* * *
Francis had started to lose track of time. The alien cell had remained firmly closed and they’d started questioning him at once. Some of the questions had been simple and easy to understand and he’d spent hours explaining how the United States actually worked, others had been plain confusing. The aliens had displayed an image of Bugs Bunny at one point, followed by Bart Simpson, and had asked him to explain just what they were. It just didn’t make sense!
Or maybe it does, he thought, as he found himself being gently awakened by the alien voice. They’d let him sleep in brief periods, but without his watch, it was impossible to tell how long he’d been in the hell the aliens had created for him. It felt as if his entire world had shrunk down to the metal cell and the questioning, impersonal voice. They just kept questioning him… and they never made the same mistake twice. He had started to suspect that he was actually talking to a computer, one with a computer’s odd sense of priorities, but again, it was impossible to tell. The whole position was unpleasantly like some of the drills he’d been run through by the State Department, before he’d been sent to London; they’d known that, these days, Ambassadors were hardly respected by anyone. Francis had once supported measured responses, rather than a modern-day version of the Relief of Peking, but now… now, he would have been grateful to see the United States Marines bursting down the metal hatch to rescue him. Hundreds of kilometres from home, cut off from the handful of remaining humans on the ship, it was easy to believe that he’d been abandoned…
The hatch opening shocked him. The two aliens who stood there beckoned him forward, taking care that he never got between them. Francis found that rather amusing; they’d probably spent most of their lives in zero-gee and they were worried that an out-of-shape ambassador was going to overpower them. Their weapons looked useable, but they might have been keyed to their touch only… and even if he did steal one of the weapons and kill them, where would he go? One man couldn’t overwhelm an entire alien ship unless he was a star in a bad movie.
They pushed him gently down the corridor into a large room. It was as bare and undecorated as the remainder of the ship, but there was a large porthole set within the wall, open to space. He saw the blue-green globe of Earth orbiting below, caught a sight of the eastern coastline of the United States, and felt a pang of homesickness that was almost painful. There was no sign of anything man-made in orbit now, nothing, but a handful of alien ships, barely visible.
“Francis,” a voice called. Francis turned to see Gary there. The ISS commander looked as if he’d been through the wringer as well; there was a dark bruise on one side of his face and at least two days worth of stubble on his chin. The aliens were escorting the others into the room; the two girls looked tired, but very relieved to see them. Katy even gave Gary a hug in zero-gee. The Russian and Frenchman looked tired as well; Stanislav was sporting his own bruise, on his chest.
“Had a little disagreement with the doc,” he said, when Francis looked at it. “The guards struck me and… well, you see.”
Katy winced. “I have some first aid training,” she said. “Do you want me to take a look at it?”
“I’ll live,” Stanislav said, firmly. He looked over at the aliens, gathering at one end of the room. “I think our hosts want to tell us something.”
The alien leader, the one wearing a gold medallion, seemed to drift forward slightly, coming to face the humans. Two other aliens, both female, stayed behind him; the guards watching the humans from their positions. Francis wondered, looking at one of the females, if she had been the doctor who’d examined him; the marking on her forehead was the same.
“You will be returned to your homeworld,” the alien leader said, his voice echoing in the room. Francis realised, suddenly, that there was almost no airflow in the room at all, something that could be very dangerous in space. Did the aliens even need to breathe? They clearly heard, but where were their ears? The sides of their heads were bare. “You will carry with you our message to your people.”
Here it comes, Francis thought, dryly. Having sucked their human captives dry, they would proceed to make what use of them they could. Returning them from orbit would be a gesture, but, more than that, it would be a sign that they were prepared to open communications, if only on their terms. They held the more powerful position, he knew, so… well, they could determine their own terms and make others stick to them. How very… human of them.
“We have come to bring you the Word,” the alien leader said. “Your people will hear the Word and will become one with us, with the Takaina.” Francis felt his heart race suddenly, thinking hard — was that their name? “You will join us in our worship of God.”
Francis stared at the alien. He’d suspected, but… it was impossible. “You want to convert us all to your religion?”
“You will accept the Truth,” the alien said. Francis could almost hear the capital letter thudding into place. The aliens were insane… and yet, they had the power to back up their words. “We have come to change your world. We will settle on your planet and bring your people to the Truth, making you like us.”
“And,” Gary growled, “resistance is futile, right?”
“Yes,” the alien said, without irony. Francis would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so deadly dangerous. “You will inform your people that resistance will only result in the death of as many of your people as necessary and considerable destruction being wrecked on your planet. We will not be denied. You do not have the ability to prevent us from imposing order on your world.”
Francis felt his head spin. “You want us to go home and demand their surrender?”
“Yes,” the alien said, flatly. “Once we have secured a foothold on your world, we will transport you to the surface and give you a means of communicating with us. You will pass on the message to your leadership. Until then…”
He gestured. The guards pulled them away.
