There was a brief skirmish when the aliens engaged the antitank teams, and then they pressed on towards Basra. Karim had found a vantage point along the outskirts of the city, while his men struggled to organise the residents of the city to defend it, watching as Sunni and Shia forgot their traditional hatreds to defend Basra. They’d all see the footage of what had happened in America and there were shrines and mosques aplenty in Basra. He’d had his tanks pulled back to hiding places, but three of them had been picked off from orbit, the alien fire almost vaporising the tanks and their crews. The others had been rapidly abandoned, which might have been the alien plan all along; they probably wanted to force him to abandon some of his firepower. Their UAV-like aircraft buzzed high overhead; two of his men had tried to bring them down with antiaircraft missiles, but the aliens had avoided them neatly.
“Here they come,” Brooks said. There was a new anticipation in his voice, a chance to get stuck into the enemy who had devastated his country. The aliens were still landing in the background, but their ranks seemed never ending, led by hovering tanks. The sight was almost out of a science-fiction movie. “Hold your fire until they’re right on top of you, then engage them before they can call in fire from orbit.”
“Got it,” Karim said. His remaining sergeants were moving among the volunteers now, passing on the same message, even though he hoped that most of the civilians would stay out of the fighting. If they were caught with weapons they would be treated as hostiles, if the aliens stuck to their standard tactics… and there were thousands of weapons in Basra. People tended to carry them around as a status symbol. The government had tried to warn people of the danger, but there were too many old wounds from Saddam’s era and the invasion. “It’s been nice knowing you.”
Brooks looked at the aliens as they carefully surrounded the city. “Yeah,” he said. “You too.”
One by one, the roads and railways leading out of the city were occupied and severed. People who were trying to leave the city were encouraged to return by brief bursts of heavy firing from machine guns. A pair of Iraqi army snipers, who’d made a career of picking off unsuspecting terrorists, took down a handful of aliens with headshots, before their hiding places were picked off from orbit. Karim watched the buildings collapse, praying that only a few people had been caught up in the fallen rubble, and wondered how they did that. It wasn’t easy to locate a sniper, but for all he knew, they had some alien sensor trick that could track him by his sweat or some other bodily odour. The Americans had shown enough impossible tricks to convince him that still others were possible.
The aliens didn’t bother to demand a surrender; they simply opened fire. One by one, their tanks advanced towards his positions, while their heavy guns boomed fire into the city. Karim and his men held their fire until the aliens were close, whereupon they opened fire with their rifles and a handful of antitank weapons, picking off four alien tanks. A pair of men who’d been close-lipped about their past, but toting RPGs fired them as well, hitting and damaging two tanks. It didn’t seem that they’d been damaged too badly; they were still moving, and still firing. Shells crashed into buildings and detonated, shattering them and sending masonry falling to the ground, while their machine guns swept across the suddenly-visible men. Explosions billowed out across the city as the aliens started their advance and pushed into the city. The damage rapidly grew into a nightmare.
Damn them, Karim thought, as his command and control disintegrated. His ability to coordinate the fight had vanished almost as soon as the aliens opened fire. They were calling down strikes from orbit even as their infantrymen swarmed into the city, a seemingly never-ending rush of black-clad humanoids, their armour protecting them from most shots. It took headshots to kill them, or grenades, while they could kill the Iraqis. A line of civilians, men carrying old AK-47s, charged the aliens, screaming aloud… and the aliens mowed them down without even breaking step. Basra was dying as the aliens hacked their way into the city… and the best Karim and his remaining men could do was harass the aliens through hit-and-run tactics. The rubble provided plenty of places to hide.
“They’re just killing us all,” he shouted at Brooks, as the American picked off a pair of aliens. The burst of return fire almost shattered the building they were using as cover. The fight had grown completely out of hand, but the aliens, somehow, were coordinating their advance perfectly, tightening the noose around the city. “What’s the point of this?”
