Invasion

Chapter Thirteen

The President had been working on some of the plans for reconstructing the country when Colonel Paul James burst in and disturbed him. It had astonished Paul how much and how little the President actually did; before he’d started to work with the President closely, he’d imagined the President as having his hand in almost everything. Instead, the President and his Cabinet set policy and left actually carrying out the policy to lower levels, something that had caused more than its fair share of problems in its time. The US had had several President who hadn’t been quite as black as they’d been painted, but had taken the blame for not micro-managing everything, despite the fact that that was impossible. The United States was the most complex nation on the Earth and micro-managing everything would have been impossible.

“Mr President,” he said, grimly. “There’s an invasion!”

The President blanched. That had been pretty much Paul’s reaction when the first reports had started to come in from Fort Hood of the alien landings. He’d known that he might be faced with the possibility of an alien invasion one day, but the President hadn’t known… and if he’d thought about it at all before the alien mothership had been detected, he would have dismissed it as science-fiction. America was almost impossible to invade and impossible to invade successfully… until now. The aliens might change all the rules.

“I see,” the President said, finally. He still looked stunned, but at least he was reacting. “Where are they landing?”

“Texas,” Paul said. He was tempted to make a redneck joke, but there wasn’t time; besides, Texas had been one of the states that the President had lost during the election. “Sir, they’re landing in force. You have to come to the Situation Room, now…”

There was a new air of urgency in the situation room when they arrived. The operators were even busier than they’d been during the first attacks, trying to pull information out of the airwaves and the internet. The aliens had wiped out the satellites, but large parts of the military communications network remained intact, enough to allow them to rebuild their communications, given time. Communications outside the United States were still fragmentary, but inside the United States, they worked almost as normal. It wasn’t as reassuring as it should have been.

The main display had been focused entirely on Texas. Paul had been surprised to discover that it could cope with an invasion of the United States at all, but it was just a simple matter of programming. There were hundreds of new KEW strikes all over Texas — and the surrounding states — but also three areas on the map, completely shaded in red. The alien landings had been detected, easily, but interdicting them had proven impossible. If some of the estimates were to be believed, the aliens might have landed a million tons or more of material…

But it wasn’t going to be an easy conquest. Paul had once taken part in an exercise that had been based around an invasion of America. The conclusion had been that it would take upwards of six million soldiers and very unpleasant rules of engagement to succeed in invading the United States; if nothing else, most of the adults in Texas would have a gun. People had been buying them madly in the weeks since the announcement of alien contact. They could make life very unpleasant for the aliens… but what methods would the aliens use to maintain control?

“I spoke to General Ridgley briefly,” General Hastings was saying. “Third Corps is attempting to get organised to mount a counterattack, but it’s not going to be easy. The aliens are spreading out rapidly and anything of ours they detect gets smashed from orbit. Fort Hood isn’t crippled, but anything that transmits a radio signal of any kind gets smashed, so we’re losing our ability to maintain tactical control.”

The President stared desperately at him. “But there will be resistance, right?”

“Of course,” General Hastings said. Paul could hear the grim resolution in his voice, the professional military man unwilling to admit that his country could be beaten. “The National Guard, militias, people with guns… but a lot of it is going to be uncoordinated. We need to get organised and get a heavy force in there and that’s not going to be easy. It’s the old problem; who gets there the first with the most wins, and our ability to reinforce has been curtailed.”

“Send them in at night,” Paul suggested, suddenly. “Failing that, wait for heavy cloud cover and then attack their positions.”

“In Texas?” General Hastings asked, dryly. “We barely know what’s happening. God along knows what’s happening in the red zone, under the fog of war. We can’t peer down from orbit any more, can we?”

“Have your people do what they can,” the President said. He sounded almost broken. No American President, with the possible exception of Lincoln, had presided over so much destruction. The country he loved was getting torn apart. “We have to do what we can to help the Texans. They’re Americans too…”

Captain Felicia Argyris winced as the Warthog flew low over the ground. Normally, she would have a wingman coming up behind her and other American aircraft in the air, but most of the bases in Texas had been hit — badly — from orbit. Her A-10 Warthog had only survived because it had been placed in a warehouse and concealed from orbit, along with a handful of other planes. Flying with the aliens in such complete control of space was almost suicide, but Felicia was determined to hit back at them at least once before she was grounded permanently. The odds were that some hotshot male pilot who’d used to fly F-22s would try to claim her Warthog… and the fighter pilot mafia would ensure that he succeeded.

