Outside Context Problem: Book 01 - Outside Context Problem

by Christopher Nuttall

  He nodded towards the big display, showing the current situation. The aliens were still pressing their offensive against the United States and losses were mounting rapidly. A handful of USAF and Air National Guard bases had been rendered completely inoperative and their aircraft – those that had survived – had been redeployed to other military or civilian air bases. The national airports had been rapidly converted into fighter bases – there had been contingency plans for that ever since World War Two – but the aliens had responded by widening the scope of their attacks to take out civilian airports as well. Civilian airports were simply less capable of taking and absorbing damage than their military counterparts. Air travel over the entire United States had become much more hazardous and could no longer be risked for anything but the greatest emergency.

  “Our assets are being worn down day by day,” Wachter said. “Our pilots are growing tired and making mistakes. Our ammunition is starting to run low, even with emergency orders placed at all of the factories and health and safety regulations completely disregarded. We’re losing pilots to errors they would normally never have made, because they’re not getting nearly enough sleep. We’re trying to rush forward the next crop of trainee pilots, but they’ll just be easy targets for the aliens. And, of course, we’re running out of planes. The war is not going well.”

  “I know,” the President said. He looked over at a timer, showing the days left before the alien mothership entered orbit. Once that happened…no one was sure what the aliens would do, but the President suspected that it involved a ground invasion, once the United States had been softened up by the air raids. He liked to think that America wouldn’t be broken so easily – neither Britain nor Germany had been broken by bombing raids in the Second World War – and yet, they were in completely uncharted territory. No one had invaded the United States since 1812.

  The reports made it clear that the fabric of American society was starting to break down. There were reports of food hoarding, looting and panic on the streets. People were buying guns and stockpiling ammunition. States that had enacted harsh gun control legislation were discovering that their citizens suddenly wanted guns to defend themselves and the laws had simply been ignored. The President had never been a gun control advocate – although he conceded that there were some people in the world who should never be trusted with a gun – and while part of him found the whole display to be amusing, he knew that it heralded the breakdown of American society. The trust that formed the underlying basis of that society was being torn apart. People were already starting to look for scapegoats. One nasty riot in San Francisco had seen a left-wing march set upon by a counter-march and over a thousand people hospitalised. There had been a spate of attacks against peace groups, Jews, Muslims and others. It was a nightmarish mess.

  “Then we need to start facing up to the possibility that we might lose the war,” Wachter said. He sounded bitter. The man the President had met as a young officer would never have conceded that the United States could be defeated. He would have been right – then. “We have to start making preparations to carry on the war once the aliens land and occupy the country.”

  “You mean an underground war,” the President said. He had nasty memories of fighting to suppress one in Iraq, yet the Iraqi insurgents had been beaten, long after he’d resigned from the army. Very few insurgencies had ever been successful without massive help from outside and that wasn't likely to happen. Those states that had an interest in helping America would need to keep their resources back to defend themselves. “Has it really come to that?”

  “Yes, Mr President,” Wachter said. They both knew that he was right. “We need to start preparing now. We have thousands of soldiers we can spread out around the country as the first line of resistance. We can set up weapons stockpiles and make preparations to produce more weapons in isolated locations. We can distribute our command network so it won’t go down when the aliens land and destroy the remainder of the official command network. We can…”

  “Tear the country apart,” the President said, slowly. Years ago, General Lee had been faced with the choice between surrendering to General Grant – and ending the Civil War – or scattering his army and engaging in an underground campaign against the North. General Lee had been wise enough to know that the war was over and had surrendered his men, but he’d been surrendering to a fellow American. The South hadn’t done badly in the years following the Civil War – some said that it had done too well – but the aliens would have no interest in rebuilding the United States, unless it was in their image. He didn’t want to admit it, but Wachter was right. They had to start making preparations for defeat.

  A vision seemed to shimmer in front of his eyes. He saw America, not the land of freedom and liberty, but an occupied land under enemy rule. There were alien soldiers marching through the streets, bullying humans as they moved from building to building, perhaps assisted by collaborators, willing or forced into serving the enemy. There were bombs detonating on the streets and shootings every day. There were alien forces advancing through the corn fields of Kansas and climbing the mountains of Virginia, hunting for human resistance fighters. It would be nothing like Iraq. The Americans who had occupied Iraq had no intention of staying for longer than they had to stay. The aliens were coming to a new home. They literally could not go elsewhere.

  He held up a hand. “Make the preparations,” he ordered, simply. “Keep it as secret as you can, just to avert panic.” He looked down at his hands for a long moment. “How long until the survivors of the assault force reach home?”

  “They’re currently in submarines on their way back to the United States,” Wachter said. “Unless the aliens have some way of tracking them underwater and sinking them, we’re looking at around eleven days before they get back home, then perhaps another day or two before we can get them into Washington.”

