Thunder and Lightning

Christopher Nuttall

Thunder and Lightning is free ... but if you want to tip me, check out The Cookie Jar on my site.  I do plan to rewrite this book at some point, so suggestions and suchlike would be very welcome.  

Christopher Nuttall
Blurb

They never saw it coming…

In the year 2100, humanity has finally started to reach out towards the stars.  The moon is strewn with colonies and outposts, Mars is slowly being terraformed and human explorers have reached as far as Pluto and beyond.  The asteroid belt teems with life, technology is slowly solving all of humanity’s ills, and the first starship is being readied for its historic journey to a new world.  And then everything changes…

Samra Hussein, an Astronomer, discovered the alien fleet heading towards the Solar System.  She thinks the aliens cannot be hostile; they have come a very long way to meet the human race.  She’s in for a surprise…

The President of America is grappling with the problems caused by humanity’s advances into space.  There are increasing tensions between the Great Powers, rebellious tendencies on the moon, and the Rockrats flout the Great Powers on a regular basis.  The alien contact seems to herald the dawn of a brand new age…

Captain Christopher Fardell, United States Army, was fighting the endless war against the Wreckers when he heard the news.  Little does he know that he’s about to be on the frontline of a war out of nightmares…

Jake Ellsworth, a Rockrat out in the belt, only wants to make money and a life for himself away from Earth.  The aliens, he reasons, will be friendly; interstellar war can’t be economic, right?

All Markus Wilhelm wants to do is marry his girlfriend and live his life with her.  His life is safe and cosy; he thinks that nothing can go wrong.  How could anyone harm them at the heart of America?

They think the aliens are peaceful.

They’re dead wrong.

Dedication

To Tony Jones and Douglas McDonald, who contributed ideas and thoughts that built up the universe of Thunder and Lightning, and to the Baen Barflies.  This one’s for you, guys.

CGN
Prologue

It is unwise to summon what you cannot dismiss. 
Neil Gaiman

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. 
Donald Rumsfeld

Fact: the first public demonstration of wireless telegraphy took place in the lecture theatre of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History on August 14, 1894, carried out by Professor Oliver Lodge and Alexander Muirhead.

Fact: radio waves travel at the speed of light.

Fact: since 1894, Earth has been transmitting radio signals into space.

Fact: in 2007, the radio signals will have reached 113 light years into space.

Fact: there are 33 stars within 12.5LY from Earth

Fact: there are approximately 260’000 stars within 250LY from Earth.

Fact: every hour, the radio signals reach an additional 1,079,252,848.8 kilometres from Earth.

Unknown: who’s listening?  And why?  And what do they think of us?

Chapter One: Discovery

Selene Observatory, Lunar Surface

Years ago, Samra Hussein had heard an urban legend that Neil Armstrong, as he had taken the first steps upon the moon, had heard the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer.  As she had grown up, one of the hundreds of children born on the moon, she had grown used to walking on the lunar landscape alone…but she had never heard the adhan.  Like all myths, it had little basis in reality, but the thought amused her; perhaps, somewhere, Allah was still watching over his children.

The shape of the main antenna rose up in front of her as she walked around it, admiring its structure in the faint starlight shining down on the dark side of the moon.  The humans resident on the farside never saw Earth rising above them; the observatory, shielded by thousands of tons of lunar rock from Earth’s endless cacophony of radar noise, was the perfect place to study the stars, free of any interference from terrestrial sources.  Samra had grown up near enough to one of the political fault lines on the moon to appreciate the neutrality of the observatory; by international and interplanetary law, the observatory belonged to the International Astronomical Union, not to any single government, corporation, or faction.

Her laser communicator registered a signal, flickering out from one of the relay posts, carefully positioned well away from the sensitive equipment.  “Boss, are you all right?”

Samra took a long breath.  “I’m fine,” she said, aware of her heart racing as she stepped back from the massive structure.  When she had taken over the post of Director of the Observatory, she had insisted that all of her staff take frequent walks on the lunar surface, wherever they came from.  Some Earth-born refused to walk out on the surface, even under careful supervision; they landed at one of the big colonies and remained underground until the day they returned to Earth, having completed their contracts without ever setting foot on the airless surface.  “Has there been any update on the shipment of new supplies from Orbit Seven?”

Her lips pressed together.  Nearly a hundred and fifty years since mankind had taken its first fumbling steps into space, it was still expensive to bring anything up from the surface; the orbital factories orbiting Earth and the factories emplaced on the moon provided most of the supplies that the colonists would ever need.  The International Astronomical Union had twisted her arm; the observatory had to buy its supplies from every possible supplier, showing preference to none.  It was a major nuisance; items she could have obtained on the moon had to come all the way from LEO…

“None,” John Laud said.  His voice echoed her irritation; between bureaucrats who wanted every last erg of power and every last Credit accounted for, and astronomers who failed to understand some of the basic facts of their profession, there were times when she wondered why she bothered to remain in her post.  A look up towards the stars – a steady glow without Earth’s atmosphere producing the twinkling effect – reminded her; where else could she see such sights?  “The last word was that they were having production difficulties and that we would see the supplies in – and I quote – around twenty days.”

Samra sighed as she started to pace around the second set of equipment.  The observatory was spread out over nearly two hundred square kilometres of lunar soil, all of it hers…or as close to hers as was possible, given the circumstances.  The IAU would one day designate a successor, but until then she was queen of all she surveyed, not least because the current arrangement benefited everyone.  Certain discussion forums on the datanet had already raised the question of just who the observatory belonged to; if Karl Bova actually did manage to put forward a mandate for lunar independence, it would be hard to avoid the fact that the observatory was on lunar territory.  

Of course, that would almost certainly start a war, she thought grimly.  It had been years since the Lawton Rebellion, the Han Pact and several other formative events in lunar history; as the moon became more populated and important in the human mindset, it would become harder for the current status quo to be maintained.  If the Lunar Independence Front actually managed to gain control of most of the lunar bases, well…she wasn’t looking forward to that day.  Life on the moon was sometimes just like living on Earth…but all it took was a leaky pressure suit to remind someone of the differences.

“Tell them that if they don’t deliver within twenty, we’ll take our trade elsewhere,” she said.  It wasn’t quite an empty threat, not quite; if she made enough of a fuss, or showed enough benefits to the IAU, the bureaucrats would back her up.  The problem would be showing enough benefits to make the trick work.  “Has anything else happened that I should know about?”

“No, boss,” Laud said.  Unlike her, he was Earth-born, one of the representatives from the British Commonwealth.  The British colony of Albion was only five hundred kilometres from the observatory; Samra knew that several emergency plans relied on their help.  There was also a small military base, which in theory was intended to provide security against Lawton terrorists…although everyone with more than half a brain knew that the real reason for their presence was the possibility that one of the Great Powers would launch a land grab.  “There’s a small set of updates from the LEO tracking system, but nothing too important.”

“Good,” Samra said.  She glanced at the display projected in front of her eyes; it was still an hour before she ran out of air, plenty of time to complete her inspection.  She insisted that all of her personnel remain familiar with operations on the surface; just because it had been years since the last major disaster on the lunar surface, in her view, was no reason to get sloppy.  The Reform Islam practiced by the Caliphate had adopted the ‘Allah helps those who helps themselves’ principle; Samra might never have been very devout, but she understood the lesson.  All of the lunar-born understood.

She kept walking.  “Inform me if anything changes,” she said, and broke the connection.  The path had been clearly marked out by the original construction crews, years ago; lunar history was filled with tales of lives being lost through people forgetting that they were on a very hostile world.  There had been rumours for years of people being adapted to live their lives on the lunar surface without suits, or indeed other life support systems, but Samra would believe it when she saw it.  There were just too many things that could go wrong on the moon.

She saw only a handful of other workers and dozens of small robots as she completed her patrol, watching as they performed their tasks in the chilling silence of the moon.  It felt oddly oppressive, even to her; in most places on the moon, there was always the radio chatter and the ever-present datanet.  Near the observatory, radio was banned except in emergency; a tiny primitive radio transmitter, used too close to the radio telescopes, could cause them to have seizures.  The IAU would not be amused at the cost of replacing multibillion-credit equipment…

Her communicator buzzed.  “Yes?”  She snapped.  “What’s happening?”

It wasn’t Laud, she realised; it was her deputy.  “Director,” Tony Jones said, his voice taut and grim, “I think that you should come in here at once.”

Samra didn’t hesitate.  Jones was something of a cold fish, something that was unusual on the moon, but he was a good worker.  He also knew his business and, like many others in his position, would have handled the matter on his own if he could have done, angling for her job when she left, or was pushed out.  Samra privately doubted that he would get it – although Jones was lunar-born, he was very definitely of British Commonwealth stock, and there were political considerations – but she had to admit that Jones would have made a more than adequate director without such considerations.  His inability to glad-hand would cost him dearly…but he wouldn’t have called her inside without a very good reason.

“On my way,” she snapped, as she moved quickly – few people ran on the moon – towards one of the access points.  Like most late lunar colonies, the main business of the observatory was conducted underground; the observatory had dug deep under the surface to accommodate the staff, the supplies, and prepare for possible emergencies.  The entire staff numbered under three hundred; Samra could have accommodated ten times that number without trouble.  “Have a briefing ready for me as soon as I reach the command centre.”

The interior of the observatory felt welcoming, but then it always had; it had to keep the staff happy, just to prevent a high turnover rate.  Samra had spent too much of her time coping with contractors who didn’t like their facilities much, or family members who resented the observatory’s dedication to pure science; the observatory wasn’t even on the high-speed lunar underground.  She stripped off her pressure suit, checked her outfit out of long habit, and paced along the corridors, down the shaft, and into the command centre.  As she entered, she was surprised to see Jones and several other scientists gathered around a little-used console; they hadn’t had to use the deep-space tracking systems for years.  Had something gone wrong with one of the Bridge Ships?  Message Bearer?

“Report,” she snapped.  The command staff had all been trained to respond to emergencies.  “What the hell is going on?”

Jones looked oddly deflated.  “I think we’ve just earned our budget for the next ten years,” he said, as he tapped the console to display an overview.  “Have a look.”

Samra leaned closer.  The Selene Observatory had been equipped with some of the best deep-space tracking equipment money could buy, something that had led to another dispute between the IAU and the Great Powers, who weren’t keen on any international organisation tracking their more secret missions out in space.  Rumours of secret military bases and testing grounds in deep space refused to fade; tracking stations like Selene Observatory might well manage to follow a spacecraft to a hidden base.  The prominence of satellites and probes equipped with similar sensors kept Selene Observatory out of the public eye; tracking a long fusion burn was easy, but a more covert operation would be almost impossible to track.

The image refused to make sense.  “Merciful Allah, what the hell is that?”

Jones looked down at Rebecca Hawthorne, who flushed.  “Director, I was running a basic overview when the system reported the presence of a fusion light in an unexplored region of space,” Rebecca stammered.  Samra let her speak; ‘unexplored’ didn’t even begin to cover the region Rebecca was talking about.  “The fusion burn seemed far too large to be creditable, so I ran some checks, and they confirmed the presence of a series of fusion burns well outside the Solar Area, but coming towards us…”

Her voice broke off.  Samra felt her blood run cold.  Could it be…?

“I ordered a sweep of that region of the sky,” Jones said, his voice inhumanly calm.  “I collated data from our own telescopes and the data dumps we received from other stations in LEO.  I had the computers run predictive curves and checked the results against images we recorded over the last few months.  I had everything double-checked and…”

He hit a control.  A cold image of deep space materialised in front of her, with hundreds of tiny lights studded across it.  A moment passed…and then the computer highlighted…nearly a hundred lights, lights that weren’t stars, but something else…

“Aliens,” she breathed.

“Unless one of the black colonies has somehow managed to build that fleet and somehow stockpile enough Helium-3 to fuel it – and, just incidentally, we ran a spectroscopic scan and we don’t know the mine where that fleet got its fuel – then there is no other explanation,” Jones said.  “There’s an alien fleet coming to Earth.”

Samra felt her heart leap.  “Aliens,” she said.  Her mind spun around like mad.  “Don’t you understand?  This changes everything!”

Jones snorted.  “It won’t change anything,” he said.  “You know the minds of our political lords and masters.  They’ll try to use the aliens as a tool to pressure the spacers and the colonies to toe Earth’s line, without any independence rights at all.  A week after the announcement makes it out – if they even bother to tell the little people – there’ll be a million soldiers on the moon.”

Rebecca coughed lightly.  “Director, I’m not convinced that their fusion tech is like ours,” she said.  “The results are far from precise at this range, but I’m pretty certain that their energy efficiency is much higher than ours; frankly, given the power of the burns, I’m fairly sure that they’re somehow achieving much higher levels of fusion…”

She stopped suddenly.  “It’s ok,” Samra said, as reassuringly as she could.  The excitement kept threatening to leap from her heart into her mouth; she rested one dark hand on Rebecca’s shoulder to calm the younger woman.  “How many others will have seen them?”

Rebecca shrugged.  “Given the power of those burns, it’s quite possible that other monitoring stations will have located the source by now,” she said.  “There aren’t that many sensors pointed in that general direction, but most stations at least maintain a watching brief of as much of the sky as they can.  The various Freeport stations are in a good position to watching for unexpected events in the sky; they are almost certain to see them within a week, if they haven’t seen them already.”

“That makes sense,” Samra said.  Her mind drifted rapidly; with the Rockrats engaged in launching ice asteroids towards Mars and Venus for the terraforming project, the handful of unions had every incentive to be watching for trouble.  The Rockrat culture might be composed of bloody-minded men and women, but they knew when to work together for the greater good.  They also had little love for the IAU.  “Tony, we have to inform the IAU before they steal all the credit.”

“A word,” Jones said.  She allowed him to steer her towards her office.  Part of her wanted to ensure that full credit for the discovery rested with the Selene Observatory, part of her was intrigued by this new Jones; before the discovery, the greatest passion he had shown had been for chess.  He had certainly shown no signs of interest in her, or in any of the other eligible young men or women on the base.  “Director – Samra – we have to tell everyone.”

Samra closed her eyes for a long moment.  When she opened them again, Jones was pacing around her office, his pale face flushed with excitement.  “It’s not as if the IAU can keep it secret for long,” she said, after she had managed to arrange her thoughts.  She brought up the image and showed him.  “There are nearly a hundred spacecraft out there – there may even be more – and they’re pumping out a great deal of energy.  If that continues, every spacecraft with a homemade detector is going to see them and then…”

“The secret will be out, too late,” Jones said.  “What happens when the Security Council decides, for the benefit of Earth, that the best way to greet the aliens in through armed force?”

“We don’t know what the aliens actually want,” Samra pointed out.  “They can’t be unaware of our existence, but how can we assume they’re friendly?”

“Interplanetary war is hard enough,” Jones said dryly.  “Interstellar war would be even harder…”

“In six months, we may know exactly how hard it is,” Samra said.  She scowled, realising that she had fallen into a trap; she was arguing a point of view she didn’t really believe.  She had wondered for years if there were other intelligent forms of life out in space, even as she had started to realise that if there were aliens out there, they were very well hidden.  A hundred years of endless listening for alien signals had yielded far less than anyone had believed possible; there had been no signals that anyone could take with real confidence.  “I told you; they can’t keep it a secret forever.”

“Long enough to use it for political advantage and start off a war,” Jones said.  “Samra, if…”

Samra thought she knew what he was thinking.  The situation on the lunar surface was dangerous; the colonists remembered rebellions and mistreatment by their governments and corporations over the years since the colonies had been established.  Some Great Powers had established limited democratic governing bodies for their colonists, others, such as the Chinese, had been forced to bring in massive military force to crush rebellions.  With the Lunar Independence Front starting to develop real support right across the moon, the situation was rapidly becoming a powder keg…and all that was needed was one idiot to light the match.

“You have an open mandate to announce any discovery of great significance,” Jones reminded her.  Samra felt her lips twitch; that was true, although the planners had never considered alien contact when they had drawn up the protocols.  “Announce it; they can hardly blame you for following their own procedures.”

“I’ll send out the bulletin,” Samra said, after a moment’s thought.  Jones was right, in more ways than he knew; if she played her cards right, she could be one of the people who made first contact with the aliens.  She wanted to meet aliens; how would Allah’s other children look to her eyes?  The mystery was endlessly fascinating.  “You might want to pretend you don’t know me.”

She left him to his thoughts as she started to compose the bulletin.  It struck her then, just how much the solar system had changed; aliens, in her lifetime.

The future seemed bright and full of promise…

Chapter Two: The Never-Ending War

African Exclusion Zone, Africa

“The missiles have been launched,” the radio buzzed.  Captain Christopher Fardell nodded to himself as the missiles appeared on his helmet display, launched from the stealth ship sitting off the coast and heading towards the Wrecker base.  The General Franks was difficult even to locate via space-based radar; the Wreckers shouldn’t even have had a clue that the ship was present.  “Impact in twenty seconds.”

“Heads up, people,” Fardell said.  The twenty-one battlesuits of the 22nd Battlesuit sent brief acknowledgements; after five years of heavy training and innumerable combat operations against various Wrecker bases, the soldiers behaved almost as one entity.  “We move as soon as the missiles impact.”

He’d been dissatisfied with the limited intelligence on the Wreckers, even though the CIA and several other intelligence agencies had been probing the bases with all manner of remote sensors, some of them he had thought only existed in science-fiction before becoming one of the 22nd Battlesuit.  There were more kinds of Wrecker faction out there than he could shake a stick at; they could be facing a radical Islamic faction, one of dozens of independence nuts, Greenpeace Eco-terrorists, or even just plain criminals.  It made his job much more complicated; simple fanatics tended to be easy to deal with, the ones who actually thought before proceeding with their lunatic schemes were really dangerous.

The missiles closed in rapidly, moving at hypersonic speeds; he could almost sense their presence and knew that the Wreckers would now be able to see them, if they had passive sensors scattered around their base.  There had been no betraying active emissions from the Wrecker base, but there wouldn’t have been; active emissions were as good as calling up the American force and saying ‘come kill me now.’  It had taken too much time and effort to find the base and, instead of levelling it from orbit, the Pentagon wanted it taken intact…

If they wanted it intact, they shouldn’t have sent the battlesuits, Fardell thought, as the first missile impacted on the base.  It was loaded with compressed high explosive; he could feel the ground shake as it pushed shockwaves down into the ground, collapsing bunkers and hidden fortifications.  Other missiles impacted, targeting suspected enemy barracks and supply locations; the missiles took no prisoners.  Fardell knew that the spooks weren’t happy at all about that part of the plan, but the General had put his foot down; he wouldn’t risk his men more than necessary.

“Advance,” Fardell said, shortly.  The battlesuit regiments had few traditions, beyond shouting ‘delete’ as they opened fire on the enemy; they had been raised in an era where such traditions were on the wane.  Advancing shouting battle cries was the mark of lunatic fanatics; the battlesuits preferred to land their blows and announce their presence later.  “Eye-spy, track us.”

“Understood, Captain,” Lieutenant Lance Seeman said.  The coordinator was the safest one of all, watching the engagement through satellites and remote drones, even some of the sensors on the suits themselves, from his bunker somewhere in America.  He maintained the necessary detachment to handle the task, but Fardell knew that his very distance from the scene sometimes meant that he didn’t understand the task.  The Pentagon had had to learn the old lesson about leaving tactical decisions to the man on the spot; there was no way that Fardell would allow Seeman to overrule him without the man’s ass being under fire as well.  “I have you now; feeding images to your suits.”

Fardell ignored the deluge of information, most of its useless, with the ease of long practice.  They’d been briefed carefully before they had been inserted into Africa, into what had once been called Nigeria.  A hundred and fifty years of slow collapse, ever since decolonisation, had completely ruined the country; it was the same story over Africa.  Fardell’s own parents had been the descendents of slaves, taken from Africa before the American Civil War; every time he returned to Africa, he couldn’t help, but be grateful to the slavers.  His family had been spared the harrowing of Africa.

The city ahead of them had once had a name that had lasted more than ten years, but Fardell had forgotten it; it had been called several different names during the collapse, when AIDS, warfare and several bio-engineered diseases had gotten loose in Africa, wiping out most of the population.  The remaining natives tended to keep themselves to themselves; ever since the European-African War and the European occupation of North Africa, the Wreckers had tried to use the remains of Africa as a base.  Fardell had heard rumours that there were still active civilisations somewhere in Africa, but none of them had any real potential to become great.  As South Africa advanced north, and Europe advanced south, and the Caliphate advanced west, it was possible that one day the poison moat would be drained.

His lips twitched.  Until then, Fardell and the other soldiers would have the endless task of penetrating the hellhole, locating and destroying the wrecker bases, and then extracting themselves.  It wasn’t easy; Africa had changed beyond all logic or reason.  There were arms scattered around for anyone to pick up and take, or the remains of several dozen different government infrastructures; anyone who wanted to spend enough on bribes could establish themselves in Africa, although deep space was a much easier place to establish a new civilisation.  Few of the new colonies lasted more than ten years…

“I have movement coming down the highway,” Seeman said, as an automatic alert appeared on Fardell’s helmet.  Once, the US Army would have inserted spotter teams into the area, risking detection in exchange for intelligence; now, there were robotic flies and butterflies buzzing around, collecting information on the wrecker positions.  “At least fifty people, armed with old weapons.”

Fardell nodded.  “Any sign of anything dangerous?”

There was a long pause.  Older weapons, including the ever-present AK-47, posed no threat to the battlesuits; the bullets would just bounce off the armour.  Small explosives and missiles, likewise, were a reduced threat; modern missiles and plasma cannons could burn through the suits as if they were made of paper.  The Wreckers weren’t a modern military force; one base would have only AK-47s and get smashed with ease, a second would have plasma weapons they had jury-rigged from old plans and require an orbital strike to eradicate it.  The first lesson that was hammered into the trainee soldiers was that the battlesuits didn’t make them invulnerable; like all weapons, they could be outthought, or just plain over-powered.

“Nothing detected,” Seeman said finally.  Fardell didn’t relax; plasma weapons, when activated, could be tracked with ease, but HVMs and mines were much harder to locate until it was too late.  “They are heading towards you…”

“Looks like we’ve been rumbled,” Lieutenant Tjitze De Boer muttered.  The battlesuits spread out a little further as they reached the old road, which was showing signs of recent use, despite it’s condition.  It looked like something out of The Sunrise Lands movie.  “They must have had spotters of their own out here.”

“Never mind,” Fardell said.  He glanced down at the developing situation as the platoon started to move up the road, well spread out; supporting elements were already starting to move into place for blocking all possible routes out of the ruined city.  “Lance, send the warning.”

There was a remote drone hanging over the city, one that was old enough to be classed as expendable; Fardell waited briefly for Lance to send the command.  “THIS IS THE UNITED STATES ARMY, OPERATING UNDER THE WRECKER PROTOCOLS,” a voice thundered.  Fardell could hear it even though the suits; the wreckers on the ground had to feel it in their very bones.  “YOU ARE SURROUNDED AND TRAPPED.  SURRENDER NOW AND YOU WILL BE TREATED FAIRLY; RESIST AND YOU WILL BE TREATED UNDER THE ENFORCEMENT PROVISIONS OF THE PROTOCOL.  YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO DECIDE!”

Fardell checked the orbital view, acknowledging its limitations; the ruined city provided thousands of possible places for the wreckers to hide.  The Wrecker Protocols gave the country involved with apprehending the wreckers in question permission to do anything to them, up to and including shooting them out of hand; there was no legal requirement to offer them the chance to surrender.  If they did surrender, they would certainly have a chance to pay their debt to society, mainly in a penal camp out in Nevada, or somewhere in Antarctica.  He would have preferred to have more flexible rules of engagement, but ever since the use of weapons of mass destruction on American and European cities, mercy had become impossible.  If the five minutes ran out, the battlesuits would advance and kill anyone who had a gun in their hand; only in rare cases would surrender be accepted.

“Four minutes,” Seeman muttered.  “There’s no sign of any concentrated movement, but one of the spotters heard some shots…”

“Deserters being shot,” Fardell guessed.  It wasn’t unknown for some of the wreckers to see the error of their ways when faced with overwhelming force; attempts to surrender were generally treated ill by the more fanatical wreckers.  “Anything…”

The red alarm blinked up, overriding everything; incoming mortar fire!  Fardell muttered a curse as the mortar shells popped up, rushing into the air and coming down among the armoured soldiers.  Analyst programs were already running; a direct hit would prove nasty, but a near-miss shouldn’t be fatal, unless the wreckers had some other tricks up their sleeves.  Explosions blossomed up among the soldiers as they spread out, their sensors already hunting for the enemy spotters…

“Got them,” Seeman snapped.  A stream of coordinates appeared in Fardell’s helmet; a skyscraper that had somehow not collapsed over the pressure of bad repair work and heavy fighting in the city below.  “Engage and destroy…”

Fardell’s arm snapped up; instead of human-like digits, the battlesuit had a heavy plasma cannon.  A stream of blinding white light streamed out of it at just below the speed of light, heading directly towards the skyscraper, which exploded under the pressure of the strike.  A stream of explosions brought the skyscraper down in ruins; a part of his mind noted coldly that the wreckers had to have been using it to store explosives and weapons as well.  The other soldiers knew what to do; they advanced forward as rapidly as possible, heading directly towards the first set of buildings, which had started to spark with weapons fire.  The wreckers had done what they could to slow the armoured suits, but Fardell could see the signs of their work; a handful of soldiers swept their plasma cannons along the ground and mines detonated before they could become dangerous to his people.

“Launching HVM strike now,” Seeman said, as the HVM launchers came online, launching a spread of heavy missiles towards the wrecker positions.  The US Army had plenty of experience at destroying buildings by now; every building that was struck exploded, or imploded, under the impact of the missiles.  The battlesuits raced forward as the noise of the fighting grew louder; warning icons popped up as the Wreckers launched counter-battery fire of their own, attempting to use older weapons to suppress the advancing battlesuits and the rocket launchers.  Ground-based lasers flickered into existence, targeting and detonating the Wrecker shells in mid-flight.

The fighting raged forward as young Wreckers, some of them with the glazed expression that indicated the use of battle drugs, ran forwards, spraying bullets towards the battlesuits.  Fardell ground his teeth as the platoon deployed and mowed the young men down; they had never stood a chance and their commanders had to know that.  Battle drugs did wonders for aggression and bravery, but nothing at all for common sense or even tactical awareness; their tactics had gone out of date since the First World War.  Explosions blossomed up as the more capable wreckers poured fire onto the battlesuits; as they got better, some of Fardell’s unit started to take real damage…

“Alert,” Seeman snapped, as a new icon appeared on the display.  Instinct took over as Fardell recognised the icon and threw himself out of the way of a charging plasma blast, a tactic that had been drilled into them at the training ground, time and time again.  A blast of white-green slight shot past him, close enough to burn an unprotected human badly without the suit, and struck one of the other battlesuits.  To his horror, Fardell saw the suit glow white and explode as it’s own systems overloaded; the soldier had died without knowing what had hit him.  “Captain…”

“HVM strike, right bloody now,” Fardell snapped.  The target had been designated the moment the first emissions had been detected and logged; one of the killer-drones orbiting high overhead had already prepared a missile for launch.  On his command, the missile streaked down and struck the enemy position, sending it up in a massive gout of flame and plasma fuel.   The superhot wave of flame ignited other buildings; Fardell pause as audio-discrimination programs recorded the presence of screams in a large former warehouse, screams that didn’t sound as if the screamers were drugged.  “Gunnard; check it out.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Gunnard Fredrickson said.  The battlesuit units didn’t bother with salutes when in armour; salutes were forbidden anywhere near a combat zone.  One advantage of the endless war was that it ensured that officers with genuine fighting experience gained high positions; officers who had spent their entire careers in the supply department never gained actual command over combat formations.  “We’re on it…”

Fardell checked the overall situation; the Wreckers were collapsing.  The defenders hadn’t stood a chance, but they had fought as if they hadn’t known that…and perhaps they hadn’t; they had killed seven Americans, three of them his people and injured nearly a dozen more.  A handful of Wreckers were attempting to escape out of the rear of the city, heading even further into the badlands, only to run into the support formations that had been positioned to advance to trap the runaways.  Some would surrender, others would fight and die; it hardly mattered.  They’d had their chance to surrender…

“Sir, I think you should see this,” Fredrickson said.  The grim note in his voice worried Fardell; the fires were getting out of control and were quite likely to complete the destruction of the city before anyone else moved in.  “It’s…not good.”

“On my way,” Fardell said, turning his suit and heading back towards the warehouse.  Support formations were completing the task of securing the city now; they would withdraw in good order before the fires reached them, taking with them all the intelligence and captives they found.  The warehouse was nothing special, but the bodies of dead wreckers nearby suggested that it was important; the Wreckers had tried to hold a building that was impossible to defend.  It was sheer luck that someone hadn’t just dropped a HVM on it.  “What is it…?”

He stepped through the hole in the wall and cursed.  The warehouse was filled with bodies, some of them still alive; female bodies.  The women looked terrified; they had been handcuffed to railings running through the building, left naked and alone.  Fardell felt sick and had to use one of his implants to control his nausea; he’d heard that the slave trade had resumed through parts of Africa, but he’d never come face to face with the evidence before.

“Get the support units up here,” he ordered.  Fredrickson’s subordinates had already began the task of breaking the railings; it was God’s own mercy that the wreckers hadn’t secured their feet as well.  A little more paranoia on the part of the wreckers and it would have been much harder to get the women out before the fires caught them.  “I want to have them all moved out and given some medical attention before it’s too late.”

He stepped back outside as the first heavy transport arrived, crushing ruins and bodies alike as it landed, releasing unarmoured support troops and medics.  Fredrickson had already briefed some of his people; Fardell watched as the women were escorted out, one by one, for transport back to the Forward Operation Base.  They would have to be interrogated and tested carefully – the wreckers might have tried to slip some of their senior people out by leaving them with the slaves – but he doubted it.  A single different decision and the women would have died, as unremarked as they had lived; grimly, he wasn’t sure if that would not have been the best thing for them.  Where could they go now?

“We’re being given pull-out orders now,” Seeman said, not entirely to Fardell’s surprise.  The burning was becoming more dangerous; the unarmoured soldiers were having real problems, even though they had extracted plenty of material from the wrecker base.  Fardell muttered orders; his remaining soldiers started to filter out of the city, leaving the task of securing the edges of the city to the support formations.  Once the fire had burned itself out, the support units would return, just to make sure that no wreckers had survived the fire and remained to cause trouble.

“Understood,” Fardell said.  “We’ll make our way back to the FOB…”

“No,” Seeman said.  “You’ve been given orders to prepare for redeployment, sir; you’re never going to believe what’s happened!”

Fardell blinked.  The unit had been deployed in the African Exclusion Zone for nearly a year and they were being redeployed already?  They’d had a month’s leave only two months ago; where were they going?  He’d heard nothing on the grapevine, unless…

He knew it was more than just impossible, but he had to ask.  “The Wreckers have surrendered?”

Seeman’s voice became more professional.  “No,” he said.  “You have orders to return to the FOB and prepare for immediate redeployment.  You’ll be briefed when you arrive at the FOB.”

Fardell shrugged and started to prepare his men for withdrawal.

Chapter Three: The Rulers of the World

United Nations Building, Geneva

“Mr President, Task Force Douglas has reported that the wrecker base has been cleared,” Clayton Scannell murmured into the President’s ear, through the earpiece communications link.  “They’re returning to the base now.”

President Allen Daly nodded once.  A few days ago, the clearing of a wrecker base would have been a major issue, one that would have required direct input from him and his cabinet.  The endless thorny legal problem of operating within the exclusion zone, the use of strategic asserts like orbital bombardment systems and battlesuit regiments…all of them would have required direct attention from the President.  Now, now clearing a wrecker base seemed almost mundane; the UNSC review that should have taken place had been cancelled, seemingly without explanation.  The President knew what had happened; the discovery of alien life…

The original United Nations had died with New York; the rebuilding program after terrorists had destroyed the city had purposefully left out the United Nations building.  The expanding Great Powers hadn’t been interesting in coddling the smaller powers any longer; America hadn’t been the only nation to find the UN increasingly irrelevant in a world of sheer terror and wreckers running rampant.  There had been no final council, no final discussions; the Great Powers had merely shut the UN down and settled for creating something new, a system that allowed them to work out their conflicts for themselves.  There had been much less to fight over then; the working relationship had blossomed and had survived the rise of space assets and the spread of dangerous ideas in space.  The new United Nations had its detractors, mainly from smaller nations who considered it to be a tool of the Great Powers, intended to divide the world up between them.  Most of the smaller nations that had existed in 2000 no longer existed; names, flags and even populations had vanished as the Wrecker War ground on.  The new United Nations survived; unlike its predecessor, it had not outlived its usefulness.

Switzerland, the only nation in Europe to maintain even a nominal independence from the European Union – unless one counted the British or the Russians – had volunteered to serve as the host for the new organisation.  Everyone had agreed, mainly because of the lack of any other good ideas; the proposal to move the base to the moon had been laughed out of court.  The President was privately grateful for that decision; the growth of the Lunar Independence Front meant that lunar politics had become much more dangerous, and explosive.  A single mistake could cause a repeat of the Lawton Rebellion…with a much more dangerous outcome.  Space was the source of the Great Powers’ power; a mistake could have disastrous consequences.

“Welcome back to Geneva, Mr President,” the Swiss Guard said, as the President stepped inside the conference room.  No one, but world leaders and those they invited, got to step inside; the seven nations or power groupings that earned the title of Great Power had to work most of their differences out without public scrutiny, something that prevented national pride from becoming an obstacle.  Protocol could be discarded here; the world leaders might not always like one another, but they always respected each other.  “The room is secure.”

By long-standing agreement, the position of chairperson would rotate around the room; as luck would have it, it was the British Commonwealth representative, Prime Minster Tim Keck, who was chair.  The President considered that a good sign; the power dynamics between the Great Powers meant that America and her allies would have a faint advantage, if the President played his cards right.  The United States and the British Commonwealth were firm allies; the Russians and Chinese were firm allies, but occasionally given to acting against each other.  The Europeans and the Japanese worked together and with the Americans, but would always place their own interests first, while the Caliphate had very little in the way of friends and allies.  The President had occasionally wondered if the Caliphate was Allah’s joke on his believers; if it had been established even ten years earlier, there would have been a real chance for the Caliphate to become powerful.  As it was, it was the least of the Great Powers… 

Which didn’t always mean that it was weak, not with it’s own orbital installations and space-based weapons drifting around in orbit.  The Great Powers had each ringed the planet with their weapons, watching for signs of trouble from the others, an arms race that risked everything.  In 2000, America had been the most powerful nation in the world; in 2100, no one was quite sure who was the most powerful.  The only thing that everyone agreed upon was that an exchange of orbital fire would be disastrous.

