The aliens hadn’t created a World War One-style network of trenches and so there was a ‘no man’s land’ between their positions and the human forces, gathering in strength. Both sides were uneasily aware that they could be attacked at any moment, and the aliens had insurgents to worry about, and so the border had been surprisingly peaceful, although the KEWs had continued to fall. The aliens had been fairly confident of their ability to defeat any conventional attack and so…they might, the crew hoped, have grown a little overconfident.
Time to show them the error of their ways, the commander thought, as he made the final checks on his vehicle. The briefing had warned that the alien parasite ships would have something else to worry about, but they couldn’t rely on that. He smiled, briefly, as the sky lit up with a blinding glow in the distance. The first of the nukes had detonated. That explained why the higher-ups had thought that the aliens would be distracted, although no one knew how much EMP shielding the alien technology mounted. What little had fallen into human hands had been crude, but functional. That hadn’t stopped them tearing the guts out of the USA – or, for that matter, the rest of the world.
“Fire,” he ordered. The MLRS elevated to launch position and started to fire. Illuminated by the flare of the rockets, the crew ran for their lives, abandoning their vehicle. The aliens might still be able to react, somehow. He watched, as they reached their pre-prepared bunker, as the rockets continued to fly towards the alien base. They looked to have been completely surprised. Their lasers weren't even burning the rounds out of the air. A moment later, he started to hear explosions as the rounds came down in the alien positions, shattering their defences.
Operation Lone Star had begun.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Surprise is the one constant in the universe.
-Anon
The SSTO slowly fell away from the Guiding Star. Researcher Femala sat back in her chair and tried to force herself to relax as the pilot started to guide the shuttle down towards the planet below, but it was impossible to be calm. She was about to set foot on a new world, the first female to set foot on the planet Earth. How could she be calm when excitement was bubbling up within her chest, her four hearts beating like crazy as the craft’s engines fired, pushing them out of orbit? How could she keep herself composed when she was going to study the human technology in its own environment?
The High Priest had sent her on the mission, she knew, because she was expendable. Females were the source of the new warriors, and the females who supported them, and as a sterile Clan-less female, Femala wouldn’t ever be having children of her own. It wasn't unknown for a clan-less female to raise her own clan, sometimes creating one more powerful than the one that had disowned her, but that wasn't possible for her. If she died down on Earth, as so many of the warriors had done, it wouldn’t hurt the development of Earth at all. The High Priest might mourn her passing, but he’d be the only one who would even care. The remainder of the settlement force would probably be glad that she was gone. She felt a sudden burst of delighted amusement, remembering the faces of the other researchers; how could they prove themselves when it was Femala who would be on the ground, Femala the person who would make the discoveries that would tap human ingenuity for the good of the Truth? How could having children and expanding their clans compare to bringing new technology to the Takaina?
Her smile grew wider as the shuttle continued its plunge towards the surface. The only other female in the compartment, a researcher into human behaviour who needed new subjects to study, was clearly terrified. She had been the best at her job, but the High Priest had had to order her to take the trip down to the surface, escorted by a unit of warriors. Femala watched, with a kind of disinterested amusement, how the warriors preened themselves in front of her, trying to convince her to choose one of them as a mate. Warriors didn’t have much to do with clan leadership – that was the domain of females – but if they helped create the children, they had a certain place within the clan. Normally, that was a serious matter, but now, with a world being invaded and death lurking for them somewhere on the blue-green orb, they were treating it lightly, almost as a joke. The poor researcher wasn't flattered; she was terrified…and Femala found it hard not to laugh. She would only have interacted with males on the Guiding Star, where they were properly respectful, not in a combat zone. Femala almost wished that they would pay her that much attention, but the brand on her forehead marked her clearly as sterile, a woman who wouldn’t be the mother of a warrior’s immortality.
The shuttle shook, suddenly, and the lights dimmed. Femala heard the other female cry out in panic, wondering what could cause the lights to suddenly dim Femala knew that it normally meant that power was being rerouted to somewhere else on the shuttle, perhaps the guiding systems themselves. The shuttle was a tough modular construction, a simple device built for landing a small number of people or a tiny amount of cargo on a world, but it was far from perfect. If they were being forced to take evasive action – if there was anything that could shoot at them on the ground – they would rapidly burn through all their fuel, and fall to Earth and crash. They were probably no longer capable of returning to orbit. The craft shook again and she peered through the porthole, watching as Earth span below them, and shivered. The planet was massive…and it was getting closer.