She could see the towering pillars of smoke rising up in the distance as she raced towards the alien landing zones. The last report had said that at least a dozen alien cone-shaped craft had landed in Texas and that they were deploying their ground forces rapidly, securing their landing sites and ensuring that humans didn’t get to go near them. Third Corps would engage as soon as possible — she found herself praying for them; her brothers were both deployed as part of Third Corps — but until then, they had to be delayed, somehow. That meant that she had to fly into harm’s way, again, and hurt them as much as she could.

It was strange, flying without a GPS or radio chatter, but there was no choice. A radio signal meant certain death around the aliens. The last reports had been that anything transmitting a signal had been hit, a list that had included cell phone masts and pirate radio stations, all of which had been destroyed. She’d also been warned to keep active emissions to a minimum, so she had no terrain-following radar or IFF transmitter. It would be ironic, after everything, if she was blown out of the sky by her own side, but it was a risk she had to take. She wasn’t going to give up without a fight.

“Warning,” the onboard computer said, suddenly. She’d selected a male voice, a whimsy from friendlier times. She’d used to joke about a man who always did what he was told, but it didn’t seem so funny now. “Hostile transmissions detected.”

Felicia glanced down briefly at the display. The aliens were using a more sophisticated system than she’d anticipated, but she’d trained to operate in far more hostile environments. Judging from the deployment of their air-search radars and even from some of their radio transmissions, they were heading for the interstate that would lead them directly to Austin. That had been anticipated; unless they had some magical form of antigravity, they would need the interstates — or what was left of them — to move their own people around. She flew low over a crowd of refugees, people struggling to get away from the aliens… and then, as she approached the interstate, she saw them.

For a chilling moment, she thought that they were human vehicles… and then she realised that the tanks had no tracks. They hovered, a third of a metre off the ground, advancing at terrifying speed towards Austin. They didn’t seem to have encountered any resistance, so far; they were just racing onwards. Burning human cars blocked their way, but they seemed to be capable of evading them, their hovering forms gliding over the cars, or avoiding them. Suddenly, with shocking speed, the aliens turned towards her, the dark barrels of their weapons pointing up towards her aircraft.

She flipped up the protective cover for the trigger and pushed the trigger down as hard as she could. The Warthog’s heavy Gatling gun thundered out and a pair of alien tanks exploded into balls of fire. She threw the Warthog into an evasive pattern as a third alien vehicle drew a bead on her and a streak of… something flashed just past her wing. The Warthog was a tough bird, but somehow she doubted that she’d be flying home if one of the alien weapons struck her. She twisted through the air, locked on to a second group of alien vehicles and selected a pair of cluster bombs. A satisfying series of explosions billowed up below her as she turned her aircraft and…

The laser beam struck the underside of the Warthog and started to burn through the armour. Felicia had only a second to realise that there was a problem and by then, it was too late. The laser burned through the aircraft and send the remains crashing to Earth, smashing down into the ground. Behind her, the aliens recovered and continued onwards towards Austin.

“It’s confirmed, sir,” the aide said. There was a grim helpless note in his voice. The United States was not used to defeat. “We got distress sequels from all of the Warthogs.”

General Ridgley winced. Normally, he would be commanding from a bunker, rather than a heavily camouflaged command vehicle. He’d had to send the Warthogs into the fray, in hopes of delaying the aliens and obtaining intelligence on their deployments, but they’d all been burned out of the air. The UAVs and even the handful of supersonic fighters he’d risked had suffered the same fate; the aliens, it seemed, were really determined to keep the human race out of the air.

“Send a runner down to the camp,” he ordered shortly. He’d grown up in a world where intelligence would arrive almost at once, where he could command his forces from half a world away… but that world was gone. If they sent a single radio signal, the aliens would smash them from orbit, probably without ever knowing what they had done. They were dependent, now, on runners, either on foot or using motorbikes. Without them, he would be completely cut off from the rest of his force. The field telephones weren’t working very well. “Tell them that we’ll meet them outside Austin.”

The map looked barely changed. The fragmentary reports weren’t enough to build up a real picture of what was happening. Fort Hood had been hit hard enough to destroy its communications systems and he no longer had much in the way of communication with the other forces scattered around the area. The aliens were likely to defeat them all individually, one by one, and prevent them from concentrating against was through orbital bombardment. The only clue they had as to the alien locations were through the work of a signals and intelligence unit, which was tracking the sources of alien transmissions, even if they couldn’t read them. It wasn’t enough. He didn’t know what was going on… and that meant that command had devolved down the ranks.

He hoped that they’d be up to the task.

