Outside Context Problem: Book 02 - Under Foot

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Understood,” Ester said. The Government had just put enough power to destroy a fair-sized city in her hands, with clearance to even decide the target! The radar network might be frayed, but it could still track clusters of alien craft marshalling over the surrounding area before flying into Israel. “Beginning confirmation procedure…now.”

  She wiped her fingertips and pressed them against the sensor, half-hoping that it would reject her identify and automatically crash and burn the entire system. It didn’t; a computer keypad blinked up on the touch-sensitive screen, inviting her to enter the next set of codes. Her fingers danced over the console, activating the system and priming the warhead. The missile, hidden in a secure complex half a mile away from her position, was ready and waiting to be fired.

  “Enter the targeting coordinates now,” she said, quickly. If they delayed too long, the alien craft would be gone and the weapon would be wasted. There weren't enough of such weapons to waste. “Confirm them, and then enter the secondary code.”

  “Confirmed,” the operator said. “Code inserted, now.”

  Ester looked up at the symbols representing the alien craft, gathering for an attack on Israel. There were thirty of them, nearly a complete formation, assuming the Mossad’s data was correct. There was no time to lose.

  “Fire,” she ordered.

  The missile showed up clearly on the display as it raced towards its target. She’d primed it carefully, ensuring that it would miss cleanly – if it had been carrying a conventional warhead – and deterring the aliens from dodging or trying to shoot it down. They seemed to ignore missiles that weren't actually tracking them, but that would change very soon. The Americans had dreamed up the concept for defending their airspace against the Soviet Union, but no one had ever actually put the concept into practice, until now. It was about to be tested.

  “Detonation,” the operator said. The screen went white and fuzzy. A moment later, they heard the sound echoing through the air. “The warhead detonated.”

  Ester said nothing. The missile had been tipped with a nuclear warhead, configured to produce as much blast as possible. If the aliens could only absorb a certain amount of energy before their drive systems overloaded and collapsed, the nuke should have been enough to overwhelm every last drive field in the area. She hoped – no one, not even the Americans, had tested the concept against alien craft. If they’d survived that, well…she didn’t know what they’d do, or how they’d retaliate. They hadn’t retaliated against the Americans, after all…

  The screen cleared slowly. The nuclear warhead had been configured to produce as little EMP as possible, but the detonation had produced a torrent of energy that had blinded the radars. Now, she looked up into open air, and saw nothing. The alien craft were gone. They might have fled, but she knew, somehow, that they hadn’t had time to flee. They’d been caught in the blast and destroyed. Perhaps the rest of the aliens would learn a little caution, or perhaps they’d just keep on hacking away at Israel until the country fell.

  “Contact the Jericho Compound,” she ordered, suddenly feeling very tired. “Inform them…mission accomplished. All targets destroyed.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (Occupied)

  Day 177

  “She’s nearly there,” Sergeant Kalid Burke muttered, watching from his vantage point. “Don’t stop her now.”

  The truck had passed through the first checkpoint without incident, much to his relief. The last time the resistance in Saudi Arabia had tried to slip a car bomb through the defences, the alien sensors had picked up the explosive residue on the vehicle and they’d blown it up from a safe distance – safe, at least, for them. Over twenty humans had died in that explosion. Kalid and the rest of the team had packed the truck as carefully as they could, then washed it thoroughly, moved it to a second location, and washed it again. Unless the aliens possessed technology that could actually see inside the truck – they’d used lead shielding to block out x-rays – they shouldn’t have the slightest idea that they’d just allowed a bomb to slip inside their security perimeter. He watched, bracing himself for disaster, as the truck was briefly inspected by a pair of collaborators, who flirted with the driver before waving her through. They hadn’t noticed!

  His grandfather had recommended the driver, promising Kalid that she was a religious fanatic who would have gone to Iraq to die, if her parents had granted her permission to go. Saudi women still tended to surprise him; some were submissive, at least in the open, some fought for everything they could get from their parents and the religious authorities, and some were more religious than any man, praying at all hours of the day. His mother had told him that Saudi women tended to suffer from mental health problems as their lives wore on and they realised they’d never be anything more than things – as far as their menfolk were concerned – yet things had been improving, until the aliens had arrived. They’d found some allies among feminist groups, but mostly their collaborators had savaged Saudi women as much as the men. Kalid found it hard to blame them. The powerless always tended to kick those lower than them.

  The irony struck him and he smiled dryly. Years ago, one of his instructors at Hereford had told him a story about the Middle East. He’d been on deployment to the region during the Gulf War and he’d been attached to an Egyptian unit when Saddam started tossing missiles at Israel. The Egyptians had shouted ‘Allah Ackbar’ in delight, forgetting, for the moment, that they were on the same side as the Israelis. Saudi Arabia seemed to be having the same problem. With their tormentors beating up the Israelis, some seemed to find it a cause for cheer, before remembering that the Israelis and Saudis shared a common enemy. Some of the resistance had even seriously suggested halting operations until after Israel was destroyed. Kalid had refused, pointing out that the Israelis wouldn’t survive forever and when they were finished, the aliens would deploy more of their strength to the streets of Saudi, perhaps even obliterate the fighters in Mecca. They had to take advantage of the Alien-Israel War while it lasted, and the reports suggested that it wasn't going to last very long.

