Outside Context Problem: Book 02 - Under Foot

by Christopher Nuttall

  “The bottom line,” Golda said, “is that it doesn’t matter what their actual motives are – they’ve given us due notice. We can either accept their terms, or prepare for war.”

  “We are as prepared as we will ever be,” Benny said. “Aircraft have been dispersed; ground-to-air missile batteries have been sited around vital locations and cities, while civil defence teams are ready to start evacuating sections of the population. The British, French and Greeks have said they’ll take as many refugees as we can send; the Turks have offered to serve as a clearinghouse, but they cannot allow refuges to stay for long. Besides, the security situation in Turkey and Kurdistan is somewhat unstable…”

  Ehud nodded bitterly. Turkey and Israel had had their disagreements, but they’d also been close allies, sharing information and technology from time to time. They’d even discussed a joint invasion of Syria back when the Syrian Government had shown signs of aggression, launching Scud missiles towards Israel before cooler minds had realised that it might provoke Israel into taking off the gloves and just hitting back. He’d hoped that the Turks might be willing to assist against the aliens, but with a mass insurgency in Kurdistan and the Turkish Army bogged down in a counter-insurgency campaign that seemed to reach as far as Saddam’s old hometown, it wasn't going to happen. Iraq and most of the Middle East had collapsed into a state of absolute chaos. The Americans and their allies had done a good job of beating the Iraqi insurgency and rebuilding the country. Ehud wished that they hadn’t done such a good job.

  “Very well,” he said. “We have to take it before Parliament, but…what do we tell them?”

  “We fight,” Golda Livni said. “We cannot, we must not, allow Israel to be rendered defenceless. If the price of remaining ready to defend ourselves is fighting, then we have no choice, but to fight.”

  “Against an overwhelmingly superior foe?” Amir Shkedy questioned. “We could lose this war.”

  “And if we lose, what happens? Occupation. If we surrender our defences, what happens? Occupation. If we win, or convince them that we’re too tough to take out without massive losses…we gain our freedom, freedom not only from the aliens, but from the Arabs as well. We can try to negotiate – there has to be something we can offer them, even if it’s just the loan of trained soldiers – but we cannot compromise our own safety.”

  “Our safety has been compromised ever since the mothership entered orbit,” Amir Shkedy snapped. “We cannot win this war…”

  “And to lose means the end of the world,” David bar Elias snapped. “Losing means the end of the Jewish State! Losing means that Jews will no longer have a safe place, free of pogroms and harassment from people who think we run the world and are to blame for all of their woes. Losing means that the rest of the world will declare open season on Jews once again! You saw where it was going before the aliens arrived; Jews fleeing Europe, terrified of attacks on their homes and property. “Lose,” means the end of the world!

  “There is no country, but Israel, that puts Jewish interests first, none. We cannot allow that to be lost, even if it means having to launch Operation Masada and risk mutual destruction. We have to tell them that we won't be bullied, that we won't allow ourselves to be pushed around, and that if we go down, we take them down with us! We have no choice.”

  Ehud silently canvassed the group and counted their opinions. “We refuse their terms,” he said, finally. “We try to talk them into accepting more reasonable terms, but if they refuse…we fight.”

  He stood up. Israel, hyperbole aside, hadn’t come close to total destruction since the Yom Kipper War, years ago. The endless war against the Palestinians had been a pain, but it had never been fatal; the Arab States had learned not to tangle with the IDF directly, after they’d been beaten repeatedly on the battlefield. Israel might die of the death of a thousand cuts, but a single overwhelming blow wouldn’t crush her – until now. He thought of the men and women of the IDF he’d reviewed only last week and felt like crying. How many of them would live past the coming week?

  “Come,” he said. He could have challenged their decision, but that would have sparked off a political crisis at the worst possible moment. Israel politics tended to lean towards the heavily conservative when it came to defence, encouraged by the certain knowledge that they were surrounded by homicidal maniacs on three sides and the sea on the fourth. The maniacs kept talking about driving Israelis into the sea…and then the West wondered why the Israelis were so paranoid. “It’s time to address the country.”