  “Good,” the President said. “We’re going to need heroes before all of this is done. I intend to tell the world this afternoon about the successful strike on their base, although perhaps I won’t go into specifics. Jones and his people weren't able to deduce what the aliens were doing with human captives and mentioning that will only cause panic.”

  “It might also convince others to rally around the flag,” Wachter pointed out. “There’s still a hard core of idiots who think we started this war and the aliens are here to bring them the New Age of Leo or some crap like that.”

  “True,” the President agreed. “We’ll get that out into the public domain as well.”

  Wachter nodded. “Yes, Mr President,” he said. “Did they identify any of the captive humans?”

  “No, but Jones was at pains to point out that means nothing,” the President said. “They could have been kidnapped from anywhere and no one might even have noticed that they were gone, or they could have been reported dead or…”

  He shrugged. “We’ll run the question past our allies, but I doubt we’ll identify any of them,” he added. “It doesn’t really matter anyway. They’re all dead.”

  “And it might have been for the best,” Wachter agreed. “I’ll get started on the preparations at once.”

  ***

  Washington was a ghost town these days, Abigail decided. The city’s richer and more successful inhabitants had decided to evacuate before the aliens even started their attacks, leaving their homes close to the centre of power for the less dubious safety of their mansions and estates well away from the city, or other cities. The middle-class residents had booked themselves holidays away from the city, taking advantage of their money while it was still worth something, although they might not have jobs waiting for them when they returned. The poorest of the city had rioted when the alien craft had crashed on their heads and FEMA had moved most of the remaining population out of the city. They’d promised that it could be done in hours, but it had taken nearly a week before the city was almost empty. The remainder had chosen to stay and see what happened, either because they didn’t be
lieve in the threat or because they expected Washington to be invaded and intended to fight when the aliens came for the city.

  The other major populations on the ground were soldiers and reporters. The soldiers patrolled the city – Washington was under martial law – and had shot a handful of looters when they’d caught them in the act. Abigail had heard that some of the more liberal reporters intended to brand those soldiers as merciless killers, but somehow she doubted that would get very far. A few hundred other criminals had been lucky and had merely been arrested, transported to one of the stadiums and left there to rot. They’d probably face a civilian judge at the end of the emergency period – if it ever ended – and would probably get away with it. The hundreds of reporters in the city merely reported, although some of the more famous names had decided that their services were required in safer locations. Washington was attacked at least once a day and several reporters had been killed in the crossfire.

  She glanced up sharply as the roar of jet engines echoed over the city and saw a pair of fighter jets making lazy contrails in the sky. It didn’t look as if an attack was inbound, although she’d seen enough to know that the situation could move from peaceful to all-out war within seconds. The news on the alien attacks was largely classified, yet she’d picked up quite a bit, even if she wasn't allowed to broadcast it to the population at large. It wasn't a decision she approved of – there were so many rumours flying around that panic was starting to set in across parts of the country – but it wasn't one she could argue. Fort Leavenworth was currently playing host to several reporters who’d broken censorship and reported on the results of two alien attacks. No one doubted that there was room for plenty more.

  The White House remained miraculously intact, although the same couldn’t be said for much of the rest of Official Washington. Dozens of buildings had been damaged or reduced to outright rubble, from the Pentagon to the Senate. She’d heard several reporters say that it was a shame that the Senators hadn’t been in the building when the aliens had hit it, on the grounds that the country would run a lot smoother and have more money, but she couldn’t agree. Hitting the Senate was a direct blow at the very heart of American democracy. The aliens had probably intended to make a statement, with or without taking out the Senators. Abigail had no difficulty in understanding the statement. They were coming to take over. The White House probably remained intact because the aliens intended to use it for themselves.

  She stepped past a pair of armed Marines after showing them her ID card and pressing her fingers to a fingerprint reader. There was no longer any informality, not when the aliens might be watching and waiting for their own shot at the President, decapitating America’s leadership in one blow. A handful of reporters who’d tried to crash the last press conference had very nearly been shot by the Marines and had been unceremoniously evicted from Washington. There could no longer be a free-for-all. A handful of reporters were invited to each press conference and all footage was shared among the networks, such as they were. The loss of the satellites had sent most of the networks to their knees.

  The old Press Room had had room for hundreds of reporters. The new one barely had room for more than a handful of people, without even a stage for the President to stand on. She wasn't sure why they’d chosen it, although she suspected that the President had to be somewhere near an emergency escape route at all times. The media knew more about the security surrounding the President than the Secret Service was comfortable with, even if it had never been broadcast. The President might have been the most powerful man in the world, yet he could hardly call his life his own.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States.”

  Abigail straightened up, fighting down an absurd desire to salute. The President looked tired and worn, with hardly any make-up or preparation for the press conference. It suggested that he was worse than he looked. As much as politicians sought to deny it, looks were important in politics and appearing haggard and worn sent entirely the wrong message. The war wasn't going well…but then, everyone knew that. The reporters knew the truth.

