He met Gary’s eyes briefly and saw the hell in the former ISS commander’s eyes. He’d lost his command and almost all of his crew…and, now, he was a prisoner. The aliens had him under their thumbs and there was no way out, not without weapons. Francis lifted an eyebrow, wondering if the far more experienced Gary had any idea what was going on, but the former commander merely shook his head. They were trapped.
A dull rumble ran through the alien craft. Francis felt the craft shift under silent acceleration and felt himself wafting towards the wall. The aliens ignored their struggles and allowed them to grip hold of handles set into the wall, while the craft shivered slightly as it moved on in its orbit. Francis hoped, despite knowing that it would mean their certain death, that they were under attack from the ground, but he knew that that was unlikely. The aliens were probably safe from anything that the human race could throw at them.
The rumbling grew louder. They were on the move.
***
Philippe Laroche was not a man given to panic. Unlike most of his contemporaries – and his fellows who’d been onboard the ISS – he was used to being in stressful situations in his roving brief as the President of France’s special representative. He’d been held hostage in terrorist training camps, threatened by armed militants in countries where France had ‘interests,’ and fired upon by one side or the other in various civil wars. He knew enough to be fairly certain that the aliens didn’t intend to kill them outright – they could have destroyed the ISS completely or merely left them to suffocate or freeze to death – and that meant that, sooner or later, they would be talking. It was a power game, like those played by human militants; they would do what they had to do to show that they were The Boss…and then they would talk. Being naked didn’t bother him, much; he’d been stripped naked before, by at least a dozen highly suspicious factions.
Besides, it’s not as if the aliens are interested in human bodies, he thought, and concentrated on acting harmless. Stanislav looked as if he was furious – he might even have jumped the aliens if they’d been kept in gravity – and the American representative looked to be on the edge. Sophia, the UN representative, was shaking madly, her eyes wide with panic and fear. Naked, she was pretty…and almost completely helpless. Philippe watched with a certain private amusement as she clutched the handles and waited for death. It would be a long time in coming.
The pressure pushing them against the wall suddenly eased. Like Francis, Philippe had considered the possibility that the craft was under attack, but it wasn't something he could do anything about. Chances were if the craft was destroyed, they would die before they knew what had hit them, but in any case there was nothing they could do about it. The aliens would talk to them, in time, and when they did, he would be prepared to open a line of communication. Perhaps he could even convince them that Earth was harmless and attacking the planet was hardly productive.
He turned his attention, briefly, to the aliens. They were as featureless as ever, but the more he studied them, the more he could pick out slight differences in height and, he suspected, weight. If they were alien soldiers, they would be fit and healthy, but he couldn’t tell how strong they were, relative to a human soldier. Philippe had more experience with the military, particularly the French covert operations unit, than he cared to admit…and he found himself studying the aliens from a tactical point of view. It was a shame that he couldn’t see their weapons in action, but…
Another dull thump echoed through the ship. A moment later, the aliens started to pull the humans off the handles and escort them through a door that had just appeared in the featureless hull metal, down towards an unknown destination. Philippe forced a smile onto his face as an alien started to pull him along. If he were right, the alien ship had just docked with their larger mothership…and they were being taken to their leader. Philippe could talk to him then…
And see what advantage he could draw from the nightmare.
Chapter Seven
Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
-President Roosevelt, Dec 8th, 1941
The massive display fuzzed once and blanked out.
The President stared in horror as the display flickered and then reset to its default position, showing the military might of the United States of America. One moment, the alien craft had been approaching the International Space Station, the next…the aliens had opened fire. Paul glanced at the President and wished that he hadn’t; the President looked like a man who’d just discovered that his loving wife had been cheating on him for years, shocked, helpless and terrified. The entire chamber was filling with voices as everyone started to talk at once, trying to make their opinions heard over the racket…as new alarms rang in the air.
“We just lost Andrews,” one of the technicians shouted. A new red icon, then another, then another, appeared on the display. Paul watched as dozens of icons blossomed into existence, climbing rapidly into the hundreds, each one covering the location of a major airfield, civilian or military. The aliens – and it had to be the aliens – weren't discriminating; every air base or civilian airport in America was coming under attack. “Sir, the entire air base is off the net!”
“Quiet,” General Hastings bellowed. Silence fell, broken only by a chain of incoming reports. “Mr President, the country is under attack!”
The President looked up from his chair. He appeared to have aged overnight. “General…are you sure that it’s the aliens?”
