Invasion

Chapter Forty-Six

The alien shuttles, particularly those designed for civilian service — insofar as they had civilians — were superior to the human-built craft in one very neat respect; they had portholes. Brent, despite feeling a little sick as the gravity ebbed away into nothingness, found the view of Earth to be exhilarating. It was easy to see why the aliens wanted Earth now; he would have happily paid half of his salary just for the chance to see the Earth from space, if only for a few seconds. The thought reminded him, though, that if the aliens won, the only humans who would see the sight would be their collaborators… and those raised within their religion.

Perhaps that’s what they have in mind for us, he thought, as the shuttle tilted slightly. It was harder to breathe the alien air than he had expected — it was hot and very dry — but somehow he held himself together. Luke, of course, looked utterly untroubled by the temperature; for him, of course, it was just like coming home. The aliens were, in their own way, as adaptable as humans, but they preferred a given environment and created it for themselves wherever possible. Perhaps there would be aliens who would be happy to live in Antarctica or at the North Pole, but somehow he suspected that they would prefer the Middle East and the other hot zones on Earth.

He’d expected, somehow, to see lights and starfighters zipping past, but the laws of physics didn’t allow such things, not outside of a science-fiction movie. There was a battle raging behind them, according to the radars and the download from the alien ships, but there was no sign of it in the darkness of space, not even twinkling lights. The engineers had warned that if they were detected, the shuttle wouldn’t provide more than a moment’s protection against the lasers defending the Guiding Star, but so far, it seemed that they had passed unnoticed. Their survival was proof of that.

“They have accepted our clearance codes and have granted us permission to dock,” Luke said. The alien didn’t even have the decency to look winded by the effort of speaking in a thoroughly alien tongue. Of course, to him it was as warm and natural as English. “They’re suggesting, very strongly, that we expedite.”

Pearson glanced over at him. “Do they say why?”

“There’s a human attack force following us and engaging the parasite ships,” Luke said. If Brent didn’t know better, he would have sworn that the alien was learning sarcasm. “They’re going to bring up the drive and attempt to escape.”

Brent frowned. “Can they do that?”

“If what we were told about the ship is accurate, then yes, they can simply outrun the attacking craft and make it to high orbit or even further away,” Pearson said. “If they do that, we’ve lost.”

It first appeared as a twinkling star, hanging over the Earth, and then rapidly swelled into a shining Matchbox toy, a city hanging in space. Brent had seen the images from the space-based telescopes when the starship was heading towards Earth, and then the much more detailed images taken from the ground when the aliens had opened fire and brought so much death and destruction to the world, but none of them had truly captured its immensity. There had been nothing in human experience to compare it to, no words that could capture it and bind it to a common reality, a shared understanding of what it was. It was beyond imagination, beyond perception; he could barely make out tiny fractions of the immense whole…

It was conical, floating in orbit, and yet it wasn’t smooth. Like the rest of the alien technology, it had an almost crude appearance, despite the advanced science that had gone into building it. Spacecraft of all kinds fussed around it, while others hung on the hull like barnacles to a watery spacecraft, clinging on for dear life. He could see the shape of a parasite ship, clear even at their distance, and wondered why it hadn’t been launched to take part in the battle. The conical landing craft, the ones that condemned an army to victory or inevitable destruction, could be seen, in perfect position for launch.

Pearson’s eyes were shining with tears. “That could have been us,” he whispered. “We could have built something like that.”

Brent said nothing. The Internet had taken on an increasingly anti-NASA tone as the news of the first attacks sank in… and how much could have been avoided, if only NASA had done its job. It had been easy to share that when he’d been down on the planet, but now, looking at the alien ship, he wondered if that had really been the problem. The human race was so limited, so short-sighted; how could it really have prepared for such an invasion. The aliens had sent generation ships to hundreds of stars, knowing that there would be no real return on the investment, while humanity frittered and played with junk science and oil. The future might yet belong to the aliens. They had done something the human race had never matched.

“They’re taking a download from the flight computers,” Luke said, suddenly. A new icon had appeared on the small display. “That’s fairly normal; they just want to know if there are any problems they should be compensating for. Their main computer may take over the approach…”

“Bastards,” Pearson said, suddenly. “I didn’t trust anyone on the ground to try to tell me how to fly and I never met a pilot that did. Can your computers really dock this craft?”

“Yes,” Luke said, slowly. The tension was rising sharply in the cabin. “Unless, of course, they realise what we are. They might decide to direct us back down towards the planet instead.”