* * *
“They did not want to believe you,” the Inquisitor said, after the humans had been escorted out of the chamber. The humans had probably not been aware of his presence, watching from the sidelines, but he’d been there. Like the High Priest, but for a very different purpose, the Inquisitor’s real name and clan had been stripped from the record, let alone his Chapter. His task, to keep the Takaina themselves in line, could not be influenced by mere politics, or old clan loyalties. The Inquisitors were merciless to their own who failed their tests. “They thought that you had more… mundane purposes.”
Femala watched, dispassionately, as the High Priest stared towards Earth. She disliked Inquisitors on principle, even though this one was more inclined to accept her continued existence than some of the others she’d met. She was, after all, the most capable researcher they had, even though some of the males showed surprising promise. They wouldn’t get a chance to learn further; as males, their role was either with the warriors, or with the priesthood. It was the females who did the remainder of the work.
“Their beliefs are of no concern,” the High Priest said. “They are a fragmented race. They have fragmented religions that have had a glimpse of the Truth, but only a glimpse. They have shown themselves unworthy to be anything, but subordinates until they embrace the Truth.”
The Inquisitor smiled thinly. “And so you intend to proceed?”
Femala shivered suddenly. The other role of the Inquisitors was to provide a check, the only real check, on the power of the High Priesthood. If this one had reason to believe that the High Priest wasn’t living up to his role, he had the right to take corrective action, in any form he felt justified. The impending invasion of Earth meant that the High Priest was going to be under more scrutiny than any High Priest had faced since they had left their last world and headed towards Earth.
“We have little choice,” the High Priest reminded him, dryly. “We have delayed longer than we should before landing on their world.” He looked over towards Femala and, for a moment, smiled at her, inv
iting her to share a joke. “Do you oppose the planned landing site?”
The Inquisitor, scenting the trap, drew back. “Such matters are not within my area of responsibility,” he said, firmly. “I merely…”
“It is the most powerful and advanced nation on the surface of the enemy planet,” the High Priest said. “In the absence of further data about how their world works, we will attempt to seize a foothold there for rapid expansion and conversion. The other nations on the world’s surface will be unable to interfere in any significant fashion.”
“And you intend to settle there?”
Femala watched the High Priest hesitate. The remainder of the colony force was on the second section of the Guiding Star, seven cycles away. Landing them would allow the Takaina to rapidly overwhelm the natives, but not all of them were warriors… and massive losses would be crippling. The humans could be expected to resist settlement of their lands.
“Perhaps,” the High Priest said. They would have to discover if the foothold occupied an area of local religious significance. “Will you join the landing force?”
The Inquisitor said nothing.
Chapter Twelve
In the magazines war seemed romantic and exciting, full of heroics and vitality… I saw instead men… suffering and wishing they were somewhere else.
— War correspondent Ernie Pyle
High overhead, the first of the landing craft disengaged from the Guiding Star, slowly falling into a new orbit. Powerful optical sensors scanned their designated landing site, watching for possible threats and picking out targets for further bombardment, before the craft slowed their orbital speed and started to fall towards the planet. Streaks of light accompanied them down, racing ahead to strike at targets on the ground, clearing the way for the landing.
Inside, warriors and a handful of priests waited nervously for the landing. They were, they knew, almost helpless as long as they were in their craft. The natives of the world below had expended most of their weapons that were capable of reaching orbit, but the lower the landing craft came, the more likely it was that they would enter the engagement range of previously unseen weapons, ones designed to engage aircraft rather than spacecraft. The landing craft were completely beyond their ability to stealth; the heat of their entry into the atmosphere alone would provide a perfect target for enemy fire. Some of them prayed, as soldiers had done throughout history, others just waited for the landing and the coming fight. As the first to set foot on the alien world, they could expect vast estates and fame… if they survived.
A handful reviewed what little data was known about the aliens. It was a matter of policy that few warriors would know the alien language, but those that did would have to be in the front lines, in hopes of convincing the aliens — the humans — to surrender without a fight. Few believed that would happen. They’d studied their own history extensively and the Truth had been resisted, constantly, by every breed on their homeworld and every other race they’d encountered. The Unification Wars alone had cost millions of lives, even though it had bred a planetary unity and a determination never to risk extinction again. Earth would become another settled world. It had been written.
And it would be done.
* * *
Dawn was breaking as Joshua awoke from his bed and climbed blearily into the shower. Austin had been luckier than some other cities; the power and water supplies had remained on, even four days after the aliens had attacked the planet. The shower wasn’t quite as reassuring as it had once been — and it had a nasty habit of suddenly running cold in the middle of a hot downpour — but it was enough to shock him awake. He climbed out of the shower, dressed rapidly in his standard working clothes, and retrieved the gun from under his pillow. It still seemed to be working.