“Who knows?” Brooks answered, as they found themselves stumbling into a mosque. It had taken a shell from somewhere, shattering the minaret, but the interior of the building was somehow unharmed. The worshippers, praying desperately for salvation, hadn’t found it; they’d been crushed under the rubble. “I don’t know what they’re thinking…”
Another round of explosions revealed, suddenly, that they were surrounded and alone. Karim realised, feeling absolutely calm, that he was going to die. He checked his rifle, loaded his final clip, and smiled tiredly at Brooks. The American had run out of rifle ammunition, so he’d drawn his handgun and checked it quickly.
“I don’t feel like surrendering,” Brooks said, as he unhooked a grenade from his belt. “You?”
“Hell, no,” Karim said, as Brooks prepared to throw the final grenade. The smoke from the growing fires was making it harder to think; his eyes were stinging and burning. He had a nasty suspicion that he was on the verge of going deaf from all the noise. “Hit them!”
Brooks threw the grenade in a practiced toss towards the alien position. A moment later, the aliens fired back, a heavy burst of machine gun fire that shattered the walls and tore through their bodies before they could escape. The remains of the building collapsed inwards and buried their bodies.
Both men died instantly.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I never really hated a one true God, but the God of the people I hated.
— Marilyn Manson
Oddly enough, pure fanatics were rare among the Takaina, those who followed the Truth. They had no problem with fighting and dying for their religion, but the idea of throwing their lives away for nothing was alien to them, allowing their commanders to cut their losses if a battle was going badly. To retreat, honestly and openly, was not a sin among them, although some of the Inquisitors might have disagreed. They, shaped into a mould that rejected all personality, all individuality, watched for heresy in their own manner, while disregarding their own safety. They were conditioned to do anything for the faith and rarely questioned their orders. The five hundred Inquisitors on the Guiding Star kept the rest of the population in line.
The parasite ship carefully altered its course and dropped into a lower orbit. Unchecked, the parasite would eventually fall into the atmosphere, but the handful of Inquisitors in command of the vessel would alter its course again long before atmospheric drag became a problem. The parasite was the single ship controlled by the Inquisitors and, also, the sole Takaina ship to carry atomic weapons. The warriors weren’t allowed to control them, not even the most capable and trustworthy of them, because of the danger. A single questioning mind in the wrong place could do untold damage to the starship. Instead, the Inquisitors not only controlled the bombs, but they controlled their deployment as well.
The Inquisitors felt no nervousness as they swept over a continent that the humans called Europe. Nervousness required a normal functioning brain, regardless of race, and they no longer had them. The conditioning process that had made them what they were had altered them to the point where they were almost incapable of feeling any emotion, from sexual lust to despair. If the Europeans had been building new weapons, ones capable, perhaps, of being turned on the spacecraft, they weren’t concerned. Besides, a handful of possibly-threatening targets had been bombed only a cycle ago and the Europeans hadn’t attempted to respond.
“Prepare to deploy device,” Inquisitor Five said. Among themselves, the Inquisitors called themselves by numbers, just to keep everything straight. It was
one of the secrets that they didn’t share with the rest of their race, let alone the others under their control, because it was something they wouldn’t understand. Inquisitors had to be faceless, nameless and utterly without feelings, because feelings led to corruption. In their role, corruption could be lethal to more than just them. “Compare targeting data and enter clearance codes.”
One by one, they pressed their hands to the scanners and confirmed the targeting data. The Inquisitors, apart from watching their own people, served as the intelligence staff for the High Priest, if only to prevent warriors and researchers from being contaminated by direct access to alien data. They had researched the human religions thoroughly and had located their centres of power, preparing targeting data for the High Priest and the War Leader. The idea of physically occupying their centres of power was an attractive one, something they knew would guarantee them victory, but that wouldn’t always be possible. The Takaina couldn’t afford to occupy every human city, not yet, but they didn’t have to. They could take other steps instead.