The alien craft grew larger. In an instant, it transformed from an object in the distance to a massive wall, covering the entire skyline. Brent had been wondering if they would be brought inside the hanger bay, but it seemed that there wasn’t time for it, not if the battle was going badly. The alien craft was turning slowly, preparing to inject itself into a transfer orbit to leave Earth behind… and come back with a world-wrecking asteroid. He saw other shuttles, just like their own, docking… and then it was their time. The alien ship reached for them and drew them in.

The engineering report scrolled across the screen and the High Priest allowed himself a moment of relief. The Takaina had invented rail guns as well, but using them against targets that could move and evade fire was something that they had never required. Even assuming a degree of efficiency beyond anything they’d come up with themselves, the human weapons had to be running short of ammunition by now… and two of their shuttles hadn’t fired a shot in the last ten minutes. That suggested, to the High Priest, that they were either laying low or had shot themselves dry… and he was betting on the latter.

The situation was almost intolerable, but the humans seemed to have shot their bolt completely, despite their surprise. The projections confirmed it and confirmed it again. They couldn’t get into close range of Guiding Star in time to prevent the battle section from boosting out on a transfer orbit, escaping their reach completely and heading out to one of the near-Earth asteroids. The remaining parasite ships could evade as well, remaining out of effective range of the human craft, secure in the knowledge that, in time, the human life-support systems would run down. There was no way, unless they’d made a real breakthrough, that such small craft could carry a self-renewing life support system. They would either exhaust themselves in orbit or land… and either decision would ensure their defeat.

They can’t have many more ships like those, the High Priest thought, coldly. They’d used the data they’d obtained from the Middle East to smash up the American industrial plant, but it was clear now that they’d failed, badly. He wasn’t sure if that was because of bad intelligence or because the humans were irritatingly resourceful, but it hardly mattered. He would see to it that the American humans and their European allies were pounded to scrap from orbit before a single Takaina warrior set foot on their lands. They would be reduced to such a condition that they would be begging for the priests to come amongst them and bring them to the Truth. The Takaina would not heed their calls until they had proven themselves submissive… and he would extract a high price. He would…

Something changed on the display. “No!”

The lone warhead was lucky, if luck could be applied to a missile head, when the parasite ships engaged the missile that had launched it on a ballistic trajectory. The Chinese missile engineers had known for years that American ABM systems were only going to get better and better… and doubted that the Americans would stick to any treaties relating to the deployment of ABM weapons. They wouldn’t have hesitated to shield all of China if they had had the capability and suspected that the Americans, in secret, had actually deployed such a capability. No one had been insane enough to test it, but the warheads loaded into the Ju Lang-2 missile had been supported by enough decoys to make knocking out the warhead a fearsomely difficult task. The aliens had engaged the missiles… but missed the warhead.

It had passed through space on a trajectory that would take it down over Texas. The insurgent attacks on the ground-based ABM systems prevented the aliens on the ground from engaging the warhead when it became detectable… and all of the parasite ships were either destroyed or out of position. The targeting system might have been less advanced than the Chinese engineers could wish, but the warhead wasn’t intended for precise work; there was really no such thing as a near-miss with a nuke. It detonated, almost perfectly, over the largest alien settlement in Texas.

In Austin, miles to the east, people saw the mushroom cloud rising up in the distance. Joshua, watching a third insurgency from the safety of a rooftop, saw the blast and knew what it meant. As the dirty shape became clear in the air, both sides separated and broke contact, too awed by the sudden destruction of a major target to keep fighting. They both knew what it meant. Thousands of aliens were killed… and the remainder were naked to human attack.

“They will pay for that,” the High Priest vowed. The reports were vague and scanty — a part of his mind insisted, nastily, that the human leaders in America and Italy must have gone through the same experience — but fairly clear. The warhead had detonated and released ninety kilotons of nuclear power onto the defenceless city below. They wouldn’t have been in protective gear, for all the good it would have done; they would have been naked and helpless against such a towering blast. “I swear, before God himself, they will pay!”

He glared down at the screen, and then, in a moment of anger, turned it off. There would be time, later, to bury himself in the details, a fitting punishment for his mistake. He would watch the dead and dying a thousand times over to steel himself for the task that lay ahead. It took a moment to compose himself and then he keyed his radio.

“Find me an asteroid, one near Earth,” he ordered. The destructive power of the nuke wasn’t as bad as he had feared, but it wasn’t something that he was going to allow to happen again, not when the Texas Foothold was more vulnerable than it had ever been. It would take careful planning to chart an impact point that wouldn’t slaughter thousands of his own people, but it could be done. An asteroid in the heart of Europe would put them off anything, but bare survival for years. A second one in North America would complete the destruction of America. “Find one and chart us an interception and capturing course.”

