Invasion

Chapter Five

Colonel Paul James watched as the President took his chair in the middle of the White House National Command Centre. The decision to have the President in the White House, even though he was actually in the underground command centre, hadn’t been an easy one for the Secret Service to swallow. They’d read countless novels of alien invasion, and seen Independence Day and other big-screen versions of alien invasion, and they feared that Washington would be attacked almost at once. They’d wanted the President in one of the massive command centres, well away from anything that might draw alien fire, but the President had insisted on remaining in the White House. First Contact, he’d said, on national television, would not be made with him cowering in a bunker somewhere.

The Vice President, Theodore Taylor, had been packed off to a command centre, despite his protests. If the aliens attacked Washington, it was likely that he would be President of the United States within the next hour. The NCC was supposed to be proof against a nuclear detonation, built using the most advanced bunker-building techniques known to man, but there was no such thing as absolute security. If the aliens dropped an asteroid on the city, the shockwave alone would probably collapse the bunker completely. Paul watched, dispassionately, as the President glanced around at his fellows, from the operators working at various consoles to the handful of Cabinet members who’d joined him for the alien arrival.

There was one hour to go.

Paul caught the eye of one of the Secret Service men and nodded briefly. The man didn’t respond. He’d seen Secret Service men who fitted the stereotype exactly and men who blended perfectly into the background, but they all had one thing in common; they couldn’t be distracted from their primary task. They would all put themselves between the President and lethal danger, yet they knew that there were limits to their protective abilities, particularly against such a dangerously unknown faction. The aliens might have weapons that were beyond human imagination; Paul was reasonably certain they wouldn’t be flying City Destroyers into the atmosphere and blasting Washington with a death ray, but even the weapons encompassed by their observed technological level were formidable. A single asteroid would completely ruin their day.

His eyes strayed to the big screen, overlooking the room. Normally, it would show the President, at a glance, the precise status of the entire United States military machine. Now, it showed the images from the ISS and the orbiting telescopes, including a pair of highly-classified spy satellites that had been re-tasked from watching for terrorists to studying the alien craft. The larger alien starship, the one that was still a week away, was still almost impossible to resolve, even in the most powerful telescopes, but the smaller one was much easier to comprehend. NASA’s scientists believed that it didn’t have any gravity of its own, which suggested that it was designed for high-speed manoeuvring, rather than a slow and stately entrance into Earth orbit. The ship’s hull, vaguely conical in form, was studded with bumps and blisters, some of which looked like smaller spacecraft, attached to their mothership like giant parasites. The more Paul studied the footage, the more worried he became; if nothing else, the aliens had made a hideously effective show of strength.

The President looked over at him from his chair. “Colonel?”

“Ah, yes, Mr President,” Paul said, ashamed of having been caught unprepared. The sheer size of the alien craft was daunting. He checked his terminal briefly before speaking. “I have the latest reports from the joint defence program.”

The President lifted an eyebrow. “The FAA has grounded, at our request, almost all civilian air traffic,” Paul said. It hadn’t been a hard decision; almost everyone in America, and indeed the rest of the world, had decided to stay at home and watch the alien arrival. The live feed from the ISS was going to have more viewers than anything else in human history; companies, resigned to the inevitable, had decided to give their employees a day off to watch the show. No one seriously believed that anyone who had a choice would come in to work… and, for those whose service was essential, they were still glued to television sets or watching streaming internet broadcasts. “The only aircraft in CONUS, apart from emergency aircraft, are military aircraft maintaining a CAP over our cities and defence bases, and the Boeing 747 aircraft that we adapted to carry laser weapons.”

He paused. “Please, continue,” the President said. “What about our ground forces?”

“The soldiers are in their deployment zones and ready for action, if called upon,” Paul said. Most of them would be watching their television sets as well, even in the bases. “Police departments across the nation have been called out completely to maintain order, if necessary, but everyone seems to be staying home. Crime seems to have dropped to almost nothing over the last couple of days. The street parties in New York and San Francisco for the alien arrival have been boisterous, but almost completely non-violent.”

Deborah scowled. “They need proper jobs,” she said. “Policy isn’t decided by people shouting their heads off in the streets.”

“They have a right to express themselves,” Spencer snapped. It was an old argument. “If they want to protest what they think of as injustice…”

“We want a peaceful contact as well,” Deborah snapped back. “Don’t they know that?”

“Not today,” the President said, firmly. The two scowled at each other and then returned their attention to the main display. “Colonel?”