  Chapter Forty

  Over Israel

  Day 176

  “Alpha-One, be aware that we have multiple contacts closing in on your position,” the AWACS operator said. “You are cleared to fire at will.”

  Captain Menahem Kapel braced himself as the alien craft started showing up on the HUD. The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II seemed to jerk under his touch as it turned to face the incoming alien craft, preparing to go to war for the first time since the IAF had purchased forty of the advanced multirole fighters from the Americans. There had been those in the IAF who had questioned the wisdom of the decision at the time – Israel’s normal opponents didn’t have access to front-line jet fighters or the training to make real fighter pilots out of their people – but they were keeping a low profile now. The aliens were on their way.

  He’d heard the President's broadcast to the nation and agreed with him, even though he knew that the coming battle was going to be the hardest of his career. They couldn’t surrender everything they’d built to defend themselves, or the aliens would simply take Israel whenever they decided to reach out their hand. The only way to stop them was to make them unwilling to pay the price it would cost to occupy Israel, which brought it right back to the fighter pilots. The IAF was, once again, the first line of defence.

  “Stand by to fire at my command,” he said, to the remainder of the squadron. The alien craft were entering range now, barely slowing as they closed in on the Israeli fighter jets. There was no way to know where they’d come from, or which alien city had launched the fighter craft; at their speeds, they could have come from the dark side of the moon. He silently envied the alien pilot his craft even as he prepared to destroy it, rapidly sharing information with the other fighters to designate targets. “Stand by…”

  His thumb came down hard on the trigger. “Fox-Three!”

  The aircraft jerked as the AIM-132 ASRAAM missile shot away from the Lightning, racing towards its target. He’d been nervous about the extra explosive that had been packed into the warhead to ensure a kill, but the technicians seemed to have been right and the missile was behaving normally. So were the aliens; their craft seemed to slow rapidly, then started to duck and weave as the missiles closed in. A second later, they started to fire pulses of superheated plasma back at the Israeli jets, forcing them to evade themselves. A brilliant explosion flashed out ahead of him as one of the alien craft died, followed rapidly by three more. The remainder evaded their missiles and raced towards the Israeli jets, firing as they came.

  “Alpha-One, we assess you have around four hits,” the AWACS said. Menahem tuned it out. There was no time for an interruption. “Good hunting.”

  The alien craft was much closer now, firing flashes of multicoloured death towards the Lightning. Menahem selected a second missile and launched it, just before yanking his aircraft to one side to avoid a plasma bolt that scorched the side of his aircraft. By some miracle, it didn’t explode and take him out permanently. His opponent twisted, spun like a corkscrew, and rocketed off into the distance, leaving the missile behind. It would either acquire a new target or fall to the ground and explode harmlessly in the desert.

  “He’s on my six,” one of the pilots said, his voice breaking into the communications channels. “I can’t shake him!”

  “Hold him for a second,” Menahem said, twisting his aircraft around and coming in behind the alien craft. Training told him to open fire with the Lightning’s cannon, but exper
ience had shown that cannons were useless against the alien craft. “I’m coming right up behind you.”

  The alien craft seemed unaware of his presence, or perhaps the alien pilot thought that he could accomplish a kill and vanished before Menahem could put a missile up his tailpipe. He felt an odd moment of kinship with the alien pilot before selecting a third missile and firing it at close range, breaking off a second later and diving for the ground. The explosion shook his aircraft and he had to struggle to pull out of the dive, but he’d survived…and so had the alien’s target. For a moment, the two IAF jets flew unmolested, allowing him to try to grasp the overall tactical position. It didn’t look good. The Israelis were down at least nine jets…and they hadn’t been the sole focus of the attack. The aliens had pressed in from all directions and hammered the patrolling aircraft, forcing them back towards their bases. He glanced at the live feed from the AWACS and winced again. The IAF hadn’t suffered such losses since it had been founded, years ago. The most modern and well-trained air force in the Middle East was having its head handed to it.

