Invasion

Chapter Forty-Four

The timer ticked steadily down to zero.

“Ten minutes,” the Captain said, finally. The USS Kentucky had been on station for nearly a week, waiting for the signal. It had come, finally, and placed the submarines on warning; at the precise time, they were to fire all of their missiles at a specific coordinate and then scatter. “Mr Exec, if you would do the honours?”

The Exec was as pale as his commander… and not because of the conditions deep underwater. Kentucky had been on a long patrol before the aliens arrived and now was one of the United States few remaining bargaining chips. The crew knew, all too well, that if they surfaced for too long, they would be picked off from orbit… and that they might never be able to go home. Submarine crewmen were used to long deployment, but no one had really believed that they would never be able to go home, not even if there was an all-out nuclear war. There would always be somewhere to go, but now, if they surfaced anywhere, they could be destroyed without warning.

“I have a targeting coordinate for Texas, USA,” he said, formally. “Mr Navigator, are we in the correct position?”

“Aye, sir,” the Navigation Officer said. The missiles had been reprogrammed as soon as they had received the orders, perhaps the final orders they would ever receive, but they were useless without an accurate position fix. In one sense, it hardly mattered, as long as it looked as if the warheads were going to come down in the midst of the Red Zone, but submarine crewmen were perfectionists. A nuke that went off-course could really ruin someone’s day. “I have an accurate fix and I have updated the missiles accordingly.”

The Captain took a breath as the timer entered its final countdown. “I have an authorised launch code,” he said, to the Exec. “Do you concur?”

“I concur,” the Exec said. Trembling hands inserted a key into the correct socket. Only the Captain knew that the Exec had had friends in the Red Zone, friends he might be condemning to death. “Mr Navigator?”

“I concur,” the Navigator said. His face was blank, unwilling to accept what they were about to do. He inserted his own key and tried to smile. It didn’t work. “May God forgive us.”

“I concur,” the Engineering Officer said. The Weapons Officer followed him in concurring. “Captain?”

The Captain glanced once at the timer and then composed himself. They’d had to rewrite several modules of programming, digging up old programs from the Cold War, back when it was all-too-possible that there was a Russian submarine closing in on their position, ready to sink them before the bundles of death were launched towards Russian targets. The irony was almost killing him; there might have been Russian submarines in the area — hell, there were Russian submarines in the area — but they were friendly. The Redshirts, as far as anyone knew, didn’t have submarines. They had orbiting Rods From God instead and if one of them hit the submarine, they were dead…

“Insert keys,” the Captain said, to the two who hadn’t inserted their keys. “On my mark… mark!” The keys were twisted almost as one. The weapons were now armed and very dangerous. The Kentucky carried twenty-four Trident II D-5 Ballistic Missiles and they were going to launch them all as fast as possible. The noise of the tubes rapidly filling with water could be heard throughout the boat. “Weapons?”

“All tubes are flooded and ready to fire,” the Weapons Officer said. His voice shook slightly, but training still held. The Captain watched him carefully; he’d known people who collapsed during drills, despite knowing that they were drills. No one’s behaviour could be really predicted until they faced a real test… and by then, it could be too late. The Weapons Officer touched a covered button and opened it. “Timer now at twenty seconds and counting down.”

“The responsibility is mine,” the Captain said, as calmly as he could. The Weapons Officer looked relieved; the Captain made a mental note to ensure that he had as much of a break as was possible on the submarine. He would have offered drink, but it was forbidden onboard American submarines. “Ten seconds…”

The timer ran down. “Firing,” he said, and pushed down on the button. There was a dull rumble as the first missile was blasted into the water, and then it’s drive ignited, safely behind the boat. The second followed, and then the third, until the Captain thought that the entire boat would shake itself apart. They’d betrayed their location now and their only hope was that the aliens didn’t have anything overhead to react to them before they could hide. The shaking stopped suddenly and everything was quiet.

“Evasive action,” the Captain barked. They had exposed themselves now. “Sonar?”

“They all fired,” the Sonar officer said. The young man looked shaken by what he’d just heard through the computers. “I counted over two hundred missiles, fired into the air… and no sign of any enemy retaliation.”

The Captain closed his eyes. Thirty missile boats — American, French, British, Russian and even — finally — a Chinese and Indian boat — firing all of their missiles towards Texas. If God was with them, the aliens would have very little to intercept them in their boost phase… and they would have to shift their orbital positions. They’d see the missiles, of course, but would they react the right way? It didn’t matter any longer, not to him; USS Kentucky was out of the war now.

