Invasion

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“Are you sure that this is a good idea?”

“Nup,” Brent said, happily, as he mounted his bike. “You do know all the dangers, don’t you?”

Joshua gave him what was supposed to be a reproving look, although he suspected that after having faced flying bullets, it wasn’t that terrifying. “Yes,” he said. Brent had spelled them all out in precise detail. “Are you sure that this is a good idea?”

“It has to be done,” Brent said, dryly. “You’re the only other person I can take with me, so… you’re coming. Besides, you can write about it for your blog.”

Joshua said nothing. The ID cards they both carried, to say nothing of their relative freedom to move around the city and even outside it, marked them as first-rate collaborators. The aliens might not be a danger to them, unless they had brought in some new security checks or even some of their own ID card technology, but there was a fair chance that some insurgent would take a shot at them, convinced that they were alien collaborators. Brent had wondered about some kind of general notice to the rest of the insurgents, but by now the aliens would have collaborators monitoring the blogs, just watching for intelligence they could use. Joshua had even helped to make them look unreliable; if half the attacks threatened on the Internet had come to pass, the entire alien force would have been exterminated several times over.

The three weeks he’d spent with the soldiers, once he’d come to an uneasy truce, had been the most exciting and the most boring of his life. Exciting because he never knew when the aliens caught on to the safe house and burst in, boring because he couldn’t go out on the streets, even for a short time. The aliens might not have a positive ID on the soldiers, but they certainly knew who Joshua was and had even hung up wanted posters, offering a reward for his capture. They hadn’t said ‘dead or alive,’ but that had been the impression Joshua had gotten… and so he hadn’t wanted to wander. Instead, he’d taken his blog back and updated it with heroic stories about the insurgents, although Brent had insisted on reading everything first, just in case. The result was a series of exciting stories that were rather vague.

And then the aliens had started to land several miles away from the city, to the west. Joshua had watched the massive shapes moving down in the darkness, their drives turning night into day, and wondered what they were doing. The aliens seemed to have clamped down harder on the city as the landings began, running far more patrols and checking everyone for signs of insurgency, leaving only their collaborators with any real freedom. Brent had spoken to one of his best sources, a former lawyer who’d signed up as a collaborator while working for the resistance, and obtained two ID cards. If they worked, they could get out of the city, if only for a short period of time, and find out what the aliens were doing.

“Fine,” he said, finally. He suspected that one of the reasons that Brent had brought him alone was because he needed support, but he didn’t have any soldier he cared to risk, not when they would be needed in Austin. Joshua was expendable. “Let’s get on with it before I have an attack of brains to the head and realise how dangerous this is.”

Brent swung himself onto the bike and peddled off, Joshua following him a little more uncertainly. It had been years since he’d ridden a bicycle, but it was all coming back to him, if only because he was glad to be out in the fresh air. The smell of vehicles had faded, to be replaced by an ever-present smell of smoke and burning, caused by the fighting. Large parts of the city were destroyed and, for some reason, the aliens hadn’t even started rebuilding them. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, an alien patrol, but ignored them… and was ignored in turn. If they were caught, it wouldn’t be right next to the safe house.

The city’s populations had gone back to bikes in a big way. The aliens didn’t seem to care about people riding bikes, although they tended to stop anyone carrying a large bag, and so everyone was peddling around the city. Brent, Joshua had to admit, had been right; the two of them just blended into everyone else. There was nothing to mark them out as wanted fugitives, not until they reached the checkpoint at the edge of the city. The aliens didn’t let just anyone out, although the internet was buzzing with some odd reports of moments of alien kindness, of all things, and if they were caught…

I could die here, he realised, suddenly. The city had seemed darker and darker as they’d ridden towards the checkpoint. Away from the remainder of the cyclists, it was easier for them to be marked as collaborators and the dirty looks… he was lucky that no one had thrown a stone at them. Brent might have managed to stay on his bike — if he was to be believed, he had managed to cross a river under fire from both sides — but Joshua had no such illusions about himself. A single stone would have pitched him off his bike and into the tender mercies of the aliens or another resistance cell. The aliens, watching them dispassionately, would be delighted to get their hands on him.

The alien checkpoint was simple enough, but Brent had taught him enough for Joshua to pick out the hidden and well-protected machine gun nests, held well back from the road. The resistance had once driven an explosive-laden truck into one of the checkpoints, blowing it up along with all of the guards, and since then the aliens had been rather more careful. They might not be afraid of a pair of cyclists, particularly ones with such good papers, but they wouldn’t take them for granted either.

