Invasion

by Christopher Nuttall

  The President blinked. “Was all the money we spent on missiles wasted as well?”

  “No, Mr President,” Paul said. “We developed a limited ABM capability and, we know, so did the Russians and Chinese, but we never developed the kind of working screen that the aliens have deployed. Nukes are normally deployed via aircraft, missiles or shells…and the aliens have a working screen against all three. We could bombard them repeatedly in the hopes of getting a warhead through their defences, but we would rapidly run out of warheads. The stockpiles were, I’m afraid to admit, badly run down in the years since the cold war ended.”

  He leaned forward. “The only way we could get a nuke through would be to smuggle one into the red zone,” he added. “There are Special Forces personnel who are trained for such missions; we could deploy some of them, pick a target, and nuke it.”

  Spencer scowled. “And what will they do to us?”

  General Hastings coughed. “What can they do that’s worse than what they have already done?”

  Spencer glared at him. “When Saddam threatened to use chemical weapons during the Gulf War, we quietly warned him that we would go nuclear in response,” he said. “When there was a danger from missing Russian nukes, we made it a policy that if the Russian nukes were used against us, we would retaliate against Russia, if only to provide a great deal of incentive to cooperate. We have long had a policy that one nuclear strike must be repaid with another, if only to keep the deterrence factor in play. We have even considered striking Iran first to prevent them from using their nukes!”

  The President winced. No President since Roosevelt and Truman had been in a position where they had seriously had to consider the use of nuclear weapons, except Kennedy. The Cuban Missile Crisis hadn’t exploded into war, thankfully, and with the end of the cold war, the nuclear nightmare had faded slightly. Terrorists with nukes were an ever-present threat, but actually producing or obtaining a nuke was much harder than the media made it seem. Sure, the Russians could still devastate America, but they’d be devastated in turn…

  But they’d all had to wrestle with the possibility of a terrorist nuke. If terrorists had nuked Washington, who could the US retaliate against? Russia, if the nuke came from there? Mecca, if Islamic terrorists? Retaliation wouldn’t actually achieve much beyond adding a few million extra dead to the death toll. It would have been pointless spite…and the President who didn’t hit back would be impeached and replaced by someone else who would hit back, even if the target in question was innocent. He could understand the alien position all right. They would have to strike back.

  “This is war,” General Hastings said. “I take no pleasure in the thought of a nuke being used, but I don’t think we have a choice. Once the aliens get organised, they’re going to start pushing outwards, clearing the way as they move. If that happens…”

  He didn’t have to spell out the consequences. “Colonel James, I want you and your staff to draw up a plan for evicting the aliens as soon as possible,” the President ordered. “Once you have an operating plan, inform me at once. We need to move fast.”

  Paul said nothing. Maybe it could be done; maybe the aliens could be removed…or maybe it was merely the beginning of the end for humanity.

  ***

  Deborah Ivey had more practice than most in keeping her face under control. Her career in a man’s world – despite an ever-increasing number of women entering politics – had taught her to keep her innermost thoughts to herself…and what she was thinking was far from complimentary. The President was losing it. He’d been shown, twice, that conventional war wouldn’t work against the aliens, but he was still keen for such a war to be launched. It would be nothing, but an unmigrated disaster.

  In her view, the only way to win was to burn the aliens out of Texas before it was too late. The people living there, those who hadn’t fled, might manage to raise an insurgency, but somehow she doubted it would put the aliens off their advance for long. They might simply call in strikes from orbit and crush resistance completely. No, burning Texas was the only option…and yet it was one that the President wouldn’t embrace. Something would have to be done.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The first hours after an invasion and occupation are always the most dangerous ones.

  -Anon

  The human city was…strange.

  Part of it had been devastated, of course, by the fighting. The defenders shouldn’t have had a hope, but they’d held out long enough to delay the advance and cost the lives of nearly a thousand warriors. The outskirts of their city was in ruins, but they’d held until one of their superiors had given the order to surrender…and even then, not all of them had obeyed. A pile of bodies, sorted out from the remainder of the wreckage, showed just how many humans had fallen in the defence of their city.

  WarPriest Allon watched dispassionately as the small convoy advanced further into the human city. It was a strange sight to his eyes. The humans seemed to have been far more profligate with their resources than the Takaina had ever been, or at least had been since the Unification Wars. Every household seemed to have a private motor vehicle of its own, or other signs of great wealth and status, while their buildings were crude and unfinished to the eye. They were proportioned wrong, of course, for Takaina…but even then, they looked weird. They’d built towering skyscrapers in one part of their city and smaller buildings in others, according to a plan that made no sense at all to him. It wasn't a logically laid-out city, nothing like there would be at home, which meant that controlling it wasn’t going to be easy.

