Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  She stood up and paced towards the map. “At least three large asteroids – the slag heaps, in popular parlance – were knocked out of Earth orbit,” she said. “One of the observatories reported that the aliens blasted one that would have impacted somewhere in Africa, but that report must be taken with a pinch of salt. In addition, thousands of pieces of junk, some quite small, others much larger, rained down upon the planet and wreaked additional havoc. I must stress, however, that all of this data is somewhat preliminary; the chaos across the world is making it harder for people to know just what is happening.

  “From what we have learned, however, we believe that one asteroid came down somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, a second somewhere in the Pacific, a third in China and a fourth that disintegrated and scattered various chunks of debris over Europe and Africa. The results have been global and serious; we were actually unable to contact anyone in India, while the highest-ranking Japanese officer we were able to speak to was in a mountain bunker. Our information is therefore somewhat limited.

  “America first,” she continued. Her voice became much brisker. “We had massive tidal waves right along the East Coast, perhaps killing as many as five million people, with additional massive infrastructure damage. The impact in the Pacific Ocean added to our woes; tidal waves hit the Panama Canals and destroyed much of the equipment, along with the habitations in the area. Panama City itself has been drowned; tidal waves lashed the coast again and caused thousands of lives to be lost. We do not yet have exact figures, but we believe that they could reach well into the tens of millions. The coming weeks will be the most vital; FEMA is already working to save as many lives as possible, but the medical and military infrastructure in the area has already been devastated. In many cases, those personnel will be the ones who need help; disease and deprivation are likely to spread rapidly. In a handful of places, gangs have already tried to take control, even to the point of attacking aid workers.”

  The President glared around the room. “I want them put down as harshly as necessary,” he snapped, relieved to finally have a target for his anger. “General, please see to it that the troops know that they’re ordered to engage the gangs and prevent them from interfering with rescue efforts.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Denny said. His lips skinned back from his teeth. “It will be a pleasure.”

  Boyd nodded tiredly. “In the long run, we will have to ensure that as much as possible is saved from the devastation and repaired,” she said. “The devastation will have a major effort on our economy; the Panama Canal is wrecked until we can get a team of engineers into the area to have a careful look at it, although global shipping has more or less come to a halt after the chaos. There are probably thousands of surviving ships out there, but with the harbours as battered as they are and radios non-functional, we could see an entire line of mini-disasters as ship captains try to find harbour.”

  Cardona nodded once. “I see,” he said. He didn’t, not really. “How long is it going to be until we recover?”

  “Years,” Boyd said flatly. “My office hasn’t even begun to make long-term predictions, but one important point is that our transport network has been hammered and our supplies of Helium-3 have been cut off. Worse, perhaps; we’ve lost all of the orbital industrial stations, so replacements for some of the most important equipment won’t be available. We’re not even in a position where we can beg the rest of the world for help; they’ve lost too much to be able to provide much help, even if they were willing. In short, Mr. President, large parts of America are about to return to the state they were in 1800…if not worse.”

  I can’t cope with this, President Cardona thought. How could anyone cope with disaster on such a scale? But I don’t have a choice.

  “The rest of the world is, at best, in a similar state,” Boyd continued relentlessly. “China was struck by an asteroid that landed in the west; the shockwave and earthquakes alone devastated a large part of the country, while parts of its coastline were devastated by tidal waves from the Pacific strike. Japan, Indonesia and Australia suffered heavily; we believe that tidal waves also washed over the Caliphate coastline and parts of Africa. Britain and Ireland got part of the tidal wave that washed over here; we believe that their death toll is very high, while chunks fell down all over Europe.

  “Global weather conditions have become even more chaotic in the last few minutes,” she said. She tapped the map as she spoke; Cardona was relieved that there weren't any pictures. “Rain started to fall over the eastern seaboard very quickly, heavy rainstorms that seemed to come and go for no apparent reason; we believe that the effects of the different strikes are playing off one another. Europe and North Africa are reporting very heavy rainfall; it should be noted that while Gibraltar was wiped off the map, most of the areas inside the Mediterranean remained almost untouched. That’s a short-term effect; in the long-term, the rainfall may destroy the farmlands the Caliphate created to feed its population and cause millions to starve. They’re going to have to set up algae farms as quickly as possible – we’re going to have to expand our own as well as soon as we can, just to feed their own people.”

  She shook her head. “Globally, Mr. President, we could be looking at something like the death of a third of the human race,” she concluded. “The long-term effects of the weather changes alone will certainly imperil our future, regardless of what the aliens might do to make it worse. We can’t even predict how the weather will change – it’s that chaotic – and all of our early warning satellites have been destroyed.”

  The President met her eyes. “How long until you have any idea what will happen?”

  Boyd shrugged. “We think that most of the water that was vaporised and dumped into the atmosphere will return to the ground and sea within the next few weeks,” she said. “Once that happens, we might be able to do some long-term projections, perhaps with the help of the remainder of the world. Our data for America alone, Mr. President, is too vague for us to make any real determination of what might happen…and the weather, of course, is a global force. We have no information on Africa, or the interior of China; it could take years before everything settles down, or the weather patterns may be completely changed.”