“Papers,” the lead alien said. As always, there was no way of seeing the alien face behind the mask, or anything to mark him out as the leader. Brent had bemoaned that in one of their brief discussions; standard sniper practice was to pick off the leaders first and it wasn’t easy to identify an alien leader. They didn’t salute or genuflect to each other. “You will present your papers now.”

Joshua was suddenly very aware that they were trapped. “Here,” he said, passing over his ID card. He couldn’t stop his hands from shaking, so he returned them to the bike handles and squeezed them hard. The collaborator looked enough like Joshua that a little make-up could allow them to pass for one another, but he wouldn’t have been so scared when facing the aliens, not unless his cover was blown. Brent seemed utterly untroubled by the guns pointed at them, while Joshua needed to go to the toilet urgently.

“You may proceed,” the alien said finally, as the gate opened. Joshua almost forgot to recover his ID card before pushing down on the pedals and biking madly out of the city. It was an illusion, but as he breathed in his first breath, he was almost sure that he tasted freedom in the air.

“Not too bad,” Brent said, when they were away from the city. From a distance, Austin looked almost normal, although parts of the skyline had been remodelled by the aliens, with several missing buildings. He could almost believe that the aliens had vanished and the human race was still alone in the universe. Only the complete absence of any moving vehicles and the devastation all around them spoiled the illusion. “You could have handled that worse.”

Joshua glared at him. “I could have handled that worse?”

“Oh, of course,” Brent assured him. “Do you think that a good soldier is automatically a good Special Forces dude?”

“I have honestly never given it much thought,” Joshua said, tightly. He had the shakes badly now and pulled over to calm himself. “What makes you so special?”

“You have to be more than just the best, you have to be willing to play a role, or even to bend the rules,” Brent said, seriously. “Most soldiers are honest people; they won’t lie or even consider lying, particularly in a combat zone. I have worn enemy uniforms and been in places where an American soldier might have shot me. I could have been shot by someone on the same side! You need a special mindset for that and most soldiers don’t have it.”

“Oh,” Joshua said. “Why is it that half the time I can’t tell if you’re telling the truth or lying through your teeth?”

“I’m a very dishonest soldier,” Brent said, with a wink. “That story about the General’s daughter, the Swedish woman’s naked badminton team and the six vats of hot custard was all true, as I live and breathe. Besides, if it weren’t for all the tall tales, terrorists wouldn’t get so scared and do something stupid when they hear we’re after them. Did I ever tell you how I managed to get a terrorist cell to kill itself?”

“No,” Brent said. “Does it have anything to do with those Iranian girls you were telling me about?”

They rode onwards, towards the alien landing sites. Joshua fell silent as the scale of the invasion became clearer, with destroyed vehicles and houses everywhere, as far as the eye could see. Someone, probably work gangs, had cleared the roads of vehicles, but otherwise there had been very little clean-up work done, even removing the bodies. Most of them had been picked clean by now, probably by animals — he didn’t think that the aliens would eat human flesh — but the white skeletons seemed to mock him. They had died, perhaps bravely, perhaps shot in the back… but they had died.

The sight was a bitter reminder. The soldiers had charged that Joshua and other reporters had gotten fat on the carnage caused by fighting, but that hadn’t happened in America, not since the Civil War. The United States had had internal troubles, but there had never been a danger of an invasion and its population had been allowed to forget how unpleasant the world could be. Now, war and devastation had torn the United States apart, with the population fleeing burning cities, carrying what little they could with them.

“We’d better be careful,” Brent warned, as they detoured around a particularly large cluster of destroyed buildings. “I thought they were burying all the bodies, but if they’re leaving them here, they’re probably Club Med for diseases now. We might even catch something really nasty.”

“I would, you mean,” Joshua said, absently. “You’re too tough for any disease.”

The sounds of alien activity had been growing louder, loud enough to convince them that they were close, so they hid the bikes and proceeded on foot, seeking a vantage point. A pair of alien patrols, armed to the teeth, passed them, but seemingly missed picking them out from their surroundings. Brent led the way up the ridge, and then swore softly under his breath. Joshua followed him, careful to keep his head, and peeked over the top. What he saw shocked him.

As far as the eye could see, the aliens were building, constructing strange buildings from the remains of the massive conical craft that had landed on American soil. Aliens, thousands of aliens, were everywhere, directing the construction process as hundreds of massive robots established their cities. A small army of human prisoners, chained and shackled together, were carrying massive containers around, aiding the aliens as they built their base.

No, Joshua realised, as terror sank into his mind. That’s not a base, not any normal base. That’s a city.