Paul had no doubts. “If they were the Russians, or the Chinese, we would have had plenty of advance warning,” he said, as new red icons flashed up on the display. The Atlantic Fleet, he saw through a haze of disbelief, had just lost contact with the Ronald Reagan. A space-based weapon – a kinetic energy weapon - could have sunk the massive carrier within seconds. “Sir, the aliens fired on the space station…”
“The satellite network is failing, sir,” one of the technicians shouted, into the silence. “All satellites; civilian, military…ours, the Russians, everyone… they’re going down!”
The display altered as, one by one, the satellites started to wink out of existence. The entire network of radars and observatories was falling apart as powerful radars were targeted from orbit and destroyed, but enough remained to show the alien craft as they encircled the Earth, firing constantly down on the surface of the planet. Radars that could track billiard balls in orbit had no problem tracking the precisely targeted kinetic energy weapons – they couldn’t be anything else - as they slashed down and destroyed their targets. Bases, airports, ships…all were being targeted and destroyed.
”Mr President,” General Hastings reported. “We have to engage the enemy!”
“We have to get the President out of here,” Deborah snapped. Her face had tightened sharply. “They might go for Washington next!”
“It has to be a mistake,” Spencer babbled. “They…they can’t do this to us!”
“It’s happening,” General Hastings growled. “Mr President, do I have your permission to engage the enemy before we lose everything?”
The President seemed to stagger inwardly. “Yes,” he said, shaking his head hopelessly. Paul realised, with a sudden moment of fear, that the President was almost beyond his limits. He couldn’t deal with the steady destruction of America. “General, hit them. Hit them hard!”
“We just received an update from the Russians,” someone shouted. “They’re engaging with everything they have!”
Or so they claim, Paul thought coldly. Russia was actually more vulnerable to precise orbital bombardment than the United States. The Russian ABM and ASAT weapons had never been tested under such circumstances, any more than the American weapons had been tested. God alone knew how well they would perform…and how long the enemy would allow them to maintain their missile bases on the ground. The aliens would track the weapons as soon as they were
launched and destroying the bases would be one certain way of limiting their deployment.
“Clear to engage, clear to engage,” General Hastings snapped. “Transmit the engagement signal to all units earmarked for Skywalker; fire at will, I repeat, fire at will!”
“Transmitting,” one of the technicians said. The display updated itself rapidly as THAAD missiles started to launch from their launch sites, scattered over the United States. Another red icon blinked up as an alien kinetic weapon came down near New York. “Signal sent…”
“God help us all,” the President breathed.
***
“We have an engagement command,” Captain Duke Connolly snapped, as the Boeing 747-400F twisted in the air. The crew had been preparing desperately to engage the alien ships before they got around to destroying the Boeing 747, but without clear orders to engage, they couldn’t proceed. “Get me a track on an alien craft, now!”
“Here, sir,” one of the radar operators snapped. Normally, the Boeing 747 would get a direct uplink from the ground or space-based radar systems, but now the latter were completely out of action and the former were being hammered from space. The Boeing 747 carried its own radar dome, but if they lit it up, they might as well call the aliens directly and ask to be killed. The radar pulses would almost certainly draw alien fire. “There are four alien craft within engagement range.”
“You are cleared to open fire,” Connolly said. “Burn them out of space.”
The lights dimmed slightly as the aircraft rerouted power to the laser. The modified Boeing 747-400F – classed as a Boeing YAL-1 Airborne Laser weapons system – carried a megawatt-class chemical oxygen iodine laser that could engage targets in the air or near-space. It had been designed to engage incoming ballistic missiles, burning through their heat shields and destroying them a long time before they could detonate, but it could be used to engage alien spacecraft as well. Indeed, there had been a movie made around that very premise, although Connolly had gone to see it with his girlfriend…and had laughed so much that they’d asked him to leave the cinema.
He watched as the alien spacecraft’s orbit took it closer to their position in the atmosphere. The other Boeing 747’s would be engaging as well, along with a surprising number of ABM and ASAT systems, but no one knew what sort of armour the alien craft carried. It might even have a perfect shield against laser fire, in which case their attack was worse than useless…but as he saw chunks of the hull burning off, he realised that the laser was having an effect. The only question was how badly they were damaging the craft…and how the aliens would respond…
“Laser fire,” the pilot snapped suddenly. The 747 lurched as the pilot threw the aircraft into an evasive pattern, trying to break free of the alien attack, even as the computers automatically kept the chemical laser burning away at the alien ship. The alien craft appeared to be in trouble, but how much trouble. “Sir…”
The plane screeched like a living thing. “Eject,” the pilot bellowed suddenly. “Eject…”
Connolly and his crew had no time to react. A moment later, the alien laser weapon burned through the aircraft, ignited the jet fuel, and the entire aircraft vanished inside a white-hot burst of fire.