Prime Minster Tim Keck tapped the table.  “The room is sealed,” he said, acknowledging what they all knew.  The President had already noticed his earpiece cut off as the security screens came down around the room; the Secret Service had worried endlessly over that.  No one would know what happened inside the room until the world leaders emerged.  “I call the meeting to order.”

The President stood a little straighter.  “The issue at hand is the discovery of an alien fleet heading towards our planet,” Keck continued.  The world leaders showed no real surprise; when the news had broken from the Selene Observatory, they had all had a day to get used to the discovery.  There had been no argument about the need for a United Nations meeting.  “I have asked Rick Davenport, from the International Astronomical Union, to brief us on the discovery.”

“Careless,” President Siegfried Gerwulf commented.  The German was the duly elected President of the European Union, elected by a system that confused American commenters more than some of the stranger variants that existed in the new states of Mexico, Panama, or Argentina.  “The news should have been kept under wraps until we had decided what to do about it.”

Davenport flushed.  He was a grey man in a grey suit, one of the innumerable bureaucrats who ran the International Astronomical Union, one of the most disliked and distrusted organisations in the solar system.  It also was necessary; without the International Astronomical Union, the President suspected that humanity would have fought the first interstellar war by now.

“The decision to release the information came from Director Hussein herself,” Davenport said.  His face tightened; the risk-averse International Astronomical Union would have probably have been happier sitting on the information until the Great Powers had formalised an agreement.  “It would be possible to discipline her, should it be required…”

“It will not be required,” Caliph Baha Ihsan said.  The Caliph – despite his title, he too was an elected leader – eyed the bureaucrat with unconcealed disdain, an emotion that the President shared.  “Any interpretation of the regulations would support her actions…”

Keck tapped the table.  “It is not important at the moment,” he said, carefully.  “Mr Davenport, please would you summarise what has happened since the first announcement?”

Davenport nodded and picked up a remote.  A computer-generated image of a star-scrape appeared in front of them, a handful of the stars circled in red, pointing out the alien starships.  It struck the President then, just what the aliens had done; the human race might have been in the middle of a private attempt to build the first starship, but the aliens had built far more ships.

“There is actually very little information available at present,” Davenport said.  “The report led to every other science program being dumped and sensors, telescopes and other equipment being trained on the alien starships.  Despite that, the sheer range of the distance between the aliens and us makes it impossible to know some details for certain, while the inherent limitations of passive sensors limits what we can learn.  In fact…”

“Cavorts duly noted,” Keck said.  He allowed a hint of irritation to enter his voice.  “Please could you tell us what you do know…?”

Davenport looked unhappy.  “We have around one hundred alien starships coming towards the solar system,” he said.  “They started a fusion burn roughly twenty-seven hours ago, angling their course towards Earth.  There’s no question of that, sirs and madam; the aliens are coming towards Earth.   It should also be noted that the alien craft are large; the largest craft we have been able to gain some figures on is over a hundred kilometres long, longer than any bridge ship or even Message Bearer.”

The President nodded slowly.  The Message Bearer project, the private creation of a starship intended to settle a new human civilisation, involved converting an asteroid into a starship.  The asteroid wasn’t much larger than fifty kilometres; the alien craft dwarfed it, both in size and in determination.  How many aliens could fit on starships that size?

“We know very little else about the aliens,” Davenport continued.  “Their fusion tech shows some signs of being more advanced than our own, while obviously those craft are much larger than anything we have designed and launched; the technical capabilities involved in sending a fleet so far are very impressive.  So far, there have been no signals detected coming from the alien craft, nor has there been any detectable response to the signals that various individuals and factions have sent to the aliens; we have no idea at all what they want.”

He sat down.

“We cannot run the risk of assuming the aliens are friendly,” President Liu Jianfeng said.  The Chinese leader glared around the room, daring anyone to disagree.  He gave voice to the President’s silent question.  “How many aliens could they fit onto one of those ships?

“It’s impossible to tell at present,” Davenport said, after an uncomfortable pause.  “Assuming that they have the same requirements as humans require, maybe a hundred thousand onboard each ship, maybe much more.  If they’re prepared to accept much higher population densities, or perhaps have a hibernation system, they could be transporting many, many, more aliens.”

“It could be an invasion force,” President Aleksandra Zakharova said.  The Russian leader looked tired; the President had heard that some Russian hard-liners had been pressing for stronger action against factions on the moon.  “That force is not a small one by any reckoning.  They have to be aware of our existence, so why haven’t they talked to us?”

She leaned forward, her old frame projecting determination and concern.  “We have no choice, but to prepare on the assumption that we are facing an invasion,” she said.  “If the aliens are friendly, well and good, but if they are not friendly…”

The President decided to inject a comment.  “There is the danger of us accidentally causing a war on our own ground before the aliens arrive,” he said, reminding her of the possible dangers involved in intensifying the arms race.  “If we reinforce the moon, we might have a rebellion on our hands.”

“Too bad,” President Liu snapped.  “We should have cleaned out those separatists before they rose to the level of a real danger!”

“Water under the bridge,” the Caliph said.  “If we seek a military solution, we will destroy everything we want to preserve.”

The President said nothing.  The urgent need for Helium-3 ensured that the Great Powers would struggle to maintain control over the mines on the moon, to say nothing of the scoops in orbit around Jupiter and Saturn.  The human race had spent too long being dependent upon oil to make the same mistake twice…and yet, there was no real choice.  Without a steady supply of Helium-3, the world economy would grind to a halt…but if they caused a rebellion on the moon, the resulting devastation could destroy the mines and destroy the world economy.

“It is possible that the Lunar Independence Front will accept the requirement,” Keck said.  “The settlers do tend to maintain a more pragmatic view of space than some of our own citizens do.  They may even want to garrison parts of the moon themselves.”

“Not unless it’s under their command,” the President said, ruefully.  The American colonies had their own assembles, along with the British and Caliphate colonies, but the European, Russian and Chinese colonies were governed by an appointed governor from the homeworld.  The bigger corporations also maintained their own colonies; they were often the source of the nastier revolts.

“Which is unthinkable,” President Aleksandra Zakharova snapped.

“We are getting off the subject,” Keck said.  “In six months, unless the aliens change course, the aliens will be at Earth.  By then, we have to be ready for them…”

“The International Astronomical Union came up with a proposal,” Davenport said.  “We have plenty of spacecraft of our own capable of reaching the alien fleet; we can send several ships to intercept them and meet them short of Earth itself.  In the event of them being hostile, we would have some warning and time to prepare for war in Earth orbit.”

“Director Hussein’s proposal,” the President said.  There were a few chuckles; Samra Hussein had indeed proposed the mission when she had transmitted the original warning to the IAU.  He allowed his mind to race; one hundred starships, each massive and perhaps even more advanced than they thought, would change the balance of power in the solar system.  It was possible – no, it was almost certain – that the other Great Powers would try to make a private agreement with the aliens, one aimed at sharing power.  “A joint mission, then?”

“An armed mission,” President Liu said.  “If we start now, we could put up a formidable defence force before the aliens arrive.  It wouldn’t be hard to arm the ships that don’t already carry weapons, and of course we have done our own research on space warfare…”

The President smiled.  “And if they opened fire, we would have a look at what their weapons can do,” he said.  Officially, the Great Powers limited their research into space weapons; unofficially, all of the Great Powers were researching like mad to discover new weapons and tactics.  Space warfare was a confusing field of study; long hours of boredom, mixed with moments of sheer danger and excitement.  “We might even take enough of a bite out of them to convince them to back off.”

“Damn it,” Keck said.  “What the hell do they want?”

The discussion raged backwards and forwards, with very little structure; the real agreement had already been made.  The President was surprised at some of the suggestions; the aliens might want to establish their own colony on Mars, or Venus, or perhaps one of the moons in the outer solar system that had never been colonised – yet – by humanity.  Other suggestions were more conventional; the brief argument over who would have tactical command when the aliens approached Earth orbit was put aside for later – the President knew that Congress and the Senate would almost certainly refuse to allow American spacemen to serve under Chinese or Russian command.

“We can certainly establish much larger defence networks,” the President concluded, after an hour of carefully vague discussions.  The precise details would be worked out by staffers; if the International Astronomical Union provided some supervision, it would be possible to emplace many more weapons on Earth orbit without providing one of the Great Powers with a tempting opportunity to strike first and win the war.  “We may want to evacuate the orbital stations when the aliens get closer…”

“That would be a serious problem,” President Siegfried Gerwulf said.  The European shook his head firmly.  “We need the products manufactured in orbit.”

“Then move some of the platforms out to the asteroid belt,” Keck said.  “If the aliens are hostile, those manufacturing platforms are almost defenceless.  A single missile and the investment would be ruined forever.”

The discussion became more heated, including covert references to other projects, out in the asteroid belt.  The President kept his opinions to himself, although he wasn't surprised to learn that the Chinese knew a little about the secret American program; the Americans knew plenty about the secret Chinese program.  He had sometimes thought that it would be a lot easier on everyone if they just agreed to broadcast every message in the clear, but secrecy had to be maintained, even if it was leaky.  Some of the manufacturing platforms would be sent away from Earth on slow-transit orbits, just in case; others would be kept in Earth orbit until the very last moment, supporting the defence program.  If nothing else, the President thought, it would be an ideal chance to see just how well they could work together.

“There is a final issue,” Keck said, as the meeting prepared to break up.  “We will have to expand our stockpiles of Helium-3, just in case the aliens do intend to be hostile.  Can we all agree to fund expansion of the lunar mines?”

“If we pay for it, they may well expand the mines on their own,” the President said.  The eternal bottleneck was shipping more men and women into LEO; it was no surprise that the children born on the moon, or among the asteroids, were less interested in supporting Earth.  “Given the other demands on our resources, it might be tricky to force them to expand their supplies.”

“True,” Keck agreed.  He glanced down at the list of agreements and limited plans; their subordinates would handle the task of translating them all into reality.  The tricky part would be ensuring that none of the Great Powers managed to gain an advantage over the others…or, for that matter, that the Rockrats didn’t manage to make a private deal with the aliens.  For all they knew, the aliens might be Rockrats themselves, or communists, or fascists, or…the possibilities seemed endless.  “Six months until the world changes again.  Will we be ready?”

The President smiled.  “We’ll make ourselves ready,” he said.  “Think of this as an opportunity.”

“Think of this as a possible threat,” President Liu said.  “We know nothing about the aliens, nothing at all.  I cannot help, but wonder; just how much do they know about us?”

Chapter Four: Preparing the Ground

Lunar City, Lunar Surface

It had been called, with stunning originality, Lunar City; a massive underground complex that had been designed by a service corporation to provide a safe haven for miners and their families, somewhere where they could relax after work. The detractors had claimed that it was a waste of money and funding, but they had been proven spectacularly wrong; Lunar City had rapidly become the most popular location on the moon, a genuine freeport that accepted anyone from any lunar base or colony.

Samra Hussein found it just a little bit overcrowded.  Unlike her observatory, Lunar City was crowded with people, many of them engaged in pursuits that disgusted her, or surprised her.  Lunar City claimed to be the least religious place on the moon and she wasn't surprised; it had a large whorehouse, three casinos and seven bars…and only one place of faith.  The place of faith might cater to all faiths, but the sheer determination to pray on time was rare away from Earth; the desire to relax and just enjoy oneself, however, was very strong.  It didn’t help that Lunar City was a self-governing enclave; Chinese and Russian miners came from their bases, completely against their regulations, and returned filled with ideas about how the moon should be independent of the grasping nations on Earth.  Lunar City was the centre of the independence movement…

“Samra,” a voice called, as she stepped out of the lift into the main corridor.  The corridor itself surprised her; unlike the grey neo-communist designs of most lunar colonies, it was decorated with designs that would have made her blush, if her dark face had allowed her to blush.  Some of the…positions displayed, she was sure, were not actually physically possible.  “Welcome to the Lunar Capital!”

She turned, to see a short man whose personality seemed to launch out of him at every opportunity.  Like many of the lunar-born, he was mixed-race, a result of various politics requiring equal opportunity and later immigration of refugee women from the various exclusion zones around the world.  Karl Bova, the son of Sam Bova, who had founded Lunar City…and the head of the Lunar Independence Front.  He would have been attractive if he hadn’t spent so much effort on making his appearance striking; lunar politics didn’t depend so much on looks as they did on competence.  Some people might have questioned Bova’s sanity, but they had never questioned either his competence or his determination; Lunar City had expanded tenfold since he had taken over the reins from his father.

“Thank you,” she said.  She had technically bent the rules by ensuring that Bova’s attention was drawn to the discovery, but there had been little choice; she wanted, desperately, to go meet the aliens.  If that involved spending time playing politics, it was a price she was willing to pay.

Bova caught her by the arm and escorted her down the long corridor onto the concourse.  The underground cavern was packed with people enjoying themselves, from a handful of rich miners and visitors who were sampling real meat from the farms that Bova had established for cows, pigs and chickens, to poorer visitors who were saving their credits for gambling, or the whorehouse.  They would be eating algae-produced foodstuffs; she didn’t envy them for a moment, even if they would be enjoying themselves elsewhere.

“The entire place is buzzing with excitement,” Bova proclaimed, as they started to walk down the steps with the air of a couple visiting a dance.  She noticed several people staring at her and kept her face blank; the last thing she wanted was people gaping at her, even if it was understandable.  She focused instead on his voice; he had the kind of voice that made it impossible to whisper, but to boom aloud whatever he said.  “Aliens, in our lifetime; what else could you have brought us that would have caused such excitement?”

“I don’t know,” Samra said, averting her gaze as she passed a man walking by without any pants.  Anything went in Lunar City, as long as it was consensual; it wasn’t for nothing that it was known as the place of sin.  “What is going to happen now?”

Bova seemed suddenly serious as they entered a much less crowded corridor.  “You’re going to give a press conference,” he said.  “As one of the lunar-born, you’re going to be telling everyone how it was the moon that enabled you to see the alien craft before anyone else, before the United Nations decides to drop a few thousand soldiers on the moon and try to take away our national independence.”

Samra blinked.  She tried to pay as little attention to politics as possible, but no one in her position could afford to be a virgin when it came to politics; the IAU would be hopping mad over her decision, even if it was justified under their own regulations.  It would have been easier if the moon was independent, or if it was not, but the patchwork of independent states, semi-independent states, corporate states, and colonies that were directly ruled from Earth.  The governments had their position on lunar independence; Karl Bova and those who thought like him had their own.  Everyone had been nervously waiting for the other shoe to drop for years.

“We have our sources on Earth and we know that the United Nations Special Security Council held an emergency session yesterday,” Bova boomed, as they entered a restricted area of the city.  “That's the council that only allows world leaders to sit at the table” – his voice made it clear that he expected that he should be allowed to attend as well, as the semi-official representative of the independent states on the moon – “and we have some reason to believe that they came to some decisions about international cooperation when the aliens get closer.”

He paused.  “By the way, have you heard anything from the aliens?”

Samra shook her head.  “Nothing,” she said, shortly.  “I find it impossible to believe that they don’t have radio, but there’s been no attempt to signal us; some of my people think that that’s ominous.”

Bova lifted an eyebrow.  “And what do you think it is?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Samra admitted.  “The IAU banned all attempts to communicate with the aliens several hours after the news got out, but in that time, there were several hundred signals sent, almost certainly confusing the aliens.  They may be waiting to talk once we actually have an embassy out there.”

“And so you are determined to have that meeting with the aliens,” Bova said.  He grinned as they came to a small room.  “You give this conference, Samra, and you’ll have a lot of people convinced that you should be included on the flight to meet them.”

He opened the door for her.  “The conference is in an hour,” he said.  “We’ve had reporters, each one trying to pretend that he or she has never been here before, flooding in over the last hour.  Knock them dead…”

Samra smiled wanly as the door closed behind him.  A little of Karl Bova went a long way, far enough for her to wonder if he was really needed for her project.  She dismissed the doubts with an effort; she had made her choice, and, as the tenants of Reform Islam stated, she had to live with it.  The Caliphate had already started to proclaim her an Islamic Heroine; it wouldn’t be easy to avoid a brief return to Arabia to meet the Caliph himself, even though it would call her neutrality into question.  Bova was right about one detail; if the moon did develop a federal government, it would have a very real effort on sorting out the blurred concept of citizenship for the solar system.  Just which state had her as a citizen anyway?

She ran a hand through her hair as the personal fresher began to display her face and a series of suggested changes, all of which she ignored.  Her short dark hair – long hair was discouraged on space habitats – contrasted with her dark skin; she undressed, showered quickly, and dressed in a simple business suit.  It would never have passed muster on Earth, being designed to provide some protection in the case of an atmospheric leak, but it was as close as the moon came to formal wear.

“Silly,” she muttered, as she inspected her appearance in the mirror.  She was thirty, but looked younger; most people growing up under low gravity tended to look around five to ten years younger than their actual ages. “The things we do to get the funding we need…”

***
Spencer O'Dowd would have privately agreed with her, had he known that she was having such thoughts, although he personally thought that Lunar City was one of the most interesting places on the moon.  O'Dowd had been exiled to the moon as a stringer for one of the major news networks back on Earth, following a dispute over the relative newsworthiness of an important article he’d written; his editor, he suspected, had sent him to the moon on the off-chance he would take the opportunity to defect to one of the lunar media companies, or at the very least stay out of his editor’s hair.  The thought made O'Dowd smile as he ambled into the massive hall, which had been used for a champion poker game the last time he had visited the city; even today, private flights from the Earth to the moon cost an arm and a leg.  His editor had dropped the scoop of a lifetime in O'Dowd’s lap…and there was no way that the board would approve sending another reporter to the moon, not when they already had one representative on the moon.

“You dropped this in my lap and you think I’m not going to use it?”  He muttered, as he found a convenient vantage point and peered around, checking out the competition.  Most of the major media companies kept an office on the moon, but it was one of the more frustrating places to gain a scoop, not least because most of the tips went to the local talent.  O'Dowd’s predecessor had known nothing about the Chinese Refugee Crisis until it had almost been resolved; it was a matter of speculation what else might have occurred and never reported to the solar system at large.  “Fuck you…”

He adjusted the small optical sensor he wore on his shoulder and pointed it towards the stage, checking through his terminal that the sensor was recording properly before pausing it; Lunar City had very strict laws on what could and could not be recorded while in its territory.  A reporter who broke them wouldn’t get a second chance; O'Dowd would find himself kicked out on his ass, and then every other independent settlement would ban him as well.  The press conference itself would be recorded – that much was a given – but breaking any of the other rules would be a killer.  How his boss would gloat…

Karl Bova appeared and began a long speech.  O'Dowd tuned most of it out after the third sentence glorifying the cause of lunar independence, something that wouldn’t impress the folks back home too much.  Every election cycle, sure as eggs were eggs, politicians would proclaim their determination to extract more supplies of Helium-3 from the moon; every new President would discover the dangers of pressing the moon too hard.  There was a great deal of bitterness on the moon; the early extraction operations had been unsafe beyond words and the conditions had been terrifyingly bad.  That wouldn’t mean anything to Joe Public back home; all he would care about would be the power bills and the need to feed his children.

“And now, Director Samra Hussein,” Bova finished, to a round of applause from the lunar-born reporters and polite clapping from everyone else.  “She will tell you all about the aliens.”

O'Dowd studied Samra Hussein with interest; unsurprisingly, there had been very little in her public file, apart from the fact that she had been born in the Subhanallah Colony, established by the Caliphate forty years ago.  She looked very young, but he could sense grim determination under her dark face; she would have been lovely beyond words if she had grown her hair longer.  Looks or no looks, the IAU wouldn’t have trusted her with the dictatorship if her competence had been in doubt; O'Dowd had already decided that Samra was likely to be a formidable player on the solar system stage.

He listened with care as Samra outlined what the observatory had seen and what had been discovered since, in the two days since the aliens had been discovered, most of it scanty and imprecise.  O'Dowd wasn’t surprised, although some of the reporters who had only been on the moon for a few weeks seemed surprised at the limited data; they had grown up in a world where a person could travel across the world within hours.  Space was big; it took weeks at best to travel between Earth and Mars, let alone the asteroid belt.  There was a reason why the bridge ships were so large…and, according to Samra, the alien ships were much bigger than the bridge ships…

A reporter from the British colony called out a question.  “Do the aliens even know we’re here?”

“I believe that they must know we’re here,” Samra said.  O'Dowd felt a flicker of alarm passing through his mind; he had wondered if the aliens had just launched at the nearest star, but when he thought about it, it was obvious.  “We have been broadcasting signals into space for nearly two hundred years, which means that anyone within two hundred light years of Earth will know that we are here.”

O'Dowd nodded.  “Do we know what the aliens want?”  Another reporter asked.  “Are they an invasion force?”

O'Dowd saw the expression on Samra’s face flicker; she thought it was a stupid question.  “It would be logistically difficult to prosecute a war across interstellar distances,” Samra said.  She glanced around the room.  “You may remember how much trouble we had colonising the moon and Mars, and both worlds are right next door to Earth, cosmically speaking.  So far, there’s no evidence that the aliens possess any super-technology like a faster-than-light drive; the few items they have shown us are more advanced than ours, but not that advanced.  We could duplicate their drive within a few years of work…”

The questions went on, and on; O'Dowd was quietly impressed.  Samra had answered all of the points with enough attention to convince everyone that she actually knew what she was talking about, something that would make her popular on Earth.  Many talking heads spoke in riddles to earn their pay, or to cover their ignorance; Samra hadn’t hidden the fact that there were details about the aliens – actually, most of the details about the aliens – that she didn’t know, or the fact that humanity needed to learn more information before the alien fleet reached Earth.  She covered other points; the human race knew a surprising amount about planets orbiting alien stars – the Message Bearer program was based around that – and it was possible that the aliens knew that Earth was a life-bearing world, although they might also know about the terraforming project on Mars.  Finally, however, the reporters ran out of questions and the conference came to an end.

O'Dowd waited long enough for most of the reporters to leave, filing the footage they had taken at once, dumping it into the lunar datanet, where it would be transmitted back to Earth through the main transmitters.  Samra was talking briefly to Bova, looking tired; O'Dowd felt his respect grow.  She wasn't a professional briefer; when the footage was aired, she would look all too human.

The viewing public would love her.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said, as Samra turned to face him.  Her eyes were tired, but very bright.  “I’m sorry to be so forward, but I would like to talk further with you about the aliens and your planned welcoming fleet.  Would you allow me to take you to dinner this evening?”

Her eyes flickered over him, a quick examination.  It wasn’t an ‘oh that’s nice’ examination, or a ‘not fucking likely’ examination, but a more dispassionate look.  They wouldn’t be going to bed anytime soon, but that didn’t matter; he had had an idea.  If she could be convinced to help him, or to let him help her…

“I have no plans this evening,” Samra said, just long enough to convince him that she had thought about it.  “I would be delighted to accept your invitation.”

Bova passed her a short note.  “You two go eat at the Mad Duck,” he said.  “Tell the chef you’re my guests.”

Samra said nothing as they walked through the corridors back into the mainstream of the city, which reminded O'Dowd of nothing less than a rabbit warren.  Lunar City claimed to be the largest city on the moon, but it was very strange compared to the cities on Earth, which were right out in the open.  Even the domed cities up near Armstrong’s Landing were drab compared to cities on Earth, but then…perhaps that was the point.  The space-born were different from their planet-bound cousins.

“So,” Samra said, when they had been escorted into a private room.  “What do you want?”

O'Dowd had to smile.  The question hadn’t really surprised him; Samra was beautiful enough to almost certainly receive hundreds of men asking her out, even though his own motives had been pure as newly-fallen snow.  Reform Islam didn’t frown so much on premarital sex, let alone male-female friendships; he wondered, vaguely, just how seriously Samra took it.  It didn’t matter; his motives were different…

“I want a place on the welcoming fleet,” he said.  He sensed, somehow, that only honesty would work with this girl.  “If you want, I can make you a star…”

Chapter Five: The Defence of the World

Washington DC, USA

“She’s quite a clever little self-publicist, isn’t she?”

The President gave General William Denny a droll look.  “She’s also someone who detected this threat before we could respond to it,” he said.  His old friend, the Commander of the United States Continental Command, smiled dryly under his gaze.  “It hardly matters at the moment; our task is ensuring that we gain equal or superior access to whatever the aliens are offering…if they are offering anything…and that we defend ourselves, either as part of a global alliance, or as an individual nation.”

He stood up and paced around the secure briefing room.  “The exact question of the composition of the welcome fleet will be negotiated later,” he said.  “Our priority at the moment is to ensure that we have something to bargain with, should it come down to a war.  Politically, we cannot afford to be either seen as the aggressor, or placing too much faith in the goodwill of the aliens, but we must prepare as best as we can.”

He looked up at the American flag hanging from the wall.  The news had swept around the world, to different reactions; there had been no attempt to hide it.  Everyone had known, in theory, that humanity would one day encounter an alien race, but no one had seriously expected to encounter one…particularly a surprisingly mundane race that showed no signs of superior technology, or magical psionic abilities.  The people who claimed to have made contact with aliens, either friendly or supremely hostile, were being laughed at; the kindest response had been that their aliens were obviously different aliens to the ones who were heading for Earth…

And there was no doubt that the aliens were heading to Earth.  That worried the President, who had sat in on several planning sessions; the human Message Bearer project had intended to establish a base in the asteroids of Tau Ceti before heading inward towards the habitable world that had been detected through the latest long-range telescopes.  It would have been the supreme irony if the aliens had been coming from Tau Ceti, but it looked as if they were coming from a very different part of the sky.  Simple prudence would seem to dictate establishing a base somewhere amid the sun’s asteroids, but the aliens were still coming towards Earth.

He sat down again and steepled his fingers.  “Admiral?”

Admiral Nelson Oshiro looked worried.  A sturdy Japanese-American, the Admiral had been one of the first Americans to spend all of his career in the United States Space Force, finally becoming the overall commander of the force.  The USSF might have based most of its traditions on the wet navy, but it had more than a few quirks of its own, including a certain odd reluctance to spend too much time with formalities.  The traditionalists in the old navy, the army and the air force might decry such laxity, but there could no longer be any doubt that the USSF was the premiere service; the sinking of the USS William Jefferson Clinton during the brief Taiwan War had proven that beyond all doubt.

“My office has been working on various scenarios for space war ever since we started taking space seriously,” Oshiro said.  His voice was grim; he, like many others, cursed the failure to develop space before the other Great Powers headed into space, preventing the American Century from continuing.  “Although we have only limited information on what the aliens are actually capable of, we have seen nothing to suggest that we are facing an impossible foe…”

Casper Henderson coughed.  “With all due respect,” the National Security Advisor said, “there is no proof that the aliens are actually hostile, is there?”

“None,” General Jessie Bark, the Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said.  “However, in military terms, we have to look at this as a possible threat, rather than what we would like it to be.  Even if we made contact tomorrow and were convinced the aliens were friendly, we would have to continue to analyse them as a potential threat.”

Oshiro continued.  “The fact remains, however, that we know almost nothing about their capabilities,” he said.  “Those ships may all be warships – even though at that size they will be easy targets for our missiles – or they may genuinely, as impossible as it seems, be expecting to find no one in our system.  If we had armed those ships, we would have turned them into…well, carriers, rather than massive warships.”

“Unless the aliens have force fields or some other unexplained technology,” Denny said.

“Unless,” Oshiro agreed.  “Mr President; if it does come down to a war, will we be fighting beside the other Great Powers or will we be on our own?”

The President felt oddly uncomfortable.  “It’s impossible to say,” he said.  “If the aliens decide to great the welcome fleet with a hail of missiles, we will have no choice, but to conclude that they are hostile and join forces…and we have some agreements along those lines.  Any form of shared command, however, may never materialise; assume that we will not have direct control over anything that doesn’t have the stars and strips on it.”

He shrugged.  “We may work out an agreement, but I’m not going to hold my breath,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Oshiro said.  “In that case, we can expect that the aliens will attempt to seize control of LEO prior to landings, assuming that they intend to invade.  That’s pretty much the worst-case outcome, unless they intend to battle us for Mars or Venus; we have simulated possible conflicts in LEO for decades and we have always concluded that they would be disastrous.  If the aliens do manage to destroy or capture most of the space-based infrastructure, they will cut us off from the rest of the solar system and strange us.  They may not know that that is what they are doing, but that will be the effect.”

He paused.  “Unfortunately, we may not be able to fight them off,” he said.  “The vast majority of space-based weapons are on fairly immobile platforms; easy targets for enemy missiles.  The manoeuvrable systems might get some blows in, but if it does come down to blows, whatever happens, the orbital infrastructure will be devastated – all of it.  Ideally, we need additional warships, but building them might be tricky.”

The President nodded slowly.  Humanity had once wondered if space would become the place of peace; that illusion had lasted as long as it had been impossible to reach space and use it for military advantage.  There weren’t that many purpose-built warships in the solar system – the USSF disposed of twenty-one tiny spacecraft designed for fighting, but plenty of other ships that could be armed in a pinch – but expanding their numbers rapidly would be difficult, not least because of various treaties…and the need to protect the orbital infrastructure.  If they kept the modules in orbit producing components, they would be destroyed if the aliens opened fire…

Oshiro said the magic words.  “Area 51.”

“You propose that we start the expansion program,” the President said.  “Can that be done without tipping off the other Great Powers?”

“It depends on how much they already know,” Oshiro said.  The President nodded; the IAU might have been ‘discouraged’ from tracking national spacecraft too closely, but the other Great Powers would be very interested in tracking American spacecraft in the belt.  Why not?  America tracked their spacecraft…and the CIA was almost certain that the other Powers had their own versions of Area 51.  “Under the circumstances, they might not object to the rapid expansion of the base.”

“Perhaps,” the President said.  “I assume that we have plans for advanced warships already prepared?”

“Insofar as anyone can build warships,” Oshiro said.  He shrugged.  “Bottom line; we can expand the defences in orbit around Earth as much as possible, but if it comes down to a real shoot-out, it’s going to be devastating whatever the outcome.  If the alien ships really are carriers, they might be able to bring more spacecraft to bear against us and then knock us completely out of LEO.”

“Brief me on the plans in detail later,” the President said.  He glanced around the room, his gaze finally lighting upon his old friend.  “William; the aliens are landing.  What now?”

General William Denny tapped the map.  It was a map that would have been unrecognisable in 2000; the United States of America stretched from the Canadian Border down to the tip of what had once been Chile, or Argentina.  The massive economic collapse and the ongoing process of the Wrecker War had brought American power into the region…and it had stayed there, finally building up Latin and South America as new American states.  Not everyone was happy with the arrangement, from the remains of the corrupt governments to some of the citizens, but by and large the arrangement had worked fairly well.  Brazil had been the only South American nation to escape being pulled into the United States; it actually had a fairly low-level space program of its own.

“The worst-case wargames we conducted two years ago assumed that we lost complete control of space and our possible opponent” – a combination of Russia and China – “had maintained its control over space,” Denny said.  The President frowned; most of the simulations had shown the near-complete devastation of the space-based infrastructure, the ‘winner’ being the side that had a handful of satellites left amid the rubble.  “We assumed then that neither of our opponents would seek to invade our heartland; even with command of space, the invasion would be bloody and – logistically – very difficult.  Our conclusion was that they would settle for snatching some vital locations, such as the Panama Canal and a handful of space facilities, and declare it a victory.  Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the aliens being so…reasonable; we are seriously hampered, not least because we have absolutely no information on what the alien ground forces might be like.  They may be composed of tanks and battlesuits, or they may have robotic fighting machines or something completely…well, alien.”

He paused.  “It is difficult to prepare for an opponent one knows nothing about.

“We planned on the assumption that the aliens intended nothing less than complete conquest,” he said.  “Logically, they could have somewhere around a billion aliens in their fleet; that’s a formidable force by any means, and they will have complete control of space.   Our exercises make it clear; we may be unable to manoeuvre any large forces with the aliens hanging over their heads, dropping rocks and tank-killers from orbit.  The fighting might just be carried out only by National Guard forces and pre-placed army units, including battlesuits and stealth tanks, rather than a continental-scale land war.

“I must admit,” he concluded, “that it is not an optimistic prediction.  We would be distributing units around the continental United States with instructions to engage the enemy when – if – they landed.  In the long run, we might take appalling losses to the aliens, but frankly, if we lose control of space, we might as well accept that we are going to suffer badly if they try to land.”

He tapped the display.  “Our limited knowledge only makes handling the aliens much harder,” he said.  “They may not be interested in the land at all; they may be water-breathers and in that case…what do we have to fight about?  We can only make a few suggestions and prepare, if necessary, to change our plans at short notice.”

He nodded at General Jessie Bark.  “Mr President,” she said, formally.  “It is the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that you declare a state of emergency and call up the reserves.  Once we have the reserve units up and running across the country, we can recall the forces we have placed across the world, including the forces that carried out the strike against the wrecker base we discovered in Africa.  I’ve taken the liberty of warning their commanding officers that they might be recalled to CONUS fairly soon, although this will lead to diplomatic problems.”

The President scowled.  The American force operating within the exclusion zone had done so with the reluctant permission of the British Commonwealth – from their member state in South Africa – and the Europeans, who ruled North Africa.  The Caliphate hadn’t been asked openly – politically, it had been difficult to openly discuss it with Mecca – but there had been some covert contacts and they had agreed to officially ignore the American incursion.  The quid pro quo had called for some additional American support…which would be drawn down if the armoured units were withdrawn from their forward operating base.

“Let me worry about that,” he said finally.  It wasn’t their problem.  “What about positioning additional units on the moon?”

“We would like to at least station more space-rated forces on the surface,” Oshiro admitted.  “Politically, we would be within our rights to expand our forces as long as we kept the other Great Powers informed…”

“But it would start off a lunar rebellion,” Casper Henderson said.  He leaned forward, one hand playing with the spectacles he wore on his nose, an affection the President found irritating from time to time.  Henderson’s eyes had been repaired long ago.  “These aren’t the days of Lawton and Hastings and the time when dissent could be crushed, whatever the cause.  These days, there are thousands of people on the moon, many of whom speak in terms of a united lunar state.”

“Treason,” Oshiro said flatly.  “We built that damned rock into one of the most important assets in the solar systems!”

“If it be treason, so was that of George Washington, or Franklin,” Henderson said.  He shrugged expressively.  “Revolts happen, Admiral, when a people feel that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by revolting…like happened back when Hastings was in charge of the lunatic asylum.”  He smiled at the bad pun.  “You may feel that it be treason, and I may even agree with you, but we have done little to engender loyalty among them, have we?”

The President eyed him.  “Do you have an alternate suggestion?”

