And yet… the humans had so much. They had barely developed a space program — and smashing what they’d had in space had been easy, far easier than he’d allowed himself to anticipate — but their civilians had so much. They all seemed to have their own means of transport, their own computers, their own links to the human computer network that was proving so hard to shut down… they had so much, and his people had so little. The Takaina had access to the endless wealth of space; they could have provided their people with such a lifestyle, but that would have meant that they couldn’t launch further colony ships out towards the stars. He knew, even if the Inquisitors didn’t, that there were warriors down on Earth wondering why the humans had so much, and they so little. Looting and pillaging were forbidden, on pain of a sudden and horrible death, but there were dozens of reports of just that. Envy was a powerful motivator… and, now that there was an uneasy peace in Texas, the warriors had time to think.
Human religions, according to the researchers, discouraged thinking. That was alien to the Takaina — literally. They needed their warriors as dangerous as possible and that meant training them to think and react to any situation, without having to wait for orders from higher up the chain. The majority of the population was actually fairly young, due to the magic of cold sleep, and they were thinking… and wondering why they didn’t have so much themselves. The Truth had originated — and the High Priest mentally punished himself for even thinking of it — in a part of their homeworld where resources had been scarce. That had driven them onwards, to conquest and glory… and yet, it seemed so weak when suddenly faced with so much obvious wealth. Young warriors, down on Earth without the strictures of their clans, might make the wrong decisions…
He cast his attention towards the new landing sites. The landings had been on a much larger scale, but this time, they’d known where to bombard. The humans didn’t seem to have any concept of basic security; the researchers had discovered, fairly easily, entire books of tactical and strategic data on the entire world. Instead of telling their people what they needed to know, the humans were allowing them to know everything… or, at least, far more than they really needed to know, or even care about. A chart of bases in the Middle East, useless to the human who’d died defending his home, had been very useful to the planners when the invasion began…
This time, it was going to be a far more powerful offensive. The bombardment had been much more carefully planned, and, now that they had better intelligence, should be almost decisive on its own. The landing forces had landed in three human countries… and then were expanding out as rapidly as possible. The most powerful country in the region might be a problem, which was why it had been left for last — there was also a human religious element involved, although none of the researchers could explain why it was still there — but the remaining militaries would just melt away. They didn’t know it, yet, but they had nowhere to hide. The cities of Jerusalem and Mecca would be taken soon… and they would be used to bring down the human religions and replace them with the Truth. The High Priest was certain of it…
So why did he have those quiet nagging doubts?
He dismissed them and turned to the War Leader. “I want the enemy organised resistance quelled within the next two cycles,” he ordered. The human resistance had been disorganised all over the region; some units had fought well, if utterly outclassed, and some had just scattered and run. They’d had to be rounded up quickly to prevent them from turning into insurgents later. “Keep up the pressure on their governments and don’t let them have a chance to form a new defence line.”
“Of course, Your Holiness,” the War Leader said. “As unprepared as they were, they will fall before us.”
“Good,” the High Priest said. If nothing else, a second round of fighting would keep the warriors from having uncomfortable thoughts. “Keep me updated on the progress of the invasion.”
The War Leader bowed and retreated. The High Priest knew that he should relax. He’d done all he could to ensure victory… but he still had those nagging doubts. Only victory would salve his concerns… and victory was just around the corner. It just felt as if they’d made a terrible mistake.
He was sure of it.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded.
— W. Somerset Maugham
His name was Naseer Ziad and he was nineteen years old.
Like most other boys in Riyadh, he’d been brought up in a very conservative household. As the oldest male child, Naseer had a degree of freedom denied to his sisters, or even to his younger brothers, one that he’d used to ensure that he had very little actual work to do. Along with most of his contemporaries, he’d gone into an Islamic school when he was very young, and through that school, had gained a near-perfect knowledge of the Qu’ran. He could recite a surah on command… but he didn’t understand it. His learning had been learning by rote, a mixture of the form of Islam officially practiced in Saudi Arabia and hatred, hatred of the Great Satan, the Little Satan, and the other official Enemies of Islam…
And it led him nowhere. He’d found out fairly quickly that there was little chance of a job without training or connections… and he had neither. He considered the Saudi military to be beneath him — and, besides, an older cousin he looked up to was in the National Guard and told him that it wasn’t a pleasant job. The highly-paid — and without doing any actual work- posts were denied to someone without the right blood, or the right connections… and, again, he lacked them. The American and European companies doing business within Saudi Arabia wouldn’t hire someone who could offer them nothing, not even introductions to the right people, and the Saudi companies reserved most of their slots for princes or their lackeys. At eighteen, he found himself unemployed and, it seemed, stuck.