“Take us down,” he ordered, knowing that the remainder of the small squadron would be doing the same. “Run silent, run deep…”

And hope that we can make the rendezvous, he thought, silently. If we can’t…

The High Priest had been studying the plans for the expanded settlements in the Middle East when the first reports of the attacks down in America had come in. He hadn’t been unduly worried, despite the somewhat panicky tone of newcomers to Earth who hadn’t faced the humans before, but it was possible that the humans intended to launch a second attack. The orbiting spies hadn’t picked up anything that might suggest that the humans had massed another attack force — although it had turned out that nothing they picked up from human radio could be entirely trusted — but the humans were masters at camouflage. He’d issued orders for the parasite ships to prepare to repel any armoured advance and for reinforcements to advance out to help secure the border — now that the settlement process was underway, they could no longer trade space for time — and turned back to the other matters. By now, the War Priests and their subordinates had the experience to handle the humans without his direct intervention.

The second report had shocked him back to the issue. They’d learned about human missile-launching submarines — a concept the Takaina had never actually invented — when they’d been used to attack the Texas Foothold and the orbiting ships with EMP, but they’d thought that they had destroyed them all. The reports had obviously been exaggerated, the High Priest decided, as the new missile tracks started to rise up from the trackless wastes of the oceans, reaching for orbit.

Smart of them, the High Priest thought coldly, as the tracks kept rising. He thought, for a moment, that the humans were actually intending to attack Guiding Star itself, or one of the starship’s sections, but the missile tracks weren’t aimed at the starship. It was almost a pity — the missiles were slow and Guiding Star’s point defence would have picked them off before they became a danger, even if they were armed with nukes — but instead, the missiles were aimed at Texas. For a moment, the High Priest couldn’t believe his own eyes; they had to be out of their minds! There were millions of humans — and Takaina settlers — in the targeted zone… and the insurgents had been knocking down their local air defence units. The warheads would fall to Earth and detonate, burning Texas down to bedrock… and slaughtering everyone within the area.

“They’re mad,” he breathed. There was time, yes, there was time, but barely enough to react. He opened his channel to the war room. No one would dare not to take his call unless Guiding Star himself was under attack. “War Leader, move the parasite ships from their patrol positions to intercept the missiles before they can scatter their warheads.”

“Yes, Your Holiness,” the War Leader said. “Should we move, also, to defend the settlements in the Middle East?”

They, the High Priest saw, were also coming under attack. “Do so,” he ordered. If the humans intended to destroy Texas, they might intend to destroy the Middle East as well, even though they needed the oil. It was insanity, as far as he could tell, but so much about the human race made no sense. If they had needed the oil so badly, why hadn’t they thrown out the previous owners, or converted them to their own religion? How many submarines were left, anyway? “Order the parasites to hunt down the remaining submarines and teach them a lesson.”

“Yes, Your Holiness,” the War Leader said. The High Priest could hear his subordinates barking orders in the background. The Takaina Warriors were responding to the new challenge… and, soon, the humans would discover that they’d made a mistake. They’d wasted a lot of very expensive, even in human terms, missiles… for nothing. “The parasite ships are on their way now.”

“Good,” the High Priest said. There would be time enough, after the missiles had been wiped out, to punish the people who’d fired them. There were more missiles than the Americans could muster, if the details they’d recovered from Texas were correct, involved in the attack, which meant that the other human powers were involved. They would pay for their impudence in due time. “I want those missiles wiped out now.”

The War Leader paused. “There were five shuttles rising from the Texas Foothold when the attack began,” he said, thoughtfully. “Do you wish them diverted to the parasite ships, or to the settlement ship?”

“No,” the High Priest said, after a moment’s thought. The vast stores of war material on the battle section of Guiding Star would be needed in Texas, and they were running out of landing cones. It was a pity that they were use-once items, but not even the humans had invented a drive that could lift things that size to orbit, although there were some interesting thoughts in their engineering journals. Once the war was won, the Takaina would study them and try to develop them for further expansion. “We will need the shuttles here.”

He linked into the main communications network and watched, dispassionately, as the warriors raced to defend the footholds. The warriors remaining in orbit were, even now, bracing themselves for a possible emergency deployment to Texas, if the humans actually did manage to mount a serious attack, with a handful of parasite ships coming in to dock to provide transport. Others were being diverted to deal with the missiles threat from the humans…

Soon, he thought. They had three footholds, two of them effectively impregnable and the third well on the way to becoming firmly subjected to their rule. Soon, we will rule…

“We picked up the FLASH signal from Madagascar,” Paul said, as the Situation Room screen updated itself frantically. The aliens were lighting up their drives in orbit, reacting to something, but it wasn’t until they got the signal through the landline that they knew that the missiles had actually flown. “They launched, Mr President.”

The President stared bleakly at him. Two hundred missiles, most of them carrying at least four nuclear warheads, were flying through space towards Texas. If even one of them landed on a populated area, the consequences could be devastating. The insurgents had even tried to force the aliens hand by assaulting the ground-based laser stations that would normally have served in an ABM role, which meant that they had exposed their own citizens to nuclear fire.