“Remain calm,” the pilot said, through the intercom. “The base on the planet is under attack and…”
His voice fuzzed out suddenly. Femala stared as the lights dimmed still further and computer screens blinked out. The craft had to have taken a major hit from an EMP, she realised, but that wouldn’t have knocked out everything. The craft was still under power, as much of the systems were shielded, but not all of them. The odds were that the shuttle was still going to crash. Gravity would make that inevitable…but they might still survive. Her fate rested in the hands of the pilot and his crew.
“What’s happening?” The researcher female demanded. Femala knew that she should ask the woman’s name and share what reassurance she could, but she’d been driving Femala mad ever since they had first met, assuming a superiority she didn’t possess. She thought she was better than Femala, just because she could bear children, and society would back her up. “You’re the technician, what’s happening?”
Femala kept the cruel smile she wanted to show off her face as she explained, in precise detail, what was going on and just how many things could go wrong and get them killed. If the craft had been in orbit, she could have aided the pilot in repairing the damage…but then, if they had been in orbit, one of the parasite ships would have recovered them and brought them back to the Guiding Star, the adventure at an end before it had even begun. Clearly, the High Priest and the Arbitrators had underestimated the human capability for fighting back. Anyone would think that they didn’t want to be converted to the Truth.
The researcher seemed to shake more as Femala outlined the possibilities, but at least she listened quietly, allowing Femala a chance to think. They’d been entering an orbit for a landing at once of the human airfields that had been repaired and pressed into service when the EMP had hit. The odds were that most of their systems had been knocked out. If the main engines weren't working, they would plummet to their deaths, but if they were, they could probably land…but where? Would they still come down in occupied territory, or would they land amidst the wild humans?
“We’re going to have to go for a landing,” the pilot said. Standard emergency procedure encouraged getting the ship down as fast as possible, but the procedure hadn’t been created for a war zone. “I want everyone to remain in their chairs until we land, whereupon we might have to evacuate the ship as fast as possible.”
One of the warriors had clearly been thinking along the same lines. “Pilot, where will we land?”
“Unknown,” the pilot said. There was a long uncomfortable pause. “I’m not even sure that I can guarantee landing on the land. The beacons are all down and I can’t pick up any station to g
uide us down.”
Femala smiled to herself as the researcher started to panic again. The idea of coming down in the water wasn't as bad as it seemed. The shuttle would float for a short period, although there would be no hope of recovery, unless the humans picked them up and offered to trade them for humans within the occupied zone. Judging from the researcher’s face, she was more worried about having to swim, rather than meeting uncontrolled humans, without a squad of warriors to protect her. She’d spent most of the last few cycles studying captured human materials…and she knew, probably better than Femala, how unpleasant humans could be. The thought of capture wasn't a pleasant one. The old laws of war allowed warriors to be killed, but females were allowed to live, but the humans knew nothing of such laws. On the other hand, they probably wouldn’t kill Femala for being sterile.
“I’m firing the main engines now,” the pilot said. “Remain in your chairs.”
Gravity returned suddenly as the roar of the engines cut through the air. Femala could tell, at once, that there was something badly wrong. The sound of the rockets was rougher than it should have been, and nastier. She could hear the shuttle’s frame screaming in protest as the craft fought to avoid a fatal craft; for the first time in far too long, she found herself mouthing prayers as they plummeted towards the ground. The roar rose to a crescendo, and then suddenly faded, half of the racket simply vanishing. She knew what that meant; one of the engines had flamed out, perhaps condemning them if they were still too high. The craft seemed to shudder, again, and then the ground rose up and hit them. Dull thunder echoed through her head as the shuttle tipped, tilted towards the ground…and Femala blacked out.
***
Captain Andrew Stocker and the company had been on patrol in eastern Arkansas when they had seen the falling star. The alien occupation had sent hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Texas and his duty had been to find them and escort them to refugee camps, where they could be processed. Most of them were harmless, mainly men and women who were willing to work for food and help rebuild as much as they could of the state, but some were criminals and others had been forced into working for the aliens. They normally were easy to spot, but most of them tried to escape rather than surrender, although a couple had tried to shoot their way out of the trap. The ones who were captured confessed at once, admitting that the aliens had their families under their control as hostages, but they couldn’t be trusted. The soldiers sent them to a prison camp in the north and prayed to themselves that they would never be faced with the same decision.
They had seen the alien craft from a distance and it had been obvious that it was trying to land. One of the men had produced a Stinger – they’d had hundreds distributed to the soldiers and resistance fighters, in hopes of wearing down the alien helicopter force – and taken aim, but Stocker had ordered him to hold fire. The craft was definitely trying to land, hundreds of miles from the red zone…and it was clearly in trouble. It came down, a demented cross between Thunderbird One and Thunderbird Three, and he felt a moment of respect for the pilot. It was clear that his craft was in deep shit, but he was working desperately to prevent a crash, struggling with his engines to land safely on the ground.
