Invasion

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Captain Mohammad Karim leaned back as the line of prisoners were marched past towards one of the security camps outside Basra, where they would be interrogated and — eventually — punished. The Iraqi police had been watching this particular group for several weeks, confirming that they were actually involved with smuggling weapons and explosives into the country, before sending in his Company to arrest the men. Some of them had tried to fight it out, hoping, like so many others, that poisoned faith could provide a counter for training and experience, the others had shown their ‘willingness’ to die for the cause by surrendering at once. Karim and his men had bound their hands, searched the warehouse quickly and effectively, and found enough proof to ensure that the men spent a few uncomfortable years in the desert.

Idiots, he thought, as he lit up a cigarette. His men had been recruited in the chaotic years of the insurgency, first working for the Americans and then for the Iraqi Government, and between them they had nearly a hundred years of experience in street-fighting. The terrorists they’d captured were nothing more than untrained punks from a madrassa somewhere in Saudi or Pakistan, dangerous only in numbers and only then if their targets were unarmed. The explosives they’d had with them might have killed a few dozen Iraqis, but it was much more likely that they would kill themselves when they tried to plant them. The Iraqi citizen who’d called in the tip, one of millions who was sick of the violence that kept trying to rear its head in his country, had probably saved their lives. They wouldn’t be thanking him any time soon.

“All yours,” he said, as the policemen came and took custody of the terrorists. It made sense to have the army conduct the arrests, but the police had to hold them in custody, before they were tried and sentenced. The police weren’t a soft option; they lived and worked in Basra and loathed the terrorists who’d tried to tear the city apart. They would be more likely to accidentally shoot the prisoners while trying to escape, rather than letting them go, something that had been a persistent problem back in the early days. Now, Iraq was finally starting to stand on its own two feet.

He looked over towards the single American advisor. The man had been distracted lately, worrying about the fate of his fellow countrymen in America… and it was hard to blame him. The terrorist internet had been shouting the praises of the aliens to the skies for destroying the Great Satan, but Karim was fairly sure that the aliens didn’t mean Islam any favours either. They’d casually destroyed mosques along with churches in America, after all, and they probably intended to do the same in Iraq. The only saving grace, as far as he could see, was that the aliens probably didn’t have the numbers to take on the entire world. By the time they reached Iraq, they might even be ready for them…

But in the meantime, there was work to be done. The main Iraqi supporters of terrorism had been either beaten or brought into the government, where they found it much harder to get to grips with the problems they’d claimed had easy solutions, but there were still thousands of terrorists out there. The alien invasion had brought more of them out of the woodwork, whereupon they’d started to attack Americans and their allies all across the Gulf. They’d also started another campaign to bring down the Iraqi Government, although this one had failed spectacularly… even though the world media would probably hail it as a great terrorist success. Karim had a private blacklist of reporters, mainly American, who always exaggerated in their reports… and not in the favour of the good guys. It was a complex war, an endless struggle that had been, mercifully, coming to an end… and one where enemies could become friends, or vice versa, at the drop of a pen.

He rounded up the men of his company — the only injury had been a soldier who’d accidentally banged his arm against a wall and was hamming it up in fine style, claiming to have been crippled — and they collected their weapons and supplies. One thing they’d learned from the early days had been to keep a close eye on their own weapons, even though Iraq was swimming in weapons, just to prevent further losses to the enemy. He recalled a newly-formed unit that had been thrown into the deep end and collapsed under fire, surrendering all their weapons to the terrorists, and was determined that that wouldn’t happen again. Like most young officers, he had a wife and children… and they would never have any cause to be ashamed of him.

“Back to barracks,” he ordered. “By the left, quick march!”

It still amazed him how many people were willing to wave and cheer as the soldiers marched past, even if they were blocking up the roads. The streets were much safer now then they’d been during the insurgency, back when it had been dangerous for armed men, let alone women and children, and the civilians knew who had cleared the streets. Karim was more than happy to let them cheer, knowing that many young boys would want to become soldiers if they saw the ceremony, and…

He sensed, more than heard, the falling KEW. A blast of light, followed by a massive explosion, rose up from the docks. A second later, the shockwave flashed out across the city, shattering windows and sending glass cascading onto the streets. Men and women, caught under the falling shower, were cut and torn by the glass as it sliced into their skin. A second explosion followed, then a third, sending new explosions billowing into the air. It looked as if they’d hit the military complex outside the city and perhaps the new airfield that had been under construction, smashed it from orbit. An instant later, he heard the thunderclaps of other strikes, hitting targets all over the area.

“The aliens,” the American said. Master Sergeant Robin Brooks was even more experienced than the Iraqis; he’d been in Iraq almost constantly since 2003, barely pausing for leave. Karim expected him to take an Iraqi wife and settle down any day now. “They’re hitting the bases!”