***
The THAAD launch site had been carefully positioned well away from any civilian targets that might be caught up in the midst of an alien attack. Furthermore, the only radar and targeting data the site used came through a landline from a radar site twenty kilometres to the north, further concealing the launch vehicles from alien detection. The crewmen hadn’t been expecting to see action – the only excitement they’d seen since their activation as part of the Missile Defence Agency had been a handful of test flights and exercises, half of which had been effective failures when the test missiles had failed before the THAAD could be launched – but as soon as the aliens had opened fire on the space station, they’d taken up their positions and prepared to fire.
“Clear,” Colonel Young shouted, as he picked up the warning message from NORAD. The landline-based defence communications network, at least, was intact; satellite communications appeared to be completely down. The alien craft were becoming harder to track as the radar stations were destroyed, or they beamed jamming signals into the atmosphere, but there was enough data to coordinate the engagement. “Prepare to engage!”
The THAAD - Terminal High Altitude Area Defence missile system – had been modified several times since it’s origin as a missile intended to engage incoming targets on a terminal boost. The growing need for a working ASAT capability, in response to Chinese and Russian developments of comparable systems – and the Chinese had never accepted the right of other countries to fly spy satellites over their borders – had pushed the designers into adding an ASAT capability, with the net result that the THAAD could engage targets in low Earth orbit, even if they weren't entering the atmosphere. It was that capability that was going to be put to the test.
“Targets locked,” the operator shouted back. “Launcher one targeted on UFO #1, launcher two…”
Colonel Young listened as the operator finished outlining the targeting patterns. The small amount of tactical data they’d pulled off the network suggested that the aliens used lasers themselves, which suggested that the THAAD missiles would be engaged as they raced towards space, but there would be enough missiles to make engaging them difficult. Political considerations had prevented the use of nuclear warheads – and practical considerations, such as the possibility of fratricide, had limited the Missile Defence Agencies attempts to have that ban overturned – but the THAAD missiles carried a powerful warhead. A single hit would be enough to devastate an alien spacecraft, unless they had some armour or force shields out of science-fiction.
“Engage,” he ordered, and blew a whistle. “Move!”
A thunderous roar split the air as the first missile launched from its launcher and grabbed for height. A second followed, and then a third, while the crews abandoned their vehicles and ran for the shelters. The THAAD missiles were almost undetectable until they opened fire – they’d been well camouflaged and observed perfect emission security – but now the enemy ships would be reacting to their presence. Colonel Young had seen simulations that suggested that they would be engaged almost at once by the aliens, and others that suggested that they would be left alone…but he’d placed his money on the former. The THAAD launch site was about to become very unhealthy for human life.
He looked up into the sky as he ran. Space seemed to be glinting with light, not just twinkling stars, but the presence of falling stars and space debris. The blasted remains of fifty years of space exploration and utilisation was falling into the atmosphere and burning up. A particularly large streak of fire tumbled silently towards the ground and he wondered, bitterly, if it was the remains of the International Space Station, before realising that it was in the wrong orbit. The THAAD missiles were fading out as the final missile launched from the truck…and then he found himself facedown on the ground. A thunderous shockwave had knocked him over, smashing him down before he could react, or even realise that they were under attack. It took all of his strength and determination to roll over and check his body, before glancing over at their former positions…
The aliens hadn’t scored a direct hit on the launchers, but they hadn’t had to score more than a glancing blow with their weapons to destroy the THAAD launchers. The kinetic weapon had blasted all three of the vehicles to atoms; he couldn’t even see any flaming debris, apart from some burning patches on the ground. Their tents and camouflage had been completely destroyed by the alien attack.
“Call in,” he ordered dryly. The crew had a landline station a kilometre from their position. There was little point in using a cell phone or a radio; the odds were that they would either not work or draw fire themselves. “Jock, report to HQ and tell them what’s happened to us.”
They’d given it, literally, their best shot…but now they were out of the game.
He looked up
at the twinkling lights in the sky and shivered.
***
Corporal Nathan Loomis gunned the Humvee’s engines and silently cursed Sergeant Bradbury under his breath. The Sergeant had had it in for him ever since he’d been assigned to the high-security protection detail for Area 51, apparently blaming Loomis for his failure to be assigned to a combat zone. Loomis, who had been trained as a guard for USAF facilities on the ground, didn’t have anything like the kind of influence that Bradbury seemed to believe he possessed; the only thing he had that not all USAF perimeter security staff possessed was a perfect security clearance. Area 51, the legendary research site and test bed for advanced military aircraft and technology, could only be guarded by men possessing enough clearance to gain access to the outer levels of security.
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