“We need to take that craft intact,” he muttered, knowing that it might prove futile. The alien pilot was good, but if his drives cut out at the wrong moment, the craft would plunge to the ground and explode. Probably. At the very least, it would be unusable. If they could gain control of a working alien craft, it would unlock new secrets…hell, maybe they could fly it up to space and bomb the aliens from orbit. “Sergeant, I want a perimeter around the craft; I’ll lead the squad that investigates.”
He ignored the Sergeant’s comment that he shouldn’t put himself in danger. Wild horses couldn’t have kept him from meeting the aliens directly. The craft was clearly at the end of its tether – the noise of its rockets sputtered, bare meters above the ground, and failed – and it hit the ground with a thud. Stocker covered his eyes, expecting an explosion, but instead the craft tilted, slowly, and fell over. It lay on the ground, smoking slightly, waiting for them.
“Come on,” he hissed, and led the way down to the craft. Up close, it was massive, but somehow they would have to camouflage it and hide it from the aliens. He’d sent for a camouflage team, but they’d have to be incredibly lucky – if Lone Star hadn’t blinded the aliens, they’d already be scrambling a response. The craft was rapidly cooling, but the waves of heat would probably be noticeable from orbit. They swept around the craft and located a hatch, set within the cooling metal, and he knocked. There was no response.
“There,” the Sergeant said, pointing to a smaller section within the hatch. Stocker realised that it was a control of some kind and pulled it. The hatch unlocked, but it took the combined strength of three soldiers to pull it open and lock it in place. A wave of hot air, smelling of something indefinably alien, struck them in the face, but Stocker pushed forward anyway, shining his torch ahead of him. It was a disaster area; the entire interior of the craft had been torn to pieces, but he could see some bodies. The alien engineering had held up, barely; he barked an order and the soldiers started to recover the bodies. There were nine live aliens, in total, including two with very noticeable breasts. He had to remind himself that they might not actually be female. “Sir, what do we do with them?”
“Get them to the hideout and have the medics work on them,” Stocker ordered, after a long moment’s thought. If they could take the aliens alive, they'd have to give him a proper combat role, rather than patrolling the rear. “Check them for any kind of weapon and then move them out, carefully. We need to get them well away from here before dawn.”
The sense that the aliens would be taking steps to prevent them escaping with this treasure trove forced him forward, exploring the higher reaches of the craft. It had once stood on its end; now, lying on the ground, it was hard to reach the cockpit, but when he managed to climb inside, he found two more dead aliens. He examined them quickly, trying to determine what had killed them, but there didn’t seem to be any kind of real damage. They had cuts and scars from damaged consoles, but…there didn’t seem to be any real reason why they were dead. It was a complete mystery.
“Get these bodies as well,” he hissed, as the camouflage team arrived. Moving the alien craft before dawn would be impossible, but if they could hide it, they could break it up and move it, piece by piece. “Sergeant, get a couple of others up here and strip the craft of anything we can carry; books, files, whatever…”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said.
Stocker managed to climb back to the hatch and out into the cool air. Lights were twinkling high above him and he could only hope that one of them wasn't an alien KEW, coming to ensure that no alien secrets fell into human hands. If they could hide the craft…
“Sir, look at their foreheads,” one of the junior lieutenants said. “They’re marked!”
“Yeah, so?” Stocker asked coldly. The priority was getting the prisoners away from their craft, not discussing their tattoos. They’d be discussing the alien breasts next. “What about them?”
“They destroy religious buildings and they have marks on their forehead,” the lieutenant pointed out. “It could be the Mark of the Beast. They could be demons, or the servants of the antichrist…”
Stocker stared at him for a long moment. “You’ve been reading Left Behind too much,” he said, dryly. “This whole war is quite bad enough without adding supernatural elements to the problem, don’t you think? They bleed and die when we shoot them, so they’re not demons, are they?”
***
Femala felt her head swimming as, slowly, she returned to awareness. It took her time – it felt like entire cycles – to remember what had just happened. The shuttle had crashed, but somehow, she was still alive. They had to have come down in occupied territory, then, and the warriors had recovered their craft. The gravity was slightly heavier than that on the Guiding Star’s habitation section, w
hich meant that they were still on Earth. The field medics had probably insisted that they remain on the planet until they were fit to return to orbit.
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