Karim had to agree. The population was starting to panic. “We have to get back to the base,” he snapped, trying to understand what was going on. The docks had been hit… which meant that thousands of Iraqis had just been killed. He couldn’t even understand why they’d hit the docks. “Come on!”

Basra was in ferment as the soldiers quick-timed it through the streets, but the police were starting to restore order, encouraging people to return to their homes. Imams and Mullahs were trying to restore calm as well, although a flood of worshippers had descended on the mosques, seeking guidance and prayer. The sound of alien bombardment was fainter now, drifting through the air, but he suspected that it meant that the aliens were moving their targeting further northwards, towards Baghdad. He wanted to shout at the skies, cursing the aliens for doing so much damage after it had been painstakingly rebuilt, but what was the point? The aliens wouldn’t hear…

The American pointed into the distance. “Look,” he said. “They’re landing!”

Karim knew, just for a moment, what Saddam’s poor soldiers must have felt when they’d seen invincible American tanks heading into Iraq. A line of massive… craft were falling out of the sky, leaving massive trails of light behind them. They looked as if they were coming down to the south, towards the Saudi border, and he found himself hoping that they’d head south into Saudi rather than into Iraq. He’d done enough patrols of the border and arrested enough Saudis trying to sneak into Iraq that he wouldn’t have minded if the aliens invaded and crushed Saudi Arabia. Everyone in Iraq knew that the Saudis were behind all of their torment. One of the best-selling Iraqi books had blamed everything on them, from the American invasion to the insurgency. It had been very popular, largely because everyone wanted someone to blame.

“Shit,” he muttered, as they headed out of the city towards the base. “What have they done to it?”

“Kinetic energy weapon,” Brooks said. The barracks had once held thousands of soldiers. Now, they were flaming debris, those that were left. They’d been designed to stand up to an IED at close range, but the KEW had shattered them with ease. A handful of vehicles survived in the tank shed, but most of them had been destroyed from orbit, caught up in the blasts. The aliens, he was starting to realise, played for keeps. “You’d better try and get in touch with Baghdad.”

Karim barked orders, getting his men to sort out the survivors and treat the wounded, while sending others to hunt for a working communications system. His radio, which should have been powerful enough to reach the next base, was suffering from jamming, while the American-designed satellite communications system was useless in the absence of the satellites. The Iraqis hadn’t realised just how important they’d become until they’d been destroyed by the aliens. An hour passed slowly while he tried to muster some kind of defence… and he realised that while there were over three thousand soldiers left alive, mostly reporting in from Basra, he was the senior officer.

“Send out a scouting unit,” Brooks advised. The aliens had landed somewhere to the south and would probably be advancing against him soon. Judging by the rising columns of smoke from the direction of Kuwait, they were attacking the Kuwaitis first. “Find out what they’re doing and then prepare to counter it.”

There wasn’t much in the way of defences to the south, Karim knew. There had been some reason for it, mainly to show that the new Iraq had nothing, but fraternal feelings towards the Kuwaitis, but it was starting to look like a major oversight. He didn’t have much in the way of armour or supporting vehicles either; if the Americans were to be believed, the aliens could simply pick them off from orbit. His infantrymen could make their stand, but if the aliens came at them, they would probably be slaughtered. As much as he hated to admit it, he was out of his depth and sinking fast.

“Move the antitank teams up to the main road,” he added, after a moment’s thought. The men knew it intimately. The American experience had suggested that the aliens liked using roads, although the terrain was different in Iraq, and they might have a chance to mount an ambush. The aliens were still landing — he could see signs of their massive landing craft falling out of the sky to land somewhere to the south — but he didn’t know what they were doing. The aliens had left him blind and deaf. “I want…”

A green flare burst up in the distance. Without radio, he’d been forced to fall back on a more primitive method of signalling an alien advance, a flare. The aliens were coming up from Kuwait to attack Basra, whereupon they would probably cut the city off and head northwards. He barked orders, ordering most of his men back towards the city; their only hope was to try and hold the city and hope that the Iraqi forces further to the north could muster a counter-attack in time. Somehow, he doubted that they would make it; the aliens had probably dropped all the old and new bridges from orbit. His force was almost completely on its own.

There was a brief skirmish when the aliens engaged the antitank teams, and then they pressed on towards Basra. Karim had found a vantage point along the outskirts of the city, while his men struggled to organise the residents of the city to defend it, watching as Sunni and Shia forgot their traditional hatreds to defend Basra. They’d all see the footage of what had happened in America and there were shrines and mosques aplenty in Basra. He’d had his tanks pulled back to hiding places, but three of them had been picked off from orbit, the alien fire almost vaporising the tanks and their crews. The others had been rapidly abandoned, which might have been the alien plan all along; they probably wanted to force him to abandon some of his firepower. Their UAV-like aircraft buzzed high overhead; two of his men had tried to bring them down with antiaircraft missiles, but the aliens had avoided them neatly.