The torrent of aliens seemed never-ending. Sergeant Oliver Pataki had given up trying to estimate how many aliens there actually were in their conical spacecraft; he’d counted over two thousand so far, and at least a hundred vehicles. Their hovering tanks and smaller vehicles, which he suspected were their form of IFV, seemed to move faster than comparable human vehicles… and that would give them an advantage. The countryside seemed to be burning everywhere; he could see plumes of smoke rising up in all directions. It didn’t look good for the human race.

He was mildly surprised that the aliens hadn’t detected their signals by now, but it was possible that they were simply ignoring them… or maybe, given how close they were to the alien landing site, they were reluctant to risk bombing them from orbit. The aliens hadn’t attempted to come up the hill yet, but once they did, the four soldiers intended to give them a hot welcome. He checked his M16 for the umpteenth time as yet another alien force advanced into the distance, heading towards the fires. Now that the alien craft had landed, he could hear the sounds of shooting in the distance, human weapons… and a deep booming sound that seemed somehow unearthly.

At least they don’t have handheld lasers, he thought, with a sudden burst of amusement. The alien weapons, as far as they could tell from their vantage point, were projectile weapons, although they looked nastier than some human weapons. He might have been imagining it — it was hard to tell at their distance — but there seemed to be a certain crudeness to their design, although that didn’t mean that they were useless. The AK-47 was an example of a crude approach… and no one would have called it a bad weapon, or even a useless piece of junk, not like some of the ideas that the scientists sold to the Pentagon that didn’t work in the field. The aliens seemed to prize the simple approach to technology; he’d seen nothing, so far, that he couldn’t understand, although human hovercraft technology was inferior to alien tech. He wished that he had some antitank mines he could test against the alien vehicles; he had a nasty feeling that some of the more basic mines wouldn’t be triggered by the alien hovercraft.

“Sir,” one of his men said. Pataki followed his finger and saw an alien aircraft take to the air. It looked like a drone to him, something comparable to the Predator recon drone, but as it flew, he saw that it carried bombs under its wings as well. Predators had been armed for years, but he hadn’t viewed them as a serious threat against a well-planned air defence system… but the aliens had shattered the American defences.

“I see it,” he said. There was nothing for it. They’d have to make another radio transmission. The system recorded the message and then transmitted it in one compressed burst, but he suspected that the aliens could detect microburst transmissions. They’d certainly proven themselves adapt at tracking other radio transmissions. “Recording…”

Having decided to take the risk, it was easy enough to make a complete report of everything they’d seen, including their count of alien tanks and other vehicles, as well as the aliens expanding their control over the landing site. They’d taken over a field and started to string up some kind of wire around it, something that reminded him of a holding pen for prisoners, although he doubted that they intended to capture the entire population of Texas. It was a good sign, in a way; it proved that they were taking prisoners. He completed the report and transmitted it… and then saw the aliens altering course. A group of them, marching on their strange legs, were heading up the hill.

“I saw them,” he said. They’d taken up as good a defensive position as possible, but he was certain that the aliens wouldn’t allow them to escape, not when they could surround the hill and intercept any attempt at fight. That left fighting or surrendering and he didn’t want to surrender, not when the aliens might have killed them all on sight. “Take aim…”

He levelled his M16 at an alien head, hidden behind a black helm, and his trigger finger tightened on the trigger. “Fire,” he snapped. Four shots rang out as one; four aliens tumbled to the ground. Their heads seemed to explode as the bullets passed through them, a sight that caused him to blink with disbelief; outside the movies, it wasn’t that easy to literally shatter a person’s skull with a bullet. “Hit them again…”

An answering burst of fire flashed back at them. The sounds of the alien weapons were definitely different, but they seemed to work on similar principles; Pataki pulled a grenade off his belt, unhooked it and tossed it down towards the aliens. The explosion seemed to shake the ground; in its wake, he heard inhuman sounds of pain. They sounded like a trio of sea lions, or seals, howling their pain and outrage… and then an enemy grenade came over into their position. Pataki threw himself away from the weapon, watching in horror as one of his men tried to cover it with his body and was blown to bits when the grenade exploded. A second grenade, much closer, stunned him long enough for the aliens to break into their position; dazed, he realised in a moment of clarity that he’d lost his weapon. They peered down at him, their faces hidden behind their dark masks, and then pulled him to his feet. His body ached dreadfully, but they didn’t seem to notice, or care.

A buzz from one of the alien suits caught his attention. “You are our prisoner,” it said. “Do not attempt to resist.”

The aliens searched him quickly, and then marched him off towards their prison camp. He watched, helplessly, as thousands more aliens spilled out of their ships and headed towards the human cities, burning in the distance. One way or the other, he was out of the fight.

He could only hope that the rest of Third Corps was having better luck.