  The High Priest had given him command of nearly a million warriors, but they weren't all down on the planet yet, coming down as the landed warriors secured control of landing sites for the spaceplanes. They’d deployed a hundred thousand warriors to each of the major human cities, but half of them had to remain alert for attack by the remains of the human forces. They were scattered throughout the occupied zone and, as they encountered warriors, tried to fight their way out rather than surrendering. They were doughty warriors, he admitted without particular concern; they’d certainly hurt the landing force badly, if not badly enough. The ruins of their cities testified to that.

  We have to hold here, he reminded himself. The High Priest had made a major gamble by deploying so many warriors to the occupation and conversion duty, but if they were all killed, the Takaina would be weakened badly. The natives would probably resist, regardless of orders, and he had to do whatever it took to keep them down. Once the remainder of their planet had been subjected to Takaina rule, they would all be brought into line.

  Ahead of him, human prisoners were marched out of the city, their arms and legs shackled, clinking as they moved. They didn’t look beaten, not to his eyes, and there were a surprising number of different uniforms among them, some recognisable as fighting garments, others strange and seemingly ill-designed for fighting. The Researchers who spoke the human language would interrogate some of them, later, to find out what they knew, but Allon doubted that they would know much. Warriors were never told much by their superiors, just because they might fall into enemy hand and be brutally interrogated. Torture was commonly known among the Takaina, particularly of those who converted and then tried to fight on; he wondered, briefly, if the humans used it as well.

  The human civilians seemed to be trying to flee the city en masse. He didn’t blame them for it; most of the fires might have burned out, but the devastation had probably rendered some of them homeless…and they had to know that the war was going to continue. They couldn’t be allowed to leave, not yet; they had to learn to understand the city first. The improbably-named Austin – and what sort of name was that for a city, he wondered – would be the test case for occupying the remainder of the human world. If he succeeded, he had a good chance of becoming High Priest. If he failed, his Clan would disown him and he’d be lucky to be allowed to commit suicide. The rewards and risks of high rank were both vast.

  They reached the centre of
the city, a strange building that served as the centre of human government. It didn’t look majestic enough to his eyes; the humans could have built a massive towering construction, but instead they’d chosen to build a fairly small building. A small group of unarmed humans, watched carefully by a group of warriors, waited for him as he dismounted from his vehicle and touched the ground of Earth. He’d been in space for years, literally, but thanks to the miracle of cold sleep, he hadn’t forgotten what life was like on the surface of a world.

  The lead human looked up at him. Their faces were more expressive than those of the Takaina, but he wasn't able to read them; indeed, watching them almost made him feel unwell. It made him wonder, in a rare burst of self-introspection, if the Takaina had the same effect on humans; how would the two races integrate if both races repulsed the other? Maybe it was something they could learn to overcome…

  “Ah, how do you do?” The lead human said. The statement made absolutely no sense at all. For a moment, he wondered if he’d learned the right language. “I am Governor Brogan, the duly-elected leader of this state. Welcome to the Texas State Capital.”

  That made more sense. The human governing system – rather oddly, their development of high tech hadn’t led to some version of the Unification Wars – made very little sense to the Takaina…and their news broadcasts regarding it made even less sense. The Takaina would not have tolerated someone dishonourable in a high-ranking position, both for actually being dishonourable and for being caught at it.

  He leaned forward enough to watch the human’s eyes, weird and unpleasant though they were, flicker away. “You have surrendered your city to me,” he informed the human. “You and the remainder of your people are my prisoners and will be held accountable for the behaviour of your people.” He gave the signal. “Take them to the holding camps.”

  The warriors swarmed forward. There had been a surprising number of humans in the building, a handful of whom tried to run when they saw the warriors, but they were all rounded up and shipped out of the city to the camps that had been established at the early landing sites. Taking hostages was an old habit, one long honoured among the Takaina, although it was still too early to know how the humans would respond. A handful of human civilians, watching from the sidelines, would be allowed to leave, to spread the word. They would have to see what was happening to their world.

  ***

  Joshua felt an uncomfortable prickling behind his shoulder blades as he saw the aliens for the first time. Most of them wore the black armour that covered their entire bodies, including their faces, but the handful that went without protection were almost worse. From a distance, when one was standing still, it was easy to mistake them for humans, but there was something indefinably creepy about their faces and when they moved, they looked almost like jelly-legged soldiers, straight out of an anti-war film.

  He’d had to see the surrender ceremony. When they’d heard about it through the remains of the city’s internet, he’d insisted that he went to see what was happening, if only to discover how the aliens treated Governor Brogan. Joshua had been surprised to see the aliens grab him, chain him up and start marching him out of the city, but maybe that wasn’t so surprising after all. They would want to keep the leaders away from the remainder of the civilian population, just to try to keep a lid on acts of resistance…and instead, they’d taken one of the limiting factors away. People who had surrendered because of the surrender order would know, now, that it had been a mistake.