“We ship them weapons that can be used to defend themselves against alien attack,” Henderson said.  “In particular, weapons that can’t be used to defeat a revolt…”

“Which will then be turned on us,” Oshiro snapped.  “You should know that space warfare is not easy; a single hole in a spacecraft’s hull and there will be a disaster.  If we send them weapons, what is to stop them turning them on us?”

Henderson met his eyes.  “They too are dependent upon components produced in LEO,” he said.  “If they try to blockade us, we can blockade them; hell, with the cloud-mining projects coming online at Jupiter and Saturn, we may not even need the moon so much…”

“We are getting off the subject,” the President said, very firmly.  “Admiral, please see that some additional anti-space weapons are shipped to our colonies on the moon.”

“Yes, sir,” Oshiro said.

The President looked around the room.  “Congress will be meeting for a full debate tomorrow, where I will ask for a state of emergency,” he said.  “We may already have to declare one; the economy has already been hit hard by the discovery of the alien fleet and will almost certainly be hit again once we start a program of heavy defence.  We also have to alert Area 51 to begin converting some of their designs into reality; Admiral, I want you to ensure that Admiral Waikoloa gets everything he needs to develop an advanced space force.”

Oshiro frowned.  “Mr President, the more we send him, the greater the chance that others will notice that we are shipping material to the belt,” he said.  “It may become a security nightmare.”

“The only group we really need to hide it from are the aliens,” the President said.  It didn’t sit well with him to risk abandoning one of the United States’ most closely-guarded secrets, but the situation had changed radically.  “How much do they know about us?”

“We’ve had teams considering that for several days,” Oshiro said.  “Assuming that they have been intercepting our transmissions, they could know a great deal about us, from our appearance to some of our languages.  Most secure transmissions are laser-transmitted, these days, so they will be undetectable, but they might have the ability to decipher anything we sent out using radio, no matter the encryption levels.  Alternatively, they could be so alien that nothing of ours makes any sense to them at all; we just don’t know at all.”

He paused.  “They may well have a good picture of what we do have in the belt,” he continued.  The President winced; there were clearly some very smart people studying the issue in the Pentagon.  “Rockrats normally don’t use fusion burns unless they have no choice, but the bridge ships and fastships use them, which they should be able to track at their range.  We never pointed the way to Area 51 like that, but…”

“There’s no way to know until the hammer falls,” the President concluded.  He stood up and glanced around the room.  “We may be overreacting here; the aliens may be friendly, but there’s no way to be certain, so we have to take the prudent course.  I expect that each and every one of you will carry out his or her duty with the same dedication that you have shown over the years.”

He glanced down at his table.  “Six months…”

“Five months, three weeks, one day,” Oshiro said, pedantically.

“Six months,” the President mused.  He glanced at the map of Earth.  It had been updated to match the current global deployment of American forces and the known deployments of the other Great Powers.  He wondered what it would look like in six months.  “A lot can change in six months.”

Chapter Six: Area 51

Area 51, Asteroid Belt

Aliens!

Admiral Paul Waikoloa stood in his office, for once heedless of the faint tug of the magnetic boots he wore, and stared at the image displayed in front of him.  Aliens!  The part of Waikoloa’s mind that was endlessly fascinated by the sheer  scale of outer space was delighted; it was proof, at last, that humanity was no longer alone in the universe.  The trained and dedicated military officer that dominated, most of the time, was concerned; like it or not, the aliens had introduced a new factor into the increasingly tense political situation.  It could get explosive.

He knew, without false modesty, that he was good at his job.  He had joined the USSF as a young man and had been streamlined into service as part of the highly-classified Esoteric Threats Assessment Unit, a department that had studied the potentials of space warfare against the other human powers, or even an alien force.  That post might have earned him his classified commission as Admiral and his even more classified post on Area 51, a hidden base among the asteroids.  The planners had worried about the potential damage caused by even a brief exchange among the Great Powers; Area 51 was not just a test bed, but also a secret production facility, unknown to anyone outside the Pentagon.

He took another sip of his tea, held neatly in a beaker; one of the small disadvantages of the secret nature of the base was that it couldn’t be spun to provide a gravity field.  That would have tipped off any Rockrat who stumbled too close to what looked, on first glance, to be a nearly worthless asteroid – although there was really no such thing – to the real nature of the base, and the Rockrat Association would be…alarmed to discover the base.  Rockrats talked endlessly to each other, trading the pleasure of personal company for long-distance radio communications; the news about the base would be flashed across the solar system before anyone could stop it.  Rockrats owed no loyalty to the United States of America; many of them would be quite happy if Earth vanished tomorrow.  They would see the base as a dagger aimed at them…

Which, Waikoloa was prepared to admit, was more accurate than he would have liked it to be.  Everyone knew – well, everyone who didn’t have their head stuck up their arse – that control of space and the resources in space would determine which of the Great Powers would become the greatest.  So far, there were only a tiny handful of warships, counting all of the ships in the system, but Area 51 had been designed to start producing warships at a great rate…should they become needed.  Waikoloa was convinced that, sooner or later, there would be war; separatists on the moon, the Rockrats, the Jewish colony on Titan…all of them would provide a potential flashpoint for an armed struggle right out of a science-fiction nightmare.  Instead, aliens…

His hatch chimed.  “Come in,” he called, already knowing who would be there.  The hatch hissed open, revealing his exec, Captain Callie Brown.  A tall blonde woman, who looked perkier under zero-gravity than she would have under a proper gravity field, she had qualifications in half a dozen different subjects and experience in space warfare, something that was surprisingly rare among the USSF.  Space combat just didn’t happen very often.  “Captain.”

“Admiral,” Callie said, as she stamped across to stand beside him.  Waikoloa winced; that battle had been fought and lost a long time ago.  The base would never be spun up to produce a gravity field…even if it did leave everyone stamping around if they had a chip on their collective shoulder.  Area 51 had too many disadvantages for it to be a very popular posting, even if some of the equipment was luxurious; the fraternisation rules had been relaxed more than any traditionalist would have considered proper.   “I have completed the inspection routine.”

Waikoloa had to smile.  “Aliens coming to the solar system and we’re still running inspections,” he said.  It wasn’t that surprising; the news had caused a minor panic across the solar system, with prices for Helium-3 soaring before the United Nations Security Council capped it, much to the anger of the miners on the moon.  The offer of additional financial inducements for the miners hadn’t defused all the anger; like all good Americans, the miners considered their right to earn as much as they could paramount.  “At least we’re not panicking…”

Callie shook her head.  There had been panic across the globe once it sank in that there really were aliens coming to Earth, from America to Japan and the Caliphate.  All sorts of crazies were coming out of the woodwork, from independence fanatics in the South American states and Mexico, to more unreformed Muslim groups in Africa and even some parts of Arabia.  Nearly fifty years since the overthrow of the House of Saud and the last unreformed Islamic government; it astonished Waikoloa that any of them could still believe that they had a chance to overthrow the Caliphate and restore their barbaric states.  The protesters in America and Europe were equally astonishing; they believed that the aliens were definitely friendly, super-advanced beings who would take the human race to new heights of civilisation.  Waikoloa would have settled for an advanced launch system, ending the endless bottleneck of reaching LEO…

“True,” Callie agreed.  She grinned faintly.  “I was discussing the matter with the research teams studying fusion drives for the future; they’re pretty certain that we can duplicate the alien drives within a year, maybe even less.  There’s nothing really new in them; it looks as if they merely achieve much greater levels of efficiency than we do.  It’s unlikely that we will achieve a monopoly on the drive tech, but we can at least put a few units into production.”

Waikoloa nodded; the only clear proof that the aliens had anything that was more advanced than what humanity possessed…and it was something fairly simple.  The dreamers who talked of faster-than-light drives, or antigravity, would be disappointed; Area 51 had been exploring countless possibilities that had somehow never been translated into reality.  Maybe one day, humanity would break the light barrier, but until them, the iron laws of Einstein still held good.

“And, of course, we know nothing about what weapons they possess,” Waikoloa said.  Area 51 had invented more than a few nasty tricks for American warships; he was pretty certain that the other Great Powers and the Rockrats had invented their own weapons as well.  Space warfare was a confusion business; it was nothing like when his father and grandfather had marched through Mexico and Latin America, seeking to bring peace to the region.  “They could have everything we have, or something that we don’t even have on the drawing board.”

“They will certainly have the numbers advantage,” Callie said.  The total population of the human solar system was ten billion, but more than nine billion lived on Earth; the moon, Mars and the asteroids didn’t account for that much of the population.  The Rockrats valued manpower beyond anything else; they had been willing, years ago, to accept women from the various exclusion zones on Earth as brides, just to boost their population.  Waikoloa found it impossible to believe that the aliens would have brought ten billion or more of their own people alone, but with most of the human population trapped on Earth, they might not need ten billion to win…

He rubbed his head.  If, of course, the aliens had come looking for a fight…

“And our orders are to do something about that,” he said.  The United States would be launching some of its orbital industrial units out towards the asteroid belt, placing them away from any possible alien attack…unless, of course, the alien fleet split up and assaulted the asteroids.  It hardly mattered; none of the units could be pointed towards Area 51 without breaking the secrecy.  The large colony on Ganymede would receive most of them eventually – there were enough Americans there to make something useful from the industrial units – but it would put them out of action for at least two months.  That would leave them only three months to produce components for defence.  “What did the think tank have to say?”

“Doctor Kelly Jorgensen told me that the design for the first advanced warship has been finalised, checked through by professionals, repaired, and then completed,” Callie said.  “She wants to show you in person, but I think that it’s a workable design; one of them can be constructed at a yard at Earth, where we can put it through trials without having to worry about compromising our secrecy.  There’s nothing really new in it…”

“Then let’s go talk to her,” Waikoloa said.  “I have to compose a report on our productive capabilities for the President within a week.”

Callie nodded, her face sympathetic; people on Earth rarely understood that it took time for events to happen in space.  The aliens had spent years travelling through space; some of the commenters on the planet had wondered aloud why they had taken so long, let alone why they weren’t arriving tomorrow.  The alien starships had been decelerating from nearly half the speed of light, but assuming they came from the closest star in that region of the sky, they would have spent at least fifteen years in transit.  The program for launching a human starship towards Tau Ceti expected that the flight would take at least thirty years; volunteers were being warned, right from the start, that there would be no going back…

“I wonder what Conrad Hamilton thinks of all this,” Callie said, referring to the brains behind Message Bearer.  The independent multi-billionaire had spent a fortune on assembling the components for the first human flight to another star; a handful of probes, everyone agreed, didn’t count.  “I would think that he’d be pretty pissed.”

Waikoloa laughed.  “I saw a brief update from the Pentagon,” he said.  “He was talking about redirecting Message Bearer towards the alien home star…or what we think is the alien home star.  Personally, I think that that’s a rather bad idea, but frankly, I’d be happier if Message Bearer was somewhere well away from the aliens when they finally reach Earth.”

The interior of Area 51 was just the same as any other asteroid habitat, from the dull corridors, mind-numbingly boring, to the carpet of air-producing grass, something that added a slight smell to the air as people walked through the corridor.  Waikoloa was used to the smell by now; it existed on every space habitat or colony, even some of the bridge ships.  He considered that a lunatic risk – if something went wrong on a bridge ship, it would be almost certainly impossible to rescue any of the passengers – but it made a certain kind of grim sense; running out of air would be fatal on a spacecraft.

He quickly inspected a pair of sections before entering the main cavern.  Area 51 was unique in one aspect; there were no children or even young trainees assigned to the base.  The Americans on the base all had contraceptive implants; Waikoloa enforced only two rules when it came to sexual relations.  No children…and whatever happened in the bedchamber stayed in the bedchamber.  There was little point in trying to ban sex; Waikoloa knew better than to issue an order that would never be obeyed.

“Admiral,” Doctor Kelly Jorgensen said, as they entered her office.  She had a much smaller staff than most people would have expected; the endless limitations on manpower ensured that automation and semi-smart computers would have a much greater impact than anything the unions would have allowed, back on old Earth.  Her staff members were mainly designers with a handful of engineers…and two people, not counting Callie, who had real experience fighting in space.  “How are you today?”

They exchanged small talk for a few moments before continuing.  “We have been designing warships for the last ten years,” Kelly said, telling Waikoloa something he had known for almost as long.  He didn’t blame her; like most semi-civilians, Kelly couldn’t resist the chance to lecture the military officers who intruded into her domain.  “The latest designs have just been finalised.”

She tapped a control.  “Observe.”

Waikoloa couldn’t help, but feel a flicker of excitement as a spacecraft design appeared in front of him.  A groundpounder would never have understood the excitement he felt as the spacecraft appeared and started to rotate; the design would never have won any awards for beauty, but few spacecraft could hope to actually appear attractive.  Apart from the doomed attempt to create a spacecraft that bore more than an imaginary resemblance to the ancient Starship Enterprise, which had failed miserably, few spacecraft were truly awesome in appearance.  The spacefarer in him saw past the appearance and knew…

The spacecraft was tiny, little more than forty metres long, composed of a handful of modules and weapon launchers, based around a fusion tube and fuel tank.  It wouldn’t have a large crew – only ten men at most could operate the spacecraft without becoming far too compressed into one location – but that wasn't important, not with the computer support.  Like almost all spacecraft, it would be built out of standardized parts; almost all of the Great Powers kept their basic equipment standardized, not only with their own ships, but with the other nations as well.  It would be easy to construct and easy to operate…

“Acceptable,” he said finally.  He saw Callie smile and knew that he had failed to hide his excitement.  “How many can you produce within the five months we have before the aliens arrive?”

Kelly hesitated.  “A lot would depend on how many supplies we could muster without breeching the security of this area,” she said.  Waikoloa nodded grimly; Area 51 had its own miners, but every time a mining mission was launched, it ran the risk of being noticed.  In theory, there would be no Rockrat activity for years in this part of the asteroid belt – the belt was so vast that it would be centuries before the rate of expansion reached Area 51 – but Waikoloa knew the hard way that security was an easy thing to breech.  “Assuming that we continued at the current rate of production, we could have as many as fifty of the spacecraft ready before the aliens arrived at Earth, but we would be ramping up our own production rates to the point where we could triple that in a few extra months.”

Waikoloa scowled.  He wouldn’t have thought of expanding the production machinery himself, even though it was obvious in hindsight.  It would mean a trade-off, building fewer warships in the first few months to ensure that they could build additional warships later, but it might be worth it.  He’d have to discuss it with the President; there were alternatives, but few of them were truly worth the risk, or the political costs…

“The real bottleneck lies in the crew,” Kelly continued.  “It should be noted that we don’t have anything like enough people to crew even the first fifty ships, although we could in a pinch run them all with five crewmembers.  We would need to bring up more crewmen from Earth, and that would risk breaking security, let along the need to actually give them practical hands-on experience with their ships.  There’s only so far that you can go with simulations, Admiral; the crew will need some actual training…”

“I am aware of the limitations of simulations,” Waikoloa said, grimly.  He strokes his chin as he studied the design for the American warship.  “What about the space fighter designs?”

“There’s really little more to report since we last studied the concept,” Kelly said.  She tapped the control and displayed an image of a ball-shaped craft, sitting in the middle of empty space.  “The fighter design bears some resemblance to a Rockrat mining craft, but obviously we’ve replaced the mining tools with weapons and some advanced lasers…although the Rockrats might have similar lasers for mining.  The catch is that they have low endurance; the Rockrats don’t mind moving slowly, but a slow-moving space fighter will be an easy target.  The fusion drive is the most capable that we can produce for such a small craft, but it burns through its fuel quickly and if it runs out…”

She didn’t spell it out; Waikoloa’s mind filled in the details anyway.  The hapless fighter would race off into the void of space and would be almost impossible to recover, whatever else happened.  He liked to think that the USSF would do what it could to recover the pilot, and the IAU had organised an interplanetary rescue treaty which would – in theory – bind every spacefaring power to rescue any stranded pilot, but the iron laws of physics would make rescue very difficult.

“I want you to start preparing to expand our productive capabilities and produce as many warships as we can before the aliens arrive,” he said, carefully.  “I’ll have to discuss it with the President and the Pentagon, but I suspect that that will be the decision they will take; fifty ships won’t make that much of a difference if the aliens are implacably hostile when they enter Earth’s orbit.”

Kelly hesitated.  “It occurs to me, sir, that the other Great Powers will have similar programs of their own,” she said.  Waikoloa nodded; he had taken it almost as a given, it was human nature to scheme and try to garner whatever advantage they could from any given situation.  “You could recommend cooperation to the President…”

“I could, yes,” Waikoloa said.  He paused; it was a good thought, but it was well above his pay grade.  “I’ll mention it to him, but, for the moment, assume that Area 51 stands on its own.  We should be used to that by now.”

Kelly said nothing.

Chapter Seven: The Welcome Fleet, Take One

Washington DC, USA

“Ah, Captain Buckley,” the President said, as his aide showed the Captain into the room.  “Have a seat, please; I’ll be with you in a moment.”

He quickly completed his brief study of the briefing paper from Area 51, marked it with his Presidential Seal, and turned to face Captain Joe Buckley.  He’d read the Captain’s file carefully, although it had been sheer luck that Buckley and his spacecraft had been available for the mission.  The iron laws governing the flight of the bridge ships between Earth and the outer colonies – Mars, Venus, Mercury and the moons of the various gas giants – meant that whenever a bridge ship was needed, one was never available.  The Neil Armstrong, one of the largest spacecraft built by humanity, had been a month out from Earth when the aliens had been discovered.

Buckley himself was tall, blonde and rugged, with a nose that showed the signs of being broken once or twice in the past; his file claimed that it had been a training accident in the Space Force Academy.  The dividing line between civilian and military spacemen was much thinner than most people assumed; Buckley might have had no real military experience, but he certainly possessed the training necessary to handle any real emergency.  The Neil Armstrong wasn't a warship by any stretch of the imagination, but, like all heavy colonist-carriers, it sometimes had to deal with internal dissent.  Not everyone coped well in space, even colonists who had been selected for Mars or the asteroids; Buckley had occasionally had to sedate someone who had become hysterical out in space.

“Thank you for coming,” he said, finally.  Buckley would have returned to Earth somewhat unwillingly; the Neil Armstrong might be generating Earth-standard gravity as it spun, but returning to the planet had to be uncomfortable to him.  “I assume that you have been following the news of the aliens?”

“Yes, Mr President,” Buckley said, as calmly as ever.  The USSF would not have given an excitable man command of the Neil Armstrong.  “Several of my passengers wanted to return to Mars the moment they heard about the news.”

The President smiled.  Hundreds of colonists, from all of the Great Powers, went to Mars; very few were allowed to return.  The Neil Armstrong and the handful of other bridge ships were important because, unlike most ships, they had a nearly unlimited cruising range; they could have followed Message Bearer to Tau Ceti if they didn’t mind spending years on the journey.  They took colonists and certain pieces of equipment that couldn’t be launched along the slow-transit orbits to their destination; they brought back some rare materials and the occasional group of short-term colonists who had finished their contracts.  What the bridge ships couldn’t do was reach high cruising speeds; what some ships could do in weeks, they took months.

“I’m not surprised,” the President said.  He leaned forwards.  “How do you feel about the aliens?”

Buckley looked wry.  “It does rather put what we have accomplished in perspective,” he said.  “That fleet of theirs is an awesome achievement, although we could duplicate it now; indeed, to some extent we have with Message Bearer.  I’m not so sure that I like the sheer number of ships they have sent; if they have sent so many, that argues that they’re pretty certain that they intend to settle somewhere in the solar system.  We can pack a thousand people on the Neil Armstrong if we use hibernation drugs; the alien craft could carry many more humans.  If they are colonists…”

He paused.  “On the other hand, I can’t see how they’re unaware of our presence, which means that they may have a plan for dealing with us, one way or the other,” he said.  The President nodded inwardly; there was nothing new here, but the endless question – just what did they want – remained.  “They may intend to ask if they can settle on Mars, but…if they have so many ships, it argues that they have no choice, but to come here.”

The President lifted an eyebrow.  “What do you mean?”

“The plan for Message Bearer is to send one ship to Tau Ceti,” Buckley said.  “We know that there is a habitable world there and we believe that it is uninhabited.  The aliens have made a massive investment in sending their fleet here; unless they have some super-advanced economical system that allows them to make such an investment, they have made a massive gamble on an uncertain outcome.  It could be that they are refugees, fleeing from something even worse.”

The President rubbed his eyes.  “That’s something none of the research teams thought of,” he said.  “The general consensus is that the aliens intend to settle somewhere in the solar system.”

Buckley frowned.  “Mr President, if I may ask” – the President nodded – “has there been any communication from the alien fleet?”

“Nothing,” the President said.  “The IAU has been attempting to signal them with every idea every halfway sane scientist could dream up, everything short of sending up smoke signals or launching missiles across their bows.  So far, no response at all; I cannot help, but find that ominous.”

He shook his head.  “But that's not the issue at hand at the moment, Captain,” he said.  “You may have heard that there is a great deal of pressure for the dispatch of a welcoming fleet to intercept the aliens a few weeks short of Earth itself, just to find out what they want.  We believe that they will have been confused by the cacophony of messages from Earth and the asteroids; they may well talk to actual representatives from Earth itself.”

He leaned forward.  “It has been decided that the Neil Armstrong will lead that fleet,” he said.  Buckley’s eyes flickered with a barely-concealed delight.  “There will be twenty-seven ships in all going, including at least three from each of the Great Powers, as well as a Brazilian and Israeli ship.  The ships will be armed, just in case, but we hope to establish a peaceful contact.”

“Of course, Mr President,” Buckley said.  “Exactly what is the overall plan for contact?”

The President stood up and paced around the room.  “The Neil Armstrong itself will carry a large part of the diplomatic team, including both Director Hussein, whom you may have heard of, and at least one reporter.”  Buckley made a face.  “Ideally, the aliens will pause to allow you to establish communications; we will have enough scientists onboard the Neil Armstrong to talk to them…unless they are completely alien, of course.”

He looked down at Buckley’s grim face.  “I won’t lie to you,” he said.  “If the aliens are hostile, we will be sending you into terrible danger without proper support at all, or even a real chance of escape; you will be far too close to the aliens to escape before being destroyed. The mission is volunteer-only…”

“I volunteer,” Buckley said, at once.  “Sir, I cannot say how much I want to do this…”

The President’s lips twitched.  “Understandable, I guess,” he said.  He understood the desire to take a role in history; who would remember the first man on Mars, or Venus, when compared to the man who had commanded the welcoming fleet for an alien race?  Buckley would have a place in history that no man could match.  “You will have tactical command of the welcome fleet, but be diplomatic; some of the Russians and Chinese will be reluctant to serve under an American.”

“Understood,” Buckley said.  He paused.  “And if it does come to a fight?”

“Give them hell,” the President said.  “It’s one hell of a hot potato I’m dropping in your lap…”

“I’ll say,” Buckley said.  “Sir, what happens if the aliens just ignore us?”

The President scowled.  “If they just pass your fleet, we have plans to intercept them with missiles nearer to Earth orbit,” he said.  “It has been decided that we dare not risk letting them enter Earth orbit, let alone LEO, before we know just what they want.  Try not to let it get that far, Captain…”

Buckley looked, for the first time, concerned.  “Mr President, just who is in command of Earth’s defences?”

The President fought down a bitter laugh.  “Well…we have agreed some command agreements with the British, the Europeans and the Japanese,” he said.  “If we lose our commanding officers in space, the British commander will take command; the same for them if they lose their commanding officers.  The Japanese and the Euros have made similar agreements; the Israelis and the Brazilians have agreed to place their space-based defences, such as they are, under our command.”

He shrugged.  “We have had some covert talks with the Russians, the Chinese and the Caliphate,” he said.  “If it does come down to blows, they will join us in the defence of Earth, but under their command unless something goes really wrong…which, you must understand, is a hypothetical of hypotheticals.  In other words, if the situation calls for it, they will join up, but only if the situation calls for it.”

“Politics,” Buckley said.  He nodded once to himself.  “What happens now?”

“You have a week of shore leave, as do your crewmen,” the President said.  “After that, you will return to your ship and prepare for the mission, along with the other ships.  Don’t let the IAU walk all over you; the UNSC agreed to back whoever ended up in command when it came to the safety of the fleet.”

He held out a hand.  “Good luck, Captain.”

Buckley grasped his hand and shook it firmly.  “Thank you, Mr President,” he said.  “I won’t let you down.”

***
An hour later, the President stood up from his desk, walked over to the side of the Oval Office, and placed his hand against a certain hidden sensor.  There was a moment’s pause as the sensor checked the President’s identity, and then a hidden door hissed open, revealing a small elevator.  The President smiled, as he always did when he entered the secret system, and stepped inside; a moment later, the elevator was plunging down towards the heart of the secret governmental infrastructure.  Bare seconds later, the doors hissed open again, revealing part of the vast complex built under Washington.

The President remembered his feelings when he had first seen the complex, kilometres upon kilometres of rooms and systems, deep under the city.  It was an awesome construction, the more so because he knew that few of the citizens of Washington really appreciated what had been built under their city.  How could they?  Information on the secret complex was closely regulated, mainly to prevent possible enemies from using it to attack the very core of America; there were other complexes, but Washington remained the heart of America’s government.

“Mr President,” the Marine guard said, as he saluted.  The President returned the salute; he had long since creased to wonder why the complex’s commander bothered to station guards that far inside the complex.  It was more than just overkill; if the complex were ever to be assaulted by the enemy – whoever the enemy were – America would be on the verge of losing the war anyway.  He nodded once at the guard and proceeded along the grey corridors, following the mental route he had marked out in his mind; one of the reasons he liked the complex was that it was one of the few places he could go without ever-present Secret Service guards.

He reached an unmarked door and – again – pushed his hand against a sensor.  The door hissed open, revealing a small briefing room and a young man sitting in the room, waiting for orders.  The young man, wearing the black uniform of the Space Marines, stood to attention as the President stepped inside; he crashed out one perfect salute and then held it long enough for the President to return it.

“At ease,” the President said.  He had never been in the military – he had been one of the two-thirds of the country to escape the draft during the middle stages of the Wrecker War and had developed his own career in space administration – but he was comfortable enough with soldiers to avoid passing the buck to General Denny or one of the other senior military officers.  He would not have been at ease with just letting the young soldier carry out his mission without meeting him in person.

“Specialist Gavin Reynolds, US Space Commando, reporting,” the young soldier barked out.  The President, curious, allowed his eyes to wander over the young soldier, looking for clues as to his augmentation.  Apart from the faintly unnatural look in one of his eyes, there was nothing; the technology was fairly well understood.  It could never be released to the public domain – it constituted a strategic advantage – but it was useful enough to risk some degree of exposure.

“At ease,” the President repeated.  Normally, young officers received a briefing package on their first visit to the White House and the subterranean command centre; there hadn’t been time for Reynolds to be briefed on protocol.  Space Commandos were very rare; they had been lucky to be able to recall Reynolds from the moon in time for him to be inserted into the welcome fleet.  “Please, take a seat.”

Reynolds sat.  “I understand that you have been augmented and rated at Augment Three,” the President said, shortly.  “Exactly what are your capabilities?”

“I can survive in space for short periods, I have inserted weapons and communications, I have some inserted sensors and I have enhanced strength and internal armour, sir,” Reynolds said.  His voice was very even for a man who had just informed the President that he was practically a cyborg.  He could walk on the moon without a spacesuit; the President dreaded what the Rockrats would do with such technology.

“Good,” the President said.  He knew that Reynolds would have been briefed on the aliens, what little there was known about them.  “You have volunteered for a dangerous mission.”  He studied Reynolds’ face carefully; they’d had to ask him to volunteer without telling him more than it was something to do with the alien fleet.  “I must ask you, now, if you want to back out now.”

Reynolds looked slightly insulted.  “I’m the only Space Commando on Earth,” he said.  “If the mission requires one, then I am the only one who can carry it out.”

The President nodded.  “You may be aware that there is a welcoming fleet being launched to meet the alien fleet,” he said.  “The IAU has selected the main body of representatives who are to meet the aliens, including Director Hussein herself and several diplomats and scientists.  This has caused some concern among those in the know; the group that the IAU has put forward consists of people who are…inclined to be well-disposed towards the aliens.”

Reynolds understood.  “And you fear that one of them will end up telling the aliens more about us than is wise,” he said.  “What do you want me to do about it?”

The President sighed.  “We have prepared a cover identity for you as a simple expect in space technology,” he said.  It was true enough; every Space Commando had such expertise drilled into them, learning more than most people born outside a Rockrat Freeport would ever learn.  Reynolds might look like a typical dumb grunt, but he had degrees in several different areas of space technology and weapons tech, although those degrees would never be made public knowledge.  “You will be attached to the core group of alien experts…and you are to act as one of them, until you receive other orders.”

Reynolds showed the first trace of emotion; doubt.  “That is a rather vague order,” he said.  “Do you have anything specific in mind?”

“No,” the President said.  He understood Reynolds’ concern, but there was really no way to know what would happen until it was too late to issue orders.  “In the event of peaceful contact, you are to keep us informed of what’s happening and avoid any discussion of weapons or weapons technology.  If there is an exchange of fire, you are to act as you see fit…with the warning that you cannot allow yourself to be dissected.”

Reynolds nodded; the President felt a moment of shame.  Positioned in Reynolds’ chest was, among other mechanical devices, a fusion cell.  If it were treated roughly, it would explode with unpleasant results for any spacecraft, human or alien.  The order he had given was practically an order to commit suicide…but what choice was there?  Reynolds was a multi-billion dollar investment in implanted micro-technology; if the aliens dissected him, it would be all too revealing.

“I understand, Mr President,” Reynolds said.  He met the President’s eyes for a moment.  It didn’t make the President feel any better; he knew now why few politicians actually met the men they were sending in to combat, although Wreckers were a far different prospect from aliens.  “I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.”

The President didn’t smile at the weak joke.  “It may be an overreaction,” he said.  “It may be that your expertise will come in handy when it comes to opening relations with the aliens, but just in case, we would feel better if we had you present on the Neil Armstrong.  It gives us options and that might become very important; we believe that the other great powers will be making their own precautions along similar lines.”

He grinned weakly.  “I wonder if any of the support staff will be who they claim to be…?”

Reynolds didn’t smile.  Instead, he looked down for a second.  “Will anyone on the ship know what I am?”

“Captain Buckley will know about you,” the President said.  “You will report to him, should it be necessary; he may have instructions for you that you can carry out, as long as they don’t compromise your cover.  Maintaining that is the priority…and good luck.”

“Thank you, Mr President,” Reynolds said.  “I’ll do the best I can.” 

Chapter Eight: Rockrats

Freeport One, Asteroid Belt

“Irving Schlock, you are cleared to approach the main spaceport, berth thirty-seven,” the coordinator said.  Jake Ellsworth, one of the hundreds of Rockrats who used Freeport One as a base port, nodded as he triggered the final approach burn of the tiny gas thrusters; it hadn’t been a long delay before clearance to approach had been provided.  Freeport One had once been an isolated base in an undeveloped part of the asteroid belt; now, there were hundreds of small spacecraft arriving and departing every day.  “Please be advised that several mandatory updates have been generated for the asteroid development zones; failure to accept the updates may result in your later claims being disallowed.”

Bureaucrats, Ellsworth thought, as he brought the Irving Schlock in towards the counter-rotating spaceport, perched on the end of Freeport One’s massive axis.  He didn’t mind that one so much, although some of the other regulations could be a nuisance; a single accidental claim-jump could cost him his reputation.  The mandatory update would tell him which asteroids had been claimed by his fellow Rockrats for later development and, more importantly, which ones had been confirmed as almost valueless.  Most asteroids were worth some credits, although iron and rock was plentiful in the belt; the real strikes would come if he found some higher elements like uranium.

Freeport One grew in front of him slowly; no one would be foolish enough to trigger a fusion flame so close to the asteroid.  The Irving Schlock wasn’t operating under the control of the coordinators on the asteroid, but Ellsworth knew just what would happen if he accidentally triggered the fusion drive; the emplaced weapons on Freeport One would destroy him before he could do any real damage.  The Rockrat culture placed self-responsibility first; if someone did trigger a drive, the Rockrats would be certain that death was the mildest thing he would deserve.  Placing one’s own life in danger was fine; risking others without their permission was not.

A dull thump ran through the little ship as it docked directly with the asteroid; he checked quickly as the airlock matched up with the hatch on the other side, followed by the direct link into Freeport One’s datanet.  Automated programs checked out his computer connection before granting him limited access; he checked to see if there were any good entertainment movies waiting in his private cache on the datanet before unstrapping himself and floating up into the main cabin.  Like many Rockrats, he did most of his mining work naked – not least because he was alone; few Rockrats worked in pairs, no matter how much safer it was – and he pulled on a standard outfit before checking the airlock again – Rockrats without a great deal of paranoia didn’t last long – and entered the spaceport, sealing the Irving Schlock behind him.

An official greeter welcomed him as he passed through the second set of airlocks into the main body of the spaceport.  “Captain Ellsworth,” he said.  “Welcome back to Freeport One.”

“Thank you, Charlie,” Ellsworth said.  Charlie was the son of one of the handful of people who actually kept Freeport One running; a boy who was a curious mixture of European, Chinese and African.  His grandfather, one of the first Rockrats, had married a refugee ‘mail order bride’ from Africa when the Exclusion Zone went up; their daughter had married a Chinese-ethnic Rockrat and had four sons before returning out to the Rockrat lifestyle.  “Anything interesting happening apart from the aliens?”

“Nothing,” Charlie said seriously.  “My Dad will want to see your manifest first, of course.”

“I bet he would,” Ellsworth said, and picked up one of the standard communication terminals before making his way into the next office.  Jamie Hong glanced up at him from his desk; Ellsworth had occasionally wondered if the man had bureaucracy in his blood.  In zero-gravity, Hong had a desk that wouldn’t have shamed a bureaucrat on Earth; rumour had it that Hong and a few hundred other Chinese had deserted the Party’s iron control on one of the Chinese asteroids to come join the much more reasonable Rockrat culture, where they had fitted right in.  “Morning, Jamie…”

Hong nodded once at him.  “Welcome back,” he said.  “Anything interesting on the manifest?”

“Less than I would like,” Ellsworth admitted.  He passed across a datachip without comment.  “I’d also like to register a temporary claim on one of the asteroids I studied; there be gold in them there hills.”

The joke slipped past Hong, but his son giggled.  “Gold?”  Hong asked.  “That might fetch quite a high price from one of the industrial stations out there, or you could forward it to Earth and see what they might offer you.  How are you for money at the moment?”

“I have enough for a load of Helium-3 or Deuterium, if I have to use it,” Ellsworth said.  Rockrats preferred Helium-3 to Deuterium; Deuterium was hell on the drive tubes.  “What are the current prices?”