  “Please keep me informed,” Cardona said. He held her eyes tightly with his own; there were steps he needed to take, steps she had to understand. “You have total authority; cut through all of the red tape and get help out to the people who need it, understand?”

  Boyd nodded. “You must understand,” she said. Her voice held a certain quiet desperation; “The best we can do is limit the damage. Millions will die, regardless of what we do.”

  “We have to try,” he said. He pushed as much determination as he could into his voice; it was more important that saving votes or even proving that he deserved to sit in the White House and make policy for thousands upon thousands of people. What was America for if it couldn’t look after its own people? “We owe it to…”

  An alarm rang. Cardona looked up. “What’s that?”

  “That’s the emergency alarm,” Denny said. He jumped up and checked the main computer; Cardona saw his face go very pale. “Mr. President, we just had word from the passive sensors we have deployed; something is happening in orbit.”

  He looked up towards the ceiling, then back toward him. “Mr. President, the aliens are landing,” he said. Cardona almost felt his heart break under the sheer impact of the news. “We’re being invaded.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Invasion, Take One

  Eastern Seaboard, USA

  The skies above Washington were…strange.

  Captain Wilbur Hawking had fought in several locations where all of the Great Powers had denied that any conflict had ever been fought. He’d flown a highly-secret mission into Mongolia for a purpose that had never been explained, years after the mission had been carried out; he’d carried out a classified strike mission against a Wrecker base in Antarctica, for God’s sake. He was no stranger at all to odd we
ather conditions…and he was flying perhaps the most advanced plane in the world.

  He was absolutely terrified.

  The asteroid, he’d been briefed, had tossed a great deal of water into the atmosphere, some now pouring down in rain, some billowing around in strange clouds that seemed perpetually on the verge of spilling their contents down on the ground below. The wind conditions seemed endlessly chaotic; at one point, he'd feared that the Shadow was about to be thrown down and dashed against the ground, at another point, he had never seen better flying weather. Linked into the fighter’s computers through the implant in his head, he could practically sense the ebb and flow of the weather, and how it affected his craft.

  He nervously glanced down at his threat receiver as the aircraft flew, its passive sensors collecting data on the weather formations and transmitting it back to the hidden USAF base though an encrypted microburst transmission that was – in theory - undetectable. He was sure that it would have been undetectable by the Russians or the Chinese, the two Great Powers considered most likely to start a war with America, but the aliens might be able to track it. Ground-based lasers and plasma cannons had almost destroyed the USAF as a fighting service; what might the aliens be able to bring to bear on him if he was discovered? He had no illusions; a burst from a human laser that scored a direct hit would utterly destroy the Shadow.

  He felt the aircraft quiver as another gust of wind slammed against the airframe. The Shadow was the latest and greatest fighter produced by the USAF, a hypersonic stealth fighter that could reach the very edge of space and punch the face of God. In theory, it was undetectable except at very short ranges, using the most advanced active sensors in the American arsenal, but who knew what the aliens might be able to do? There had been a theory that the Shadow could be tracked by the effects it left in the atmosphere; Hawking was convinced that no one, not even the aliens, would be able to pick his craft out from the chaos.

  The question was simple; what now?

  His orders had been to recon the area and provide what information he could for the planners back in Washington – who were likely to be drinking salt water themselves, part of his mind reminded him – who would be planning to somehow rebuild the country. Hawking was as patriotic and determined as anyone else in the USAF, but looking at the chaos, even from his height, he felt near despair; how long would it take to rebuild? He had remained high enough to avoid being slammed into the ground by a sudden gust of wind, but he didn’t dare go too high; the aliens might notice him and swat him with a laser from orbit. The Shadows could be armed with ASAT missiles, but Hawking doubted they would do any good; the aliens would have plenty of time to notice and take countermeasures. He would fly the mission, of course, if ordered, but it seemed nothing more than a fancy way to commit suicide…

  A databurst flickered out at him; tracking stations were reporting something within the air formations that had been created by the asteroid impact, bursts of heat that seemed somehow odd – and sinister. He accelerated slightly, taking the Shadow up over the coastline and out towards the sea, peering ahead with the passive sensors the aircraft mounted as well as the familiar Mark One eyeball. The rolling ugly clouds seemed to be being disputed by something, something rising from high above; he took his life in his hands and accelerated again, heading right through the clouds and rising above them. The Shadow shook like a demon – he could have sworn he saw bursts of blue lightning flickering through the dark clouds…but it made it, passing through what seemed like miles of clouds and up into the blue-grey sky.

  “My God,” he said. Further words seemed to fail him. He had expected the streaks of light, like something out of a movie, where the wreckage of the battle in orbit was falling towards the ground, but it was the sight ahead of him that filled him with awe…and fear. “What the fuck are they doing?”

  He’d seen – everyone in the USAF and the USSF had been briefed on them – the original plans for SSTO spacecraft in the early days of space flight. The concept had been harder to get to work than many people had thought, but there had been some success; basic passenger shuttles taking colonists up to the inter-orbit ships and the bridge ships were SSTO-capable. The basic designs were simple; cone-shaped spacecraft flying up and landing with ease.