Paul had used the brief diversion to catch up with the reports. “The THAAD launchers, Patriot missile batteries and Air Defence Artillery are on standby and ready for action, if required,” he continued. “The ground-based radar network is up and running at full capability and hard linkages between each site have been checked and confirmed. If we lose the satellites, we should still be able to coordinate our operations. The Navy has deployed antiaircraft ships in positions to provide extra firepower to defend our ports and other installations; the ballistic missile submarines and other strategic assets have been placed on alert. We have a direct link to Discovery and the ISS, Mr President; we’re as ready as we’re ever going to be.”

The President nodded slowly. An unnatural air of peace had settled over the entire world. Everyone was watching the alien contact, even the people whose leaders had tried to keep the fact of alien existence from them; wars, disputes and even underground insurgencies had almost come to a stop. The President was fundamentally a man of peace, but he had come to power in a world of endless war, one where he had to wage a war against shadowy opponents. The peace wouldn’t last… but then, did it ever?

“That leaves one question,” he said, looking up at the alien craft. “What about the rest of the world?”

Paul spoke without taking his eyes off the screen. “The Russians, Chinese, French and British have launched and dispersed their ballistic missile submarines,” he said. “Russian and Chinese ASAT systems have been brought online and, in line with the secret protocols, have been linked into our tracking system. The EU will do what they can, but their ASAT weapons are rather more limited than either the Russians or ours. In short, everyone who has some ASAT capability is preparing it for operations, while everyone else is merely going on alert and praying.”

The President snorted. “And the aliens themselves?”

Paul shook his head. “Nothing, Mr President,” he said. “They’ve said nothing to us.”

“When I was elected to lead this country,” the President said, talking more to himself than Paul, “I thought I wanted the job. I thought that it would be the crowning accomplishment of my career. Now… I think I made a mistake.”

Paul smiled, but said nothing.

There was half an hour to go.

“And tension is rising in the streets as the alien starship continues towards the International Space Station,” the talking head said. Joshua Bourjaily listened with half an ear as he typed away on his laptop. He’d actually managed to win back some prestige with his article on the secret military build-up, although not for the right reasons, at least in his view. His sources had started to offer him titbits again, but now that the MSM had access to the story, there was nothing exclusive for him. “In San Francisco, crowds have gathered to welcome the aliens to Earth…”

The television changed, briefly, to show a group of topless men and women dancing together in the streets. “Welcome to our new insect overlords,” one of them shouted, through cheers and giggles. They were clearly all very drunk. “We welcome you…”

The cameramen at the studio hastily cut back to the alien starship. Joshua had followed the negotiations with some interest; NASA had wanted to classify most of the live feed, but the MSM had refused to accept that. They’d pushed and harried NASA until they’d been forced, in the wake of congressional enquired into the failure of the American space program, to agree to share the raw footage. Again, it wasn’t something that really interested him, at least not as a source of possible income. He didn’t have a steady wage; he only got paid for exclusivity, and every news service in the world would have access to the live feed. Even Al Jazeera had decided to show the alien contact, live and uncut.

“Only twenty minutes to go until the alien starship comes to a halt near the space station,” the talking head continued, her voice breathless with excitement. Joshua wondered, in a moment of pure spite, how she managed to keep awake from the excitement of pointing out the obvious, time and time again. “NASA scientists have informed us that the aliens will enter an orbit that will put them at rest, relative to the International Space Station, where they will either dock directly with the station or send a smaller shuttle towards the station.”

She rolled on and on, making it simple enough for an idiot to understand, dumbing down the science as much as possible. Joshua tuned her out as best as he could, ignoring her even as he wrote his own article, knowing that getting it online was his only hope of making money off First Contact. Once the alien craft docked with the station — or however they intended to proceed — the entire world would see what was going on… and, unfortunately, would have talking heads explaining the meaning of it all. There were times when Joshua wished he had chosen a better line of work.

There was fifteen minutes to go.

The house looked like a normal semi-detached, one that might be owned by an up and coming junior executive, or high-paid tax lawyer, with a wife, two children and a third on the way. Inside, it looked normal enough on the ground floor, but the upper floor rooms were studded with weapons of all kinds. Any of the gun control factions who saw the weapons would probably have fainted; Captain Brent Roeder and his men, all wearing civilian clothes, had amassed enough weapons to take and hold a shopping mall for a few hours.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Corporal Cody Fahy said, in-between stripping down a M16. SF34’s ‘deployment’ to suburban America hadn’t sat well with a man who had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the shit hit the fan, he’d been loud in expressing his opinion that they would all die before being able to fire a few rounds in the direction of the enemy. “We should be out in the countryside holed up in a barn or a farmhouse or…”

“We’ve been through all this,” Brent said, as patiently as he could. There were twelve men occupying the house, all carefully briefed to keep themselves out of sight so that the neighbours didn’t see them, and the tension had been rising steadily. The suburb on the outskirts of Austin was almost deserted — the population had headed out to the countryside to escape an alien threat, if the aliens were actually hostile — but there were too many people around, still, to lower their guard. Everyone in SF34 had been warned about the discovery of one team — on exercise, thank God — that had been reported to the Police as a possible terrorist cell. Somehow, he was pretty certain that having a shoot-out with the local SWAT team or the National Guard would not endear him to his superiors… or SF34 to the politicians. “If something happens, we have to be emplaced in position to fight…”

“If we have to fight at all,” Fahy growled. “They’ve come hundreds of light years to visit us, sir; they’re not going to be hostile.”