He’d drifted into the radical fringe merely for something to do. He couldn’t swear to any kind of devout belief, merely a conviction that the Americans, or the Jews, or the British were to blame for his troubles. He’d certainly enjoyed the trip to Bahrain he’d made with his father as an eighteen-year-old birthday present, where he’d tasted alcohol and lost his virginity. He was nineteen… and unmarried, unemployed, and completely without prospects. No father or brother would consider him as a possible relative… and, caught up in his need to blame someone, he’d gone radical. The teachers and contacts he’d met in the radical mosques had singled the young Naseer out — there was little wrong with his intelligence, only his learning and application — and played on his fears and beliefs until he was willing to do almost anything for them. They’d seen it a thousand times before; the products of the Saudi educational system, designed to co-opt or keep down the Saudi population, found themselves in a world where their skills were worthless. The recruiters gave them a cause and something to die for.
The radical mosques had praised the aliens to the skies, at first, for running roughshod over Texas. Cartoons of former President Bush performing oral sex on one of the aliens had been passed around the mosques for weeks, despite Wahhabi bans on images of human beings, while the radicals had delighted in the Royal Family’s discomfort. They held the whip hand for once; as long as they seemed to speak for the people, the Royals didn’t dare move against them. Naseer had learned to hate the Royal Family — he’d been assured that they kept the job rate down just to prevent people like him from having their own chance at reaching power — and he’d joined in the protests and demonstrations with the others, seeing for the first time the weakness of the regime. A power that could — and had — lock up all the believers in democracy couldn’t cope with the forces of hatred and revolution seething up from the deepest, darkest part of their nation. Their time was coming…
And then the news had sunk in, slowly, that the aliens were com
ing to destroy religion, human religion. Naseer hadn’t wanted to believe it, but the internet-based service which had replaced Al Jazeera — it had been knocked off the air by the destruction of their satellite, although Naseer knew, of course, that it was a plot of the wicked Zionists — had passed on images of the destruction of churches, synagogues… and mosques. The radicals warned, changing their tune slightly, that Islam was in as much danger as the other religions… and, when the aliens had landed in the north, Naseer had realised that the aliens were coming for Riyadh.
The young men — women were expected to remain in their homes — had gathered in their mosques as the aliens approached the city. The sounds of battle could be heard in the distance, although rumour, spreading from person to person and growing wilder with each telling, claimed that the Royal Family had cut a deal with the aliens, or the Shias had come out in favour of the aliens, or even that the Jews had nuked the aliens before they could land. The only news that seemed at all reliable was that the aliens had punched through the Saudi Army and broken it like a twig, advancing on the suddenly unprotected cities. Naseer had been given a bottle of petrol, a match, and ordered to take to one of the rooftops. The aliens were about to enter the city… and they were going to give them a warm welcome.
“Allah,” he breathed. Suddenly, as he saw the aliens for the first time, from the distance, the religion seemed more important to him. They weren’t advancing into the city, not yet, but were spreading out around it. He wanted a gun, one that could be used to shoot at them, but the leaders had refused to give him one. His duty was to throw the Molotov Cocktail and then as many stones as he could, before the aliens retreated, faced with the determination of thousands of young men to defend their city. A handful of aliens were walking without their masks, their reddish faces exposed to the hot desert air, and he saw them… and knew that they weren’t human.
Behind the lead alien vehicles, there was a line of prisoners, some of them bleeding and battered. He wondered, desperately hoping that it was not so, if his cousin was among them, but he couldn’t recognise him among the beaten men. They were mainly high-ranking officers, which, to his mind, suggested that they had remained well behind the fighting when brave soldiers like his cousin had gone out to fight the aliens. He watched, grimly, as the aliens came closer… and then someone opened fire.
They’re not supposed to fire, he thought, horrified. The plan had been simple enough; wait until the aliens were well within the streets, then close in and beat them to death. Instead, someone had fired early… and, judging from the sparks bouncing off one of the tanks, completely without any use at all. The aliens on the ground dropped and, for a moment, he thought they’d been hit… before they unslung their weapons and returned fire. A second later, the remaining fighters with weapons opened fire… and the tanks returned fire. In seconds, what should have been an orderly attack, at least according to the leaders, disintegrated into a bloody screaming mass of bleeding flesh. Hot bullets tore through bodies — clothes and even makeshift armour were no protection — and sent chunks of blood and gore everywhere.
Naseer just stared. He had completely forgotten the bottle in his hand as he watched the scene unfold. Calmly, dispassionately, the aliens were slaughtering anyone who even looked threatening. He hadn’t seen any real violence in his life, not even on the American cowboy films that his father had loved — and his teachers had disapproved of so strongly — and suddenly coming face to face with it scared hell out of him. He was barely aware of the sudden hot rush trickling down his leg as he tried to move, but his legs failed him. He was supposed to throw his bottle at an alien — no, he was supposed to light his bottle and then throw it at the aliens — but he couldn’t even remember that. He was rooted to the spot as more aliens appeared, flushing out fighters from the surrounding area, streaks of light thundering from the sky and smashing a handful of buildings, just to make the point. The shockwaves sent him stumbling, his building shaking as if it were going to collapse, other buildings across the city collapsing like dominos. The princes whose firms had handled the construction costs hadn’t bothered with minor details like safety… he saw a skyscraper collapse inwards, coming down with a rumbling noise audible over the entire city.