“Yes, Your Holiness,” the War Leader said. The High Priest could feel the growing power of the drive now. The last of the shuttles had docked and they could move. “We will punish them for this impudence.”

“And summon the Inquisitors,” the High Priest added. He had a final order to give. “Those who converted to the Truth must face the ultimate test.”

Brent had been nervous about combat in zero-gravity, but the handful of aliens who had come to meet the shuttle hadn’t suspected a thing, not until they popped open the hatch and came face-to-face with silenced gun barrels. Brent disliked silencers — he’d yet to meet one that didn’t screw up his aiming — but they had to be used… and the heavy ammunition punched through the alien skins like a knife through butter. Blood, dark alien blood, bubbled off the bodies and floated in the air, slowly falling towards the rear of the ship as the drive started to push them away from the planet.

“You two, stay and guard the shuttle,” Brent said. “The rest of you, follow me.”

The aliens clearly had their own problems in zero-gravity and had thoughtfully rigged up a series of hoops and railings to help their people manoeuvre around the ship. Gary had been right, Brent decided, after five minutes of swarming through the tunnels and corridors down into the heart of the ship; the aliens had designed the battle section to have gravity, at least some part of the time. It wasn’t shaped like the interior of the International Space Station, but rather more like the Starship Enterprise, although a decidedly less advanced one. They passed — and killed — groups of surprised aliens, wondering how long they would have before the alarm was sounded. If they could take out something vital… they might survive this crazy mission after all.

“We’ve been boarded!”

The High Priest couldn’t believe his ears. No one had ever boarded a Takaina starship before, not since the Unification Wars… and even then, the boarding actions had been minimal and designed to hamper operations. They had never even anticipated the possibility! The human prisoners they’d taken and held onboard, before returning them to Earth, had been watched carefully… but naked and unarmed, what could they do?

But the display was clear. The internal security system was reporting humans, real armed humans, moving unerringly down into the vitals of Guiding Star, right towards the main drive shaft. If they started to wreck havoc down there, their very success of their holy mission would be in peril. They would be crippled, at the very least, their plans to defeat the human race shelved until they could rebuild the starship. The High Priest’s hindsight was nagging at him now, reminding him of all the things that could go wrong, and his mind snapped under the pressure.

“Send the warriors,” he screamed. If nothing else, they couldn’t know about the security system, or that they were being monitored all the way; the sterile bitch had never known about that! They knew where they were going, all right, but they didn’t know to knock out the system as they moved, and even if they did… they would mark out a clear pathway for the warriors to follow. “Destroy them!”

“Shit, we’re hopelessly lost,” Jack called. The corridors all looked the same to the humans. If they’d had a chance to navigate, they’d blown it somewhere once they left the hanger deck. “Captain, you got any idea of where we are?”

“No,” Brent said. He looked over at Luke, but the alien was coming apart at the seams. The sight of one of his priests blown apart by a spray of bullets seemed to have unhinged him slightly. He wouldn’t be any use at all and it was damn lucky that they’d never given him a weapon. “We just keep heading into the ship and…”

A spray of bullets cut off his words. The aliens had, somehow, managed to get a blocking force in ahead of them… and, he suspected, another in back of them. The space engineers had suggested that the aliens would be reluctant to use heavy weapons on their mothership, but clearly no one had bothered to tell them that; they were firing heavy machine guns right into the confined space. The small unit split up and threw a pair of grenades back down the corridor, hearing an explosion and screams of pain, but Brent knew that they were trapped. They might punch their way through the blocking force, but by now the aliens would be sealing them into a trap and sending warriors to cut off all the escape routes. They’d be expecting a surrender; they knew that most trapped human units tried to surrender, but not now.

“Cover me,” he ordered, and pulled his backpack off. It was the work of a moment to open the covering and reach the control panel and then, taking a breath, to enter his code. The red lights lit up, revealing a countdown, but he cancelled it impatiently. The aliens would break through at any moment… and, he realised now, they had been foolish to think that there was even a chance to get away. He thought, briefly, of the remainder of SF34 and allowed himself a moment of relief that they hadn’t come with him, and then held his finger over the button. It was a moment for last words, but he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to say, even though he’d known it would come down to this one day.

“I’m sorry, Luke,” he said, and pushed down on the button.

It made a single ominous click under his finger.

The world went white.