  He checked his watch as the truck advanced through the checkpoint and towards the target, the main alien governmental building in Riyadh. It had served the last government well – although most of the real decisions had been made in the hundreds of palaces the various princes had built before the aliens descended and forced them to flee or die – and had been shamefully surrendered to the aliens without a fight. But then, perhaps it wasn't surprising, for many of the mundane positions in the building had been held by guest workers. The Saudis had even relied upon outsiders to run their government! Kalid couldn’t understand why the country had lasted as long as it had.

  Time’s nearly up, he reminded himself. It was true in more ways than one. It was hard to get any accurate information on the progress of the war over Israel – the BBC was maintaining a studied neutrality that somehow failed to provide any useful information – but by all accounts, it didn’t look good. Israel had used nuclear weapons against clouds of alien craft, a tactic that smacked of desperation, yet the aliens had adapted and started shooting down any missile that came in their general direction. Israel had almost no depth at all that it could trade for time. The aliens could just keep hammering away at their defences until they finally collapsed. There was even a report that suggested that Israel had pressed Arab aircraft into service to help stem the alien attacks, and yet it had accomplished nothing.

  He looked back down at the truck and winced inwardly. His one meeting with the driver had been…odd. She’d worn a heavy veil and refused to even think of looking directly at him, while her father had stood behind her, half-scared of his own daughter. Kalid hadn’t sensed such fanaticism in the worst male terrorists he’d taken out back when the world made sense, back before the aliens. He didn’t even know how she could drive – women weren't allowed to drive in Saudi, although plenty had been caught behind the wheel dressed as men – but so far she hadn’t m
ade a single mistake. Even if she were caught now, it wouldn’t bring the entire plan crashing down. The poor bitch had done her part splendidly.

  The tricky part had been bribing the local Order Police. The collaborators often refused bribes from the Saudis themselves on principle, beating or killing the men who attempted to offer them money or goods. He’d had to send Gavin to offer the bribes, fearing that his friend would be taken into custody or killed, but the bribes had gone down nicely. Corruption was a fact of life all across the Middle East and even an alien invasion hadn’t been able to change that. In exchange for gold, jewels and some rare bottles of wine, their source had provided them with papers that would allow a supply truck to enter the governmental building. He shook his head again as the truck reached its final destination. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it. How could they be so stupid?

  “Now,” he said, and covered his eyes. The world seemed to turn white for a moment even through his hands, and then the light faded away into fires and the sound of shooting. He opened his eyes to see the burning building – the blast had knocked a massive hole in the side of the building – and dead or dying collaborators and aliens. The blast alone would have wrecked the collaborators and their operation, but Kalid had a far deeper plan. He keyed his radio and issued a second command. “Engage.”

  He heard more shooting breaking out all over the city as the various teams produced weapons and started to engage their targets. Alien patrols, Order Police units, known collaborators and people who worked with the aliens…all were targeted for death. The aliens would have so much trouble sorting out which was the real attack – and separating it out from the hundreds of seemingly random attacks – that they’d have time to get in a heavy blow. He drew his pistol and ran down the stairs as the shooting outside grew louder. The first assault teams, concealed in other trucks well away from the blast, were already dismounting and moving into position. A handful had even been soldiers who’d somehow escaped the round-ups after the aliens had landed. He was privately grateful for their presence. The ones who’d thought quickly enough to escape were the ones he needed. Naturally, they had never been offered a chance at promotion.

  “Get in there now,” he snapped, to the leader of the first unit. “Kill all of the collaborators and free the prisoners!”

  The compound looked far worse now that the fire had really caught hold, sparking old memories in his mind. Hundreds of dead collaborators – and innocents who had only been visiting for the day, his mind insisted on reminding him – were strewn around the area. He nodded to the second team as he reached the first alien bodies and motioned for them to carry out their mission, stripping the aliens of anything useful and transporting it to one of the safe houses in the city. If the aliens didn’t track it down in a hurry, he’d have it transported out of the city to the coast, where a Royal Navy submarine would pick it up and transport it to Diego Garcia. The researchers there would be glad of an insight into alien technology.

  He ran through the bomb crater – there was nothing left of the driver or her truck – and into the wrecked building. It creaked alarmingly as the flames licked away at the base structure – if his grandfather had been right, the contractors would have skimped on the work and used substandard materials – but he kept going. Gavin and several of the former soldiers came up behind him and joined him, moving from room to room. A pair of stunned collaborators lay on the ground, staring up at the insurgents with wide terrified eyes. He didn’t give them an opportunity to beg for their lives. The soldiers fell on them with drawn knives and cut their throats.

  The next room held a pair of stunned alien workers, who had been working on a strange mix of human and alien technology. Kalid shot them both before one of them could try to fight – experience had shown that the workers could fight if they had no choice – and studied their machine, wishing he could transport it out of the compound and get it to the submarine. There was no hope of even getting it out of the room, so he pulled a timed detonator out of his pocket and thrust it into the middle of the odd device. It would explode when they were gone and add to the confusion.