“Pretty high,” Hong admitted.  He named a price; Ellsworth stared at him.  “It’s the aliens, you see; they have everyone scared and excited at the same time.  The mines on Jupiter have been forwarding fuel loads to us to add to what we have found in the asteroids, but the price is starting to rise higher and there’s a great deal of inflation as well.  The cost of weapons has also gone through the roof; you might want to consider a quick sale of the gold and take what you can get.”

“Fuck me,” Ellsworth said.  He didn’t doubt Hong’s word, not for a moment; if he was caught lying to one of the Rockrats, his reputation would be at an end.  Hong might have been willing to serve as a middleman, but if he gorged his customers, he would rapidly find himself out of business.  “What would I get if I sold now?”

“I’m not buying on speculation at the moment,” Hong informed him.  Ellsworth appreciated his honesty; Rockrats wouldn’t offer to buy or sell unless they were serious.  Hong cast his eye down the manifest.  “You might get two to three hundred credits for the gold and around fifty to sixty credits for the other materials on spec; I can open a line of enquiry for you with the industrial stations if you don’t mind waiting a week.”

“Please do,” Ellsworth said.  He started to pull himself towards the hatch and then paused.  “Is there anything else I should know?”

“Kyle Short is going to be holding a meeting tonight relating to the alien crisis,” Hong said.  Ellsworth lifted an eyebrow; the chairman of the Rockrat Association – the closest thing the belt had to a real government, not least because trying to organise Rockrats was like trying to herd cats – rarely attempted to assert any power unless something had changed radically.  “Any Rockrat who has paid his dues is entitled to attend and vote.”

“I’m fully paid up,” Ellsworth said.  “I guess I’ll see you at the meeting.”

He left Hong’s office and pulled himself into the asteroid, entering one of the tubes that led down to the interior surface of Freeport One.  Like most asteroid habitats, Freeport One spun to create gravity, with most Rockrats spending time in the Earth-standard gravity field to keep their muscles in trim when they were not on their ships.  Ellsworth, like almost every other Rockrat, kept a small apartment on Freeport One; it provided a convenient place to shower, change into more practical wear, and head out to one of the entertainment centres.  One of the main attractions of Freeport One was the brothel; jokes aside, not all the Rockrats were either married to refugee women or homosexual.

“Welcome back,” the bartender said.  Ellsworth nodded to Ian; the bartender had been around longer than he could remember, seemingly unchanging.  There were rumours that he had been waiting on Freeport One when the first settler had converted it into the first freeport, complaining about the millions of years he had waited for the human race.  “Your usual?”

“A double-orgasm would be nice,” Ellsworth said, looking towards the brothel’s entrance.  Moments later, Ian put a pink drink down in front of him.  “Oh, very funny.”

Ian’s face was as impassive as ever.  “You asked for a double-orgasm,” he said.  “I’ll put it on your tab.”

Ellsworth glowered at him, but sipped it anyway, wondering just what went into it.  It tasted surprisingly good for it’s colour; he finished it and ordered a beer, before leaving the bar and heading into the brothel.  There was a short wait before he could meet one of the girls, but once the formalities were out of the way, he was able to spend an hour with her.  She told him her story as they were getting undressed, an attempt to convince him to pay her extra; she had come out to become a Rockrat without knowing just what it entailed and had been forced into prostitution to support herself.  Ellsworth’s sympathy was limited; she was earning more lying on her back with her legs open than he was mining every day.

Afterwards, he entered the main communal hall and found a seat.

The Rockrat Association had been formed to give the Rockrats some collective bargaining capability, something that had seemed more important at the time than it did now, several years after several industries had been established in the belt.  The Association, rather like the IAU, was charged with enforcing fair play; composed of Rockrats who spent a year on Freeport One and paid a small salary from the dues Rockrats paid, it was very responsive to the needs of the members.  Board members were nominated by their peers and elected by popular vote; coordinating it each year was the final duty of the Chairman.

Kyle Short was midway through his term as Chairman, a tall muscular man with a formidable reputation and a scarred face.  He claimed seven Rockrats in his direct line of descent; unlike most other Rockrats, he had married another Rockrat, one of the rare female Rockrats.  Ellsworth privately wondered how they’d been close enough to conceive a child; both of them had continued their careers out in the belt.

“This meeting is hereby called to attention,” Short said, glancing around.  There were nearly seventy Rockrats in the room, the largest group assembled in one place since the Chinese refugees – including Hong – had come to Freeport One.  “The secretary will now read the minutes of the last meeting…”

“Mr Chairman, I move that we skip the reading of the minutes,” a Rockrat called.

There was a general roar of assent.  Any Rockrat who cared could have read the minutes on the datanet.  “I need a show of hands,” Short said.  “All those in favour?”  Almost every hand, including Ellsworth’s, went up.  “The motion is passed.”

Short paused long enough for the chatter to die down.  “The aliens are coming to Earth,” he said.  Ellsworth smiled; he’d checked the datanet for the briefing notes, along with every other Rockrat who could be arsed coming to the meeting.  None of the Rockrats would make any allowances for Rockrats who hadn’t bothered to read their notes.  “This may be good news for us as they don’t seem to be heading anywhere near Freeport One, although they could change course quite radically unless they have limitations we don’t know about.  Our attempts to signal the aliens have received no response; to the best of our knowledge, none of the Great Powers nor the IAU have succeeded in gaining any response from the aliens.”

He paused.  “The question remains; what do we do about it?”

There was a long pause.  “What about the corporate rats?”  Someone shouted finally.  There were some mutters; the corporate employees were not regarded highly by the Rockrats.  “What about the dirty ones on Earth?”

Short tapped the table meaningfully; ‘dirty ones’ was a common Rockrat insult for people who lived on Earth.  “They’re preparing their defences around Earth and sending some additional infrastructure out here and to the moon,” he said.  “It is unlikely that they will be willing to waste time on defending us; we are not as important as the mines orbiting Jupiter, or the moon, or even Mars.  We may have to look to our own defence.”

The debate raged backwards and forwards, surprisingly orderly to Ellsworth’s ears; the Rockrats knew that everyone who had proven his right to stand among them had a right to be heard.  Not everyone had something to say, but everyone who did had to have a chance to be heard; the stewards kept order long enough to make sure that everyone said their piece.  The debate raged from the increased prices for mining to the increased prices for fuel, something dear to the Rockrat heart; if the price of fuel went too high, some of them would go out of business and have to mortgage their future on a final desperate gamble.  The other question was that of defence; if the governments were unwilling to defend the Rockrats, could they defend themselves?

“We have started a small program of establishing a black colony,” Short said.  Ellsworth smiled with the others; there were dozens of black and grey colonies out there in the belt.  Some of there were religious colonies, from Mormons to strange cults that worshipped one god or another, others were popularly supposed to be pirate colonies, although space piracy had never really caught on.  The handful of people who had attempted pirate attacks had been spaced by outraged Rockrats.  “Hiding from the aliens should be possible, unless the aliens have some technology we have never heard of.”

Ellsworth shook his head.  He had read enough news articles from Earth to laugh at what some people on the planet below thought was possible; the Rockrats, who lived and breathed space, knew that the aliens might be advanced, but they had shown nothing…magical or hyper-advanced.  They might have some advanced technology, but nothing that would provide a decisive advantage.

“The second program involves defence,” Short continued.  “We can use our own infrastructure to produce weapons to mount on our ships, perhaps using them to fight the aliens…or the strengthened governments and the IAU.  The main problem is that if they expand their own defences, they will have the capability to come after us, whatever the aliens do.  This may pose a threat to our very existence.”

Ellsworth scowled.  “Can we arm enough ships to make a difference?”  He called, before anyone else could speak.  He was considering the issue, but he had to know if it was worth the effort before he committed himself one way or the other.  There was always a place for a skilled Rockrat on the outskirts of the solar system.  “What about payment for the use of the ships?”

Someone on Earth would have questioned the Rockrats patriotism; the Rockrats understood basic self-interested economics.  Their ships were the basis of their wealth, both actual and future earning prospects; if they were converted into space fighters, as ludicrous as that seemed, it would damage their ability to earn future credit.  The concept of calling a spade a fork, something that seemed to be practiced on Earth quite frequently, meant nothing to the Rockrats; Rockrats who didn’t keep a tight grip on reality tended to end up dead.

“We have constructed a proposal to use credits from the Association’s store to cover the costs and compensate ship owners for the loss of future earnings,” Short said.  He looked nervous and well he might; Rockrats didn’t like the concept of becoming dependent on something as hazy as interplanetary financial dealings.  They preferred solid results to the shadowy money of wheeler-dealers; the prospect of losing control over their own finances would worry many of them.  “It would not cut that much into earnings; it will take a month to assemble standard weapons packages and equip them onto volunteer ships, and then, one month before the aliens arrive at a point where they can make a high-speed transit towards one of the Freeport outposts, we will call in the ships and prepare for a possible engagement.”

The discussion became heated as the argument raged backwards and forwards, but what clinched it for many of the Rockrats was the thought of what might happen if defence of the belt was left to the various governments, under the uncertain supervision of the IAU.  If any of the Great Powers achieved a preponderance of power in the belt, that Great Power would have the muscle to take on the Rockrats and force them to come to heel; it was important to avoid any excuse for military action.  Not every Rockrat was keen on the idea of becoming a military ship; several wanted to find a quiet asteroid, set up a habitation tent, and wait for it to all blow over.  Others wanted to head out with Message Bearer; Conrad Hamilton had already informed them that he was looking for more recruits for the interstellar voyage.  There would be no room to take along refugee women for their breeding potential, as had been done years ago for Freeport One; everyone who went on the ship would have to be a useful pair of hands.

“The preliminary motion has been passed,” Short said, after the vote had been taken.  Two-thirds had voted in favour of the motion, although that meant less than it would seem; Rockrats who had been out in their ships would have to have a chance to register their vote, which would take upwards of a week as transmissions of the meeting and the issues at hand were beamed out to the ships, then the vote would have to be registered and filed.  “However, under the circumstances, we are asking now for volunteers to serve as the first line of defence.”

There was a long pause.

Jake Ellsworth was the first to hold up his hand.

Chapter Nine: The Welcome Fleet, Take Two

Orbit One, Earth Orbit

There were few spacecraft, Samra had decided years ago, that really lived up to the promise of endless science-fiction movies.  The iron limitations of physics and science, to say nothing of the need to interchange components as much as possible, dictated that most spacecraft would have as much sex appeal as a slug.  The concept of graceful lines and the sense of sheer power manifested by such timeline classics as the Starship Enterprise or the Star Destroyer had floundered upon such laws; most spacecraft that lacked the ability to land on Earth had the appearance of semi-random construction by an unimaginative committee.

The Neil Armstrong defied most of those conventions.  Five kilometres long, constructed of lunar rock that had been launched into lunar orbit and then processed by the first industrial stations to be established in LEO, the spacecraft had never been designed to land on a planet.  Instead, it gave the appearance of a travelling ring-class space habitat, endlessly spinning to produce a gravity field tuned to the level of the destination world.  In the three months since the ship had arrived at Orbit One, the spacecraft had been renovated completely, improving both its living quarters and scientific equipment, converting it into a travelling scientific base.  The ship wasn’t armed heavily – Samra had heard that Captain Buckley had been privately furious about it – but it was important not to give the impression that humanity was a bunch of savages.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”  Spencer O'Dowd said, as he appeared behind her holding two drinks.  Orbit One was the oldest facility in space still active and it looked it; the original International Space Station had been decommissioned and turned into a museum piece long ago.  The older facilities from before then, Skylab and Mir, had been destroyed; the scientist in Samra detested the men who had made those decisions a century before they were born.  “I hear that we are actually getting good cabins on that beauty.”

Samra smiled to herself.  It had all paid off, from courting the press to making the bargain with O'Dowd.  The reporter knew where a lot of skeletons were buried; some of them he had unearthed to gain an advantage, others he had merely threatened to unearth…just to ensure that he received the position of official reporter.  The IAU had wanted to keep reporters off the flight…until the demands for press coverage had started to come in, and grow louder, and louder, until the bureaucrats had given in.

“I’d be happy with a broom closet,” she said.  She knew that O'Dowd was attracted to her, but she would be happier just to remain as friends; her life was complicated enough without adding a lover.  Reform Islam might have insisted that every Muslim do their duty to provide more children for the faith, but she didn’t want to become a working mother…and she would rather have died than lose her work.  It was easier just to stay celibate.  “We just have to ensure that we get to talk with one message.”

She scowled; she hadn’t understood, really, just how many human factions would want to risk everything to ensure that they were the only ones to talk to the aliens.  The aliens had been bombarded with message after message from different factions, from the Zionist colony on Titan to the Rockrats and the Great Powers on Earth; if they had been interested in playing divide and rule, they would have found it easy.  The IAU had finally managed to get agreement on a joint mission as part of the welcome fleet, with diplomats from the United Nations taking the lead, but no one had any illusions.  There would be attempts to make private deals with the aliens; the only reason why no one had broken ranks already was that the welcome fleet seemed to be the only means left to approach the aliens.

A little more information had come in as the aliens came closer.  Half of the alien craft were massive, each fully a hundred kilometres long; the others were smaller, but still larger than the Neil Armstrong.  The alien fleet was starting to look more and more like a colonisation fleet, something that had started more debate, from selling the aliens Helium-3 to allow them to reach another star, to inviting them to settle on Mars or Venus along with the human race.  Samra favoured the latter; the aliens had been out in interstellar space, well away from any radio noise; who knew what they had heard and recorded?  Talking to the aliens could become very profitable for the advancement of science…

Her terminal buzzed.  “Director Hussein, your presence is requested in the main lounge,” it said.  “Do you require escort?”

“No, thank you,” Samra said, and broke the connection.  “Coming?”

Orbit One had begun life as the first real space habitat in Earth orbit, a standard Stanford torus-design that showed very clear links to the Neil Armstrong’s design.  It had first served as a dormitory for space workers, and had then become the solar system’s first space hotel and collection point for lunar colonists.  There were larger habitats now, some of them built from asteroids that had been moved into Earth orbit, but Orbit One was history.  Where else could the welcome fleet depart from?

The main lounge, like everywhere else along the wheel, was set at standard Earth-gravity, allowing the delegates who had come up from Earth to avoid zero-gee as much as possible.  Even with gene treatments and supplements, there were still people who had real problems coping with a lack of gravity; back when Orbit One had become a hotel, it had kept an entire team of doctors and lawyers on call to handle emergences.  Lawyers had never gotten much further out into space than the moon; the Rockrats detested them and the corporations had managed to avoid most of their liability.  Samra approved; the last thing she wanted was someone looking over her shoulder – and probably down her shirt – while she made First Contact.

“Welcome to Orbit One,” Rick Davenport said.  The IAU Board Member shook her hand with the practiced ease of a professional politician; Samra was privately convinced that he detested her for daring to follow orders and transmit the news that the alien fleet had been detected.  “You’re quite popular at the moment; some of the newshounds would be delighted to interview you.”

“Thank you,” Samra said, as she glanced around the main lounge.  The crew of the Neil Armstrong had been reduced to the bare minimum; hundreds of people had wanted to join the welcoming party, only thirty-seven had been accepted.  She had met with all of them, from the official United Nations Ambassador - Rudolph Giacometti, of Switzerland – to the scientists who had been excitedly discussing the prospects of analysing the first real starships at close range.  “When are we going to board?”

“Once all the speeches have finished,” Davenport assured her.  He pressed her hand again and left the pair of them alone as one of the representatives from China began yet another speech, leaving most of the room ignoring him.  The politicians were being largely ignored; the men and women of the welcome fleet had been selected and – now – there was no going back.  Samra had approved most of them personally; only a handful had been slipped through the net and arrived without being examined first.

“Cheeky bastard,” O'Dowd said.  “What on Earth do you think he wants?”

Samra shrugged.  “I think he’s a politician,” she said.  “I think…”

O'Dowd elbowed her.  “Heads up, here comes our lord and master,” he said, taking a pair of glasses from a robotic maid and passing her one.  Samra looked up to see Captain Buckley and one of his crewmen following him, heading over towards her.  “Remember to salute properly and genuflect at the right moments.”

“Shut up,” Samra muttered back, as she took a sip of the orange juice.  She’d met Captain Buckley, but there hadn’t been any real time for a proper session; he’d been occupied with the Neil Armstrong and she’d been preparing the contact team.  She raised her voice as Buckley approached.  “Captain; thank you for coming.”

Buckley’s expression reassembled, just for a moment, a man approaching the hangman’s noose.  Samra sympathised; she hadn’t been happy during her first press conference, and even though she had grown used to them, she still disliked them.  She had organised the final departure party on Orbit One just to avoid having to give any speeches herself; there were too many politicians who thought that they should have a chance to say their piece to allow the woman who had only discovered the aliens to have a word.

“I would be happier were we already underway,” Buckley said.  “Departure is in five hours and counting.”

“Good,” Samra said.  She pulled him away from the main group and into a corner; O'Dowd followed her like a mother hen.  “Captain, is everything prepared for the flight?”

“The ship is ready, if that is what you mean,” Buckley said.  His lips twitched.  “You had a chance to tour it before you moved the equipment onboard, so I hope that you are satisfied.”

Samra nodded.  “I would be happier with more space, but short of moving Message Bearer over to intercept the aliens, that would be impossible,” she said.  “Captain, do you have any particular concerns you wish to raise in private?”

“Maybe a few, but not at present,” Buckley said.  He nodded to his assistant.  “This is Commander Roberts; I believe you have met?”

Samra smiled briefly at Roberts, a big dark man with surprisingly nimble fingers.  “He showed us around the ship,” she said.  It had been a quick tour; civilians, including herself, were not permitted to enter the central tube of the ship, regardless of the reason.  If worst came to worst, she had been briefed; the habitat-area would be freed from the main body of the spacecraft through explosive bolts, although she found it hard to imagine an emergency that would allow them to do that, rather than destroying the spacecraft outright.  “It was a remarkable tour.”

“Quite,” Buckley said.  On the podium, Ambassador Giacometti had just begun to speak.  “I would appreciate a chance to have a few words with you once we are onboard the spacecraft and boosting out on our course.”

“Of course,” Samra said.  She wondered, briefly, just what couldn’t be said now, on Orbit One; had Buckley been given some classified instructions from the USSF?  Even if he had, he wouldn’t have told her about them, would he?  “I have some minor issues to raise with you as well…”

“Excuse me,” a voice said, from behind her.  Samra turned slightly to see Gavin Reynolds, one of the space technology experts; the tall man had only been introduced to her a week ago and she didn’t know him very well at all.  He knew his material, she’d found out, but there were few records of what he had done when it came to turning his knowledge into practical work.  For some reason, that bothered her; the Americans had to have had a reason for sending him on the welcome fleet.

She dismissed her concerns.  “Yes?”

“The Ambassador would like to ask you a few questions,” Reynolds said, his voice droll.  Samra rolled her eyes; Ambassador Giacometti wanted a photo opportunity of the two of them together, where he could take all the credit for her work and whatever credit there was when it came to talking to the aliens.  “You might want to head out the door.”

Razia Khan went through worse than this, Samra thought, remembering one of the heroines of the Islamic Reform Movement.  Razia had defied the religious police in Saudi Arabia, hiding a recording device on her person; it had recorded her arrest, beating, and gang-rape at the hands of the religious police, a recording that had started a revolution.  How can I do any less?

“I’m coming,” she said.  It wouldn’t be long now.  “Captain, I’ll see you on the Neil Armstrong.”

***
An hour later, they were finally permitted to board the Neil Armstrong, walking into the zero-gravity section of Orbit One, and then into the zero-gravity section of the Neil Armstrong before entering the main habitat ring.  It was surprisingly roomy; they'd had plenty of time to organise the sections of the spacecraft into workspaces, sleeping chambers and research laboratories.  The bridge ship had been intended to carry a vast number of colonists, most of them in drug-induced hibernation; it could carry a hundred wide-awake crewmen and scientists with ease.

“Now hear this,” the intercom buzzed.  Samra recognised Commander Roberts’ voice and smiled; she liked the man.  There was something about him that reminded her of her father.  “We will be disengaging from Orbit One in twenty minutes; if you are not intending to fly with us, do not attempt to remain on the ship any longer.”  There was a pause.  “Director Hussein to the bridge, please.”

Samra exchanged a puzzled look with O'Dowd, but followed the markers on the hull back into the zero-gravity section, and then into the crew-only section.  The bridge itself had been marked as off-limits, but she didn’t worry about it; she imagined that Captain Buckley had his reasons for calling her to the bridge.  The bridge – the nautical term had stuck despite the slightly ramshackle appearance of any spacecraft command centre – was smaller than she had expected for such a large ship; a handful of consoles, a handful of chairs, and four crewmen.

“I confirm one minute to departure,” the helmsman said.  “Hatches have been sealed.”

“I thought that you would like to see this,” Buckley said, as he pointed Samra towards an unoccupied chair.  She pulled herself down and buckled herself into the chair.  “Mr Reynolds assisted us in designing the craft and asked to observe as we departed.”

Samra favoured the young man with a smile.  “Thank you,” she said.  “I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”

“There’s less to see than you might think,” Buckley said, as the helmsman began a short countdown.  The spacecraft had no sci-fi viewscreen; the closest there was to any omnipresent display was the views from cameras mounted on the hull.  There could be no viewport on the bridge; she’d been told that it was the best-protected section of the spacecraft.  “Still, it is something…”

“Release,” the helmsman said.  Samra had half-expected a dull rumble running through the ship; there was nothing, but the ever-present thrumming of the fusion pile at the rear of the spacecraft.  “We are free of Orbit One; I repeat, we are free of Orbit One.”

“Begin reaction burn,” Buckley ordered.  This time, Samra did feel something; a faint…sense of motion that rose and fell slightly as the reaction jets fired, nudging the Neil Armstrong away from Orbit One and pushing the massive ship into an exit orbit.  It seemed to take forever; it seemed to happen very quickly.  One of the cameras focused on Orbit One as it fell away in the distance, the spacecraft rising up towards the stars.  “Reaction burn…terminate.”

The sense of motion faded; she knew, intellectually, that the spacecraft was still moving, but her body insisted that there was no motion, none at all.  Time passed; the spacecraft kept moving, heading away from Earth…and towards the aliens.  She wondered if the aliens knew that she was coming, if they could see the human ships; they would definitely see them when the fusion drive was ignited.

“I confirm that we have laser link-up with the other ships of the welcome fleet,” Commander Roberts said.  Samra felt her breath catch in her throat; she had almost forgotten that there was more than one ship taking part in the mission.  Standing orders had the aliens being forbidden to visit the other ships, just to hide the fact that humanity had launched an armed fleet at them, just in case.  Samra couldn’t believe that the aliens had come all that way just to fight, but she hadn’t been charged with making the final decision; that decision had been made by politicians on Earth.  “They are ready to join us when we go fusion.”

“Good,” Buckley said.  Samra met Reynolds’ eyes and saw just how excited he was; she shared something of his excitement, while Buckley and his crew were taking it in their stride.  “Issue the standard warning, John.”

Roberts took the intercom.  “Now hear this,” he said.  “Fusion burn will commence in five minutes; please ensure that you assume fusion position and do not move until the all clear is sounded.”

Samra checked her seat out of habit; she would be safe.  Some of the faster ships had to have people in water baths, just to prevent them from suffering damage caused by heavy acceleration; the constant-burn ships, in particular, could be very dangerous under the wrong circumstances.  The Neil Armstrong wasn't a constant-burn ship; it would be slower, but much safer.

“Trigger the fusion drive,” Buckley ordered.  This time, Samra felt it instantly; a pressure that pushed against her body, a cold dispassionate force of nature that chilled her more than any contact with a heavy male body, or the time when she had been trapped under her own wardrobe.  The heavy thrumming in the hull increased; she knew that if the aliens were watching, the welcome fleet had just highlighted its own position for them to track…and project their course to rendezvous with the alien fleet.

Reynolds glanced across at her from his seat.  “We’re on our way,” he said.  Annoyingly, the high boost didn’t seem to have any effect on him at all; Samra almost envied the colonists who spent their entire trip in a stupor.  They would never know what was happening until they were woken up at the far end.  “Thank you for this chance.”

Samra could have kissed him at that moment.  “Thank you, too,” she said.  “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”

Chapter Ten: While The World Waits…

Camp Macintyre, Near Virginia Beach, USA

“Captain Christopher Fardell reporting, sir,” Fardell said, as the door to the General’s office hissed open.  The invitation – which no sane officer would dare refuse – to meet with the General had surprised him; most Generals wouldn’t know that anyone below the rank of Colonel existed under normal circumstances.

The news of the aliens had surprised everyone, but Fardell found it irritating on more than a personal level; the entire armoured combat suit unit had been pulled back to the States at short notice, rather than completing the task of destroying the remains of the Wrecker force in the Exclusion Zone.  Hunting smart Wreckers – the stupid ones didn’t last past the time they sent a betraying signal to attract an orbital KEW – was a hard task, but it was also challenging; Fardell had been quite looking forward to it after discovering the slaves.  Whatever cause of the week had motivated the Wreckers, it clearly hadn’t included peace and freedom for everyone.  America had lost most of her remaining racism during the long Wrecker War; the reminder that not everyone shared American values had stung.

The unit had been given a week’s leave, but then they’d only taken part in garrison duty, something that Fardell privately detested, a role fit only for the National Guard.  The Battlesuit Regiments were designed for rapid mobile firepower, not standing in one place and waiting for the enemy to attack, or holding down a region that might have become rebellious if troop numbers were pulled down sharply.  It did have the advantage that no one was shooting at him and his men – American citizens generally didn’t consider their own soldiers an army of occupation – but it was boring.

General William Denny looked up at him and returned his salute.  “At ease, Captain,” he said.  Fardell relaxed very slightly; he still had no idea why he’d been called to face the General.  Short of some hideous breach of regulations, and he knew that he had committed none, nor had any of the men under his command, he found it hard to imagine why the General would want to talk to him in person.  It wasn’t as if there was anything special about him.  “How are your men holding up?”

The US Army encouraged honest reporting; it was one of the edges it held over non-western armies.  “They’re pissed off at being taken from Africa,” Fardell reported.  “There’s been no word on just what we found in the base, but everyone saw the women and everyone wants to get stuck into the bastards and give them hell, sir.”

Denny’s lips twitched.  “There was little choice,” he said, as close to an apology that Fardell knew he was likely to get.  “We may be overreacting to the aliens, or we may not have considered anything reassembling just how dangerous the aliens might be to us; in many ways, we’ve become overconfident over the last fifty years.”

Fardell said nothing, but there was a certain amount of truth in the statement; the civilised world – meaning the Great Powers – had never had to take on an equal opponent since the final Arab-Israeli spat, a year before the Caliphate Movement led to the establishment of the Caliphate and the Treaty of Jordan.  The Wreckers could sometimes be dangerous – New York had proven that, as had Marseilles and Stalingrad – but they didn’t pose a threat on such a scale.  How could they when their only real weapon was random terror?

“But that’s an issue for another time,” Denny said.  “You may be interested to note that we recovered several dozen storage mediums from the Wrecker base, most of them packed full of pornography” – Fardell laughed; a century after the Internet had really taken off and become the datanet, porn was still the number one content – “and some of the videos hiding real information.  Most of it was written as vaguely as possible, for obvious reasons, but we did manage to use it to track down some of the Wreckers’ supporters in America and Europe.  The death sentences were passed last month.”

Which didn’t, Fardell knew, mean that they had been executed by now.  The suspects, their guilt confirmed by lie detectors and drugs, would be kept in a very secure location and interrogated until they gave up everything they knew about the organisation they had supported, maybe even played a role in directing.  Once they had been drained, they would be shot and their bodies broken up for organ recycling.  Publicly, they had been dead since the sentences had been passed; no one would bother to raise the issue once their guilt had been proven.

The general stood up.  “You may have been reading the various papers on how we can insert some of our soldiers though a high-speed descent from orbit,” he said.  Fardell nodded; the concept was hardly new, but it was very much a case of a white elephant.  He had no doubt that it could work, but where on Earth could they send orbital transports that they couldn’t insert them though cheaper means, such as stealth helicopters or parachute drops?  “The planners believe that the aliens might use such a means to insert their soldiers on the ground, once they have taken control of the high orbitals and used them against us.”

Fardell scowled.  The troop movements might make some sense under those conditions; if the aliens were hostile and they did manage to take control of LEO, they could pick off any large force that was moving across the ground, like rolling down an interstate.  They could sink ships from orbit, pick off aircraft with laser weapons; who knew what else they could think of that humanity couldn’t even imagine…?

“You look like a man with a question,” Denny said.  “What do you want to say?”

Fardell kept his face blank.  “Do we know that the aliens are hostile?”

“If we knew for certain, we would be panicking a lot more,” Denny said wryly.  “What we do know is that in two weeks, the welcome fleet will intercept the alien fleet…and then?  The aliens may open communications; the analysts believe that that is what they will do.  Or…they may open fire on the fleet.  Or…they may just head through the fleet and carry onwards towards Earth.  If that happens…”

He paused.  “We have to assume that the aliens are just like us; maybe not intentionally hostile, but willing to take advantage of weakness,” he said.  “If they don’t make contact with the welcome fleet, we will have to assume that they are hostile and if that happens, we dare not let them into LEO without a fight.  I don’t like this, Captain, and neither do the analysts, but if they try to enter LEO without convincing us of their good intentions, we’re going to open fire.”

Fardell felt his blood run cold.

“But it may not come to that,” Denny said.  “And, besides, it’s way above your pay check.  Your unit has been assigned to a particularly important mission.”

He tapped the massive map of America, ranging from the Canadian border to what had once been Argentina, and then looked up at Fardell.  “Your unit has had experience in almost all manner of American terrain and, if worst comes to the worst, you have operated with units from the British Commonwealth, the Europeans and the Russians.  That makes your unit an asset.”

“They don’t call it the British Commonwealth, sir,” Fardell said.  It was a fairly common American mistake.  “The British may think of it that way, but the Canadians, South Africans and Indians resent being called the British Commonwealth; the entire system has much more in common with the pre-federal America than it has with Europe or even ourselves.  It’s a union of equals.”

“Thank you,” the General said, dryly.  Fardell said nothing.  Correcting a General wasn’t always a smart career move.  “Regardless, the aliens have forced us to make some…less than optimal decisions.  One of them is that we are forced to spread out our regular forces to support the National Guard, which in turn is garrisoning the United States in hopes of providing a rapid response to any alien incursion.  Your unit, Fardell, will be assigned to providing rapid support and firepower to National Guard units, serving as a reserve and recognisance force.  When – if – the aliens land in America, you will move up to support the Guard or engage the enemy, depending on the exact situation.”

He grinned.  “Given that America is not the centre of the universe, it is equally possible that the aliens might land elsewhere,” he continued.  “If they land in Canada or Brazil, the locals may request our support; in that case, your unit will be earmarked for a rapid transit to Canada.  If they land in the Exclusion Zones, you may be transported back there and asked to provide intelligence on just what they’re doing there.”

Fardell frowned.  “Do we have any idea at all where the aliens might land?”

“None,” Denny said.  His hand ran over the map briefly.  “We don’t have the slightest fucking clue.  They may come down right in the middle of the United States; we have a contingency plan to handle that when – if – it happens.  They may come down in Panama, like in that movie; if that happens, we may have real problems evicting them…assuming they can defeat the heavy defences we placed there when we annexed the region.  They may come down in Europe or Russia or China; if that happens, we may be dependent upon the locals dealing with the aliens for us.  There are just too many imponderables.”

He shrugged.  “But, again, that is hardly an issue,” he said.  “Your role is fairly simple.”

Fardell smiled; it was good to know just what his superiors were thinking – assuming they were thinking at all; many front-line soldiers would have doubted that – but at the same time it was sometimes pointless.  As Denny had pointed out, issues of strategy were well above his pay grade; his job was merely to carry the orders out or die trying.

“We have established a small base here” – his hand tapped the map near Fredericksburg – “with support units here, here and here.  You may have noticed that the base is camouflaged and we have actually been unable to locate it from orbit – knowing, of course, that there was something there to be located.  Your unit will be based there and, hopefully, will escape being noticed by the aliens if they have hostile intentions.  Once the aliens show their intentions, then we can decide how we are to use you and your unit.”

“And, of course, we can visit the beach at Virginia Beach with them,” Fardell said dryly.  Denny gave him an ‘I am not amused’ look.  “They might like the water…”

“Or they might like Africa,” Denny said.  “I could just imagine some politician selling them the Exclusion Zone, complete with Wreckers and bio-collapse, in exchange for whatever technology the aliens have.  It might be a bargain and a solution to the Wrecker problem into the bargain.”

“Yes, sir,” Fardell said dutifully.  He kept his private thoughts to himself.  “Are the Wreckers going to become involved with the aliens?”

“I don’t know,” Denny said.  For an instant, he looked like an old man; Fardell wondered if any of the generals from a hundred years ago had felt the same way when the Twin Towers had fallen, when they discovered that the rules of warfare had suddenly changed.  “All I know is that we have our duty…”

He cleared his throat.  “The quartermaster will see to transporting your unit and your suits, complete with all the equipment you might need, to the base without exciting attention,” he concluded.  “I don’t think that anyone would betray you” – Fardell nodded; ever since a handful of reporters had been shot for reporting military secrets, security had become much tighter – “but, just in case, you will operate under covert protocols.  Good luck.”

Fardell saluted.  “Understood, sir,” he said.  “We’ll report in once we reach the operating base.”

***
The massive skyscraper reached nearly a thousand meters into the sky, holding for a brief period – before New York built an even bigger Skyscraper, which had coped with the nuclear blast surprisingly well – the record for tallest Skyscraper in America.  There were taller ones in Japan, Europe and even other cities in America, but Virginia Beach was proud of its monument.  The Fulsome Building had been the first to be partly constructed with materials from orbit.

At the moment, a month before the aliens would arrive at Earth, it was almost half-empty.

“I wasn't able to sell a real policy today,” Carola Eichwurzel grumbled, as she entered the small flat she shared with her fiancée.   Carola – a young blonde girl of Swedish descent, whose parents had emigrated to America to escape the chaos of the European Civil Unrest – worked for one of the largest insurance companies in America.  “At this rate, there are going to be more lay-offs and maybe even a collapse.”

Markus Wilhelm nodded from his chair as he tested the telescope.  It had belonged to his brother, who had loaned it to him when he had emigrated to the moon as one of the long-term colonists of an American colony; he had enjoyed looking at Orbit One and the other massive habitats in Earth orbit over the last few years.  One of the handful of perks residents of the Fulsome Building had was access to the roof; Wilhelm had used it as a base for observations.