  Damn you, he thought, as the squadron regrouped. The aliens seemed to have abandoned them, choosing instead to head inwards towards Ramat David Airbase and hammer the IAF’s support facilities. He wanted to call them cowards for refusing to tangle any further with the jet fighters, yet their tactics made perfect sense. Jet fighters couldn’t fly without fuel or fight without weapons and knocking out their bases was a cheap way to ground the IAF. He hoped that the Air Defence Network was ready and waiting. The aliens might discover that they’d stuck their heads into a hornet’s nest.

  “Return to base,” he ordered, swinging the jet around. The ground defences might need some help and they were dangerously exposed where they were. The IFF systems should prevent the ground-based forces from accidentally shooting them down. He hoped. Two years ago, the Air Defence Network had come within microseconds of shooting an American helicopter carrying one of their congresswomen out of the air, after her pilot had forgotten to file a flight plan. The Air Defence Network took its job seriously. “There’s still work to be done.”

  ***

  Rahat Rasul wasn’t exactly a prisoner, but no one had gone out of their way to make him welcome either. The last place he’d ever expected to end up was on Ramat David Airbase, but it was where the three Egyptian pilots had been vectored to after they’d flown into Israeli airspace and begged for sanctuary. The Israelis had confiscated their aircraft and personal weapons, yet they didn’t seem to have come to any decision about what to do with them. Two of the pilots remained in their quarters, expecting to be arrested and brutally tortured at any moment, but Rahat had decided to wander the airbase and see what he could learn. No one seemed to care about the security risk, not now the Egyptian Air Force and Egypt itself was no longer a going concern. The cool contempt would have been humiliating if he hadn’t been beyond humiliation, or any other emotion. He'd been told to stay away from some of the secure areas, but otherwise he could wander as he pleased.

  He’d watched the Israeli jets taking off and wished he could feel emotion. He would have envied the precision of the IAF if he’d still had his own jet, or his own air force, but now all he felt was sorrow. The IAF had debriefed him and the other pilots extensively and he'd told them everything he knew, yet how could they stand against the aliens? They didn’t understand how powerful they were, or how much damage they could wreak on a squadron of jet fighters. Perhaps no one could understand until they actually saw the aliens in action. He found himself praying to Allah that some of the young Jewish pilots would survive and live to fight another day. They might have been Jews, but at least they weren't aliens. To the south, the aliens occupied Mecca, an offence to every true Muslim. Thousands had gone, the Israelis said, to join a great Jihad against the demonic aliens, but Rahat knew that it wouldn’t be enough. How could mortal man fight such creatures? Even the Americans had been broken.

  A siren echoed across the airfield and he recognised it at once; incoming enemy attack. He braced himself as a roar echoed over the airfield. Streaks of light rose into the air as the Israelis fired Patriot and Arrow missiles towards the incoming alien craft. He turned to face the missiles and saw tiny black spots in the sky racing down towards the airfield. A wave of brilliant flashes of light lanced down and he found himself on the ground, surrounded by explosions. The entire air base seemed to be on fire as the aliens worked it over thoroughly, destroying the missile batteries first before wiping out the hangars and carpeting the runways with thousands of tiny potholes. Rahat knew what that meant after studying the Israeli strike against his own people during the Six Days War; the aliens intended to make it impossible for the airbase ever to launch another air strike. Their tactics had improved, he noted numbly; they’d taken much longer to take out American bases in America.

  He saw a soldier, half-maddened by the sight, firing up madly with a rifle towards one of the alien craft. It didn’t seem to notice as it passed over the base, firing down pulses of light towards any reasonable target. The ground shook, as if there had been a massive earthquake, as a new fireball rose up into the sky. The aliens had hit the underground ammunition storage deport! The chain of explosions seemed never ending; he curled up on the ground, covering his ears, and waited to die. Somehow, the Angel of Death never touched him.