Below, the prisoners were gathering. Mainly young and very scared men, their enthusiasm for the fight had vanished the moment the aliens opened fire, their clothes stained with the blood of their fellows. Most of them had been wounded, sometimes badly, in the lopsided fight; Naseer saw, now, just how stupid they’d been. Out in the open like that, it had been easy for the aliens to cut them all down; all they’d had to do was point and shoot. They could hardly have missed! The prisoners cringed inward as the aliens threw them out of their hiding places, trying to combine sullen defiance with a desire to avoid being noticed by their captors, the black-garbed aliens who had beaten them. The leaders…
The thought gnawed at him. Where were the leaders? Where had they gone?
It struck him, suddenly, that they’d been betrayed. The leaders had pushed them into a position where they could fight — and die — while they’d remained behind. The Royal Family’s tame clerics had been right all along! The attack hadn’t, as far as he could tell, harmed a single alien, while hundreds of young men were prisoners… and it looked as if the aliens had wiped out the entire population. Surely so much blood and gore had to come from thousands of people!
He heard, below him, alien stormtroopers, moving through the building and flushing out the inhabitants. The young fighters — so long ago it felt like another life, one lived by an idiot — had ordered the families within the building to remain, confident that the aliens wouldn’t put their lives in danger. The leaders had had some reason to believe that, one that they hadn’t shared with their young charges, but whatever their reason, they’d been wrong. The aliens hadn’t hesitated to burst into the buildings, drag out everyone involved, regardless of their sex or clothing, and throw them out to join the other prisoners. He felt a cold burst of helpless anger when he saw the young women being added to the bag, even though the aliens didn’t seem to be interested in them that way, but coming on top of all the other shocks, it hardly seemed to matter. The aliens would find him, soon enough; he had to be visible from their position, standing up and looking stupid. He hadn’t even sought cover when the aliens had opened fire.
He sighed and turned to face the aliens as they came out of the rooftop door. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, but he no longer wanted to fight; when the aliens appeared, he started to hold up his hands in surrender… and then they shot him. A hot burst of pain, right in his chest, sent him staggering backwards and crashing to the ground.
“Why?” He tried to say. A clinking sound as the remains of the bottle hit the roof answered his question. He’d forgotten all about the bottle and they’d shot him for it. He would have laughed, but suddenly it hurt so badly…
Darkness came for him, finally, a child lost in an adult world.
* * *
Ambassador Simon Carmichael watched grimly as the aliens completed the suppression of Riyadh. The American Embassy within the city had been almost under siege from the first alien landings in Texas, when the radicals had realised that they would probably never have a better chance to take complete control, but the month hadn’t ended with a repeat of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Somehow, in defiance of all of his predictions, the Saudis had managed to hold on, barely, until the aliens had landed. They’d rapidly crushed the Saudi Army and National Guard, before moving in on the cities…
Idiot stupid prince, he thought, taking a puff on his cigar. He had the feeling that it would be a long time before any more cigars came in from Cuba, assuming the aliens let him live. No one knew if they had any concept of an Ambassador, even if they had treated the folks in orbit well enough, but they might seek to make an example of him. Judging from the complete collapse of the defences, they wouldn’t need to make any more horrible examples — the Ambassador’s Saudi aide had
slipped through the streets and returned with tales of horror — but who knew how the aliens thought? What was he thinking?
He shook his head, watching the fires swelling in the distance; the fire brigade couldn’t cope with so many at once. The Saudi Prince in command of the Army hadn’t had any proper training; the Princes that actually did have such training were rarely allowed to actually put that training to use. There was too much fear, apparently, that someone who was genuinely popular and linked to the Royals might launch a coup… and that fear had led to a quick and complete disaster. The Americans attached to Saudi HQ, before the telephone links had been lost, had reported that the General in command had led his tanks out to do battle. He might as well have shot all of his men himself. It would have been quicker and perhaps kinder.
Redshirt bastards probably couldn’t believe their luck, Carmichael thought. There they are, knowing full well that they stomped us and that everyone else has been learning from those lessons, and here’s a complete dumbass leading his men out for the slaughter…
He turned, slightly, as Captain Harper entered. “Sir,” the Captain said. The Marine Protection Detail in Riyadh was much bigger than most cities. The thought of losing the ambassador and all of his staff had focused a few minds at State and they’d ensured that the embassy defenders were armed to the teeth. They couldn’t have hoped to hold off a full assault, not long enough to matter, but a rampaging mob might have been beaten off. “The gates are closed, but…”
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