“The aliens have everyone scared,” he said.  He couldn’t understand it; why would the aliens come God alone knew how many light years to start a fight?  It made no sense; Wilhelm might not have had the fancy degrees in space travel that his brother had – his own expertise lay in economics – but he did understand the basics.  The aliens had placed a great deal of effort into crossing from one star to another; the Message Bearer project, operating on a much smaller scale, had been awesomely expensive.  He dreaded to think of what would happen if they had tried to build a hundred starships at once.  “What did your boss say?”

Carola gave him her patented look of death.  “He said – and I quote – that unless we learnt what the aliens were doing, damage caused by alien attack would not be considered a viable reason to claim damages,” she said.  “Everyone wants to be insured against alien attack, but it’s the one thing that we are not allowed to even offer a policy on, just like an act of God.”

She paced over to him and placed her hand on his shoulder.  “And we cannot prevent people from cashing in some of their current portfolios because of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the case,” she continued.  The case had been a political nightmare; facing public pressure to reform the insurance companies, Congress had passed laws that nearly made it impossible to function.  Insurance was a gamble at the best of times, but the mega-deaths caused by various Wrecker attacks had sent prices soaring into the stratosphere.  This would have been good news for companies…except few people could afford to pay the premiums.  The ruling that, if a policy was disallowed, the claimant could recover the premiums had very nearly been the final kick in the teeth.  “I’ve been sworn at and shouted at and cursed at all day…”

“Poor baby,” Wilhelm said.  He pulled her down and gave her a kiss.  “Don’t worry, love; it’ll all be over in a month.”

“Yes,” Carola said, slowly.  Her eyes darkened slightly.  “Are you sure about that?”

Wilhelm lifted an eyebrow.  “There are an awful lot of people heading out of the city and deeper into the country,” Carola said.  “Half of the employees at my company have already given their notice of intending to take the week the aliens arrive as holiday; its quite likely that we will all get at least a few days holiday and everyone is talking about heading out to stay with their family, or something.  Don’t you think that we should be heading out as well?”

“It’s not that much of a risk,” Wilhelm said, inspecting the telescope carefully before pointing it at her breasts.  She snorted and pushed it away gently.  “We can watch what happens from the roof with this baby and record it all, before selling it for big bucks.”

Carola watched as he carefully cleaned one of the lenses.  “Would you like a moment alone with Miss Telescope?”  She asked.  Wilhelm rolled his eyes at her teasing.  “Are you sure that it’s safe?”

“They didn’t come hundreds of light years to start a fight,” Wilhelm said.  “Besides, the news from the refugee camps is pretty bad…and it’s only going to get worse.  Even if the aliens are hostile, we have several military bases nearby to protect us, and anyway…where would we go?  My family live in Chicago, yours are in Atlanta…and there’s no way that we can find accommodation somewhere under these circumstances.  We could head out and buy some camping equipment, if we can find some, but again, where would we go?”

He watched the interplay of emotions on Carola’s face.  He understood her concern, but where could they go even if they had to run?  They didn’t have a vehicle of their own – private vehicles were rare in the city – and even if they obtained one, where could they go?  Besides, he wanted to see the aliens arrive from the roof, whatever happened.  He would have sold his soul for a place on the welcome fleet, but what did he have to bring to the gathering of scientific talent?

“I hope you’re right,” Carola said finally.  She sniffed the air.  “Is that goulash I smell?”

Wilhelm nodded.  “Come on, love,” he said.  He’d prepared the meal hours ago, leaving it to cook slowly; he normally cooked during the weekdays.  “It’ll all have blown over in a month or two.”

Chapter Eleven: Transit

USS Neil Armstrong, Deep Space

The curious thing, Samra found, was that the voyage was boring.  Once the fleet had departed Earth and settled onto a course that the helmsman swore would allow the aliens to match speeds with them and come to rest, relative to the human craft, there was actually very little to do.  The telescopes mounted on the human spacecraft probed towards the alien starships, but there was actually very little information available past what had already been determined by the massive telescopes orbiting Earth and the Moon.

“They’re basically advanced versions of this ship,” Gavin Reynolds said, one evening.  Samra liked his company enough to spend some time with him; he was neither dreadfully earnest about alien contact, nor apparently concerned with getting into her pants.  He was younger than most of the professionals on the spacecraft, young enough to be one of the crewmen; if he hadn’t lost an eye at some point, he would have made a fairly handsome movie star.  She’d wondered how he had lost his eye – it had been replaced with a very good, but limited prosthetic eye – but he had refused to tell her, beyond the fact that it had been very embarrassing.  “Some of them, however, are clearly not rotating.”

“They could be generating gravity themselves,” Samra said, as she moved her pawn forward.  Playing games, mainly chess and a half-dozen other games, was the main form of entertainment, although some of the scientists had paired off and were spending time together in their cabins.  Spencer O'Dowd had found himself a cabin where he could edit his footage to his heart’s content; his daily broadcast back to Earth kept everyone on the planet interested in what was going on.  “Wouldn’t that solve the problem?”

“Not unless they kept their drives going all the time,” Reynolds said.  He moved a knight into an attacking position and waited for her response.  “If they have some antigravity or gravity-generating system, they wouldn’t have to arse around with fusion drives, just like we do.”

Samra smiled and took his rook.  “Do you have any insights as to how they are designed?”

Reynolds shrugged.  “They’re not showing us anything special,” he said.  “It is odd to have ships that size that don’t have any compartments at all with gravity, but it is quite possible that they just don’t have the same urge to generate gravity that we do.  We humans hate the discipline that used to be enforced when someone had spent more than a month or so in zero-gravity, but maybe the aliens are logical enough to avoid the need for enforcing such provisions.”

Samra considered his point before nodding.  Humans tended to suffer if they spent too long in zero-gravity, and then returned to Earth, but now such ill-effects could be counter-acted by drugs and tailed gene treatments.  Most Rockrat children were born with such treatments already inserted into their bodies; it was much rarer on Earth, not least because of the bad reputation such modification had gained when bioweapons had been unleashed in Africa.  Even with AIDS and cancer and many other human ills cured by such treatments, and the human immune system had been boosted to eradicate many more diseases, such research was frowned upon and only conducted in space habitats.

“There are, however, some interesting points,” he continued.  Samra withdrew her hand from her queen and looked up at him.  “The aliens have been making some minor course changes over the past few days, enough so that when we encounter them, the closing speed will be much reduced…particularly for the larger ships.  Unless they make some additional changes in the few days before we meet them, the aliens will have spilt into two groups; one that will meet us and the other that will hang back.  I cannot help, but notice that all of the ships with gravity are holding back…”

Samra lifted an eyebrow.  “What does that suggest to you?”

“I’m not actually sure,” Reynolds said.  “Most of this is literally theoretical to me, but it strikes me that the larger motherships – the ones that could carry thousands upon thousands of occupants – are all hanging back.  It could be an ominous sign.”

“They wouldn’t have come all this way to start a fight,” Samra said.  The phase had been repeated so often on the datanet that it had gotten into common usage.  “Why would they have?”

Reynolds picked his king up and held it in front of her.  “This is the weakest piece on the board, and yet it must be protected.  It cannot become a queen; it cannot move more than one square at a time, but it must be protected because without it the game is lost.  If those spinning alien craft are carrying their…well, their mates and children, they will be very concerned with protecting them.”

Samra’s eyes narrowed.  “What do you think the aliens are doing?”

“I think they’re ensuring that their armed ships meet ours first,” Reynolds said.  He moved a pawn forward and threatened Samra’s remaining knight.  “I just wish that we had been able to talk to them before we launched this fleet, because if they are hostile, we are committed to fighting them at very close range, space-wise.”

Samra said nothing.  The welcome fleet had officially discarded most of the IAU’s regulations on alien contact, which had been written with an eye to covering some bureaucratic committee’s collective ass, and had been transmitting several attempts to talk to the aliens each day.  They’d sent messages in every human language, they’d sent mathematical lines of data that should have been instantly comprehendible to anyone with a basic knowledge of science, they’d sent messages that contained images, even limited translation software…and the aliens had said nothing.  The only sign they were even aware of the welcome fleet was their movements; as Reynolds had said, the aliens were preparing to meet them.

Captain Buckley said more or less the same thing when she met him for dinner later that day.  The Neil Armstrong had benefited from one advantage of the reduced crew; more room for food and other supplies.  The water might have been recycled from things that were best not thought about, while the algae vats were still buzzing away providing material that was nutritious and almost, somehow not quite, inedible.  She’d been told by Buckley that some spacers had committed suicide rather than live on algae-based food; while no one starved on an asteroid or the moon, eating anything worthwhile required some actual money.  While the food supplies lasted, the contact team would have plenty to eat.

“One of the things I will not risk is the ship, more than necessary,” he said.  “The alien movements prove nothing more than a certain sense of prudence on the part of the aliens, but it is worrying.  Have you thought about what we do when the aliens come to rest facing us?”

Samra had considered it; the contact team had discussed it endlessly.  The limited information on the aliens proved nothing, although Reynolds had pointed out that standard-gee, for them, was slightly more than Earth-standard; their ships were rotating at a rate that would produce such a gravity field.  One possibility was that the aliens would want to board the Neil Armstrong; a second possibility was that they would want to invite the humans onboard one of their ships.  Buckley had made one point very clear; the aliens would not get to board any of the other ships until their credentials had been firmly established.

“It depends if they open communications with us,” she said.  They’d signalled the aliens using lasers, for direct untappable ship-to-ship communications; no response.  “They may signal us to come onboard, or they may want to send a shuttle over to the Neil Armstrong, which will be at the front of our formation.”

Buckley grinned.  “What happens if they just stare at us?”

“Then we have to push the issue and make contact with them,” Samra said.  She was reassured by the alien manoeuvres, even if Reynolds and the military officers were concerned; the aliens weren't going to blast past them and head towards Earth.  It had been her nightmare; whatever Buckley did, there was no way that the Neil Armstrong could get back to Earth until a week after the projected arrival time for the aliens.  That would have been embarrassing.  “We can send a single small unarmed shuttle out to see how the aliens respond.”

“Perhaps,” Buckley said.  They finished their dinner in silence.  “I just think that everyone is assuming too much about the aliens.”

Samra said nothing.

***
Although he would never have admitted it, Spencer O'Dowd was becoming more than a little bored on the voyage…and just a little jealous.  He hadn’t seriously considered Samra to be his girlfriend, or anything like that, but she spent very little time with him now that she had gotten what she wanted, a place on the welcome fleet.  The others didn’t want to spend much time with him either; any hope that he would have been seen as a group publicist had either faded or been drained by some of the delegates.  Ambassador Rudolph Giacometti, in particular, expected O'Dowd to serve as a de facto Press Secretary; never mind that O'Dowd worked for a particular media company, which would give him the sack if he shared information more widely than his contract allowed.  The other media companies might have access to his recordings, but it was O'Dowd who would have the inside track…and the time needed to ensure that he got all of the scoops.

As the days passed, he found himself pushed more to the side than ever.  He had nothing in common with most of the scientists, and he lacked the credentials to be anything other than an interfering reporter to the crew of the Neil Armstrong…and he wasn't one of the ones favoured with permission to enter the control section.  The only person who paid attention to him was Giacometti, who was endlessly promoting his own career as Global Ambassador, something that the political briefs suggested would never last.  How could it?  Once contact with the aliens was established, the Great Powers would start dickering with them individually to ensure that they got something out of it, even just preventing any other power from gaining an advantage.  Giacometti, who could not be said to be representing any of the Great Powers, would be pushed to the side as soon as possible…

O'Dowd found that a more attractive thought every day.

“The alien ships are clearly preparing to meet with us,” Captain Buckley said, on the final day.  O'Dowd had watched as the flight paths of the alien craft became clearer and clearer; the alien fleet was clearly splitting up, although both sections were continuing on their course towards Earth.  Some early fears from the asteroid civilisations that the aliens intended to send a section into the asteroids had proven groundless, although the aliens could still change course.  Their smaller ships were clearly capable of constant-boost, unsurprising given their drive technology.  “I trust that you will be watching from one of the main lounges?”

O'Dowd nodded.  Captain Buckley had been reluctant to be interviewed; only very heavy pressure from American journalist associations back on earth had forced him to be interviewed.  It was a tricky issue; if O'Dowd asked the wrong question, O'Dowd could be sent to jail – or worse – for broadcasting the answer.  America had seen too many leaks from reporters to tolerate such costly behaviour any longer.

“I hope so,” he said.  He glanced at his watch out of habit; it was seven hours until the two fleets would be at rest relative to one another.  The humans and the aliens might never have spoken, but their spacecraft spoke the same language; making the rendezvous would be easy.  “Is there any chance that we can collide with the alien ships?”

Captain Buckley didn’t laugh, much to O'Dowd’s private relief; the question had been submitted from his editor, back on Earth.  “Not unless we were both trying to crash into each other, and even then, it would be difficult,” Buckley assured him.  “On a cosmic scale, the largest of the alien ships isn’t even a mote in God’s eye; even at closest approach, we will be passing within thousands of kilometres of the alien ships.  It’s the same as the endless questions about hitting an asteroid; not bloody likely unless someone is trying really hard.”

It wasn’t a diplomatic answer, but O'Dowd appreciated it more than the vague answers given by pilots for the various tourist operations out in the belt.  Few people on the ground appreciated the sheer size of the asteroid belt’s area of space; asteroids, even the largest, were tiny on a cosmic scale.  The entire Earth-based fleet of spacecraft could fly between them with room for a Death Star or two…without even coming close to an asteroid.  Rockrats spent years amidst the belt; they hunted asteroids and even they spent most of their time travelling between them.

“That’s a relief,” he said, and saw the flicker of amusement in Buckley’s eyes.  “Are we prepared for anything when the aliens arrive?”

“You know we never discuss such matters, particularly not on an open channel,” Buckley reproved him.  O'Dowd wondered if it really mattered; the datanet had been buzzing for months about what defences could be constructed against the aliens, should it become necessary.  If the aliens had launched a covert probe or two towards Earth, they might well have been able to read some of the transmissions directly from source…

“Of course,” O'Dowd said.  He smiled as the Captain scowled at him.  “On a final note, will I have the use of the main transmitter for relaying the signal back to Earth?”

“Of course,” Buckley said.  He grinned suddenly.  “You will be reporting from the second lounge, but that won’t cause you any problems.”

The unimportant lounge, O'Dowd thought coldly.  It made a certain kind of sense; too much sense for him to believe that it was anything, but a deliberate trick by someone.  He had hoped to be recording how Samra and the others reacted, but instead he was spending time in the second lounge as the aliens came to a relative halt.

“I would prefer to be in the first lounge,” he said, hiding his annoyance.  Buckley grinned, not fooled for a moment.  “I have a contract to report everything…”

“And you will see everything,” Buckley assured him.  The confidence in his voice was amusing; the Captain was more nervous than he let on.  “Everything is being recorded anyway.”  

O'Dowd grinned; when some of the female researchers had discovered that, there had nearly been a mutiny before the crew had reassured them that the pickups in their cabins had been disconnected, although they would be reactivated once the aliens made contact.  Even so, losing his chance to watch in person as history was made hurt…

“Thank you,” he said.  He forced his voice to show as much gratitude as possible, even though it was a lie and a half.  “I’ll see what happens from the main lounge.”

He watched as Buckley left before he started to dump his recordings back to Earth, ensuring that there would be a backup before he started the long task of updating the daily blog he was sending from the Neil Armstrong.  Some of the details he had withheld could be used, later, for gaining interviews out of some of the researchers, other details had merely been three-day wonders, including one of the homosexual scientists sleeping with a female scientist and discovering that he rather liked it.  That wasn’t so important these days; like so many other useless American laws, victimless crimes had gone the way of the dodo.  Men and women experimented how they pleased…

He caught a few hours sleep before making his way into the second lounge.  It was practically facing the alien craft, although there was no hope of seeing anything through the viewport apart from stars, unless they came very close to the alien craft.  The room was dominated by the view from one of the telescopes, which had started to pick out details on the alien craft; even with computer enhancement, it was hard to see more than a vague set of lights heading towards them.

“The alien craft is emitting some basic radar,” someone muttered, over the intercom.  Everything was being recorded now; the aliens would presumably be interested in having a precise idea of where the human craft were as they glided towards one another.  “It’s a low power scan, nothing particularly sophisticated…wait…they’ve hit us with a low-powered laser radar scan now…”

O'Dowd sat back and waited.  He had considered a muted commentary, but the billions of humans who were watching had cast their votes on the interactive entertainment network had voted against it; a reporter who defied their vote would almost certainly lose his job, no matter how unique he was when it came to being alone near a scoop.  Any moment now, the alien craft would launch a shuttle, or open communications with the human ships…

“We transmitted the basic welcoming call,” a voice said.  Samra’s voice.  O'Dowd wondered just what she was thinking, looking at the culmination of her career; in a sense, it was the culmination of his career as well.  He wanted a soundtrack, some nice dramatic music created by a science-fiction fanatic; the eerie silence, broken only by faint whispers, was somehow ominous.  “No response…”

“We have some movement now,” someone said.  O'Dowd didn’t recognise the voice.  One of the crewmen, rather than the researchers, touches of alarm flickering thought the otherwise calm voice.  “They’ve painted our hull with a very high-powered radar” – lights flickered, on cue – “some interference caused by the power levels…”

On the screen, the alien craft seemed to burst with tiny stars of light…

Chapter Twelve: First Conflict, Take One

USS Neil Armstrong, Deep Space

“Dear holy shit!”

Captain Joe Buckley had seen simulations of space warfare before, but it still astonished him when the aliens opened fire, launching a spread of missiles towards the human fleet.  For an instant, he remained rooted to his command chair as the alien missiles started their flight towards their targets, and then he snapped out of his shock as alien drives started to vanish with the same timing as their human counterpart designs.  Without their drives, the missiles would be much harder to track; he had to act, and fast…

They suckered us in close, Buckley thought.  He had seen the possible implications of the alien manoeuvres long before anyone else, without really accepting the danger; deep down inside, he hadn’t believed that the aliens were hostile.  The evidence was right in front of his eyes, a stream of missiles heading right towards his ship; the aliens had launched…unprovoked, they had fired on his ship!

“Bring up the main active sensors, paint me those targets,” he snapped.  There was no point in trying to hide; the aliens knew exactly where the Neil Armstrong was in space, and there was no way they could evade without using the fusion drive and revealing their position.  More alien radar sources were flickering into existence, pinning his ships as surely as a collector might pin a butterfly on a display case.  His orders allowed him to return fire if the aliens assaulted his fleet…and there was no question that the aliens had opened fire.  “Point defence…come online!”

He ran a hand down the switches positioned on the seat of his command chair, unlocking the firing sequences for the point defence lasers, high powered weapons that could sweep an alien missile out of space…assuming that they could find the target.  The alien missiles were smaller than human-standard designs…and, if they followed comparable lines of thought, they would have altered course very slightly with the aide of gas jets.  It had to be done carefully – even a nuke was small beans on an interstellar scale – but they might just be able to get a missile in close to his ship.

“Point defence online,” Commander Roberts said.  No human mind could handle the speeds required; whatever he had said to that damned reporter, the closing distance between the alien warships and his fleet was close enough for a high-boost missile to cross within minutes at most.  “Firing sequence has activated; targeting has already begun.”

Buckley took a long breath.  “Clear the other ships to open fire at will, aimed at the missiles,” he snapped.  The fight was almost futile, but there were always options; the Neil Armstrong would be almost certainly impossible to extract from the disaster, but some of the other ships could probably make it out with enough time.  He had to make a decision quickly; did he dare open fire on the alien craft directly – something that he had been ordered to avoid unless completely necessary – or did he dare risk leaving the aliens in position to continue to fire on the human ships?  The choice was an easy one; if he took a bite out of the aliens, the Earth might have a chance.  “Find me some bloody targets!”

The alien formation had dissolved into a mass of radar noise and confusion; the targeting computers were having problems locating any alien target, but some of them were almost impossible to hide.  Buckley cursed the decision not to arm his ships with any nukes; the politicians had made his position much harder just by preventing him from destroying any of the massive alien craft with a single blow.  The alien drive system was still a mystery, but if it could be damaged, it might blow up and take the ship with it…

“I have some targets,” the coordination officer snapped.  One thing the fleet had practiced religiously was coordinating their weapons; surprisingly – at least to non-spacers – almost all of the equipment was compatible with only a handful of program fixes and desperate improvisation.  Buckley had considered it a political mistake before trying to get the fleet to work together; without the standardisation program, the humans would have been willing, but the machinery would have been very weak indeed.  “Enemy warships locked on…sir?”

Buckley took a long breath and prepared to enter the history books.  “Order all ships,” he said.  “Fire at will.”

Neil Armstrong hadn’t been intended as a warship; the USSF had only fitted a handful of missile ranks to the bridge ship’s hull, although the complement of lasers for point defence had been increased to the point where it had caused protests from the contact team – who, Buckley thought darkly, were probably praying for the despised military to get them out of the mess.  The scientists who did know something about spaceflight would know that their chances of escape were slim, even if they had the help of Stellar Star of the Spaceways…and as she only existed on the silver screen, that was unlikely.  The ship shook slightly as the missiles launched; the aliens painted the hull again with a radar sweep, tracking the missiles as their drives faded…

The screen flickered for a long moment.

“That was the Chairman Mao,” Commander Roberts said.  “Dear God, that was a nuke…”

Buckley felt sick.  The Chairman Mao had been a small frigate, with a crew of ten; he’d met the Captain and had enjoyed his company.  Captain Li and his crew would only now exist as free-floating atoms; no spacecraft could stand up to a nuclear blast at such close range.  EMP wasn’t so much of a problem with modern shielding, but the sheer force of a nuclear blast was terrifying; the only safe defence was to be somewhere else.

“The aliens are launching a second set of missiles and…I think they’re launching smaller craft,” Commander Roberts said.  His hands were flying over his console.  “Sir, we have incoming…”

We’re dead, Buckley thought, morbidly.  The bridge ship might be the second-largest class of spacecraft that Earth had built, but it couldn’t hope to stand up to a nuke.  Sharon…I hope that…

Neil Armstrong rang like a bell; the lights flickered, faded, and dimmed before emergency power took over, revealing a status display that was covered in red warning lights.  Buckley opened his eyes, not really aware that he had closed them a moment before impact, to look around.  His crew looked equally stunned.

His mind raced.  Why the hell aren’t we dead?

“We took a major hit, somewhere along the fusion tube,” Commander Roberts reported.  Buckley realised that seven of his crewmen in engineering were almost certainly dead; without the fusion tube, the Neil Armstrong was more or less stranded.  The aliens had punched out any hope they might have of escaping the disaster; the shortages in power would mean that they couldn’t hope even to cover themselves against further alien attacks once the laser cannons exhausted their onboard power packs.  “Captain, we’re adrift…”

“They want the ship intact,” Buckley realised.  The fleet was taking a pounding, but the Neil Armstrong, the ship that had been attempting to communicate with the aliens, had been somehow disabled, rather than destroyed outright.  “What the hell did they hit us with?”

“Judging from the telemetry, they slammed a hard KEW-style missile through the hull, rather than anything explosive,” Commander Roberts said.  The screen flickered again and faded; Buckley realised that any hope he had of coordinating the battle was fading along with it.  “The internal sensors have failed completely in that section; I think it’s completely gone.”

The screen changed yet again.  “Hit,” Commander Roberts snapped.  Buckley wondered, for a moment of self-delusion, if there was a chance, but knew that it was illusion.  The human fleet had launched nearly a hundred missiles; if one hit was the best they had been able to do, it suggested that the aliens were winning.  He glanced at the readouts to see if there was any clue as to how that hit had destroyed an entire ship, but there was nothing; the best guess was that the missile had struck something explosive and triggered an explosion.  “We got one of them…”

“Send the signal; tactical command has devolved,” Buckley snapped.  The fusion tube had been knocked out, which meant that the Neil Armstrong was on the verge of losing all power, which would mean that everyone on the ship was doomed to freeze or die in any number of other interesting ways.  The ship would drift forever, unless the aliens came to recover the wreck, or a Rockrat came by to exercise salvage rights.  “The remaining ships” – there were only three, he saw numbly – “are to retreat as fast as possible.”

He didn’t have any illusions as to their chance at escape, but if the aliens had any sense of mercy in their…well, whatever they used for bodies, they might allow the remaining ships to make an escape, rather than wasting effort killing them.  The cold-blooded ambush made him wonder if he was facing a fleet of computers, rather than living and breathing intelligent creatures, but there was no real reason why computers and robots would want gravity on their ships.  Metal bones wouldn’t decay…

He remembered Gavin Reynolds briefly and wondered what had happened to the cyborg.  In theory, that section of the ship was still intact, but internal sensors were failing right across the board and the entire crew might be dead, apart from the seven men on the bridge.  The cyborg might have survived because of his enhancements, but it would be a lonely life…for as long as he lasted.  How long could a cyborg last in space anyway?

“Captain, I think we have a second problem,” Commander Roberts said.  Buckley almost laughed, and then gazed at the radar screen; five new shapes had appeared, boosting towards the stranded human starship.  Four of them were moving too fast to be crewed – unless the aliens can take higher gravity than we can – and were almost fast enough to be missiles, the fifth was holding back and cruising along at a steady unhurried speed.  The radar was failing also, but it picked up a handful of other craft, heading out from the alien fleet towards the Neil Armstrong.

“They’re going to board us,” Buckley said.  The fleet had a handful of personal weapons, but bridge ships weren’t safe places to fire heavy weapons; rocket-propelled bullets would be lethal if they hit the wrong component.  Rockrats used tasers and other non-lethal weapons, but Buckley suspected that they would be almost useless against the aliens; tasers couldn’t hurt a human in powered battle armour, after all.  “Gentlemen, it has been a honour to serve with you.”

His priorities had fallen to carrying out his final duty, ensuring that the aliens recovered nothing useful from the wreck of the Neil Armstrong.  Triggering an automatic wipe of the databanks onboard the spacecraft was easy; destroying the entire ship physically was much harder.  He snapped at Roberts to confirm his identity as well…and then the power failed completely.  Emergency lights glimmered in the darkness, but he knew then that he had failed.  There was no way he could destroy the ship now…

“Try to make contact with any of the remaining ships,” he ordered the communications officer, who carried an advanced personal terminal as part of his duties.  The communications officer shook his head; either though alien jamming, or though simple lack of range, the other ships weren’t responding.  Roberts was pushing at the consoles, trying to raise even a spark of power, but there seemed to be nothing left, but the emergency lighting…

“Nothing, sir,” he reported.  A new noise echoed through the ship, a screeching wave of pain and torment from an entity the crew had believed to possess a soul and even a mind of its own; their ship – Buckley’s ship – was dying around him.  The tearing noise only grew louder, and then he heard the unmistakable noise of air streaming out of the hull.  “Sir…”

The crew all wore standard shipsuits; all they had to do was pull up their hoods and check their personal air supplies.  They all knew the air wouldn’t last very long; for all the advances in compressing air, they had only half an hour of air at most.  The general feeling had been that if there was no help by then, they were dead anyway; Buckley’s first drill sergeant had made that very clear.

“If you are not within range of support equipment,” he’d thundered, “spend your last moments reminding God of all the good things you’ve done in your life, because you fucking won’t get out of it without His direct intervention!”

He lifted his weapon, only to hear the noise grow louder…and then the command compartment broke open around them, spilling them into space.  He saw, vaguely, strange alien shapes and the bright light of a gas flare as the hull tore open…and then something exploded, blasting him into merciful darkness and silence.

***
Spencer O'Dowd had stared, unable to believe his eyes, as the alien ship lit up like the fourth of July; the false colouration of the computer-generated confusing him long enough to miss just what was going on.  His mind gibbered, unable to understand, as the alien missiles vanished from the display…and the sounds of panic from the others convinced him that the missiles hadn’t been destroyed.  He’d been briefed on countless science-fiction first contacts that had ended in violence, but how many of them had started with the aliens simply opening fire at first encounter?

“They fired on us,” he shouted, breaking right into the live feed.  It occurred to him that the live feed directly back to Earth might have already been broken, but he had – somehow – to tell the world what had happened to the Neil Armstrong.  “We have to get out of here!”

There was no response from the command crew, only a series of alarm sounds as the spacecraft struggled for its very survival; he saw, briefly, a glimmer through the viewport as the spacecraft launched missiles out towards the alien starships.  The panic rising within his mind bubbled just under his control; only the determination to provide some kind of record kept him focused.  Reporters had been awarded rewards – mainly posthumous – for such episodes; his life had shrunk down to doing the best he could…

Damn, now I’m glad I didn’t go to bed with her, he thought irrelevantly, as several of the others – including Ambassador Rudolph Giacometti – pounded on the intercom, demanding that Captain Buckley Do Something about the crisis.  O'Dowd was pretty sure that Buckley would be doing everything he could…and if the Captain had been right when he had been talking to O'Dowd earlier, escape would be impossible.

“Damn you, call and tell them that we surrender,” Giacometti was shouting.  O'Dowd noticed with a moment of black humour that the intercom had broken, failed along with dozens of other systems, but the diplomat didn’t seem inclined to notice.  He also doubted that the aliens would take any notice of a surrender offer even if one was broadcast; if worst came to worst, he was sure that the very Right Stuff Captain Buckley would blow up the ship rather than let it fall into enemy hands.  “Call them and…”

A terrible noise echoed through the ship and the lights failed.  Giacometti screamed and panicked, even more than before; one of the other scientists caught hold of him as the emergency systems failed, one after the other.  O'Dowd kept up a running commentary, trusting in the emergency systems that his company had insisted on providing to keep the signals heading out towards Earth.  The other ships in the fleet might relay the signals still further, even if his equipment failed; in a way, he had already accepted his own death…

“This can’t be happening,” Giacometti was gibbering as the emergency lights failed and left them all in darkness, illuminated only by the glowing stars through the viewport.  The noise of tearing metal was overwhelmingly prevalent through the ship; the hatches into the lounge, he couldn’t help, but notice, had sealed automatically.  O'Dowd wondered briefly what had happened to Samra; had the Director already been killed, or was she alive, like him, waiting for inevitable death.  “This can’t be happening…”

The gravity was starting to twist, somehow; O'Dowd didn’t know what it would take to produce that sort of effect.  “It is fucking happening,” he snapped, unable to take it any longer.  Why had Giacometti been sent anyway?  Hadn’t he considered the possibility of meeting his death in space?  “For God’s sake, shut up and stop wasting oxygen!”

“They’re coming,” a female researcher shouted.  O'Dowd turned to see a purple light outside the viewport, something hanging over the remains of the Neil Armstrong; the noise was growing louder.  The waves of panic were becoming impossible to prevent; one of the male researchers seemed to be assaulting a female researcher, or perhaps it was a last desperate attempt to make love before they died.  It hardly mattered as the flickering lights on the outside grew brighter.  “They’re coming to kill us!”

“Shut up,” O'Dowd shouted.  He could feel it now too, the animal at the back of the human mind exploding into the sunlight.  “For God’s sake, shut up!”

Something was happening; a wave of heat seemed to reach out from the hull, catching them all and heating the air.  Someone – perhaps Giacometti, perhaps someone else – screamed as the hull buckled, and the viewport blew out into space.  The air rushed towards the breach; Giacometti’s body fell rapidly towards the breach and impacted with it, for a few seconds sealing the breach before the hull metal continued to buckle and collapsed outwards.  Giacometti vanished into space…

…And, moments later, everyone else in the compartment followed him into the icy darkness of space.  O'Dowd felt a terrible cold…and then nothing, but darkness, and the peace of the grave.

Chapter Thirteen: First Conflict, Take Two

USS Neil Armstrong, Deep Space

“No!”

One moment, Samra had been contemplating the imminent contact with the aliens; the next, the aliens had opened fire, launching a spread of missiles towards the human fleet.  She hadn’t understood what she had been looking at for a long chilling moment; it had been so unexpected, so incomprehensible, that she had wanted to deny the very nature of the attack.  Her attempt to delude herself, as impossible as that had seemed, failed; the first missile crashed into the Neil Armstrong and somehow left them alive.

“What the hell?”  Reynolds asked, as the lights started to flicker.  “Why aren’t we dead?”

“Don’t complain,” someone said, nervously, as the hatch sealed and alarms rose, before fading out of existence.  The main lights in the room failed; some of the equipment, with its own emergency power source, provided a dull glow.  Part of her mind, desperately trying to escape, wondered if anyone could see her in the dim lighting; she found it almost impossible to focus as the dull sound of tearing metal echoed through the ship.

Reynolds had remained calm.  “I can’t reach anyone,” he said.  Samra was trying to remember emergency procedures, but they were limited; unless completely freakish, accidents in space were almost always fatal.  If the bridge ship had been hulled, their lives would be measured in hours at most.  “The bridge is not responding to my calls.”

Samra glanced down at what should have been the live feed from the other ships in the fleet.  It was blank; she wondered if that meant the link had broken, or if the aliens had destroyed the ships?  Her mind kept spinning, trying to understand; why had the aliens launched a completely unprovoked attack?  Had the fleet somehow provoked them?  How could they have done?  Endlessly, she wondered, time and time again; what had happened?

Something flickered out in the viewport; a moment later, there was a terrible tearing sound and she saw the edge of the hull start to break open.  A sudden rush of wind, impossible in space, pulled at her as the gravity started to fade and vanish; she realised dimly that the spinning that generated gravity had to be contributing to the disaster.  She felt the tug of rushing air as the breach into space grew wider; for a second, she almost appreciated the chance to see space without a spacesuit before Doctor Gold was plucked away from his chair and pushed screaming out of the breach, followed by everything that wasn’t tied down, including most of the scientists.  She caught hold of her chair as the pressure intensified, the temperature dropping rapidly, but the tugging only grew and grew and her fingers slipped…

A hand, strong as steel, caught on to her arm.  She didn’t see who had caught her, but her fall towards the breach halted; she watched in horror as the remainder of the team vanished, pieces of the spacecraft following them into the void.  The temperature was still falling; she felt the cold begin to grip at her, even though the dedicated shipsuit she wore.  The pressure was fading now, but she was finding it hard to breath; there was no air in space.  A strange calm came over her as her eyesight began to dim; she could hear, somehow, a voice whispering to her, promising her the secrets of the universe and peace, true peace, at long last.

She knew the voice.  Allah…

Something pulled at her; she had only a second to realise that someone was pulling her against the wall, pushing a life-support mask onto her face.  Her eyesight cleared as pure oxygen pushed into her, the air mix normalising rapidly as the mask monitored her condition, a life-support bubble popping out of the wall and drifting over to her at the behest of a shadowy figure.  She couldn’t see him clearly, but his grip was like iron; he pushed her into the bubble and sealed it.  She wondered, through the pain, if he was an angel…and then, as one of the consoles sparked, she saw him clearly.