“You don’t know that,” Brent snapped. “Tell me something, Corporal; how did you get your medal if this was the level of professionalism you showed in Ashcanistan?”

“There, I knew that I was on a mission,” Fahy replied, dryly. “I knew what I was doing, even if it was just lurking under a blanket for a few days until Mullah Fat-Ass drove by, unaware that there was an American soldier ready to send him to a fiery end. Here, sir… here is surreal.”

“There’s a vampire in the loft and a roomful of student nurses in the next house,” Sergeant Clayton Mancil offered, from his position in the corner. “What more do you want? A chance to fire automatic weapons with total abandon?”

“You know what I mean, sir,” Fahy said. He finished working on his M16 and picked up a second weapon, running through a basic set of checks. “This whole situation feels unreal.”

“Yes, but… it’s our duty,” Brent said, dryly.

“So shut up and soldier,” Sergeant Tessa Wireman said. The stocky woman didn’t look like a soldier, something that she’d used to her advantage in the past; as the only woman on deployment with SF34, she had to play the role of the woman of the house. The other men had to remain out of sight, but she could be seen in public; no one would even question her presence. “Best case; we all go home in a week and never speak of this… embarrassment again. Worst case, well…”

She shrugged as they directed their attention back to the television set. There was little point in taking up defensive position, not unless the aliens had some kind of matter transmitter… and if that were the case, the war against them would become rather more unwinnable than it already was. The remaining soldiers ambled in with studied casualness, taking their seats and leaning back to watch, knowing that their overt brethren, deployed across the nation, would be watching as well.

There were ten minutes to go.

Ten minutes until the world changed forever.

NASA’s standard emergency vacuum protection suit felt hot and clammy to Ambassador Francis Prachthauser as he shifted uncomfortably within the heat, but there was no choice; it had taken hours of arguing to convince Gary to permit the diplomats to wear the protection suits, rather than a full-out spacesuit. The protection suits were supposed to provide protection against a brief exposure to vacuum, but it felt uncomfortably as if he was wearing a condom, one large enough to cover his entire body. He hadn’t spoken that thought aloud; the closer the alien starship grew, the more tense and silent the ISS felt, even to him.

The alien starship was settling down into its orbit now, catching up on the ISS on its stately orbit around the planet. The hail of communications beams from Earth had only intensified, but still the aliens made no reply. It was almost large enough to be seen with the naked eye now, even though it was hundreds of kilometres away from the station. Francis swallowed twice as he realised just how dry his throat was becoming. The entire situation was becoming increasingly surreal.

“If they don’t slow now, they’re going to ram us,” Gary said, softly. The ISS commander was as riveted to the display as the rest of them. Almost on cue, the alien starship twinkled with little lights, slowing the starship still further. “Impressive power source; I wonder what they use to provide their power. Those aren’t chemical rockets.”

Francis felt his gaze straying to the display. “Perhaps they have something we haven’t even imagined,” he said. He’d read all the speculations, but now, watching the alien craft approaching in silent majesty, they were somehow inadequate. The aliens seemed to move so effortlessly in space… and still they were silent. “Or maybe…”

An alarm sounded. “Radar sweep,” Damiani snapped. His face was very pale in the room. “They just swept space with a high-powered radar!”

Sophia flinched. “Did they detect us?”

“They detected everything on this hemisphere,” Damiani said. It had been a stupid question, born of fear and tension, but he allowed it to pass. The aliens would have located the ISS with a simple telescope sweep. “They’ll have picked up everything that wasn’t behind the planet…”

A second warning tone sounded. Francis saw Gary’s eyes swinging towards the radar display… and saw the icon of the alien starship slowly beginning to break up. For a crazy moment, he thought that the aliens were committing suicide, that they’d spent all of the effort to get to Earth only to die, but then he realised that the aliens were launching smaller craft. Lots of smaller craft…

Damiani’s eyes went very wide. “Incoming,” he shouted suddenly. There was no hiding the raw fear in his tone. “Incoming…”

And the hammer of God struck the space station!