  When he opened his eyes, he saw flames everywhere and ground crews working desperately to repair what they could. A female nurse grabbed his arm and started to work at him, before realising that he was uninjured and pulled him to his feet. She barked an order at him and he nodded, running over to assist with pulling the wounded out of the wreckage and getting them to a makeshift hospital station. Hardly a building on the airbase was still standing; the aliens had wiped out control towers, hangars and support buildings with a remarkable degree of viciousness. He'd never seen anything like it in his life. It would take months, perhaps years, to rebuild the base and get it operating again. The aliens wouldn’t let them have the time.

  He found himself detailed to another medical term and started to help move the lightly wounded out of the base. The Israelis didn’t seem to care any longer that he was an Arab; they just kept pushing tasks at him, along with the rest of their people. The entire civilian population of the surrounding area seemed to have come out to help the military personnel, not something that would ever happen in Egypt. He felt a pang for his lost family and friends, and then pushed it aside. He winced as jets flew overhead and would have thrown himself to the ground if he hadn’t been carrying a stretcher. Others seemed to have had the same reaction, even though they were clearly Israeli jets rather than alien fighters. Most of the ground crew looked shell-shocked. They couldn’t believe what had happened to them in less than a few hours. Rahat could barely believe it either. The IAF was regarded with fear and awe all across the Middle East and the aliens had wreaked havoc in less than a day. They hardly needed anything from humanity if they could do that!

  The base seemed to have been totally wrecked. Like other air bases around the world, it was massive, large enough to soak up multiple hits and keep on operating, but this time he doubted that it could be repaired in time to make a difference. How long would it be until the aliens sent in ground troops to occupy the bases and pen the Israeli population in their cities, as they had done to the Arabs and Americans? How long would it be before they found willing collaborators and built a puppet government…?

  He shook his head as he carried the stretcher towards the waiting ambulances. Whatever happened would happen. All he could do was try to help as best as he could. There was nowhere else to go.

  ***

  Colonel Ester Goldfarb looked down at her orders and made a face. She had been warned that such a day might come, yet she had hoped that it wouldn’t come on her watch. No one could blame her for feeling a certain…concern about deploying nuclear warheads, not after the world had held them in such total fear and awe after their first deployment. Three nuclear weap
ons had been deployed against enemy targets and the results had been terrifying, every time.

  She looked down at the console and scowled. A day – just a day – and the IAF was already being pushed right to the limit. Four airbases were completely out of service for the foreseeable future – which was looking very short – and three more had been badly damaged. Supplies of men and weapons were being burned up at a terrifying rate. The aliens seemed to come and go as they pleased through the Air Defence Network, daring the Israelis to stop them and forcing the defenders to expend irreplaceable missiles on fast-moving targets that just accelerated out of range when fired upon. She couldn’t believe that it had happened so quickly. A week ago, everyone in the IDF had been cheering the aliens for terminating the threat from the Arabs. They should have known better. The aliens wanted the entire planet and that meant Israel too. They’d keep pouring on the attacks until the IAF collapsed and they could send in ground troops. Rumour had it that they were already preparing to deploy Arab soldiers to the streets of Israel to keep the peace, although she had to admit that that would be insanely stupid of them – unless they wanted humans to kill each other off.

  “Confirm launch authority,” she ordered. Her unit wasn't – technically – part of the Air Defence Network, although they drew data from the integrated radar system that protected Israeli airspace. The network was already starting to look frayed as the aliens took out radar bases and AWACS aircraft. “Clear it with the secure link; make sure that the codes are verified and confirmed twice.”

  “Yes, Colonel,” the operator said. There was a pause as he worked the console. “The launch codes come directly from the playbook, Colonel; everything has been verified.”