somehow accomplished it…or maybe they were a hive mind, or…endlessly, he contemplated the problem, using it as a way of avoiding the real question. What were they going to do with their captives?

  Reality intruded as the lead alien pulled out a sharp knife and started to cut the bubble open. Katy screamed as the alien pulled her out and left her floating in the room; Francis, more sedately, followed her a moment later. An alien stepped forward, somehow walking on the deck despite the lack of gravity, and caught him. He saw a second flashing knife and feared the worst, but all the alien did was slice all of his clothes away from his body. The protective outfit might have protected against the vacuum, but it was no protection against the knife, which cut through it sharply and left him floating naked in space. The aliens showed no interest in their human captives once they were naked, transferring out the remains of
their clothes and various electronic gadgets through a tube, leaving the humans floating helplessly in the middle of the room.

  Bastards, Francis thought angrily, trying not to look at either of the two girls. They’d taken four men captive and two women, and they’d stripped them all. It made a certain kind of sense – the aliens might not recognise a human weapon on sight, so they’d removed anything that could possibly be a weapon – but it was inhuman. The thought made him smile, bitterly. They were in a very inhuman position. The aliens just…watched them, unconcerned by their protests or attempts to talk. Francis tried to speak directly to one of the aliens, but got no response, not even a sign that the alien could even hear him. It was like dealing with robots, or automations.