Inquisitor Nine spoke from his seat. “Target is locked and device is armed,” he said. There was, as was right and proper, no excitement or anticipation in his voice. As far as they were concerned, what they were about to do was just a job. “We can fire on your command.”
Europe was passing rapidly underneath them. It still escaped the researchers how the humans hadn’t united into a handful of large states, but at the moment, it served in their favour, particularly when it came to religion. The Truth tended to ignore, or place to one side, religions that weren’t directly competitive, but the human religions were all going to be competitive. The Inquisitors, insofar as they felt anything, would have loved to get to grips with the religions on the ground, but that wasn’t going to be completely possible. They would have to take other steps.
“Fire,” Inquisitor Five ordered.
The ship jerked slightly as it launched the single device from its underbelly. Small rockets fired at once, nudging the device into a trajectory that would, inevitably, bring it down to Earth, hard. It wouldn’t matter; once the device had reached the required distance from the ground, it would detonate and purge one of the human religions from the face of the Earth. Without its centre of power, it would fall apart and the Truth would be there for the humans. It had worked on dozens of worlds, ever since the Unification Wars… and it would work here. The Inquisitors were literally unable to even question that doctrine.
“Weapon away,” Inquisitor Nine confirmed. “Trajectory is precise.”
“Good,” Inquisitor Five said. He would have liked to have visited nuclear fire across the remaining human holy sites, but that wasn’t part of his orders. “Take us back into orbit and prepare to return to the Guiding Star.”
Below them, the device continued its fall towards the planet.
* * *
The small observatory had been taken over by the Italian military a week before the aliens had arrived, despite the protests of its staff and students, and rapidly converted into an alien-monitoring centre. Italy, being the part of Europe that might come under attack from Iran — a trend, so far, that had remained happily fictional — had taken a progressive attitude towards defence, constructing a network of radars, tied into NATO, that monitored Italian airspace constantly. The aliens had shut down the radars with their KEW weapons, but the observatories remained, passively watching the aliens from the ground.
Colonel Alberto Felici had been on duty when the telephone call had come through from Britain. A British observatory had tracked an alien craft as it lowered itself down towards the planet, coming in on what was suspected to be an attack run, even though the aliens normally launched their weapons from standard orbits. There was certainly something odd about it… and, with the aliens invading the Middle East, everyone was nervously awaiting the next step in the alien plan. He studied the computer screen, which showed the alien craft as it entered their view, and frowned. It almost looked as if the craft was going to pass directly over Rome…
“I have a track,” Julia announced, from her console. Programming the computers to work with the telescope data had been easy… once they’d realised that astronomers had been doing it for years. “The UFO is definitely going to pass over Rome, almost exactly over our position.”
“How lucky for us,” Felici muttered. The alien trajectory was taking it over France, but at the speed it was moving, it would be bare minutes before it crossed over Italy. He longed for some kind of weapon, something that could be used to shoot back at them, but the aliens could just pick off whatever part of Italy they wanted. The Italian Air Force had been literally shot out of the sky and several army bases had been destroyed from orbit. He wasn’t even sure why… unless the aliens hoped that there would be an uprising and the Italian state would be destroyed. “Keep an eye on it and pass it on to the next observatories in line.”
He ran his hand through his hair. Italy had been badly hit by the aliens and he was worried about his family. He got to watch the aliens as they carried out the invasion, but he was unable to intervene… and, as far as he knew, no one else could either. The aliens had been attacked in orbit during the first encounter, but since then they’d kept space to themselves and prevented the human race from striking back at them. The Prime Minister might keep up the encouraging tone in his webcasts, but Felici and his fellow officers knew the truth; Europe was naked and defenceless under alien fire. Once the aliens had finished attacking the Middle East, and completed the destruction of America, it would probably be their turn next… and all they could do was wait to be hit.
“Sir,” Julia snapped, her voice suddenly rising with alarm. “The alien launched something towards us!”