His eyes caught a rising puff of smoke. A human town was being demolished by the robots, smashing the remains of the town and pushing them aside. He’d never seen activity on such a scale before and so he had no idea how long it would take them to complete their city, but it had barely been days since they had landed. The city already seemed kilometres wide… and it was still growing.

Brent caught his arm and nodded towards a group of aliens. For a moment, Joshua didn’t see what was different about them, and then he saw the breasts. He almost laughed, despite himself; topless alien women were prowling the streets of the alien city! The aliens hadn’t set any clothing rules, he remembered, although they’d banned openly religious clothing, and it was very hot… but looking at them, he wondered if it was a cultural thing. Did bare breasts mean the same to them as they did to humanity?

“You could use your charm on them,” he muttered, barely above a whisper. “Perhaps you could seduce them into joining our side.”

“I think that needs Captain Kirk, or maybe Captain Sheridan,” Brent replied. “I don’t know if I could… perform with any of them.”

“You did see some of the girls Kirk had it off with, right?” Joshua pressed. “That girl with the skull-bone in her hair was pretty hot…”

“Focus,” Brent muttered, pulling a small device out of his sleeve. Joshua had seen the camera back in the safe house and had admired it; Special Forces really did get all the best toys. It was tiny enough to pass completely unnoticed, and yet provided excellent images for later analysis. The images of the alien construction work would come in handy for someone, although at the moment, Joshua wasn’t sure who. How could they even get them back to independent human territory? The Internet was unreliable at the best of times. “Keep an eye out for any alien patrols.”

Joshua looked. The aliens seemed to be almost unconcerned about the possibility of danger, although they had at least four patrols orbiting the construction site, and probably others that he couldn’t see. They had been lax to allow the two of them so close to the construction, although they might have let them through, just to show off their work. Paranoia, never far from his mind these days, blossomed; the aliens might have allowed them close to show the human race that they weren’t going to leave. The thought was maddeningly taunting.

“Got all we can,” Brent said, finally. Joshua, who had been feeling a growing tingling between his shoulder blades, allowed himself a sigh of relief. “I think we’d better make tracks before they realise we’re here.”

“They may already,” Joshua said, and outlined his reasoning. “What if they let us this close?”

“After Washington, they have to be worried about someone like me sneaking up with a suitcase nuke,” Brent said. “It’s piss-easy to hide a nuke of you know what you’re doing, so unless they have something we don’t have, they would have to intercept us well short of the city. Hell, I might volunteer to come back here with a nuke and blow them to hell.”

Joshua looked back down at the strange buildings. They seemed utterly alien, a strange mixture of pyramids, oblongs and pointy spires, blended together into a very alien mass. The aliens had sometimes had problems with human buildings, he recalled, but if merely looking at their buildings made his head hurt, he didn’t want to think about what it would do to anyone living inside for any period of time. The slaves had to be going mad down there, or perhaps they had gotten used to it.

“Yeah,” he said, thinking. “I reckon that that’s going to be one of their first major settlements on our world. If we could blow it up…”

“We’ll lose another city,” Brent said, grimly. “I think I need to take this one upstairs.”

Somewhat to Joshua’s surprise, the trip back to the city was accomplished without incident, even passing through the checkpoints. The aliens didn’t seem interested in what they were doing outside the city, although they did remind them to report to the meeting hall the day afterwards for a new briefing. The real collaborators would have to go in, find out what the aliens wanted, and then report back. There was no way they would allow either Joshua or Brent into the meeting. The resistance had blown up two previous meetings and security was tight.

“We can’t send these over the Internet,” Brent said, once they’d finished outlining what they’d seen. The images had been downloaded to a laptop, but they were not only huge, but easily recognisable. “The government needs them, but we can’t get them to them, not directly.”

Joshua frowned. “How do we get them out, then?”

Brent winked. “I guess I’ll have to start walking,” he said. He winked at Joshua and grinned at the others. “It’s only a few kilometres to the human lines.”

“It’s over two hundred kilometres to the human lines,” Joshua burst out. “You won’t stand a chance!”

“Of course I do,” Brent said. “It’s the last thing anyone in their right mind would expect, so they won’t be prepared for it. There are plenty of people who do make their way out of the Red Zone without my training or advantages, so…”

“You’re mad,” Joshua said. The very thought struck him as completely insane, even if there weren’t any alien patrols watching for people doing just that. “You’re completely loopy!”

“And that’s why we will win,” Brent assured him. He opened one of the cupboards and started to pile up the contents. “We once had to force-march five hundred kilometres merely for the hell of it, all around Fort Hood. Damn sadists thought it would help us build character.”

He winked again. “Don’t worry; I’ll be sipping Coors a week from today,” he said. “Besides, when I get back, you get the exclusive interview.”