  The aliens had taken the concept to a ridiculous extreme. He’d read, once, a paper in which a retired military expert had proposed a landing craft that would have inserted an entire battalion from orbit to a trouble spot within moments, an idea that hadn’t found much favour in the USAF – which would have lost another of its responsibilities – and the USSF, which would have had to carry out the damnfool idea. The aliens had no bases on Earth; they literally had no choice, but to land using SSTOs…and they had taken the idea and run with it. The craft falling towards Earth were huge…

  The dispassionate flight computer recorded their size, speed and probably landing zones; somewhere along the East Coast of America, near Washington and Fredericksburg. They were falling rapidly, rockets using fusion flame – a violation of an international treaty, part of his mind gibbered– working hard to slow their descent, while drones and other craft seemed to be being launched from the cones as they fell lower. The drones seemed to be having problems with the weather; he hoped that they would all fall out of the sky before they managed to start sending useful information back to the aliens. His onboard sensors reported alien radars and alien scanning systems probing around for possible threats as they descended…

  “Not bloody likely,” he muttered, as he realised just what the aliens had done. Any army or National Guard units in the area affected by the asteroid were not likely to be in any shape to put up a major fight against the aliens; there was a good chance they would be able to establish a beachhead without any problems at all. They’d already killed thousands of people; given a chance, they would kill thousands more. He muttered a single command to the computer. “Transmit.”

  He waited, just long enough; Higher Command might want him to engage the aliens. He was far enough from their position to be fairly sure they hadn’t noticed him, but he wanted – needed – to hurt them. He was the only Shadow anywhere near the alien formation, although there were others that had survived the tidal waves and the alien bombardment; he might have the best chance the human race was ever likely to have to take out some of the alien landing craft…perhaps, if he was very lucky, all of them…

  A quick glance at his scanners revealed that that wasn’t likely. A second wave was already breaking into the atmosphere. The alien craft were likely to force a landing, whatever else happened; all he could do was give the guys on the ground the best chance he could. He held his breath as another alien radar swept across his position; the aliens didn’t seem to notice him, but…

  The communicator buzzed. The encrypted message was simple; go get them.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, and interfaced his mind completely with the Shadow’s computers. A moment of hesitation, and then the fighter leapt forward, weapons systems already coming online and taking their targeting information from the passive sensors. The only good thing about the situation was that there was no need to use the active sensors – which would have almost certainly drawn fire, unless the aliens were completely stupid or had their landing craft unarmed for some strange alien reason – with the sheer power of the alien craft revealing their location. “Engaging the enemy now…”

  The lead alien craft was a massive cone, descending above a brilliant yellow-white fusion flame; he fired a pair of missiles at it and threw the plane into an evasive manoeuvre, just in time as a burst of alien plasma fire shot through the space he had occupied seconds before the launch. The missiles lanced towards the alien landing craft; one of them was wiped out by a laser beam, the second struck the side of the landing craft and detonated the plasma warhead in the missile. The brilliant flare of white light consumed the craft; Hawking whooped and launched his remaining two missiles, both of which were knocked out of the sky by alien lasers.


  “Time for up close and personal,” he muttered. No one had flown such manoeuvres – at least no one willing to admit to it – outside training school, but every pilot had been looking forward to the chance to try. He activated the plasma cannon on the Shadow and lanced closer to the alien craft, firing bursts of streaming plasma towards the aliens, who retaliated with their own plasma fire and dangerous laser fire. The computers reported that the alien sensors had grown much more powerful in the last few seconds; even as he strafed the side of a landing craft, they managed to burn through the stealth and reveal his position. He threw the plane down towards the land as the aliens targeted him; for a terrifying moment of time, he thought that the aliens had filled everywhere with plasma fire, but somehow he survived, pulling out of his dive seconds before he hit the ground. The ground had been almost close enough to touch…

  He streaked away as fast as he could as more alien craft appeared, heading down and down towards the shore, landing all over the East Coast. His computers estimated that hundreds of humans could be loaded in one of the craft; how many could the aliens fit in? They still had no idea just what the aliens looked like; he’d heard that observatory telescopes had been looking for alien bodies in orbit, but if there were any, they’d remained unnoticed. Human bodies had fallen down into the atmosphere or remained trapped in orbit; he wondered if the aliens would launch a clearing operation, or if the bodies would just be left up there, forever…

  A new order came in; return to base. He nodded once, grimly, and headed away from the battlezone. He hoped that the men down there could destroy the aliens before they became established, but he knew, somehow, that they would be lucky to escape before they were wiped out. The aliens had brought too many of their people to the party…and, if some of the early speculation of invasion possibilities were accurate, they might well be landing all over the world. The last war Americans had fought on American soil had been the operations in support of the annexation of Mexico and much of Latin America; none of them had been anything more than a police action. The last major war had been the civil war…and that had been nearly three hundred years ago. The Wrecker War didn’t count; the terrorists had only spread terror, terror that had only fuelled the determination to exterminate them, by whatever means were necessary. The aliens might have killed millions of Americans in the opening round…and, from what he could see, they were serious about taking the rest.