She tried to speak.  It hurt; she realised that the close encounter with the vacuum of space had left its mark on her body.  “Gavin?”

If he heard her, he gave no sign; he was walking normally around the cabin, trying to recover other pieces of equipment.  She wanted to rub her eyes; he was walking around without a spacesuit, without any protection at all, as if he was walking towards the local shop.  The cold of space didn’t seem to be affecting him much; his face might be scarred and pitted by the effects, but he had no mask, no air supply…she wondered if she was in the final stages of death and was hallucinating.

He turned towards her and she gasped; even through the plastic of the bubble, she could see that his face was a mess, with one eye – the real one – jammed shut and the other one spinning in his eye socket like a demented cartoon character.  He clanked over – she wondered if he had been wearing magnetic boots, although few of them had bothered with such precautions in the standard gravity field of the bridge ship.  Whatever he was doing, however he was surviving, it was hurting him; she could see blood drifting off his face and floating through the air.  She wanted to be sick; only a routine course of anti-nausea drugs back at the beginning to the flight kept her gorge down.  She still wondered if she was deluding herself somehow…but surely it didn’t take that long to die without oxygen?

Reynolds caught hold of the bubble and tethered it to the hull, before finding a second bubble and pushing it against hers, sealing them together and pulling himself into it.  She tried to remember what she knew about the bubbles; they were intended to provide limited life support for a few hours, but then, without rescue, they would reach the limits of what the bubbles could do for them and die.  At least, she would; dimly, she wondered of Reynolds was an alien.  Had he been the last survivor of a dying world given powers under a yellow sun?

She laughed at herself.  The pain had to be getting to her.

Her radio buzzed; it took her a moment to realise where it was and how to activate it.  “Are you all right?”

Samra giggled, wondering if this was what it felt like to be drunk.  She had never touched alcohol in her life.  Muslims weren’t supposed to touch alcohol, although like most rules it was honoured more in the breech than the observance.  She remembered with a moment of bitterness the peace she’d felt, at the end, but pushed it aside; he’d saved her life.

“No,” she said.  Her body ached; she didn’t dare touch her cheek because she was certain that the pain meant that her looks had been ruined completely.  Samra wasn't particularly vain, but she didn’t want to think about what might have happened to her face; it was sheer luck that she hadn’t lost an eye.  “I'm sore and I hurt and…”

“I know,” Reynolds said, his voice harsh and broken.  She was shocked until she remembered the damage to his throat; he had to be having real problems even talking to her.  “Apart from that, did you enjoy your trip to the theatre, Mrs Lincoln?”

Samra giggled again at the joke.  “What are you?”

“It’s a long story,” Reynolds said.  Samra tried to focus on him, tried to think of some way of worming the story out of him, but it was so hard to think.  They were drifting in space, far from any possible rescue; what was the point of trying to think any longer?  “We may as well keep talking about other things…”

Lights flared; she turned, to see a dark shape floating out in space, lights peering into the hull and illuminating them.  She covered her eyes as the pain increased, a strange feeling that reminded her of when she’d caught sand between her eyelids and scratched her eyes, causing irritation.  Reynolds turned slightly inside his bubble to peer at the alien craft; Samra could see flickering purple light and dark shadows, but there was really no way to distinguish it from the human spacecraft she’d seen.  Only the certain knowledge that the human fleet had lost the brief and bloody battle convinced her that the craft that had arrived was alien.

“They know we’re here,” Reynolds said.  Just then, she would have given anything to hold his hand; what would the aliens do?  Would they open fire, or just leave them stranded until the air ran out?  The lights grew brighter and she cringed away, and then they faded; she turned back…and saw something moving, heading into their room.  “Samra…”

For a moment, she thought she was staring at an octopus, a strange ball-like creature right out of her wildest imaginations.  Reality asserted itself a moment later; the…thing wasn't alive, but a robot, something out of one of the Sonic the Hedgehog games that had enjoyed a comeback on the moon, years ago.  As her rationality returned, she studied the robot, admiring the skill that had gone into constructing it; she could see working tools, cameras and devices she couldn’t even begin to guess at the purpose of, moving and flexing almost like a living thing.  The robot came closer, peering at them…

She smiled.  “What are you looking at?”

The robot showed no response; a moment later, the stars vanished as the alien craft pressed itself against the breach in the hull and sealed it.  A hatch opened, emitting a bright light; did the aliens require a brighter light source than humanity?  She tried to peer into the light, half-expecting tall grey shapes silhouetted against the light, but saw nothing; the robot, glittering in the light, was all she could see of the aliens.  A second later, it had attached what looked like a toilet plunger onto her bubble and was pulling at it, pulling her towards the alien craft.

“It’s still tethered,” Reynolds said.  She could hear the forced calm in his voice and wondered, with a moment of pure admiration, just how he kept himself so calm.  She was on the very verge of panic.  The robot, or its controllers, came to the same conclusion moments later; it left her drifting in the bubble and powered its way around to the tether, examining it for a long moment before holding out a pair of scissors and cutting it.  The bubble floated free, drifting back towards the wall; the robot grasped it and tugged her towards the alien craft.  The light poured in at her and she blinked, closing one eye to protect it, even as she looked around what looked like a mundane hold.  A second later, Reynolds’ bubble bumped into hers and pushed her further into the alien craft; she looked back at the remains of the Neil Armstrong before the robot burned through the hatch – sending a burst of air into space – and headed further into the human spacecraft.

She choked down a sob.  She’d liked the Neil Armstrong.  “What are they going to do to us?”

Reynolds sounded concerned for the first time.  “They want human specimens, obviously,” he said.  “How many others do you think survived?”

Samra didn’t have to think about it.  As far as she knew, they were the only two survivors, although it was possible that there would be other survivors in other bubbles, somewhere in the habitat wheel or maybe in the command section.  The fusion tube had been hit, so there might be no survivors there, but stranger things had happened before.  She started to shake; again, she wanted him to hold her…and knew that as long as they remained in the bubbles, there was no way that they could touch.  

They waited for nearly thirty minutes, according to Reynolds; more alien robots appeared out of the light and headed into the Neil Armstrong, sometimes returning carrying bodies, or equipment.  After seeing the first body, she’d refused to look at them, but Reynolds had watched and kept up a running commentary; a crewman here, a researcher there…she didn’t want to know what might have happened to her friends and colleagues.  She wondered, briefly, what had happened to Spencer O'Dowd; had the reporter survived, or was his body waiting somewhere in the wreck to be discovered by the aliens?

Without warning, the hatch closed; they felt the sensation of the craft firing its small reaction thrusters and heading somewhere.  She guessed that it was heading towards one of the alien craft, but there was no way to be sure; the trip lasted nearly ten minutes while they talked and shared notes, such as they were.  Reynolds said that human history showed hundreds of different ways in which humanity treated their prisoners, from the fairly decent treatment of prisoners during the early stages of the Wrecker War, to the behaviour of the Religious Police kuffār before they had been overthrown.  The aliens wouldn’t want to damage their specimens, would they?  Reynolds was no comfort; he considered it very possible that the aliens would test them to find out just what they could do.

“Don’t show them everything,” he said, seriously.  “Don’t let them realise how strong and clever you are.”

Samra, who felt neither at the moment, managed a brave smile.

The hatch opened again and the bubbles were pulled out by the air pressure, drifting into another larger room.  A robot appeared behind them, taking Samra’s bubble in one of its manipulating devices and slicing though the plastic with a knife.  She screamed, unable to help herself, as alien atmosphere rushed in; she heard Reynolds shout something over the intercom as alien air entered her lungs.  It was hot, and steamy, with a vague taste in the air, something utterly…alien.  She’d seen videos of jungles in Africa and South America; the aliens seemed to love such temperatures, judging by what they had shown her.  The alien robot released Reynolds, then cleared away the remainder of the bubbles, leaving them drifting in the middle of the room.

She held his hand gratefully.  She had never thought that she would be so glad for a simple human contact.  “Now what?”

“I have no idea,” Reynolds said.  He pulled at her lightly and launched her towards the wall; with perfect timing, she pulled on him and they spun together into the wall, just lightly enough to land and take hold of the handholds.  They looked as if they had been designed for smaller hands than human hands, but there were hundreds of them; it was almost like a child’s climbing frame.  “I guess we get to meet them.”

A screen flickered into existence.  She turned, to see a cartoon-style human looking back at her; a second, a female, joined the first a moment later.  She had only a moment to wonder what was happening, and then clothes started to vanish on the image, revealing a form that – part of her mind laughed – was not exactly physically correct.  There was a pause, and then the image repeated, and repeated.

“They want us to undress,” Reynolds said, slowly.  His voice was reluctant; Samra shared his concern.  She had never been naked in front of a man before, even if they weren’t likely to need many clothes in the alien temperature; the aliens probably wanted to ensure that they had nothing dangerous on their person.  Samra doubted that she could hide anything from them.  “I don’t think we have a choice.”

“I don’t want to,” she said.  She knew her voice sounded childish, but she couldn’t help it.  The alien instruction cut right to the heart of her very being.  “I don’t want them to see me.”

“I won’t look,” Reynolds said.  He turned from her and started the process of undressing in zero-gravity; it wasn't an easy task even with a shipsuit.  He wriggled out of it and removed his underwear and watch; the robot caught the clothes and pushed them firmly away from him, then pointed with one long manipulator towards the image.  The male had vanished; the female image was repeating the undressing action, time and time again.  “I’m sorry, but…”

Samra undid her tunic, blinking away tears from her eyes, followed rapidly by her bra and panties.  Reynolds didn’t look at her as the alien robot caught her clothes as well, carrying them away and leaving them alone.  Modestly, she wished for longer hair to cover her bare breasts; she crossed one of her arms over her breasts, holding the other in front of her tightly-closed legs.  She kept her eyes lowered, trying to avoid the temptation to sneak a peek at him; the aliens clearly understood very little about humanity.  Or, maybe, they knew too much; a naked human was someone who was much less aggressive, much more defenceless.

“Something is happening,” Reynolds said.  A large hatch, large enough to stop a charging tank, was opening soundlessly; she heard a faint click-click-click noise echoing through the room as the air currents started to change, blowing them towards the hatch.  She allowed Reynolds to go first, pulling herself along as best as she could with one hand, and flinched back as the light grew brighter, revealing a much larger room in the interior of the alien craft.  “I think…my god!”

He stopped.  Samra didn’t realise in time that he had stopped and crashed into his back.  She would have been terribly embarrassed under other circumstances – her breasts had bumped into him - and then she saw what had brought him up short.  It stood there, larger than life, too real to be denied or buried under what passed for rational thought.

She knew, without any doubt at all, that she was gazing upon a creature that had been born on a very different world.

Chapter Fourteen: First Contact

Seeker for Truth, Deep Space

Although she would never have admitted it, Oolane-Researcher-Seeker was as excited as any of the Oghaldzon ever became when the first humans were brought onboard the starship.  She had spent most of the long flight in suspension and wasn’t fond of zero-gravity, but she would have happily have done whatever it took, with the exceptions of ThrillKill or MemeKill, to have been the first of the research team to actually meet humans.

The Oghaldzon had watched grimly as their fleet approached the human star.  They’d learnt rapidly that the humans had expanded to most of the worlds and asteroids in they system, their unique disunity actually providing a source of strength as they even considered sending a small craft – only fifty kilometres long – to another star.  The news had almost caused a panic on the starship; the humans might have realised that the Oghaldzon existed and might be intending to send their starship to visit their homeworld.  There had been no proof, however…until radio signals had started to fall directly on the fleet, asking for identification and offering everything.  Human groups had offered to trade, others had asked the Oghaldzon to take a side in human disputes; the Fleet Council had chosen to ignore all of the communications until they reached human space.  The human fleet hadn’t been a surprise – signals beamed directly to the fleet had told them everything about the welcoming fleet – but there had been no real choice; Oolane had watched in horror as the Oghaldzon had opened fire…

The battle had been short and unpleasant; the desperate need to convince the humans that they could be beaten – would be beaten – had required the Oghaldzon to take more risks than normal.  If the humans had been rational creatures, the Oghaldzon would have been delighted to have met and talked with them, perhaps even shared knowledge with them, but humans were far from rational.  Their transmissions made that clear; they abused their own people, fought amongst themselves, and practiced both ThrillKill and MemeKill on a regular basis.

She watched through the monitors – her sonar senses couldn’t penetrate the hull metal of the Seeker for Truth – as the humans slowly and reluctantly undressed.  Human broadcasts had told the Oghaldzon a great deal about the species, but very little of it seemed to make sense.  At the moment, onboard the starship; Oghaldzon wore heavy clothes, or nothing at all.  Humans seemed to consider clothing important to them.  Like the others on the research terms, Oolane’s instructions had been simple; find out if humans could be tamed, or if their world was forever to be sealed off from space.

I won’t let you die, she thought, wishing that she could reassure the humans.  She had volunteered for the role of their direct liaison, a role for which her only practical experience was as a teacher of the young, once they had reached sentience and could be tamed into civilisation.  It wasn’t ideal; if there was one thing that was beyond dispute, it was that humans were not Oghaldzon.  A single look at the strange two-legged creatures proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt.  I have to keep you alive so that I can learn from you and you can learn from me.

A warning light flickered up as the hatch began to slide open.  Oolane felt a sudden flicker of near-ideological excitement, the sense that she was about to insert her own idea into the dominant memeplexe.  A human, going by their transmissions, might speak of anticipating a mating…but there was much that remained obscure about human mating practices.  Oolane herself was out of season, but even when she entered season and was ready to allow her eggs to be fertilised and placed within one of the breeding zones, it wasn’t a matter of life or death.  For the humans, it seemed that their entire lives were based around mating with their ideal partner…

She extended her sonar as the first human drifted in and came to a stop when he – she thought it was a male, insofar as the Oghaldzon term could be applied to a human – saw her.  She was pleased to note that one of her conclusions had been accurate; the humans didn’t seem to possess any form of sonar sense, instead peering at her with eyes that were much more…elaborate than any Oghaldzon eye.  The Oghaldzon eyes were smaller, almost vestigial; some of the biological researchers had speculated that one day the Oghaldzon would evolve to a point where they would no longer need eyes.  She didn’t believe it herself; sonar had its limitations, particularly when out in space.

The second human appeared, a female; Oolane was pleased.  They would have one of each to study.  She extended her sonar again, wondering if the humans would sense her examining their bodies; if they did, they showed no sign, although she wasn't sure that she would have recognised a sign if she saw one.  The male had a great deal of equipment implanted in his body, completely dark to her sonar; the female had only a handful of implants, one near her neck, one implanted in her skull, and one positioned in her lower body, just below her heart.  That entire region had something to do with human mating, she recalled from the human transmissions, but further study would be required to understand its exact nature.  What exactly did the very alien humans think of their own behaviour?  If they lacked sonar, how had their learned about their own bodies before they have developed high technology?

The more she gazed upon them, the more alien they seemed.

She composed herself and formulated her first message.  Human hearing seemed to be different to Oghaldzon hearing; they’d prepared a speaker to produce a loose version of a human speaker.  She knew the main human language, but it would be tricky to speak to them without the technology; Oghaldzon voices were much higher-pitched than human tones.

“I greet you,” she said carefully.  “Welcome onboard the Seeker for Truth.”

***
For a moment, Samra thought that she was looking at a deer, a bizarrely-mutated deer.  The alien stood, facing her, a featureless domed head seeming to be leaning slightly towards her.  Her eyes travelled over the creature with a growing sense of disbelief; three legs, two smaller forelegs facing her, under what she thought was a head, and one much larger hindleg at the rear of the alien, supported the alien.  Its leathery skin was a strange mixture of black and grey; what little of its flesh she could see seemed to be covered in strange fronds, lying down like fur.  Six strange long tentacle-like arms hung down from its body, three to a side; they moved and flexed, seemingly at random.

It was alien as hell.

A sense of numb disbelief swept over her and she almost fainted.  The alien’s face – if face it was – was almost impossible to grasp.  It wore a simple black uniform; as it stepped – pranced – closer, she could hear a strange sound, right at the edge of her hearing, surrounding the creature.  She had, subconsciously, expected to face a humanoid race; the sheer presence of the alien awed her into silence.  She wondered, just for a brief moment, if the heat was getting to her; she pinched her arm quickly, but the scene refused to fade from her eyes.

She could hear a slight tick-tick-tick as the alien spoke; moments later, she heard it speaking Standard English, coming from a device it wore around it’s…neck.  The great dome seemed to be facing her, but the alien eyes looked cold and dead, almost as black and strange as the eyes of a rodent, like the hamsters that had gotten loose in the colony, years ago.  The voice was warm, but fake; the voice of a computer-generated personality.  It was only later that it struck her how alien that was.

“I greet you,” the alien said.  The underlying tick-tick-tick shook her, somehow; she guessed that part of the alien’s voice was too high for her to hear.  “Welcome onboard the Seeker for Truth.”

Samra had planned a long welcoming speech for the aliens.  Somehow, she didn’t feel like giving it; she wanted explanations, but she was also terrified.  Somehow, seeing how alien the alien was, she felt reassured…but she also felt fear.  What could a creature that walked on three legs and seemed completely unconcerned about them have in common with humanity?

“Thank you,” she stammered.  She sensed Reynolds’ quiet amusement from his position behind her; it almost helped her to forget that she was naked.  Fury bubbled up, mixed with outrage and horror; she leaned forward, wondering if her anger could intimidate the alien.  “Why did you attack us?”

The alien didn’t answer her.  She pushed forward, wondering if she dared try to force answers out of the alien; Reynolds’ put his hand gently on her shoulder before her rage sent her tumbling over in zero-gee.  The alien stood neatly on the floor; out of habit, she checked its feet – hooves – and saw the magnetic boots that it wore.

“We came in peace,” she protested, a futile protest against the universe.  Were the aliens Allah’s devils?  “We came to welcome you!”

“Such contact must happen only on our terms,” the alien said.  The bland voice didn’t change at all; she wondered if the fact that the alien was almost debating with her was a good sign or a bad sign.  “You will teach us about your people and help us to forge relations with your race that will prevent further conflict.”

Samra wondered, inanely, if the alien knew what it was saying…

“We will escort you to a place where you may rest,” the alien said.  “Once you have rested, we will discuss your planet, your people, and what we may do to prevent further conflict.”

Reynolds asked the question she would never have dared to ask.  “What happens if we don’t cooperate?”

The alien answered his question with a question.  “Why do you have so much” – something unintelligible – “inside your body?”

“I don’t understand,” Reynolds said.  His face seemed to have paled slightly, although it was hard to tell under the bruises caused by burst blood vessels.  Samra remembered that he had survived the vacuum of space and wondered just what was inside his body…and how the aliens had known that it was there.  They hadn’t been x-rayed, had they?  Would they have known if they had?  “What is inside my body?”

“You have” – the alien seemed to be struggling for words – “systems implanted inside your body, meshed into your neural net,” it said.  “Why do you have them inside your body?”

“I was caught up in an accident once and it was the only way to save my life,” Reynolds said.  Samra would have bet her maidenhead that he was lying; she’d never heard of any technology that could do anything like that without massive physical and mental trauma.  “How did you know it was there?”

“You will be held onboard this ship until you can be returned to your people, once the unfortunate expansion of ideas is completed,” the alien said.  Samra blinked at the non setiquer before realising that the alien was answering Reynolds’ earlier question about what would happen to them if they didn’t cooperate.  There was a clue to the alien mentality there; she was sure of it.  She forced herself to focus, like the legendary heroine Mizba, on Gathering Intelligence; perhaps it could be used to broker a peace.  She was sure that if the pair of them fought, all it would achieve would be the pair of them dying gloriously…if the aliens even bothered to kill them.  Being naked brought home to her just how defenceless they were.  “We ask you to cooperate to spare unnecessary death and meme-death.”

Samra pushed.  “Why did you attack us?”

“You will be escorted to your holding area,” the alien said, and started to clump down the corridor.  Samra suppressed an insane urge to grab the alien’s tail; instead, she used the handholds to pull herself along, cursing the alien desire for nakedness.  The alien himself – herself? – wore only a covering; did they consider clothing to be completely optional?  She couldn’t cover herself; she could only hope that Reynolds would be a gentleman.  “Do not attempt to head anywhere else in this ship.”

Inside the main body of the starship, the lighting changed radically, going from blinding white to near-complete gloomy darkness, with flickering red lights shimmering through the gloom.  It was always hot and steamy, but some of the time she sensed more than saw the presence of other aliens nearby, carrying out their own incomprehensible tasks.  The aliens all looked almost identical to her; their colouring was a mixture of black and grey, but sometimes they wore completely random colours in their…fur.  Was it a racial issue, she wondered, or something optional?

A hatch hissed open, revealing a room with one large sleeping mat and what she suspected was a toilet, along with a small set of food.  She felt her mouth fall open as she took in the emergency rations, before she realised that the aliens had had to have stripped the Neil Armstrong of everything that could be used to keep them alive.  Some of the food looked as if it needed to be cooked, but they would have to make do; most space-foods heated automatically if they were still in their original packing.  She hoped that Reynolds could cook if they had to cook for themselves; she knew very little about cooking.  Her mother would have laughed…

“You may use the controls to set your own environmental conditions,” the alien said, waving a pair of hands at the small set of controls on the wall.  If you require assistance, you may call me using the intercom; I will be there as soon as you require me.  Samra almost smiled; the alien was treating it as if they were entering a hotel.  “We will talk again once you are rested.”

“A question,” Samra said.  “What is your name?”

The alien looked, for a moment, like a cat that had swallowed a hairball.  “Oolane,” the alien said, following up with a series of clicks that seemed – again – to partly exist outside her hearing range.  She supposed that they were name, rank and serial number…or maybe the alien was reciting his or her lineage.  “I am a female of my species.”

Samra looked the alien up and down.  No breasts, no thighs…it would disappoint the movie producers who had created hundreds of cute female aliens, from Saavik to Delenn, both of whom had captured hearts right across the universe.  The alien – Oolane – was about as attractive as a…well, as a not very attractive thing.

“Pleased to meet you,” she said finally, as Oolane backed out.  The alien seemed to have no problems walking backwards without crashing into something.  “Perhaps we can convince your leaders not to start a war that will get millions of people killed.”

“In the long run, billions more will die,” Oolane said, and backed out completely.  The door slid closed; Samra couldn’t help, but notice that there was no way for them to open it from their side.  It had been foolish for her to hope that they would have access to the entire ship, but she had wondered; Oolane had seemed so civilised…and yet her race had opened fire and destroyed the welcome fleet.  It all caught up with her and she sagged, suddenly; Reynolds caught her and held her close as she sobbed.  Their sweat held them together for what felt like hours.

“They fired on the fleet,” she said.  She wanted to pinch herself, in case it was all a dream, or a nightmare; she tried, only to feel the pain.  “They fired…what are you?”

“Nothing anyone needs to know about,” Reynolds said.  He tapped his ears and nodded to the walls; Samra cursed herself as she realised that the aliens would be listening to their every word.  Whatever they said, whatever they did, it would all be added into some great alien database of human behaviour and considered representative of the human race.  The aliens had – intentionally or otherwise – caught one of each sex; had they been placed in together as a kind of experiment?  How on Earth – or, rather on their homeworld – did the aliens mate?  “I think, for the moment, that we need to get some sleep.”

“Just promise that you won’t jump on me in the night,” Samra said, trying to find something for her to cling to with her entire world shattering around her.  “Why did they open fire?”

“There’s no way to know, yet,” Reynolds said.  He pushed himself over to the sleeping mats…and stuck.  Samra tested the mat and realised that it was sticky enough, somehow, to hold them down while they slept; she guessed that they had been placed in a position where humans, or aliens, wouldn’t be hurt if the starship boosted before they woke up.  Air, hot and musty with strange alien smells, drifted over them; suffocating in their own exhalation wasn’t a risk.  “Perhaps they wanted contact under their own terms.”

Samra lifted an eyebrow.  “When a force wants the overwhelming advantage, they will act to ensure that they have it, even if that means dominating the area and killing or suppressing all resistance,” Reynolds said.  “Maybe they considered it their safest approach to contacting humanity; contact very firmly on their terms.”

She found it surprising that he was trying to be optimistic.  “Maybe,” she said, unconvinced.  She’d read a thousand stories where First Contact had gone bad and few of them had covered anything like their situation.  “Maybe…”

Reynolds grinned and lay back.  “Or maybe they’re just bastards,” he said, and closed his eyes.  Samra laughed despite herself.  Being naked with a man who was still very much a stranger wasn’t as bad as it could have been.  “Goodnight.”

Chapter Fifteen: Backs to the Wall

Washington DC, USA

The President sat in his office and stared down at the table.  The video-telephone on his desk had finally fallen silent; there had been no time to call a proper meeting of the United Nations Special Security Council, or even reform Congress and the Senate for an emergency debate.  The nation was panicking – the world was panicking – and there was little time.  He found it hard to grasp; he was a politician, not a religious leader, but any politician who wanted to remain a politician had an instinctive grasp of grand strategy.

The aliens had fired on the welcome fleet.

No, he corrected himself, with the brutal honesty that had kept him from falling by the wayside, first as a Governor of Kansas, and then as a candidate for the position of President; the aliens had wiped out the welcome fleet.  The Neil Armstrong, as far as they could tell, had been damaged, perhaps destroyed; the remaining ships had been destroyed with nuclear warheads.  The fleet had been utterly destroyed by the aliens; if there were survivors, like Gavin Reynolds, they were under alien control.  Perhaps Reynolds could find a way to do some damage before the aliens smashed him, or perhaps he was already dead; there was no way to know.  His low-powered transmitter could hardly be used without being detected.

“Mr President?”

The President looked up into Admiral Nelson Oshiro’s eyes.  “Admiral,” he said, slowly, “just what happened?”

“We’ve been collating the date ever since the connection went terminal,” Oshiro said.  It took the President a moment to realise he meant that the spacecraft had all been destroyed.  “We had a constant uplink coming in from all American craft in the fleet, including the Neil Armstrong, and the other nations have been sharing data with us.  The aliens definitely opened fire first, launching a spread of missiles towards the welcoming fleet…and they intended, we suspect, to capture the Armstrong.  We think that they launched some kind of KEW at the Armstrong’s fusion tube; the other ships were all hit by nukes, eventually.”

He scowled.  “I rather wish that we hadn’t done such a good job when we built the Armstrong,” he admitted.  “A weaker ship might have shattered under the impact of the alien missile; instead, at the last signal, smaller alien craft were preparing to board the ship.  If prisoners were taken…we don’t have any way of knowing…they had to have been taken onboard the alien ships.  The Armstrong was definitely beyond repair.

“There’s little to add about the other ships,” he continued.  “They were all targeted by nuclear missiles, following roughly comparable operational patterns to our own, although the aliens fired more than we would have done; that’s going to have to change, by the way.  The point defence network worked fairly well, but given the inherent limitations of the systems and the alien advantage of surprise, it wasn’t enough to cover the fleet long enough for it to build up any real speed and make it’s escape.”

The President put his head in his hand.  “Is there any good news?”

“Firstly, the alien nukes that we saw have less kilo-tonnage than ours, although that may be just because of the limited scope for operations,” Oshiro said.  “The second point is that we definitely took out one of their warships and damaged a second, although we have no data at all to deduce just how badly we hurt the bastards.  It’s bad – we can expect them to assault Earth as soon as possible – but it’s not a complete disaster.  We took a hit, Mr President, but not a complete disaster.”

The President met his eyes.  “So, what now?”

“I think that they will head towards Earth at once,” Oshiro said.  He tapped the display to make his point.  “The Earth-Moon system is the centre of political and economic life in the solar system; note, sir, that Earth not only provides a great many components to other colony efforts, but most of the colonists as well.  If they knock out most of the industrial stations in orbit around Earth, they will cripple us, even if they do nothing else…and we cannot expect them to do nothing else.”

“No,” the President said.  He stared at him.  “God damn it, Admiral; what the hell do they want?”

Oshiro held his eyes.  “The analysts believe that the aliens want, in our terms, to establish themselves as the masters in this system,” he said.  “Why?  We don’t know; they could be governed by economics, or they might find the human form disgusting, or…we don’t know, but their logical next move is to lay siege to Earth and prevent us from launching resupply missions to the remainder of the solar system.  If we lose the ability to funnel people to Area 51, for example…”

He allowed his voice to tail off.  “Tell me something,” the President said.  “Exactly how confident are you of this information?”

“Unless they’re too alien for us to understand, they have to understand that we have more productive capability than they have in this system,” Oshiro said.  “Destroying or capturing as much of our capability as possible will tip the balance in their favour, the more so because we have the time they lack…unless they ensure we can’t use it.  Once that happens…they may intend to land on Earth, they may intend to simply seal us off from space and hunt down the Rockrats one by one, or they may intend to exterminate the human race.”

The President closed his eyes.  “What now?”

It was the Vice President who spoke.    Vice President Calista Elodia was from one of the Mexican states; integrating Mexico into the United States had altered the balance of power completely.  There had been three Hispanic Presidents and two black ones, although power was shifting back towards the north as the effects of American technology took their toll.  The President respected her, rather than liked her; she was popular with the voters for being blunter than a club in the face.

“The population is panicking already,” she said.  There had been no way to prevent the news from getting out; Spencer O'Dowd’s dramatic death on camera had ensured that everyone would learn quickly.   “Our priority is to prevent a panic and prepare for a war.  Admiral, do you believe that the aliens will land?”

“We would be foolish not to prepare for the possibility,” Oshiro said.

“That’s not quite an answer,” Calista snapped.  “Is there any way that you can provide a definite answer?”

“They have the capability to do so, unless they are somehow unable to land because of the effects of living permanently in a low-gravity environment,” Oshiro said, placidly.  “As we don’t know just what they want…”

Calista turned to face the President.  “Allan, the panic must be prevented,” she said.  “It was barely manageable before, even with thousands of people heading into the countryside, but now there will be thousands more heading out and trying to find a place to hide.  There have already been hundreds of unpleasant incidents; we have to prevent more from happening, or we will be completely unavailable to oppose the aliens at the same time.”

“The exodus has already started,” Casper Henderson said.  The National Security Advisor sighed loudly.  The President eyed him suspiciously.  “We have to order people to stay in their homes, now, because otherwise the panic will prevent us from making any kind of military manoeuvres without running into civilians.”

“I should point out that if the aliens do intend to bomb cities, more people would die if we kept them in the cities,” General William Denny said.  The President gave him an icy look; his old friend wasn’t normally given to hiding his thoughts, but pushing in such a manner was almost calculated to undermine someone’s authority.  “The only real advantage gained by keeping people in the cities is in keeping the roads clear, and frankly that's not that much of a problem at the moment.”

“It will get worse,” Henderson predicted.

“I’ll address the nation,” the President said.  He leaned back and forced himself to take a few breaths.  “I have been in conference with the Russians and the Chinese.  Once we got over the random ungrounded panic, and the more grounded panic that followed, we made some quick agreements.  Overall command of the combined defences of Earth will be placed in the hands of Admiral Thompson, of the British Commonwealth; descent afterwards will be by seniority.  We chose him by randomly pulling a name out of a hat – although the official record will tell everyone how great Thompson is – and the command of ground forces will remain with the various governments in the area.”

There were nods.  It was possible – just – to coordinate every independent space-based defence network, particularly in the panic caused by the alien attack; coordinating operations on the ground would be almost impossible.  If the aliens landed, the defence of any particular area was best left to the locals, who would know what they were doing.  Later, perhaps, some additional cooperation might be required; the aliens might land along the Canadian Border, or in Mongolia, or even in Egypt, somewhere where two or more great powers met.  How many invasions could they launch at once?  There could be billions of aliens in their fleet?

“Once the aliens attack, I expect that we may well need to prepare for what happens if we lose control of LEO – we in the sense of the human race,” Oshiro said.  He gazed around the room.  “We may face an invasion of both Earth and the Moon; the moon, in fact, might be a more logical target for the first invasion, although they might be reluctant to wreck devastation on the facilities there that they will need in the future.  If that happens…”

Calista scowled at him.  “Will it happen?”

“It’s something we have to prepare for,” Oshiro said.  “Once the aliens blockade Earth, we will be unable to ship anything to the asteroids, the moon, Mars, Venus…or even into LEO.  In the long run, such a strong alien position will strangle us.  The blockade will have to be broken.  That will not be an easy task…but it is one that we can handle, given time.  I propose, therefore, that our orders to Area 51 are that they go into deep cover and continue to churn out warships, ones that will be updated by what we saw yesterday and what we will see when the aliens reach Earth.”

He pushed on before anyone could interrupt.  “The ships that are currently ready on Area 51 will not be enough to turn the tide in their own right,” he said.  “There are forty-seven ships designed for fighting and thirty converted ships in Earth orbit; the nine ships at Area 51 won’t make that much of a difference.  We have around a week, at least, before the aliens reach Earth; we should use that time to get as many technicians and supplies out to the belt and the moon before its too late.”

“I see,” the President said.  “And then?”

Oshiro took a breath.  “We think that the aliens are very limited in what they have with them,” he said.  “In a week, we could build a warship; how quickly can they establish the plants to build more ships of their own?  We build up in the belt, using Area 51 as a base, and then return to Earth with those ships, break the blockade, and threaten their motherships.  If they’re not insane, we might be able to use that to force them to surrender…”

“And if they are not?”  Calista asked.  “What do we do then?”

“If they are not, we may have to destroy the motherships,” Oshiro said, unflinchingly.  “This is not a war between human factions, but a direct unprecedented clash with another race, one that has started the war.  We talked sometimes about a war of extermination over the last hundred years, we claimed that it was them or us, but the truth was that we didn’t have to exterminate Islam to win.  Now, we may face the same question, against an enemy of overwhelming power and unknown resources.  We don’t know who they are, we don’t know how many there are, and we don’t know what they want.”

He stood up.  “My suggestion is this; we make plans, we make our preparations, and when the time comes, we hit as hard as we can,” he said.  “We may not get a second chance.  This is war.”

***
There was a photograph of a handsome young American – although the angle had been specifically played to ensure that the young man looked arrogant, unpleasant, cowardly, perverted, dead, or sometimes all five at once – substituting for a dartboard in the base; the soldiers in the small base used it to remind themselves of how much could go wrong.  Colonel Nathan Hackenback had been an intelligence officer, back during Operation Infinite Justice; his methods had been brutal, disgraceful, and above all…useless.  All officers had had to come to terms with the use of torture to extract information from suspects, but Hackenback had been a freak; he had enjoyed the sessions and had used his authority to interrogate people who could not possibly have known anything useful, purely for kicks.  His field court martial, followed by death by firing squad, had been a useful lesson, not just for Americans.