  The aliens seemed to be searching the Texas State Capitol. More and more aliens were arriving on their hovering vehicles and Joshua decided that it was time to make himself scarce before they decided to add him to their bag. He walked quickly back though the streets, passing shops and buildings that had been boarded up by their owners, and discovered what the aliens were doing with some of their prisoners. A KEW had fallen on the street and smashed several buildings and at least a dozen cars…and they had put their prisoners to work clearing up the mess. Shackled, their legs chained to stop them from running, former soldiers and policemen worked together to clear the area, piling up the debris into massive hills. The aliens didn’t seem to have a more comprehensive plan besides clearing the streets so they could use them, but maybe they’d dispose of them all in time.

  It was the bodies that almost made him throw up. He hadn’t realised just how many people had been killed until he’d seen the pile of bodies, just tossed there without any concern for funeral rites or the feelings of their relatives. Men, women…the tiny broken bodies of children, caught up in a war they’d never asked for nor wanted. The aliens seemed to be sorting them out themselves, without regard for human feelings, piling up the bodies until it seemed that the stink alone would drive them out of Austin. There was a brief pause as a pile of bodies was finished…and then flames flared through the pile, consuming all the bodies in a wave of irresistible heat. Joshua gagged at the smell of burning flesh and this time, he did throw up. The aliens ignored him, despite the vomiting; their masks probably provided all the protection they needed from the smell.

  “Bastards,” he hissed, as soon as he could speak again. His stomach felt as if he’d thrown up everything he’d eaten and yet, he was still trying to retch. “They could have buried the bodies, but no…”

  It took everything he had just to keep moving, just to get away from the smell, but somehow he managed to stagger back to the apartment. The smell seemed to be everywhere, but at least it wasn't as bad inside, although most of the residents were wearing masks. They seemed to think that the aliens were trying to gas them all out and kill them; they didn’t want to know what the smell actually was. Mr Adair suggested that the real reason the aliens were burning the bodies was to prevent them from decaying and spreading diseases, but there really was no way to know.

  Others came in and reported other news. The aliens were ransacking libraries, for some reason, taking all of the books, loading them onto their vehicles and driving them away. Joshua guessed that the real reason was that they intended to study the human books and learn more about humanity, something they wouldn’t have been able to do from orbit, allowing them to chose their tactics more carefully. They’d already damaged the world significantly, but if they knew exactly how it worked, they could take over completely.

  “I’m going to blog,” he said, and went to his apartment. The laptop was where he’d left it – one advantage of the apartment union was that theft was almost impossible – and he powered it up quickly, gambling that the aliens couldn’t have interfered with the internet that much. They hadn’t; it might have been slow and erratic, but it was working. “Now, lets see what I can post.”

  He wrote up the entire story of the downfall of Governor Brogan and what he’d seen in the streets quickly and concisely, and then uploaded it to a dozen news sites, using his private key to confirm authorship. The internet news media had redesigned itself in the last few days; instead of the mainstream media, there was now an entire series of bloggers reporting on what they saw, outdoing the MSM. The MSM was probably on the verge of falling apart anyway; they wouldn’t be getting any income, they weren’t broadcasting and the newspaper distribution network had been shot to hell. He smiled as he typed, enjoying the thought…and feeling like a real reporter for the first time in far too long.

  ***

  The first day of the occupation passed quietly, too quietly. There were a handful of incidents in the inner city, an area that seemed to have been completely abandoned to the gangs of young humans, but they were dealt with quickly. Allon couldn’t understand why the humans had even allowed them to flourish; it wouldn’t have happened at home and it wouldn’t have been difficult for the humans to clear them all out. The young humans had been easy to crush once he’d sent in a few hundred warriors and the survivors, those who hadn’t escaped to spread the word that lawlessness would not be tolerated, had been added to the clean-up crews.

  “WarPriest,” the Inquisitor said. Allon eyed him wit
h carefully concealed disliked. Inquisitors were all the same; they stuck their noses into everything, often without any concern for propriety. “We have completed our survey of human religions establishments within this city.”

  Allon felt a flicker of annoyance. He’d assumed that it would take longer for the Inquisitors to locate all of the human religious buildings. His people weren’t prepared to hold down the city if it erupted against them, not yet. The warriors were poking their heads into every nook and cranny, confiscating all the weapons they could find, but he was far from convinced that they’d found all of the weapons. The city seemed to have a quite amazing amount of weapons in civilian hands, something that the Truth strictly forbade, and the humans seemed to dislike losing them.

  “The humans had actually listed them all prior to our arrival,” the Inquisitor continued, apparently unaware of Allon’s innermost thoughts. Or maybe he wasn’t; he might have been as nameless as the rest of his kind, but there was a certain sliminess around this one. “We have located them all and we would like them destroyed, as per standard procedure.”