Felici whirled towards her console. She was right; the alien spacecraft, now firing it’s boosters to reach a higher orbit, had left something behind. The telescope was powerful, but all they could tell was that it didn’t appear to be a KEW. The KEWs they’d seen while Italy had been attacked had been smaller, somehow, and faster. This… object was just falling down slowly towards Italy.
His blood ran cold, suddenly. “Get me a trajectory on it,” he said, knowing that it was already too late. The Americans had said that the aliens were religious invaders… and Rome was the home of the Vatican, the largest religious centre in the world. Felici, himself a devout Catholic, had wondered what the aliens would do when they reached Rome, but now he had the suspicion that he knew. The alien weapon was still falling…
“Sound the alert,” he ordered. It was already too late. “Everyone get down…”
The windows went white as the bomb detonated.
* * *
High over Rome, precisely targeted on the Vatican, the nuclear bomb detonated. For an instant, too quickly for human minds to follow, the bomb was still there… and then it exploded, sending a massive blast of flame over the city. Seconds later, the shockwave followed, blasting Rome and smashing buildings, merely human in the face of the raging power of nuclear fission. The people caught under the blast were vaporised, utterly, while those further away, but unlucky enough to be looking at the blast, were blinded. The secondary effects of the blast, the shockwave and the firestorm, tore through the city, disrupting or destroying the city’s emergency response teams. Armed police and soldiers had been patrolling Rome, as in many other European cities, and the blast hit them, killing and maiming thousands. The EMP pulse knocked out or disrupted every piece of electronic equipment within range, apart from shielded devices, and further disrupted recovery efforts. No city in Europe had been hit like that, not since the Second World War, and Italy was ill-prepared for the crisis… but really, who could have prepared? The disaster was so large as to be unimaginable.
A quarter of Rome’s population had fled the city well beforehand, going to live in the country or with friends and family in other parts of Europe. Half of those that remained were killed outright, or died within the first hour of the blast… and they were the lucky ones.
For the remaining citizens of Rome, the nightmare had only just begun…
And, of the Vatican and its centuries of history, almost nothing was left.
* * *
The High Priest watched dispassionately as the fireball billowed out over the City of Rome. The shielded satellites that were constantly observing the planet below the Guiding Star had tracked the weapon from the moment it was launched to the moment of detonation, whereupon they’d started to monitor the devastation. The humans below had been slaughtered in the blast — and the High Priest mourned their deaths — but the centre of their religion had been destroyed. Few would go now to the City of Rome, few would even consider rebuilding it, not when it could be knocked down again in a heartbeat. Some of the Inquisitors had even called for a second strike, mounted as soon as the humans started recovery efforts, but the High Priest had rejected that as meaningless barbarism. It wasn’t as if the humans below could hurt them in orbit. If they had had such weapons, they would have deployed them against the bombing ship.
He turned his attention to the near-orbit display. The Inquisitors, as untouched as ever by the magnitude of what they’d done, were coming in to dock with the Guiding Star, probably not even expecting praise for their actions. They’d killed, at the very least, hundreds of thousands of humans… and they didn’t even care. There was a reason why even the High Priest disliked the Inquisitors; if he showed any weakness, or lack of resolve and ability, they would turn on him. They were… not popular.
But they were necessary. The Guiding Star was a closed environment. When the starship had been launched, it had been outfitted with all the supplies it needed… and could carry. It could not afford dissent or even major changes in society, not when they operated with so few supplies, whatever the reason. The population of the ship, all one billion of them, had exactly what they needed, no more, no less. The massive farms on the habitation module produced enough food for the people, but barely… and as for having luxuries, forget it. The High Priest had few perks that came with the robe, and many problems. He had thought, back when he’d been an under-priest, that the High Priest had had everything, but he knew now that that wasn’t true. He might have had extra servings of some foods, and the occasional sip of forbidden water, but that was about it, even for his rank. They couldn’t afford a major social upheaval that would come, inevitably, from so many perks for the high-ranking priests.
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