He scowled down at the weapon and winced. He knew almost nothing about guns. The gun nut who lived on the fifth floor had given it to him, along with a handful of clips, but Joshua had tuned out the lecture on how the gun worked, past the basics. He could take off the safety, fire and reload, but past that… he didn’t even know what type of gun it was. It didn’t give him a feeling of inflated self-esteem, either; he’d almost been disappointed when he’d brandished it for the first time. He wouldn’t have taken the weapon, at all, except for the fact that Austin was clearly a city on the edge; the residents of the apartment had been pushed into banding together to keep themselves alive.
Coffee, he thought, and staggered out the door and down to the next flat. It had never been occupied, or at least it had never been occupied since Joshua had moved in, and it had become the communal kitchen, despite some dark mutterings about creeping communism. Between the thirty men, women and children who lived in the apartment block, they’d amassed quite a surprising amount of food and equipment, including campfire stoves and other camping gear. If the power failed completely, which Joshua suspected was likely to happen sooner or later, they would be still capable of boiling water and cooking their food. The whole arrangement worked on trust and while Joshua would have scoffed before the war, now he was amazed by how well it was working out.
As long as the food holds out, he thought, sourly. Sally Adair, who had been appointed official coffee maker, poured him a cup without even being asked. Joshua didn’t know who’d thought of electing a twelve-year-old girl as coffee-maker, but he had to admit that it had been devious; somehow, trying to cajole or steal more coffee out of her was impossible. Their father had been making daily trips to the bank, trying to build up a supply of dollars, but Joshua suspected that it wouldn’t be much use. The President might have restricted withdrawals to three hundred dollars a day, something that would have been unthinkable a month ago, but dollars were becoming less and less useful. In time, Mr Adair might even find himself faced with his cash becoming useless and the other thing he had to trade would be his daughters…
Joshua shook his head, hoping to banish the image, and took a seat in the corner. Sally got very irritated when people took her coffee mugs away and didn’t return them. The city was slowly being eaten out of food and drink… and when it ran out completely, all hell was going to break loose. A city the size of Austin, which had a population of nearly eight hundred thousand inhabitants, consumed an astonishing amount of food and drink… and while there had been stockpiles, they were being distributed out to the public in hopes of preventing a panic. The Governor had tried to make hording illegal, but as a law, it was about as unenforceable as the laws against copying CDs and putting them on the internet. There had been a couple of cases where the police had met with armed resistance to their plans to distribute some of the larger private stockpiles and the entire city was on edge. The damage to the infrastructure surrounding the city meant that incoming food was going to be reduced… and, when the city dwellers worked that out, there was going to be panic.
He took another sip of his coffee and shivered. The entire global infrastructure, according to the internet, had been completely knocked down by the aliens. Ships were being sunk, more or less at random… and international banking had been destroyed. America didn’t import much in the way of food — in contrast to Japan, which did and therefore would be on the verge of starvation within a week — but everything else that was imported would be… delayed. Chinese steel, Japanese electronics… everything that came from overseas would now never come, while the internal transport network had been shot to hell. No wonder the Governor had thousands of policemen and National Guardsmen patrolling the city; it wouldn’t be too long until the social order started to collapse completely.
Sally called over to him as two more people entered the room. “Good coffee?”
“Yes, thank you,” Joshua replied, placing the cup in the sink and earning a dirty look. It was the work of a moment to clean the cup and place it neatly on the side for someone else to use. He was supposed to be on the guard shift in an hour — so far, no one had tried to break into the apartment, but they all knew that it was just a matter of time — but until then, he had
to return to his apartment and start logging into the internet. It wasn’t what it had been before the war… but then, what had?
The thought stayed with him as he walked back to his apartment. America looked the same on the surface, but the entire country had taken a beating. Television was almost completely off the air, apart from a handful of minor channels, and radio was… erratic. Kids had to play with their friends now, rather than watching television all the time, and older children had to grow up fast. Schools and colleges had been cancelled for the moment and most parents were trying to keep their kids off the streets. People were pulling together, with or without help from the feds… but Austin was one of the lucky cities. If the radio or internet was to be believed, Detroit was on the verge of restarting the civil war.
A roar of thunder passed high overhead. He cringed, remembering, deep inside, the silent skies after 9/11. There hadn’t been any aircraft in the skies since the aliens had arrived — the internet claimed that they were all blasted out of the sky by the aliens from orbit — and the sudden change shocked him. A series of thunderclaps followed, the entire building shaking with their impact, and he felt himself stagger. He heard the sound of smashing china below him, back in the kitchen, but ignored it. He had to get to the roof! The elevator had been marked as untrustworthy since long before the invasion, but he could still take the stairs. He ran up them, passing others coming out of their apartments, half of them holding guns as if they believed the aliens were coming down right on their heads… and burst onto the roof.
“My God,” he breathed, as the sight struck his eyes. Austin seemed to have been hit several times by the alien weapons — kinetic energy weapons, according to the internet; they didn’t need nukes when they could destroy anything from orbit — but it wasn’t that that caught his attention. “They’re landing!”
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