  “Down here,” one of the former soldiers called. “I found the cells!”

  The building had once held a particular kind of prisoner, a person who had dared stand up for their right to be free. Now, the collaborators used it to hold people who displeased them, including many of their former masters. The stink was horrifying as they forced open the doors and allowed the naked men and women to stagger out, shaking on unsteady legs. Islam ordained that its adherents were to wash regularly and thoroughly, yet the collaborators had denied their prisoners any soap or water. Some of the girls looked really bad. It was easy to guess what they’d been through. He hoped, despite himself, that they’d been former mistresses. No one could have inflicted such damage on a person without a degree of personal hatred being involved. They had paid for their crimes now.

  “Get them up and out of the building,” he ordered, tartly. The one thing they could be grateful for was that the former justice system – the injustice system, more like – was permanently defunct. The raped girls would not be tried for the crime of being raped. “Did you find anything else?”

  “A pair of collaborators here,” someone shouted. “They’re not in any state to talk.”

  Kalid looked up. The air was growing thick and the building was creaking alarmingly. “Shoot them and then let’s get out of here,” he said. “I don’t think we’re going to have much more time before all hell breaks loose.”

  They ran back through the building and out into the open. The sound of shooting had only grown louder and he realised that some of the collaborators had attempted a counterattack, bringing in guards from other checkpoints to engage the resistance teams. Some of them were pinned down under heavy and accurate fire from several nearby buildings, others were deploying rapidly. They’d have some problems operating the armoured cars, he hoped; they’d bribed one of the mechanics taking care of them to put grit in their fuel tanks. He doubted that the mechanic would have been able to get to every car, however, and then there were the alien tanks. How long would it be until they redeployed their vehicles to put down the insurgency?

  He felt a moment of professional envy. A tank that could literally cross water, mud and quicksand without getting bogged down had been the holy grail of tank designers ever since the first lumbering beast had churned into action on the Western Front. The aliens could have tank columns heading towards the city now, backed up by their aircraft and thousands of warriors, or they could have decided to simply write off the city and drop a nuke on it. He looked over towards the west and saw hundreds of plumes of smoke rising up into the sky. Whatever else happened, it would take the aliens time and effort to regain control of the city. The hundreds of mines and IEDs they’d scattered around would see to that.

  A bullet whistled past him and he threw himself to the ground, rolling over to see a collaborator wearing a black uniform shooting at him. He snapped off a pair of quick shots and saw one of them strike the collaborator in the belly, sending him to the ground vomiting blood. The counterattack was growing more orderly now and it wouldn’t be long before they drove the resistance out completely, so he keyed his radio and issued a second instruction.

  “Go,” he ordered. “Go now.”

  He pulled out the flare gun and fired a green shell into the air. Green was the colour of Islam, but it also had another meaning, at least as far as the resistance was concerned. Retreat at once. He fired another shot towards a collaborator and crawled as fast as he could towards the remains of the checkpoints. The other trucks would already be on their way and no one wanted to be in the area when they arrived. They’d been positioned in a car park, their engines idling, for far too long, but no one had been able to think of an alternative. They had to be in position to reach the governmental compound quickly. He pulled himself to his feet and ran with the rest of the fighters, running for his life. The first truck w
as already turning the corner.

  He’d never been comfortable near any amount of high explosive, a trait his instructors had taught him to use to his advantage. The trucks were packed with enough explosive to take out a city block, each. He ran past them and onwards towards the safe house, hoping that they could meld back into the city’s population before the aliens clamped down hard. Behind them, the trucks kept moving, driving right towards the Order Police. There was a brief burst of gunfire…

  The shockwave knocked him to the ground. Cursing, he picked himself up and kept running. Someone had been stupid enough to fire at a truck driving right towards them…but then, they’d had little choice. The other trucks detonated in quick succession, completing the destruction of the compound and the defending Order Policemen. The aliens would have to rebuild large parts of their organisation from scratch. The other attacks all across the city would have bled them white.

  Two massive alien craft roared overhead and came to a sudden stop over the burning compound, dropping hundreds of warriors down towards the ground. The pre-positioned mortars opened fire at once, dropping high-explosive shells among the warriors before they could react, killing or wounding dozens of them. The shells kept coming until one of the alien craft opened fire on the mortar’s location, blowing away entire buildings to silence the mortar. Kalid felt a moment of envy – they’d never been allowed to do anything like that to silence mortars back in Afghanistan – before he turned and kept running. There was no point in a stand-up battle with the aliens. They held the advantage now.

  Bet we put a fucking knife in your pride, you wankers, he thought, as he ran. Behind him, he could hear the sound of alien weapons as they cleared away the last insurgents, the ones who had disobeyed orders and carried on fighting. They’d be coming out after the rest soon and by then, he wanted to be off the streets and looking as innocent as possible. He heard a thunderous roar in the distance and saw a skyscraper collapse as an explosion blew away its supporting structure, leaving him wondering who had destroyed the building and why. His grandfather wasn't the only person plotting against the aliens by a long chalk. There were religious factions they considered too radical to be trusted.