“They launched,” Paul repeated. “Mr President…”

“I heard,” the President snapped. He looked up at the display showing the alien ships in orbit, moving with a stately elegance. “Is it time for Phase Two?”

“Just about,” Paul said, watching the timer. The aliens weren’t creatures armed with advanced technology that looked like magic; they, like the human race, had to obey the laws of orbital mechanics. Turning in space to react to new developments on the ground would be almost impossible. They had to move just a little further. “We’re committed now, sir.”

“I know,” the President said. “We were committed the moment we started the offensive.”

Paul nodded. The timer finished its second countdown. “Mr President, it’s time to start,” he said. “May we proceed?”

“Proceed,” the President said. Both of them knew that it had already begun. “May God go with us.”

“That’s what they’re thinking too,” Paul said, tightly. “God is on their side.”

“That wasn’t funny,” the President said, irritated.

“No,” Paul agreed. Now, they were just spectators on the eve of Armageddon. One more task, one more order, and then all they could do was watch. “It wasn’t meant to be.”

The complex had been built in the south of France, well away from any city or any major town, near one of France’s nuclear reactors. It had been hard to conceal it’s presence from the handful of locals, but the declaration of marital law and the crackdown on any form of unpatriotic activity — defined rather loosely by the government — had prevented any word of it spreading from the locals to the aliens, or those who might seek to topple the government.

“We’re ready,” Chef d’Escadron Renan reported, through the landline to Paris. He would have preferred to be commanding one of the units patrolling the southern cities, keeping the peace with extreme… firmness, but the government had trusted him to handle one of the stations. “We can fire as soon as the timer reaches the appointed time.”

He looked up at the camouflage netting. It would be removed seconds before the lasers and masers opened fire, targeting every alien parasite ship within range, along with a hundred other stations all across the world. From America to China, Britain to Russia, the stations would engage the large alien ships, giving them something else to worry about. Renan doubted that the station would last longer than ten minutes, not with the aliens — high overhead — ready and willing to bring death down on their heads, but they had to fire for as long as possible. The lasers were the most powerful the human race had ever produced and the masers designed specifically to take advantage of alien weaknesses. It was almost as if the Americans had obtained inside information, although he wouldn’t have traded an invasion of France for that data.

The timer reached zero. “Fire,” he ordered, as soon as the covering was recovered. The weapons fire was invisible in the air, but he could feel the heat as the beams burned through the air, reaching up towards a target high overhead. The alien ship would be writhing now, trying to target and destroy them before the lasers burned through something vital, despite the armour. It was a shame that Star Trek weapons were impossible — yet — but the weapons he had would suffice. “Keep hitting the bastards!”

He smiled broadly as the lasers burned into the sky.

He was still smiling when the KEW smashed the station, the lasers and him into dust.

“The aliens are under attack now,” Paul reported. It was hard to tell how much success they were having, but at least one parasite ship had gone completely dead and was falling towards the planet, Earth’s gravity pulling it down to a fiery end. The mass of the ship would probably survive — if parts of the old Skylab had, there was no reason why the alien craft wouldn’t — and would come down like an asteroid, somewhere in Africa. “They’re being forced out of the sky…”

“And our boys?” The President asked. His gaze searched the main display. “Where are they?”

“On their way,” Paul said. The small shuttle was almost beyond detection, assuming that it was the right shuttle. There had been no emergency signal, but that proved nothing. The aliens might have reacted quickly enough to prevent a distress signal from getting out. “It’s time to launch the main attack.”

The President smiled wryly. “Two angles of attack, each one offering the possibility of decisive victory, but if both of them fail, we lose. Is it worth the risk?”

Deborah spoke from her chair. “You saw the report, Mr President,” she said. “Mass starvation across Africa and Europe. The Northeast is no longer capable of functioning. China in ruins and torn apart by civil war. Russia is disintegrating… and hell, we’re disintegrating as well. They’ve killed upwards of a billion humans in three months of war. If they remain in control, well… we’re reaching our limit. A few more months like this and we won’t have a country any more.”

“Besides,” General Hastings added, “we’re committed now.”

“So everyone keeps saying,” the President said. He smiled thinly. “What was I thinking when I decided I wanted to run for President? Colonel, send the order; Phase Three is to commence at once.” He paused. “And pass on a message from me; good luck.”

“Yes, Mr President,” Paul said. He turned to issue the orders through one of the junior operators. The big displays kept updating as the orders went out, although no one was entirely sure how accurate they were. The fog of war was settling in around them, confusing the humans… and, he hoped, confusing the aliens as well. It would all be settled, one way or the other, within the next few hours.

The President bowed his head in prayer.