“The orders haven’t been changed,” Captain Christopher Fardell said, briefing his lieutenants.  The reserves had provided him with a company of one hundred battlesuits and access to additional reserves scattered around the area, although they were mainly light infantry and light amour.  “If the aliens land, we are to engage them as soon as possible, operating under stealth protocols.”

He scowled.  One reason for stealth protocols was that everyone was certain that most bases on the ground, particularly the big obvious USAF bases, would be hit from orbit as soon as the aliens broke into LEO.  He couldn’t dispute the concept – and nor could the Pentagon, which had been reassigning units as fast as possible to get them away from their bases – but it struck him as somehow defeatist, as if they were certain to lose the bases.

“And if they don’t land?”  Lieutenant Tjitze De Boer asked.  Fardell scowled; it was a good question and he had no answer.  “What if they just blast away from orbit?”

Fardell favoured him with a sly smile.  “Then we just sit tight under here and wait to die,” he said.  The bunker had been rated nuclear-proof, unless the bomb detonated right on top of the bunker, they should be safe from orbital attack.  If the aliens did start bombing at random – and it would have to be random unless someone really fucked up and transmitted a betraying emission – he wasn’t sure if it would be worth coming out of the bunker.  If that happened…

He pushed the thought aside.  “I want everyone to remain in the bunker,” he said.  There really was no way to know just what the aliens could see from their position, or if they hadn’t inserted some stealth probes into Earth’s atmosphere, or something so…alien that no one human would have thought of it.  “From today, we go into a total lockdown; no visits out, no training sessions in the open, all training to be done in the simulators and so on, and so on.  If the worst happens, I want to be ready, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant De Boer said.  The others echoed him.  “What if we were to…”

A soldier shouted, interrupting him.  “Captain, sir, it’s the President,” he shouted.  Fardell was on his feet and heading towards the communal mess hall before his mind had quite caught up with the words.  He knew it had to be important because they had been interrupted.  “He’s about to address the nation!”

The mess hall was larger than Fardell had expected, buried deep under the ground; the five hundred men under his direct or indirect command needed plenty of rest and relaxation.  The room was packed, but soldiers made room for the senior officers as they looked up at the big display, which normally displayed the Super Bowl or another sporting event.  Now, it displayed the President; Fardell couldn’t help, but think that the politician looked as if he had aged radically over the last few days.

“My fellow Americans,” the President said.  A small tag at the bottom of the screen said LIVE; that was something that showed it was really important.  Most media programs these days, whatever they were, were recorded and dumped onto secure areas of the datanet; subscribers could access them whenever they wanted, at cost.  “It is with a heavy heart that I come before you to confirm the destruction of the Neil Armstrong and the remainder of the welcome fleet, at the hands of the aliens.”

The room let out a long gasp.  They had known, but it had suddenly become very real.  “I have been in communication with the other human nations and we have agreed to stand shoulder to shoulder against this new threat,” the President said.  Fardell thought about it; he had trained with Commonwealth and European soldiers, but knew nothing about Russians or Chinese.  The Caliphate had a bad reputation, mostly unearned, for military matters; the other powers were too small to bother about.  “We have united our orbital defences and we possess the power to drive the aliens back from our home planet and force them to come to the conference table.  We do not know what they want, we do not know who they are, but we know that they will pay a heavy price for their acts.”

He paused.  “There is nothing that the human race cannot do if we stand together,” he concluded.  “We will face this new threat and emerge triumphant; goodnight, and God bless America…and the entire human race.”

Chapter Sixteen: Life Among The Aliens

Seeker for Truth, Deep Space

There was no rhyme or reason to the conference room, no suggestion of symbolic authority or of a hierarchy; the seven Oghaldzon in the room were scattered around, kneeling on their forelegs as they studied the image that was rapidly building up in front of them.  By nature, the Oghaldzon were a consensus-building race; the seven members of the Fleet Council represented each of the main different departments, which in turn were families of specialists and students, the closest thing that the Oghaldzon had to proper families.  The scent of mating season – one of the subsets had come into season – was heavy in the air, but the Oghaldzon ignored it; it just wasn’t important to them.

Dataka-War Commander-Fleet, commander of the Oghaldzon force, studied the display, then tapped with one foreleg against the deck, calling the room to attention.  The clicking of sonar flickered through the room, touching each of the seven briefly, an old ritual dating from back before the days when the Oghaldzon were a united race.  They gave him their attention; they would listen, dispute, and then act as the consensus decided.

“The human ship has been analysed,” Dataka said.  The researchers had been sending their robots swarming all over the human ship, just to find out as much as they could before something happened to change the balance of power.  “Researcher?”

Takalak-Researcher-Seeker lifted his foreleg briefly. “The human spacecraft is roughly five cycles behind ours,” he said, “but there are some interesting points.  The first one is that most of the spacecraft was designed as modular units, particularly the command section that would have remained permanently in zero-gravity.  Despite the pounding we subjected the ship to, large chunks of it remained intact and could be reactivated now, should we desire to try.  It would require considerable effort, but much of the ship could be repaired fairly quickly.

“The computer records on the ship were largely wiped,” Takalak continued.  “They weren’t wiped by our attack; we found traces of specialised programs intended to erase and destroy all data, including the storage units, although power failed before they could complete that task.  Human computers, in general, are roughly comparable to ours; we should be able to read them once we capture more intact computers, but the converse is also true.”

“The humans will be able to read our computers,” Dataka said.  “Is there any way that we can protect them?”

“Don’t let the humans capture a computer,” Takalak said wryly.  “Our standard precautions should be sufficient to handle any major threat, provided we have time to use them; failing that, we can ensure that no computer that contains important information goes somewhere where it can be captured.  If the humans capture Seeker for Truth, we will have lost and then the priority would be ensuring that the human race knows nothing about where we come from.  Incidentally, the humans paid particular attention to destroying details about their settlements, but we believe that most of their settlements will be detectable, once we start scouting properly.”

Dataka said nothing.  The sheer scale of human expansion throughout their solar system worried him; the Oghaldzon hadn’t developed their system so quickly, once they had mastered space flight.  The humans should have been able to spread out faster; Dataka was uncomfortably aware that if they had started to spread out fifty years earlier, they would have been dictating terms to the Oghaldzon by now.

He ran his sonar around the room.  The main details of Takalak’s report would be in the computers for the council to read later, but one detail was clear; time was pressing.  The loss of one of his ships to a human missile had not been unexpected, but he hadn’t wanted anyone to forget what it meant; the Oghaldzon did not hold a vast and crushing superiority – certainly not the vast and crushing superiority that had been used during the ThrillKill War – over the human race.  Time was not on their side.

He said as much.  “We have captured humans and we have captured some of their technology,” he said.  He had debated the matter endlessly with the shipmasters and the other savants the fleet had brought along to study the humans.  The Oghaldzon had to force a major change in human society or keep them firmly penned up on their homeworld; the thought of genocide – MemeKill on a gigantic scale – was horrifying to them.  “The question is simple; do we proceed or do we attempt to convince the humans of the folly of resistance?”

It was Takalak who spoke first.  “We do not hold an advantage as yet,” he said.  “We lack sufficient data for real certainties, but we know that the human weapons are capable of hurting us and we have monitored a massive increase in human installations around their home planet since we were clearly detected, which has only expanded in the period since the battle.  If we do not move now, we will be unable to prevent the humans from standing us off from Earth, something that will mean our certain defeat.”

The temperature suddenly seemed much higher.  “There is another issue,” Gafalae-Speaker-Seeker said.  Her crest was extended as she moved slightly forward.  “According to the truth, we have to send a formal warning, a challenge, to the humans, calling upon them to surrender and abandon their evil ways.  I propose that we transmit the warning at once.”

Takalak objected at once.  “That would only cause more delay,” he said.  “In the time period it would take for us to reach the human world and engage the defences, the human race will have expanded the defences; the truth tells us that there must be a period for the humans to consider, during which we will have to wait here and watch as they keep expanding defences.”

Dataka would have scowled if his face allowed such an expression.  Gafalae’s position as one of the teachers onboard the fleet meant that she could not be dismissed, although he felt instinctively that the humans, hardly comparable to Oghaldzon and certainly unaware of the rules that governed most of Oghaldzon society, could not be expected to comport themselves according to the truth.  There were too many unknown factors involved…

“They must be given an opportunity to change themselves for the betterment of the entire race,” Gafalae said firmly.  She would have been horrified to know that human leaders had faced similar choices and reached similarly unsatisfactory answers.  “Those amongst them who are held down by those infected will revolt when they realise that help is finally at hand.”

“We do not know that that is the case,” Takalak said.  “My colleague has been examining the humans we have captured and neither of them show any signs of being willing to abandon their ways and embrace the truth…because they do not know the truth.  They are like the Tyake back home; they do not know that there is another way to live…and they may not be willing to embrace it, should they learn about it from us.”

There was a long pause.  To Oghaldzon eyes, human broadcasts had been an endless list of horrors, from crimes that the Oghaldzon understood all-too-well to crimes that hadn’t even been theoretically possible, until they had discovered the human race.  The humans seemed to glorify violence and horror; they willingly stamped on dissident ideas and glorified it.  It was as if they were facing an entire planet – no, an entire solar system – infected with the MemeKill poison.

“We have studied the human settlement network,” Dataka said.  He sent a burst of reassuring sonar clicks, the closest the Oghaldzon could come to a caress, towards Gafalae.  “If they are cut off from their homeworld, they lack the ability to project power towards us and can be handled at leisure.  Unlike us, their disunity ensured that when they launched their missions towards the asteroids, they did not transport a major industrial base along with them.  Once we have forced change on the human homeworld, the asteroids will fall in line or fade away.”

Gafalae didn’t look mollified.  “They should still be challenged,” she said.  “If they are not called upon to change, there will be deaths; thousands upon thousands of deaths, both ours and theirs.”

“We can advance now towards the human homeworld,” Takalak said, ignoring the fact that they had been moving towards Earth ever since the battle.  They could have changed course at any time without risking further contact with the humans.  “We can transmit the challenge as we move; technically, we will not be firing until we reach Earth orbit, unless the humans intend to launch a suicidal attack with their spacecraft against our force.”

Dataka clicked at him, testing his conviction.  The Oghaldzon didn’t have any real habit of lying – they could always tell when one of their kind was being untruthful – but they knew that someone could be mistaken, reporting what they believed to be the truth.  Just for a moment, he saw his force on the very edge of disaster; silently, he cursed the delay in launching the fleet.  Had they arrived before the humans had settled their moon, the battle would have been fought and won by now.

There was a final matter to be dealt with.  “Can such an attack hurt us?”

“Not seriously,” Takalak assured him, his body radiating sincerity.  “We have tracked most of the human spacecraft in the area of their homeworld with the capability of mounting such an attack.  If they are all launched towards us, we would have plenty of warning and we would be able to engage them before they could engage us.  The habitation ships would be even safer; given some of the limitations inherent in human technology, they would be able to evade or destroy depending on the exact situation.”

Dataka sought consensus.  “Then we will transmit the standard warning as we approach their world,” he said.  “We will include a demand that they stand down their orbital weapons as we approach and allow us to take possession of them to prevent them from striking at us when we enter Earth’s orbit.  Should they fail to respond, we will proceed with the plan and engage the orbital defences as soon as we enter range, forcing them out of space.  Once they are forced out of space, we will engage them on the ground and begin the task of eradicating the dangerous ideas.”

Consensus buzzed around the room.  “We proceed,” Dataka said, as soon as he had counted the votes.  “Have the warning transmitted at once.”

***
Reynolds claimed that they had spent three days on the alien craft; without any way of measuring time herself, Samra had been forced to accept his word.  Their days had been strange, to say the least; every day, they had faced one or more of the aliens, and tried to answer questions.  It was a strange experience; the aliens weren’t ignorant about human history and culture, but they viewed everything through their own eyes and didn’t really understand it.  How could they?  They were very far from human.

“I think that they’re boosting again,” Reynolds said.  His senses were much better developed than hers, as she could expect of someone who had spent most of his life working in space; he could feel some of the subtle motions in the ship before it started to become obvious.  The aliens had given them some instructions, but vague ones; Samra wasn’t sure if it was an elaborate intelligence test, or if it was simply a matter of them not understanding humanity very well.  “They’re making a longer boost this time.”

Samra felt herself being pushed back against the sticky mat.  “Yes,” she said, unable to say more.  She wanted to talk, wanted to feel human, but the growing pressure made that harder.  The aliens – their name, they had learnt, was something like Oghaldzon – might take acceleration better than humans, although Reynolds doubted it.  Humans had had accidents, sometimes serious accidents, caused on high-boost ships; the Oghaldzon might have their own accidents, or maybe they were just careful.  The boost phase had never lasted so long before; she couldn’t help, but find that ominous.  “What are they doing?”

The second day, the aliens had given them some of their own food, strange muddy pastries that had tasted very…alien.  The taste had been foul, but surprisingly, she had kept them down afterwards.  Reynolds had speculated that the Oghaldzon had studied the bodies they had recovered from the Neil Armstrong and worked out which of their foods humans could eat.  Samra hadn’t wanted to think about it; it was bad enough being captive on an alien ship, without wondering what had happened to her friends and colleagues.  Had the Oghaldzon simply cut them open to find out how their bodies worked?  It would have been callous…but they had already learnt that the aliens didn’t think like humans.

The boost cut off abruptly, leaving the ship coasting towards an unknown destination, although she was sure that she did know the destination.  Earth.  She knew some of the basic laws of spaceflight as well as anyone; boosted, the ship would continue to speed along until it either ran into something or decelerated of its own free will.  The odds against the former were high, unless Earth’s defences opened fire on the ship; she only wanted some gravity so that they could move around properly.  The alien conditions might have been perfect for them, but the heat and the damp air and the too-bright lights were burning away at her.

The hatch hissed open.  By now, Samra had gotten used to the aliens complete lack of regard for privacy; she had stopped trying to cover herself when they entered.  Their shapes made it easier for her to accept them; they weren’t likely to be interested in her body out of more than scientific interest.  Their goldfish bowl, as Reynolds called it, allowed them to see everything; she wondered what the aliens made of his erections, which she had tactfully ignored.  She wondered, not for the first time, just how the aliens mated.

It was Oolane; there really was no mistaking her.  “Hello,” she said, in that same bland voice.  Samra had grown to hate the voice, although she was careful not to confuse it with Oolane herself.  Each of the aliens seemed to be surrounded by a sound; Oolane’s sounded like tinkling water.  “Why have you not mated?”

Reynolds bit off a laugh.  “I don’t understand,” Samra asked, her mind spinning.  Was it a wild coincidence, or could the aliens read minds…or perhaps Reynolds body.  “Should we have mated?”

“You want to mate,” Oolane said, addressing Reynolds.  “Why have you not mated?”

Samra would have laughed under other conditions.  The aliens must have been watching television programs where the editors reduced time, taking a courtship that lasted for days, if not months, in real life and turning it into minutes at most on the silver screen.  She wondered just what they thought of that; unlike humans, they lacked the background knowledge to know that such things didn’t happen in real life, unless money was involved.  Few girls would go to bed with someone on the strength of a few hours acquaintance. 

“I don’t want to mate,” Reynolds said finally.  Oolane looked at him; Samra was starting to realise that the aliens might not be dependent upon their eyes, but they certainly still used them.  “It’s not the right time.”

Oolane seemed satisfied with the answer, for the moment; sometimes they would return to a line of questioning later on without any apparent reason.  “Your world has to be brought to a proper state of being,” she said.  Samra listened carefully; it was the closest she had heard to any alien reason for the war.  “We intend to issue your world with a formal warning and a demand that you change your culture before you destroy yourselves, us, and any other races that might be out there.”

Samra blinked.  “Change our culture to what?”  She asked.  “What is the point of this war?”

“The human race is infected with…hostile ideas,” Oolane said.  Her voice remained bland, but Samra would have bet good money – if betting had been permitted by Islam – that there was an undertone of superiority hidden somewhere in the voice.  “You have been unable to find a proper balance of existence and wage war endlessly upon each other and nature, slaughtering thousands just for being different, crushing others for daring to dream.  You cannot be permitted to spread out across the galaxy without reform.”

Reynolds leaned forwards, almost falling off the sticky mat.  “Who are you to make such a demand?”

“We are your neighbours in space,” Oolane said.  She listed a catalogue of crimes, some of them understandable, some of them bizarre, all of them human.  Samra listened carefully; humanity encouraged violence and horror, slaughtered others for race or sex or colour, or creed, had a history of suppressing people who had different ideas…the same point, returned to again and again.  China, Russia, Iran, Mecca, Africa, Europe, even America, even the asteroids…humans, the aliens accused, formed into groups which promptly began tormenting other groups.  “We have to prevent you from hurting others, even yourselves.”

She paused.  “We wish you to broadcast to Earth to inform them of this,” she concluded.  “If you do not broadcast, one of us will have to compose it, without the understanding of humanity that you two possess.  I would advise you to broadcast to spare further loss of life.”

“They’ll fight,” Reynolds predicted.  There was a note of pride in his voice.  Samra smiled and allowed him his moment of defiance; she wasn’t sure if she wanted to make the broadcast or not, telling them everything about what had happened.  Would they let her even confirm who was alive or dead?  “No one can dictate to humanity.”

Oolane looked at him.  “That,” she said, “is exactly what is wrong with humanity.”

Chapter Seventeen: The Final Countdown

Virginia Beach, USA

“I told you we should have left the city,” Carola Eichwurzel said, as the television began to repeat, once again, the final broadcast of Spencer O'Dowd.  The final images from the Neil Armstrong had been chilling, although some of the talking heads suggested that the government actually had more data that hadn’t been shared with the people; what had become public knowledge was quite upsetting enough.  “Now look what’s happened.”

Markus Wilhelm said nothing.  The President had acted quickly, broadcasting a request for people to stay in their homes and enforcing it with the police and the National Guard.  As the media stroked the growing panic, the population had tried to flee the cities, only to discover that the public transport networks had been reserved for military traffic and all roads were blocked.  The small percentage of city-dwellers who enjoyed the use of a personal vehicle might be able to escape; the remainder, including Wilhelm and his wife-to-be, were stuck.  He had seriously given some thought to hiking out, but the reports had given him pause; large parts of the nation seemed to be in chaos.

“Damn it,” Carola said.  “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t think that there is much we can do,” Wilhelm said.  It pained him to admit it, but unless Congress or the Senate pressured the President to lift the travel ban – and that would be difficult given the clear and present danger – they were stuck.  The President had invoked the bioweapon protocols; ever since Paris had been hit by a generically-modified strain of the Ebola virus, it had been legal to seal the cities to limit the scale of the contamination.  There was no actual virus, but panic was a powerful force and, if it got out of control, it would do no end of damage to the defence preparations.

He had taken a few precautions; like almost every American, he owned a gun and had bought additional bullets and supplies before the shops had sold out.  He was also grimly aware that the weapon would be useless against the aliens; Americans might be able to own anything short of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons since the terrorist attacks that had been beaten off by armed citizens, but none of them could reach orbit.  The mere thought was ridiculous.  Some parts of the city had descended into anarchy – typically, the richer folks had deserted at once, before the police sealed the cities – and he knew that he might need the weapon, but once the aliens arrived, who knew what would happen?

“We have to do something,” Carola said.  She too owned a weapon, but she hadn’t bought any additional supplies; the skyscraper residents, those who had remained in the building, had tried to convince everyone to club together, just in case.  The panic buying had emptied most of the shops and food supplies into the city were becoming scarcer.  He remembered some of the scenes caused by panic following nuclear threats; drivers and suppliers had refused to enter the city and supplies had had to be taken over by the army, who hadn’t been that enthusiastic about the task.  “What the hell can we do?”

“Nothing,” Wilhelm said.  He watched as Carola flounced off to their bedroom, slamming the door behind her, and sighed.  His father’s only advice, when he had told him that he intended to get married to Carola, had been simple; never win an argument with her, or she’ll never forgive you…

He turned back to the telescope programming, altering the kernel so it would draw signals from satellites…as long as they lasted.  He wanted to watch the battle in orbit that everyone now knew was coming; he’d spent a day in shock before realising that, somehow, he’d been wrong.  They’d all been wrong.  For some insane reason, the aliens had indeed come a very long way to start a fight.

The entertainment console bleeped, a note that an important piece of news was about to be broadcast, something of vital importance.  Wilhelm called for Carola at once, turning up the volume; she came in and sat down as far from him as she could without leaning against the wall.  Wilhelm focused on the console; no media producer would risk using the emergency system for anything other than a real emergency.  The lawsuits alone would bankrupt them…after they had spent a few years in jail for alarming the entire country.

The face that appeared in front of them was computer-generated, a girl with unrealistic proportions and a face that was eternally smiling, except when it wasn’t.  She wasn’t smiling now; her face, inhumanly beautiful, was far too grim.

“A signal has been detected, coming from the alien craft,” she said.  Her face twitched into what might have been intended as a more serious expression, but was more like a parody of a pout.  Computers had come a long way, but they couldn’t duplicate a real person’s mannerisms, not yet.  “Scientists in several different institutes have confirmed that the broadcast is indeed emitting from the alien ships and is in English.  The signal is repeating now…just a minute.”

A new voice appeared.  Wilhelm knew who it was without having to wait for identification; he’d heard that voice often enough while he was watching the media coverage of the alien ships and the welcome fleet.  The woman sounded as if she had been pushed right to the limits of her endurance; the bitterness and shame in her voice was almost palatable.  Carola looked at him, looked back at the blank screen – the aliens hadn’t sent a visual image – and held out her hand.  Wilhelm took it without comment.

“My name is Samra Hussein and I am broadcasting directly from the alien craft Seeker for Truth, which is heading towards Earth,” the woman said.  Wilhelm almost flinched at the tone.  “With me is Gavin Reynolds; as far as I know, we are the only survivors of the welcome fleet.  The aliens rescued us and took us onboard one of their ships; they have also recovered a number of bodies from the wreck of the Neil Armstrong.  Nothing was recovered from any of the other ships.  We are both in good health, apart from damage caused by brief exposure to vacuum.”

She paused.  “I have been asked by the Oghaldzon” – her voice stumbled badly over the pronunciation of the alien word – “commander to speak directly to the peoples of Earth.  The Oghaldzon have intercepted thousands upon thousands of transmissions from Earth – we have seen images recorded back during the 1960s – and have concluded that humans are uniquely dangerous; humans act in ways that the Oghaldzon consider more than just barbaric, but actively dangerous to the very fabric of human society,” she said.  Her voice sounded a little more lively at that point; Wilhelm wondered if it was a sign of something.  “The Oghaldzon hope to have peaceful relations with the human race, but they cannot permit us to spread poisonous ideas throughout the universe, particularly not to the point where they could threaten the Oghaldzon themselves.  The Oghaldzon society, as far as we can gather, is based on ideas; the human race seems to actively work to suppress ideas.  The Oghaldzon regard this as an abomination.

“The Oghaldzon do not intend to exterminate humanity, but they do insist on trying to show humanity a better way to live,” she continued.  “The alien commander has ordered me to ask for Earth’s surrender; when their fleet enters Earth orbit, they want to take control of the orbital defences and work to reform the human race.  The alien commander has promised trade and prosperity, but they do insist on treating with us on their terms.”  Her voice darkened.  “For the Oghaldzon, this is a matter of life and death; they will not imperil their own culture regardless of their desire to reform and incorporate the human race.”

There was a long pause.  “The alien commander warns that resistance is futile,” she concluded.  Wilhelm could have sworn he heard laughter echoing through the skyscraper; the aliens would never have understood, but a human with a reasonable grounding in science-fiction classics would have understood.  “They do possess the firepower to destroy the orbital defences and take possession of Earth by force.  Such an outcome would result in massive loss of human life and the Oghaldzon would prefer to avoid it.  They are a practical species, however, and if that is the only way to accomplish their tasks and safeguard their world, then they will do it.”

The signal ended so rapidly that even the computer-generated presenter looked surprised.  “Ah, the message is repeating,” she said.  “So far, there has been no word from any governments on the issue of the response to the alien message…”

Carola hit the console hard enough to hurt her hand.  “This is another fine mess you’ve got us into,” she said.

Wilhelm didn’t smile.  “You heard them,” he said.  “They don’t mean us any harm…”

“If there is one thing I have learnt from working in insurance, it is that no one ever means any harm,” Carola said.  “Unless, of course, the policy doesn’t cover criminal damage and they want to prove that whatever happened wasn’t criminal damage.  The aliens may be sweetness and light incarnate and…”

She sagged suddenly.  “Markus, I’m scared,” she said.  “What’s going to happen to us?”

Wilhelm stroked her hair.  “I don’t know, love,” he said.  “I just don’t know.”

Lunar City, Lunar Surface

Tony Jones, Deputy Director of the Selene Observatory – and Director in the absence of Samra Hussein – had spent a few days in Lunar City before, enjoying the nightlife.  Unlike his boss, Jones had actually enjoyed his visit; Lunar City had a freewheeling attitude to life that was lacking in many other colonies on the moon, even the other independent city-states.  Lunar City’s lack of any real debts and ownership of several mass drivers and Helium-3 mines made it the richest independent state on the moon…and the natural leader of the independence front.

Jones had once seen Bova explaining it to the faithful…and the people who might one day join the Lunar Independence Front.  “The only real investment in developing a lunar colony lies in the early days, all of which is recovered once the mines run for a year or two, but we remain under their thumbs.  We are their slaves, we are their battleground; how many of us remember the days when Lawton or Li Han led rebellions against tyrannical authority?  They cared nothing for us, only for our work; they have turned the moon into their playing field!  Why should we not seek independence as a united Lunar nation?”

Many agreed; Jones was one of them.  The summons to Lunar City had been unexpected, but with an alien fleet bearing down on the Earth-Moon system, it wasn’t exactly surprising.  What was surprising was the four men in the conference room; Bova himself, Chen Yucheng, the director of one of the Chinese colonies, Adam Faulkner, the closest thing the independent states had to a military commander, and Harriet Wenham, Bova’s media commissioner.  The Chinese director was the real surprise; he might have been a long-term lunar resident, but the Chinese Government – which had engaged in the harshest crackdowns on the independence movement in their territories – would have shot him if they had suspected that he was involved with Bova.  Jones reminded himself to be careful as he took his seat; there was more going on than met the eye.

“Thank you for coming,” Bova said.  In private, he tended to be much less bombastic.  “We have an interesting window of opportunity provided by the recent alien transmission.  Director Jones, do you have any observations to make about the transmission?”

“She read most of it from a prepared script,” Jones said.  He had some difficulty imagining Samra held at gunpoint, but perhaps that was what had happened.  “There is actually very little we can use there; all we now know that we didn’t know before was why the aliens are here.  They consider us…dangerous.”

“The governments of Earth have decided to fight the aliens,” Chen said.  “I have been in contact with my Commissioner” – the Chinese government appointed a commissioner to each of its lunar bases, someone who would always toe the party line and never spend enough time on the moon to go native – “and the decision has been made by the entire United Nations Special Security Council.  They believe they can defeat the aliens.”

Jones leaned forwards.  “Can they defeat the aliens?”

“Perhaps,” Adam Faulkner said, breaking an uncomfortable silence.  The former USSF officer smiled thinly.  “Too much of space warfare has remained purely in the theoretical region until four days ago; the aliens may have been practicing it for years and years, gaining actual experience.  I hate to admit it, but any military unit without experience is almost certain to lose against a unit with experience, even if the experience is very limited.  And, of course, the aliens could be lying to Director Hussein, or perhaps she’s lying to us, or…”

He shrugged.  “The mass power of the defences of Earth would be hard to bet against, assuming that the claim that all of the great Powers and the minor powers have linked their defences together is actually accurate, but we know so little about them.  They might intend merely to destroy the defences from long range, or perhaps they will close in and attempt to take them intact, which would be almost impossible under normal circumstances, but who knows if the aliens have any more tricks?”

Bova tapped the table.  “The question is simple; do we take advantage of this situation, or do we continue to act as if we are willing to be part of the current economic system, which discriminates against lunar citizens?”

Jones knew the correct answer…and he also knew that it wasn’t necessarily the correct answer.  “We only know what Samra has told us about the aliens,” he said, carefully.  “For all we know, their real intentions include genocide, and if we try anything stupid, it may only result in the complete extermination of the human race.”

“The point does remain that we do have an opportunity,” Bova said.  “If we were to see Earth blockaded by the aliens, exactly who do we sell Helium-3 to, just to keep the money flowing in?  Do we need the money flowing in?”

“People are not always stupid, but they are self-interested,” Harriet Wenham said.  She was forty and looked thirty under lunar gravity.  “If the aliens blockade Earth, the only way we are going to get Heilum-3 there is through shooting it at Earth and hoping that it gets through the atmosphere intact…”

“To say nothing of the aliens simply shooting down any load we fire at Earth,” Faulkner said.  “Regardless of the exact situation, the exact outcome, we must assume that the lines that link us to Earth will be cut.”

“Then we have an opportunity to act in our own best interests,” Bova said.  He glared around the room.  “We have been planning this for years.  Could we move, now, and declare independence?”

There was a long pause.  Jones got up to leave – the discussion was well above his head – but Bova nodded at him, waving for him to stay.  “We would have to somehow handle the troops that have been moved into the national colonies,” Faulkner said.  He nodded to Chen.  “How do your people feel about that?”

“They don’t like them,” Chen said shortly.  The Chinese system was different from the American or European system; any troops who were sent to the moon kept themselves to themselves, draining resources and food, but giving nothing back, not even real security.  “Actually stopping them from doing real harm will be tricky, unless we are willing to kill them all.”  He smiled thinly at Adam Faulkner.  “Are you prepared to fire on American soldiers?”

“It won’t come to that,” Bova said.  He leaned forward confidently.  Jones was reminded of some of the older footage of fanatics before their plans had fallen down around their heads.  “They’re not going to start a war where they would be rather unpopular, outgunned, and distracting everyone from fighting the aliens.”

“The military units can be cut off if we have to,” Faulkner said.  The confidence in his voice surprised Jones, although he knew little about the military; was it really possible to force them to surrender without major loss of life?  “The one issue remains the alien reaction; do you intend to make a deal with them, or what?”

“That depends on what the public want,” Bova said.  Jones wondered just what he was playing at; there was something definitely bubbling under the surface.  “The point is simple; we are faced with the only opportunity in years to form a provisional government and dictate terms to Earth, terms that will establish the moon as an independent nation.  We will represent ourselves in the United Nations.  We will control our own resources.  We will control our own military.  We will control everything that is rightfully ours.”

Jones smiled to himself.  Bova already had an assembly of the free states on the lunar surface; it was what gave him his political power.  When the aliens arrived, when they cut Earth off from the Moon, it would give him an opportunity to add the national and corporate states to the assembly, the more so because there had been unrest bubbling away in almost all of the colonies for years.  The corporate colonies, in particular, would be quite happy to sign up in exchange for better rights; the corporations considered the colonies little better than slaves.

He could only hope that the old joke about an independent moon’s first action being a major civil war over what the new nation would be called was indeed a joke; with the aliens around, it wasn’t funny any more.

Chapter Eighteen: The Battle of Earth, Round One

Earth Orbit

“Nothing to report, Captain,” the helmsman said.  

Captain Kang Seung Jae examined the display forming ahead of him in what he liked to think of as his command console.  There was little of the silver screen in it; like almost all spacecraft designed for combat, it reassembled a confused electronics cave rather than the neat and shiny bridges belonging to science-fiction starships.  The Shokaku was only forty metres long; most of that length belonged to the fusion tube, with the crew buried in a handful of small modules surrounding the tube.  

“Inform Defence One,” Kang said.  “Inform them that we have nothing to report.”

He scowled.  He had been made aware that the Co-Prosperity Sphere – only outsiders called it the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere and never twice near a Korean – had asked for the honour of point position along the edges of the Earth defence zone.  The Shokaku – and two other tiny frigates – were following a course right along the edge of the defence zone, maintaining radio silence and keeping their drives offline until they were needed.  The alien fleet was decelerating, spreading out until it could come at Earth from several directions at once, racing to catch up with the planet and enter orbit.  Before then, however, they would have to punch through the defences…and that would be tricky indeed…

Or so Kang hoped.  He was feeling rather exposed out on the flank, even though he was used to spending weeks at a time cooped up in conditions that would have made a submarine crew start a mutiny.  No one, not even the Captain, had any real private space; the nine men of the crew practically lived inside one another’s shoes.  The aliens could be sneaking up on them, if they had a clear idea where the Shokaku was, or even a vague idea from when they had boosted out into higher orbit, and then into their own course.  The big radars around Earth were supposed to be watching for alien contact, but that worried Kang; it would be irony indeed if a human radar pulse bounced off the Shokaku and found an alien radar sensor.  In fact…

“Captain, I think I have something,” the sensor officer said.  Kang glanced over at him; they were all either sealed in their chairs or trying to sleep within sleeping tubes that would, in theory, protect them from very high acceleration.  They couldn’t risk being caught out of safe positions if they had to boost out of danger…if they had a chance to boost.  An injured crewman wouldn’t be half as bad as losing the entire ship.  “It got a reflection from one of the Earth-based radars…”

“Show me,” Kang ordered.  He glanced down at his own console when the data flowed through.  There was something out there, not radiating anything, but plunging towards Earth at very high speed.  He felt a flicker of alarm; moments before the alarm screamed, something had just lit off its drive and was coming right at them!

“Incoming missile,” the tactical officer snapped.  The noise of the alarm was growing worse; Kang shut it off with an irritated swipe at his console.  The crewmen who were meant to be sleeping would be awakened; he could only hope they could remember their training and remain where they were.  “No, four incoming missiles, closing in on us.”

Kang glanced at the screen as it updated; the aliens hadn’t quite known where they were, but the computers on their missiles had to have worked out a close enough location to risk a terminal boost and make the rush towards the human ship.  He took a breath and brought up their own active sensors; high-powered radars swept space around them, revealing the presence of a handful of other missiles, carrying on their course towards Earth.

They want to soften us up, he realised.  They want to weaken us as much as possible before they launch their main attack.

He turned to the tactical officer.  “Point defence; go active,” he ordered.  They would have a chance to defend themselves; it depended on how much armour the missiles carried.  Judging from their profile as they narrowed in on his ship, locating him by homing in on his own emissions, they carried enough armour to be dangerous if they hit his ship, even if they had no warhead.  It was wishful thinking; no one, unless perhaps their alien mindsets were too alien, would send in such a wave of missiles without warheads.  They would want to ensure that they maximised their returns.  “Take them down; helm, move us!”

He felt the ship tremble as the helm officer triggered the reaction jets, pushing them away from their course; in enough time, they could be well away from where the alien computers would expect to find them…assuming they had time.  The reaction gas wasn't anything like as powerful as a fusion tube, but until the drive could be powered up and triggered, they would have to rely on it.  