  “My Fellow Americans,” the President said. It wasn't a live broadcast, of course. That would have revealed the President’s location and the aliens might have tried to attack the White House and take him out. The reporters had cooperated when that had been pointed out to them, although cynics had wondered if that had anything to do with the fact that the reporters would be in the same location. “We have struck a blow against the aliens and hurt them badly.”

  Abigail found herself straightening up sharply. “Days before they landed in New York, we discovered the existence of an alien base at the South Pole,” the President continued. “An attack force composed of Special Forces soldiers was sent to attack it, a mission they successfully completed with the destruction of the entire alien base, along with a number of their fighter craft. The attack force successfully departed the South Pole and is on its way to a base in Africa.

  “The assault force discovered that the aliens have been kidnapping humans from Earth and conducting medical experiments on them. They may have been abducting American citizens for years. Their claims to come in peace are at variance with the facts. We do not know why they carried out such experiments, or what they had in mind, but they showed a frightening lack of concern for human rights. The footage, exposing the true horror of the alien threat, will be released for study by the entire world.”

  He leaned forward. “I ask all American citizens to give thanks to God for the victory and pray for the souls of our fighting men who lost their lives in the battle,” he said. “Their sacrifice may mean that we continue to hold our freedoms, our right to be who we are. They may have struck a decisive blow against the aliens.”

  There was a long pause. “I wish to discuss another matter as well,” the President said. “Over the last few days, there have been hundreds of…incidents involving guns, the gun control lobby, and American citizens desperate to obtain what they believe to be necessary to protect their families against a possible alien invasion. Many citizens have been arrested for violating or trying to violate gun control legislation. A pair of BATF agents has been shot for attempting to arrest others in violation of that legislation – people who were guilty of no other crime.

  “By executive order, I am removing all legislation involving the private possession of firearms, with a single exception,” the President said. “The private possession of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is still forbidden, but all other bans and laws are hereby overturned. Those arrested for possession of illegal weapons will be released from prison and pardoned. I am also removing restraints on private research into firearms development and production. Thank you for your time.”

  The President departed, leaving the reporters behind. Abigail found her mind racing, knowing that WNN would need its own spin on the President’s words. The President had never been a friend to the Gun Control Lobby, yet why would he turn them all into sworn enemies? Why take such a desperate step? The only reason that made sense to her was that it was a tacit admittance that the guns might be needed, and the only reason for that was a possible alien invasion. That, in turn, suggested that the war wasn't going well at all, despite the successful strike on the alien base.

  And that, she knew, was something that could never be broadcast.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Over Virginia, USA

  Day 47

  It was a gamble, one that could cost them their lives, but desperate times required desperate measures. The farm in Virginia had been taken over by the military, who had deployed a dozen AN/TWQ-1 Avenger and MIM-104 Patriot mobile missile launchers to the farm and the surrounding area. Normally, the systems would have their own organic radars sweeping the horizon, but the analysts had concluded that those systems would have given the game away too soon. Using passive sensors only, emplaced near silos or hidden under camouflage, there should be nothing to tip off the aliens that a large section of farmlan
d had suddenly become a great deal more dangerous.

  Lieutenant Andrew Summerlin glanced down at the live feed from the AWACS a few kilometres away and winced. The United States Army Air Defence Artillery had played the Army’s lead role in the fighting against the aliens, although everyone expected that would change when the aliens actually started landing ground troops. Andrew had been deployed to four airbases that had been under attack – along with soldiers and USAF personnel armed with MANPAD system – and fired missiles against attacking alien craft, scoring two hits and a near miss. It hadn’t stopped the final airbase from being battered to uselessness by the aliens, who hadn’t even bothered to engage the air defence systems before vanishing back into space. He'd expected redeployment to another possible target, but instead…

  He looked around at the handful of vehicles scattered around, pretending to be haystacks or civilian vehicles. Everything looked different from the air – or space – and even though he could see through the camouflage, he was fairly sure that the aliens would have problems doing so at high speed. They’d get in at least one good shot before the aliens reacted, if they came overhead in the first place. The plan worried him because it was too dependent upon the aliens playing the role allocated to them, yet there was no other choice. The aliens knew to expect surface-to-air missiles near airbases and the handful of civilian airports that had been pressed into service. They wouldn’t be expecting a missile battery in position miles from anywhere important, or at least that was what the plan said. The United States was vast. It would be difficult to cover all of the United States even if every vehicle in the army were replaced by a mobile missile launcher and the aliens flew freely over much of American territory. They’d been doing it for years, according to the President. It was very definitely payback time.

  His earpiece buzzed. “Make it so,” a voice said, in a passable imitation of Captain Picard. Andrew rolled his eyes as he looked back down at the console. They'd agreed on a set of code phrases for certain situations, yet he knew that the unexpected might occur at any moment. ‘Make it so’ meant that the Dark Shadows were engaging the enemy fighters, before preparing to bug out.