“Here they come,” Brooks said. There was a new anticipation in his voice, a chance to get stuck into the enemy who had devastated his country. The aliens were still landing in the background, but their ranks seemed never ending, led by hovering tanks. The sight was almost out of a science-fiction movie. “Hold your fire until they’re right on top of you, then engage them before they can call in fire from orbit.”

“Got it,” Karim said. His remaining sergeants were moving among the volunteers now, passing on the same message, even though he hoped that most of the civilians would stay out of the fighting. If they were caught with weapons they would be treated as hostiles, if the aliens stuck to their standard tactics… and there were thousands of weapons in Basra. People tended to carry them around as a status symbol. The government had tried to warn people of the danger, but there were too many old wounds from Saddam’s era and the invasion. “It’s been nice knowing you.”

Brooks looked at the aliens as they carefully surrounded the city. “Yeah,” he said. “You too.”

One by one, the roads and railways leading out of the city were occupied and severed. People who were trying to leave the city were encouraged to return by brief bursts of heavy firing from machine guns. A pair of Iraqi army snipers, who’d made a career of picking off unsuspecting terrorists, took down a handful of aliens with headshots, before their hiding places were picked off from orbit. Karim watched the buildings collapse, praying that only a few people had been caught up in the fallen rubble, and wondered how they did that. It wasn’t easy to locate a sniper, but for all he knew, they had some alien sensor trick that could track him by his sweat or some other bodily odour. The Americans had shown enough impossible tricks to convince him that still others were possible.

The aliens didn’t bother to demand a surrender; they simply opened fire. One by one, their tanks advanced towards his positions, while their heavy guns boomed fire into the city. Karim and his men held their fire until the aliens were close, whereupon they opened fire with their rifles and a handful of antitank weapons, picking off four alien tanks. A pair of men who’d been close-lipped about their past, but toting RPGs fired them as well, hitting and damaging two tanks. It didn’t seem that they’d been damaged too badly; they were still moving, and still firing. Shells crashed into buildings and detonated, shattering them and sending masonry falling to the ground, while their machine guns swept across the suddenly-visible men. Explosions billowed out across the city as the aliens started their advance and pushed into the city. The damage rapidly grew into a nightmare.

Damn them, Karim thought, as his command and control disintegrated. His ability to coordinate the fight had vanished almost as soon as the aliens opened fire. They were calling down strikes from orbit even as their infantrymen swarmed into the city, a seemingly never-ending rush of black-clad humanoids, their armour protecting them from most shots. It took headshots to kill them, or grenades, while they could kill the Iraqis. A line of civilians, men carrying old AK-47s, charged the aliens, screaming aloud… and the aliens mowed them down without even breaking step. Basra was dying as the aliens hacked their way into the city… and the best Karim and his remaining men could do was harass the aliens through hit-and-run tactics. The rubble provided plenty of places to hide.

“They’re just killing us all,” he shouted at Brooks, as the American picked off a pair of aliens. The burst of return fire almost shattered the building they were using as cover. The fight had grown completely out of hand, but the aliens, somehow, were coordinating their advance perfectly, tightening the noose around the city. “What’s the point of this?”

“Who knows?” Brooks answered, as they found themselves stumbling into a mosque. It had taken a shell from somewhere, shattering the minaret, but the interior of the building was somehow unharmed. The worshippers, praying desperately for salvation, hadn’t found it; they’d been crushed under the rubble. “I don’t know what they’re thinking…”

Another round of explosions revealed, suddenly, that they were surrounded and alone. Karim realised, feeling absolutely calm, that he was going to die. He checked his rifle, loaded his final clip, and smiled tiredly at Brooks. The American had run out of rifle ammunition, so he’d drawn his handgun and checked it quickly.

“I don’t feel like surrendering,” Brooks said, as he unhooked a grenade from his belt. “You?”

“Hell, no,” Karim said, as Brooks prepared to throw the final grenade. The smoke from the growing fires was making it harder to think; his eyes were stinging and burning. He had a nasty suspicion that he was on the verge of going deaf from all the noise. “Hit them!”

Brooks threw the grenade in a practiced toss towards the alien position. A moment later, the aliens fired back, a heavy burst of machine gun fire that shattered the walls and tore through their bodies before they could escape. The remains of the building collapsed inwards and buried their bodies.

Both men died instantly.