“I’ve flashed a laser warning to Defence One,” the communications officer said.  Kang nodded; the Shokaku might not survive the next few hours, but they had ensured that Earth’s defences were warned about the danger.  “They want us to scan for alien craft that might be sneaking in on the heels of the missiles…”

Kang glanced at the sensor officer.  “Nothing so far, sir,” the sensor operator said.  His screen was changing rapidly as other radars around Earth came online, hunting for the attacking missiles; it dawned on Kang that the aliens had duped them into revealing the positions of all of their radars…or at least the radars that had been activated.  “Only some missiles; given our position, we may not see them all…”

“Incoming,” the tactical officer said.  The lighting dimmed slightly as a laser beam lanced out from the Shokaku and struck one of the alien missiles.  Other beams joined it as the ship rotated; there was a sudden flare of heat and the alien missile went haywire.  It might still be dangerous, but it would miss its target by thousands of kilometres.  The other missiles were closing in and one of them died, but the remaining two reached detonation range before they were destroyed.  Kang closed his eyes…

The alien warhead detonated a mere kilometre from the hull of the Shokaku.  If anything remained of the ship, its Captain, and its crew, it existed in very small pieces indeed.
***
“We just lost contact with the Shokaku,” Commander Darren Vargus reported, as he looked up at Admiral Thompson.  The tall Admiral rubbed his bald scalp, wishing that Defence One had been spun up to provide gravity; he didn’t like prolonged periods of living without gravity.  “The aliens are out there, somewhere.”

Thompson nodded grimly.  The only advantage they had was that most of the alien missiles had been illuminated by the radars, although they would now be changing course, unless the aliens considered the missiles completely expandable and unnecessary to whatever the hell they thought they were doing.  The aliens were bound by the same iron laws as humanity; their missiles wouldn’t trigger their main drives until they were in a final attack manoeuvre, so there would be limits on just how much they could change their course before they had to go terminal or plunge harmlessly into the icy depths of space.

“Keep the un-activated radars stood down,” he ordered.  The wave of missiles was starting to enter the defence zone now, a handful going active to attack ships like the Shokaku, others continuing on their silent course before they found something that their computer brains considered worthy of their time.  There was no point in providing them with more targets; his immobile radars couldn’t escape, they were completely reliant on their point defence to keep them safe…and the final download from the Shokaku had proven that point defence wasn't perfect.  “Order all stations to track and fire at will.”

He pursed his lips as he watched the battle develop.  Space warfare had been almost completely theoretical before the aliens had arrived; they’d never fought a war on such a scale before, while the aliens might have fought endless wars.  Their main fleet was still hours away from engagement range, but they had already hurt his forces and forced him to remain committed to engaging their missiles, burning up power and supplies while gaining nothing, but time.

“Earth-based defences report that they are ready to take action,” someone muttered in his earpiece.  “The civil defence instructions have been issued, but hundreds of people are defying them to watch the battle from their homes.”

An explosion, far too close to an automated Planetary Defence Platform to do it any good; Thompson shook his head as more alien missiles vanished, the point defence computers analysing their opponents and adapting their tactics to match the aliens.  It took almost a minute of laser fire to kill one missile, Thompson saw; future human laser cannons would have to have much greater output to make a more rapid impact on the battlefield.  He almost shuddered as more nukes detonated, washing electronic disruption and chaos across the battlefield; in nearly thirty minutes of the strange war, more nukes had been detonated than humanity had ever used on anger.  

The battle was slowing down again as the alien missiles started to slack off; Thompson guessed that they had been fired using mass drivers, rather than launched under their own power.  It was innovative, revealing more expertise in space warfare than he possessed; the aliens had had years to plan how they were going to attack the human race.  Whatever they wanted, if they had intended to make peace at one point, it was too late now; they would have to punch through the defences or die…

“That was the Falcon,” Vargus reported, his voice shaking.  Thompson remembered that Vargus’ brother had served on the USS Falcon and said nothing, the ship would be little more than free-floating atoms now…and he had no effective way of hitting back at the aliens, or did he?  “Sir, we can’t keep taking blows like this!”

Dimly, Thompson remembered a lecture from one of his old training officers; the training could always end, even if it meant a cadet had washed out, but the fighting could never end, save with the cooperation or the defeat of the enemy.  They were putting their people under hideous stress; none of them would have expected that they were going to enter combat in such a hideous manner, nor that they would be standing between the enemy and their homeworld.  Americans had plotted to fight Chinese, or Russians; Chinese had plotted to fight Japan and Russia and America…how many of them had considered aliens?

It was immaterial at the moment.  “Send the signal to Commodore Yokuv,” he ordered.  The Russian had dreamed up the scheme and had been rewarded with one of the handful of United Nations commissions for the defence forces.  “Tell him that I want him to launch Mad Dog as soon as the aliens enter engagement range.”

He sensed, more than saw, Vargus’ astonishment.  “Sir, with all due respect, Mad Dog would mean that…”

“I know,” Thompson snapped.  He allowed a little of his own anger and frustration to show.  “There’s no choice, is there?”

“No, sir,” Vargus said.  His hand danced over the console.  “The orders have been transmitted.”

***
The missile racks had been designed for warfare in the early 2020s, when space had become a very real battleground between the established power of America and the rising power of Russia and China.  The early plans for international cooperation had been pushed aside as space rapidly became a military testing ground, then a sign of military power; the very brief Taiwan War had proven beyond all doubt that space was the important arena of the 21st Century.  The missile racks had once held missiles near the primitive space stations for targeting on locations on the planet below; now, they rotated and launched their missiles in sequence towards the alien craft as they slowly entered the very edges of engagement range.  Not unlike the aliens themselves – the tactic was an obvious one – the missiles would alter course slightly as soon as their first stages burned out and were left flashing towards the aliens on the known course; if the human forces were lucky, the aliens would either destroy the first stage and conclude that they had taken out the missile, or they would ignore the first stage and it would strike an alien craft.  At such speeds, even a marshmallow would be horrifically deadly…

Behind the missiles, the real surprise of Mad Dog went into action.

“Go,” Major Tyrone Stults ordered.

Flying Officer Shelia Hartford – the rank had been transferred over from the RAF when most of its exo-atmospheric assets had been transferred to the Royal Space Force – checked her fighter’s systems one more time, then triggered her thrusters and pushed the fighter out of its orbit and out towards the alien force.  The aliens hadn’t tracked the force of human fighters – or they hadn’t considered them worth bothering with, part of her mind added darkly – and they hadn’t launched any missiles at the flight, perhaps allowing them to get one shot in before the aliens noticed them.  If luck was with them, they would have mistaken her force for more missiles…

She closed her eyes for a second as the acceleration faded slightly.  ‘Space fighter’ was such a laughable term, so laughable that it might just give them an edge; if some of the conclusions of the scientists studying the broadcast from the alien ships had been right, the aliens were a united force.  No Russians or Chinese or Americans for them, only one nation; perhaps they wouldn’t expect craft that had been designed to fight mainly in LEO, although there had been talk of deploying the fighters to the belt.  Instead of the trim craft of science-fiction, her ship was a long pipe, with a tiny compartment for her and plenty of weapons…and very limited fuel.  They would make one pass through the alien fleet and then, if they were lucky, they would be picked up by one of the constant-boost ships before the air ran out.  If they weren’t lucky, she would die out there, alone and unnoticed as she suffocated.  The plan hadn’t been called Mad Dog for nothing…

She kept a careful eye on her scope as the fighter closed in on the alien formation, linked only by laser light to the other fighters, the one hundred and seven space fighters than humanity had produced before deciding that the entire concept was useless, or very close to useless.  The RSF had been on the verge of abandoning such craft entirely; only the distant possibility of a police action in the belt had kept them from dispensing with the craft and her services.  The aliens…she had wondered, then; would the aliens have fighters of their own, or would they simply engage them with point defence?  The alien fleet was growing closer; she wondered, with a yearning that surprised her, what was happening to her family down below on Earth.  What would happen to them if the aliens won the war?

An alien radar swept across her fighter and locked on; she hit the gas jets and altered course slightly, enough to avoid a rail gun or a laser beam, if the aliens had fired on her.  She cursed as power emissions rose on one of the alien ships, revealing laser weapons that targeted two of her comrades, along with the remaining missiles.  The space fighters vanished in mere seconds; the conclusion was inescapable.  The alien lasers were more powerful than human lasers…

“Lock on, now,” the Wing Commander said.  A large alien craft, one of the ones that seemed to be a warship, was being targeted; she selected it quickly and launched four of her missiles, targeted on the warship.  Seven of her remaining comrades fired as well; a massive spread of missiles lancing out towards the alien craft, which abandoned its attempt to fire on the other fighters to cover itself.  She noticed that the other alien craft were concentrating on covering themselves as well; she wondered if that would give them an edge as the remaining fighters grew closer to the alien ships…

She watched grimly as missile after missile fell to the alien fire; their weapons were powerful enough to reduce the warhead to slag within minutes at most.  The fighters had thrown most of their missiles into that attack; the remaining fighters launched their final missiles, adding to the chaos and trying to break apart the alien formation, but the aliens refused to panic.  Their power emissions kept sparking oddly; she stared at it, trying to understand just what the aliens were doing, but the readings matched nothing that humanity had ever seen.

“Shit,” someone said.

For a moment, she wondered if they had somehow scored a devastating hit, but the craft her friend was indicating hadn’t been targeted, but it was coming apart anyway, revealing a force of smaller craft.  She stared, holding her breath, as the alien craft separated from their mothership and boosted up themselves; not fighters, but frigate-sized craft, closing in on Earth.  All of a suddenly, the entire battle had just become much worse.

“Hit them,” someone else snapped.  It was impossible; the fighters had spent most of their missiles on the bigger ships, with only their lasers left to engage the enemy.  Shelia was concentrating on shooting down enemy missiles as they launched them towards the human orbital defences, but it seemed very pointless; by the time her lasers made an impact on one missile, several more had been launched.  She was committed to flying far too close to the alien fleet, and she was almost unarmed…

Her threat receiver screamed a warning, too late.  Before she could react, an alien laser struck the fighter; she felt the temperature rise sharply in her cabin.  She reached for the controls, but the hull glowed red and melted, the heat detonating the fuel in the fighter, and sending her craft up in a massive explosion.  Unmoved, the alien fleet continued towards Earth…

Chapter Nineteen: The Battle of Earth, Round Two

Earth Orbit

Dataka-War Commander-Fleet watched as the fleet spread out, closing in on the human world.  The battle hadn’t gone exactly as predicted – the space fighters had been an unpleasant surprise, although they had been destroyed once the Oghaldzon had realised what they actually were – but the fleet had remained intact and was closing in.  The humans literally had their backs to their own homeworld; they could have boosted the remaining spacecraft out of orbit into the outer solar system, but where did they have to run to and hide?  The researchers didn’t consider it likely that the human asteroids could support their remaining ships for long…

He tapped his console as the smaller warships spread out, fanning forward to drive the humans in front of them, their drives flaring briefly as they rotated to bring their weapons to bear on the human craft.  The Oghaldzon lasers were much more capable than the human lasers, he’d been relieved to notice; the humans had fired enough missiles at the fleet to guarantee its destruction if the lasers had been much less efficient.  Every time a human remote platform fired, it revealed its location and one of the warships would fire a stream of super-fast pellets at it from a rail gun.  The human automated platforms didn’t manoeuvre; unlike the human ships, they had no hope at all of avoiding the rail guns at such ranges.  The battle would be long and costly, but he was sure that it would be won.

Information was building up rapidly, finally adding detailed icons to the images that had formed in the holographic tank, revealing the answers to questions that the Oghaldzon had only been able to guess at.  The human space stations were all armed, at least with lasers, and some of them had enough power to overcome their inherent problems.  The space stations hadn’t been priority targets, but that would have to change; he was sure that they were serving to coordinate the human defence.  Unless the humans had discovered some radical new tactics – or their racial insanity had gone too far, he reminded himself quickly – one of them would hold the commander of the defence.  There was little hope of capturing him – or her; the thought that any race could discriminate against one of its sexes was completely alien to the Oghaldzon – he would have to be killed if the commanding space station could be identified.  It would take time and effort, but they had time…

The space battle unfolded with the slow precision of a ballot.  Both sides knew the rules; as Oghaldzon missiles came down towards the spacecraft, the automated platforms, and the space stations, the humans moved to cover them and launch their own missiles, overloading the Oghaldzon defences.  Once again, he cursed the delays in launching the fleet; the battle was far from one sides.  Some of the larger craft had separated into their smaller mobile units; others had been hit and destroyed by human nuclear weapons.  Human nukes, the researchers claimed, were less efficient than Oghaldzon nukes, but it hardly mattered; a nuke either detonated close enough to cause damage and destruction, or it did not.  EMP didn’t matter that much to the Oghaldzon; the reports suggested that it didn’t affect the humans much either, although their fire control seemed much less capable than the Oghaldzon fire control.

Dim clicking alarms echoed through Seeker for Truth – he wondered just what the human captives made of the experience of being in a battle directed against their homeworld – as human missiles lanced towards the ship.  He wondered if the humans had realised somehow that it was his command ship, before deciding that that was impossible.  The humans had to have gotten lucky, if luck was the word; they’d fired on a target they’d seen through the electronic haze caused by jamming and nuclear explosions.  He forced himself to remain calm as the linked point defence of the fleet engaged the missiles, wiping them all out of space before they got closer to the ship.  The final human missile detonated seconds before it would have been destroyed, either accidentally or through design, but the effects were almost none existent.

The Shipmaster was issuing orders, warning the sensor crews to watch for something hidden by the glare of the explosion, but there was nothing.  The space fighters had been inefficient as a means of attack; the odds were that even humans – who seemed prepared to throw their lives away for the flimsiest of causes – wouldn’t try that again.  Maybe they didn’t have any more fighters; if they had, surely they would have sent them all as one group?

An hour passed as the fleet grew closer, and closer, to Earth.  He could see the world through the view displayed by the camera; it was very different to their own homeworld, the world they’d left a long time ago.  The researchers claimed that the Oghaldzon could live on Earth without any serious problems; he could only hope that they were right.  If humans were all as stubborn as the ones fighting madly in space to prevent him from seizing the planet, the Oghaldzon could find themselves spending a Grand Cycle trying to cure the human race of its madness.  It was a duty, the closest the Oghaldzon could conceive of to a holy duty, but it was going to be difficult.

The tactical display changed again; a handful of Earth-based defence sites had been revealed, launching some projectiles into orbit through what the researchers suspected was a mass driver or launch rail.  Dataka issued calm orders; when the fleet entered orbit properly, they would target the bases on the ground and anything else that looked dangerous or military.  It was a shame that the human captives had refused to discuss matters concerning precise details of their governments, but it hardly mattered; in a war against ThrillKill and MemeKill, extermination of hostile leaders was permitted, indeed required.  Dataka had a suspicion that the concept didn’t quite apply to humanity, but he would carry out his duty; short of summoning a general conclave and putting the matter before every Oghaldzon in the fleet, there was nothing he could do to change the consensus.

“I have preliminary landing sites marked out,” Takalak-Researcher-Seeker said, his voice clicking though the intercom and into Dataka’s ears.  The researcher wasn’t permitted on the bridge during combat; he would have lost his ability to understand the human race if he thought of them as enemies to kill or be killed by them.  “Most of them are near to significant human populations and locations of tactical importance.”

Dataka clicked in understanding.  They’d planned in general terms, but knowing exactly what they were going to do was always much more useful; they had known plenty of general information about Earth from the broadcasts, but little of it had been as specific and up-to-date as they had wanted – needed – to know.  The humans could not be allowed time to react to their sudden capture of LEO; they would have to be attacked at once, an orbital bombardment followed by the landing craft coming down in their hundreds.  If the humans had time to react, they might be able to intercept the alien craft as they descended…and that would be a disaster.  The human broadcasts might have discussed technology that was as near to magic as the rationalist Oghaldzon had ever considered, but the Oghaldzon were bound by the same laws as the humans.  Failure at the wrong moment would cost thousands of lives; the entire war would be within shouting distance of being lost along with them.

“Good,” he said.  “Ensure that precise coordinates and the details of the landing zones are provided to the landing force commanders.”

“I obey,” Takalak said.

“As a secondary note, have alternate landing site details prepared as well,” Dataka ordered.  If he knew the Senior Researcher, he would have prepared dozens of possible landing sites and only targeted the five most promising sites on the planet.  Earth was an irrational world; with so much of its surface covered in water, the landing forces would not necessarily be able to give each other support.  “If we find that one landing site is unsuitable, we must change plans as quickly as possible.”

He dismissed Takalak and turned back to the display.  The fleet was preparing now for the final engagement, directly against the human orbital stations and their defences…and the handful of remaining human spacecraft.  Both sides were now locked in a death grip; there was no time to advance towards the human moon or the fleeing spacecraft, not when everything would depend upon how quickly both sides reacted to fleeting opportunities to hurt the other.  The Oghaldzon would aim to sweep orbit; the humans, too, would be trying to destroy them or at the very least prevent them from holding too great a command of the skies.

For an instant, the battle seemed to pause, and then, once again, the fleet advanced.

In a very real sense, it had never stopped.

***
“You bastards, you blew it all up,” Captain Sidney Bush snapped.  “You fucking sons of bitches!”

He was watching history die.  Something – the analysts’ safe on Earth suspected that it had been an iron projective or a micro-meteor, fired through a mass driver – had struck Orbit One, smashing the station’s habitat ring and punching a massive hole right through the main body of the habitat.  The habitat, which spun to provide gravity, was tearing itself apart; hundreds of people would be dying right that second…and Bush was helpless.  The debris was showering everywhere thought space; much of it would fall down towards Earth, but other chunks would go into permanent orbit, providing a serious problem for the defenders.  Bush had seen simulations of the expected Great Power war, where debris cut the human race off from space, permanently, but the aliens were something else.  He was sure that they had done it on purpose.

“Helm, keep watching for any incoming debris and melt it if it poses a danger,” he snapped, keeping his temper under control.  The USS Constitution had been assigned to assist in the defence of some of the remaining industrial stations; so far, the aliens had killed two and shattered Orbit One.  It was unlikely that they would be threatened by the debris – most of it would be going into the wrong orbit – but so many proven facts had been recently shattered that Bush was feeling cautious.  “Tactical, find me something to kill!”

The alien craft had surrounded Earth, their smaller warships probing down towards the planet, firing as they came.  The radars around Earth were pumping out search pattern after search pattern; stealth had been abandoned as soon as the aliens had revealed the mass drivers, useless against ships, but all-too-effective against the immobile stations.  The stations were now trying desperately to coordinate their defence; Bush had the nasty feeling that the aliens intended them to keep trying to cover an impossible target, while the aliens completed their own dirty work somewhere else on the battlefield.  The Constitution had been paired with a Chinese warship for the battle, but the Chinese ship had been destroyed when the aliens had expanded their own attack, leaving the Constitution alone.

“They’re firing more missiles down towards the stations,” the tactical officer reported.  Bush cursed; the tactical command network was breaking down.  He hadn’t liked the thought of submitting his ship to the commands of a Russian, or a Chinese, or even a European, but he would have been happier if the ranking officers from those Great Powers had survived.  The Russian space defence station had been blown apart by a nuclear hit; the Chinese Admiral had been on one of his ships and died with it.  The entire tactical position was fatal for ships like the Constitution; Bush found himself looking for options…

“We have orders from command,” the communications officer said.  Bush glanced over at his console hopefully; the communications network’s failure had meant that commands had had to be rerouted through dozens of smaller stations.  “We’re to link up with the remaining ships and engage the alien fleet directly.”

Good, Bush thought.  He issued orders quickly; the defence of the industrial stations – which were now sitting ducks for enemy attack – would have to be left with the automated systems.  They hadn’t exactly covered themselves in glory; he’d had to order his ship to keep making rapid, but minute course changes to avoid an alien gunner with a rail gun getting lucky and destroying his ship.  The automated platforms were targeted and picked off almost as soon as they fired.

“Drive engaged,” the helm officer said.  This close to the planet, they didn’t dare ramp up the fusion drive to its full power, a legacy of old fears about what might happen if a fusion drive was used near Earth.  Scientists swore blind that nothing would happen, but no one wanted to find hard evidence the easy way.  “We’re moving on the engaged course…”

There were only nine warships left in orbit, two of them American, two of them Russian, and the others divided up among the other Great and Minor Powers.  The Japanese ship had been extremely lucky; struck with a rail gun, but somehow the damage had been confined to one module and had been contained.  The Captains conferred, exchanged seniority, and confirmed a commander; the little flotilla headed towards the alien fleet.  The aliens had spread out their fleet, just to provide additional targeting options; if Command was actually right, the humans would have a chance to bite off a handful of alien ships for less risk than they were already facing.  Bush had to smile at the final line; they were already in danger…and by triggering their fusion drives, they had told the aliens exactly where they were.  Even as the fleet started to coast and altered course, the alien warships altered their own course, heading right towards the human ships.  

Bush had studied at Cape Canaveral Space Combat Academy, but one thing everyone knew for sure was that space combat was very much an unexplored field.  In theory, they would pass through the enemy formation, firing missiles and lasers at them, and break contact very quickly.  In practice…well in practice, anything could happen.  The fleet advanced and the aliens spread out; a moment passed, and then both sides started to launch missiles.  The tactical display lit up as missiles lanced down from the alien craft; moments later, their own missiles advanced on the alien craft.

“Concentrate fire on one or two craft,” the commander ordered.  Bush nodded; one thing that was clear was that alien point defence was better than human point defence.  They had to overload the defences if there was to be any hope of scoring a hit.  The alien missiles were coming closer; the human craft linked their defences together and engaged them with lasers.  It required a ten-second burn to damage the alien missiles and some of the missiles were smart enough to actually dodge…

Or, he thought wryly, they’re all that smart and some of them just ran out of fuel.

“Four missiles down,” the tactical officer said.  He cursed.  “The Aluka just took a hit; she’s gone, Captain; the Bismarck just got hit as well and blown apart…”

The tactical display screamed a warning; a missile was bearing down on them at very high speed.  Seconds before it would have detonated, the lasers killed it, blasting it into a cloud of superhot dust; Bush allowed himself a moment of relief as he watched the aliens try to shoot down their missiles.  Five fell, six fell…a seventh missile entered engagement range of the alien craft and detonated, blowing the alien craft into radioactive plasma.  

“Hit,” the tactical officer reported.  Bush smiled; the survivors of the small formation would be arguing endlessly over whose missile had actually killed the alien craft.  “Captain, we have…”

An alien nuclear missile detonated far too close to the Constitution.  

There were no survivors.

***
“Bring up the remaining mass drivers, let them have it,” Admiral Thompson ordered, all too aware that the battle was going badly.  The aliens had picked off most of the automated weapons platforms now; the handful that were left simply hadn’t been ordered to engage until they found a suitable target.  The aliens had almost wiped out the industrial stations; had they intended to cripple humanity’s economy, or had they thought that the industrial stations were defence stations?  It didn’t matter; the truth was that while they were hurting the aliens, it was becoming all too clear that the human race was losing.

“Firing,” one of the operators said.  The mass drivers normally launched cargos towards the moon, bulky solid items that no one would care if they were damaged; now, they were launching projectiles towards the alien craft, they drew fire almost at once; the aliens launched missiles at them, trying to kill them before a heavy cargo capsule could slam into one of their ships at a speed that would vaporise it.  “Impact in twenty seconds…”

They’d hit three of the big alien craft.  It hadn’t been enough.

“Admiral,” another operator snapped.  “I think we’re being targeted directly!”

Defence One had never been spun up, or even converted into a proper habitat; the RSF had moved it into orbit so that it could be slowly mined and then finally converted into more British space habitats and spacecraft for the planned expansion of the colonies out in the solar system.  It was also the best-protected station in space; the defence command had been constructed right in the centre of the asteroid, protected by tons of rock and metal.

“Order the point defence to engage,” he snapped.  A nuke might not kill them, but it would damage equipment and shatter what remained of the communications network.  It would also strip the defences completely bare.  “I want to…”

A projectile, composed of solid rock, slammed into Defence One.  The weapon had been perfectly placed; before anyone realised the danger, the massive asteroid started to fragment…and de-orbit over the Earth.  The sky was falling…

Chapter Twenty: The Battle of Earth, Round Three

Eastern Seaboard, USA

“Mr President,” Colonel Garth said, “I think we have a serious problem.”

The President looked up at him, feeling an insane urge to laugh.  He fought it down; the last thing the nation needed was the Chief Executive descending into giggles when it was fighting for its very life, along with the other Great Powers.  No one had surrendered, no one had run…and they were losing.  Entire chunks of the orbital defence network had vanished completely; the President knew exactly what that meant.  Even if the aliens vanished tomorrow, the American Nation was finished as a Great Power; the only consolation was that the other Great Powers would be in the same boat.

“We have a lot of problems,” the President said.  He’d told the nation that he was going to be watching from the White House, overriding the Secret Service’s objections; the country was on the verge of panic.  If the President had fled Washington, there was no way that it could be kept secret, and there would be chaos.  Millions of people would try to flee the cities, and blood would be shed very quickly, perhaps even triggering civil unrest on a massive scale.  “What’s happening?”

Garth tapped the display; a large object was shattering in Earth orbit…and descending.  “The aliens have been targeting most of our space facilities, including the asteroids we brought into Earth orbit and started to mine,” he said.  “Several of the asteroids are now starting to break up and fall out of orbit, onto the planet.”

The President stared at him.  “How many?”

“All of them are falling,” Garth said.  His gaze was distracted for a moment by the developing images.  “Several of the habitats have shattered into smaller chunks of rock” – the President said a silent prayer of thanks that they had evacuated almost all of the civilian population from the asteroid habitats – “and most of those will burn up in the atmosphere.  The mining rocks, however, will definitely hit the ground fairly quickly…and there were seven of those in orbit.”

The President felt his blood run cold.  The danger from asteroids had been one of the – public – reasons behind basing weapons in space; they’d all seen simulations of asteroid impacts and the disastrous effects they would have on the planet below.  A single small asteroid would be completely devastating in the short term; if all seven hit the surface of Earth, the aliens wouldn’t be needed to complete the ruin of human civilisation…it dawned on him that that might have been exactly what the aliens wanted.

“The aliens,” he said.  “Did they do this on purpose?”

“I don’t know,” Garth said.  “They might have intended to destroy the asteroids without realising exactly what they were, because we were using most of them to coordinate our defences.  They might also have intended to shatter the asteroids and simply got their maths wrong.”

The President ran his hands though his hair.  “Never mind,” he said.  “Can we nuke the asteroids as they come down?”

“Not any longer,” Garth said.  “One of the asteroids, we think, will come down somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.  A habitat, breaking up, will shatter somewhere over Central America; odds are that only a few chunks will make it to Earth.  We think that most of the others will come down in the Eastern Hemisphere somewhere, but there will still be serious effects…”

“If the Atlantic Ocean asteroid has an effect,” the President said.  The sheer potential for disaster struck him as he started to stand up.  “My God; we have to warn everyone, get them out of the danger zone…we have to warn the other nations, let them know that disaster is coming…”

Garth’s eyes were wide with horror.  “There’s no time,” he said.  “The first impact will be in twenty minutes, maximum.”

Jane Claymore, a Secret Service agent, came over almost at a run.  “Mr President, we have to get you out of here,” she snapped.  “It’s too dangerous for you to remain here.”

Garth shook his head.  “When that asteroid comes down, everything in the air is going to be swatted,” he said.  “The bunker here will be the safest place he could be; it’s secure enough so that even if the city is destroyed, the bunker itself will not be breached.”

Jane glared at him.  “And what happens if the asteroid comes down on the bunker?”

Garth gave her a droll smile.  “Then we’re screwed,” he said.  “It’s as simple as that.”

The President held up a hand.  “I'm staying,” he said, firmly.  He had to set a good example.  “Coordinate with Continental Command; warn people to seek shelter, high ground, whatever it takes” – he paused – “what effects can we expect?”

Garth scowled.  “Major ones,” he said.  “The impact will toss up tidal waves right across the eastern seaboard and the other countries bordering the Atlantic Ocean.  Tons of water will be vaporised and dumped into the atmosphere, so we can expect very heavy rainfall for a few weeks; the shockwave may even alter items such as the Gulf Stream, with uncertain long-term future results.  If any come down on land, we could be looking at massive impact fatalities, shockwaves, earthquakes…”

The President forced himself to sit back.  There was nothing that he could do.

“I have a visual,” someone shouted.  The President looked up; the Space Tracking Network might have taken a beating, but there were plenty of ground-based systems to provide at least a limited substitute for the space-based radars and sensors.  All of them were gone now.  An image, filed directly by one of the USAF observatories, appeared; a monstrous fireball in the night, heading over America with a noise like the end of the world.  “its coming in; projected impact point at…”

The President glanced at the map.  It had narrowed down the results now, sharing information from the remainder of the world as well; at least one asteroid was going to come down somewhere in Europe, perhaps in the Ukraine, but the real threat was in the Atlantic.  It would come down a bare two hundred kilometres from the eastern seaboard, far too close for comfort; the President silently prayed that the bunker was as strong as the designers had claimed…and that the population would have a chance to survive, somehow.

He couldn’t see how.

***
Markus Wilhelm had been having the time of his life, much to the loudly-expressed disgust of his girlfriend, who had warned him that whatever happened in orbit would determine the fate of the world.  He’d grinned at that; whatever happened in orbit, there was no way that either of them would be able to make a difference.  Why not just sit back and enjoy the fireworks?  He’d watched, for a while, though the telescope as lights had danced and sparkled up in orbit, with the brilliant light of fusion flames and the shattering blasts of weapons sending a spectacular display all over the Earth.  It was a fantastic mixture of the Fourth of July and the greatest science-fiction movie ever made; as the remains of spacecraft and defences fell into the atmosphere, they left streaks of light in the darkness.

The radio buzzed from time to time, reporting on the battle, but static kept overloading the airwaves.  The Internet, the small laptop he’d brought to the roof dependent upon microbursts from satellites that – he assumed – no longer existed, had gone dead; there was no way of placing everything in context.  The telescope, fortunately, compensated automatically for the blinding light of nuclear explosions in space; even so, after the third one left him blinking, he put the telescope away and leaned back with Carola on the rug, staring up into space.

The roof had several other people on it, mainly long-term residents; the city was quieter than it had been in years.  He’d glanced down the side of the skyscraper, down to the roads below, and had seen many citizens standing there, staring up at the sky.  It made him wonder what else was happening; had crime taken a holiday as criminals and police alike abandoned their work and watched the battle.  A handful of similar buildings were having parties, but they seemed to be subdued; everyone knew they were watching history in the making.

“Here,” the Block Committee Chairperson said, passing him a mug of something warm and tasty.  He couldn’t identify the flavour at all; it tasted like apples and spices and something from another world.  The Chairperson had fought in the Wrecker War; unlike the rest of them, she had brought an assault rifle with her to the roof.  Wilhelm couldn’t think why she had bothered – it wasn't as if the aliens were about to land with UFO craft and abduct everyone – but everyone had a right to keep and bear arms.  When he’d been a kid, he’d read it as the right to arm bears; it had made his mother smile before she’d explained it.  “You’ll need a drink out here.”

The air seemed to be tense; the display in the heavens hadn’t ceased at all.  He could feel it, right on the edge of his perception; a strange feeling of portentousness, as if something great was about to happen. It was almost a religious feeling; had the shepherds felt that way as they watched their sheep, before the angel had come to tell them that the Son of Man had been born on the Earth.  Flashes of light and glittering flames danced in the heavens; something fell, shattering into a spread of falling stars that vanished before they could hit the ground.  Someone ‘oooohed’ in the darkness, but there was no sense of excitement; the sense that something was about to happen was infecting everyone.

The hair was standing up on the beck of his neck…

“Look,” Carola shouted.  She had been leaning back, the warmth of her body pressed against his; now she started, looking out over America towards the west.  Wilhelm turned as she moved, looking up into the sky, and saw it; a massive flaming streak that moved slowly, tumbling over their heads.  He could hear a dull roar as it passed, the sense that the fireball was alive and somehow malign towards the puny humans under its footprint.  “Markus…”

Wilhelm caught her and held her close as the fireball passed overhead, seemingly moving at a snail’s pace, although he was sure that it was moving well past the speed of sound.  It seemed almost close enough to touch, but it roared overhead, bringing sonic booms and a wave of shattered windows in its path; it passed over towards the horizon and seemed almost to touch the sea…

…Later, he would conclude that it had fallen somewhere over the horizon, but at the time there was no time to think of reality…

There was a mighty flash, followed rapidly by a blast of thunder.  Acting on instinct, he threw himself down onto the mat, forcing Carola down and landing on top of her, covering her body with his own.  He heard her cry out, but there was no time to be gentle; he was deadly certain that the shockwave was on its way.  A mighty gust of wind lashed at them, barely sheltered by the edge of the roof; it faded as quickly as it had come.  He rolled off her and caught her, holding her tightly; somehow, they had survived the blast.

The city seemed to be in chaos; he could see several fires billowing up in the darkness and could hear several arms, and gunshots, echoing out across the city.  He hoped that the police were on the streets before the city descended into mob rule; the remains of New York had been hellish places after the nuke had gone off, even though the city hadn’t been hit anything like as hard.  That might as well mean that the gangbangers had survived as well as the police; if they acted like they had in New York, there would be looting, pillage, and rape on the streets until the army shot them down like dogs.

He clasped his pistol with one hand.  It would not come to that.

The radio was buzzing; he could barely hear one word in ten.  “Asteroid…impact,” it garbled, though a hail of static.  Carola snorted; he understood her disdain, but he had the sense that not everything was over yet.  The skies were still bursting with tiny pinpricks of light; what was happening up there?  “…Waves…possible impact…evacuate the affected areas…America…”

A burst of music washed through the radio and then the static became too thick to hear anything.  He turned his head slightly, looking out to sea, and stared; something was happening out there.  He could see the lights of a USN destroyer out there, a missile ship that had been on station, although God only knew why the military had left it there when the real action was in space, and they were rising.  For an insane moment, he wondered if the aliens were beaming it up into space, and then he saw, as a searchlight snapped on, a massive wall of water, advancing towards them at a rate of knots.

“Tidal wave,” someone shouted.  Tidal waves were rare on the east coast, but there had been one only ten years ago that had damaged Pearl Harbour, if he recalled correctly.  “It’s a frigging tidal wave.”

The Chairperson fired a single shot into the air and started to shout orders.  “Everyone get down on the floor and grab on to something unless you fucking want to die,” she shouted.  Carola fell to the ground at once, her hand finding and holding a secure railing; Wilhelm stared, unable to quite believe his eyes, as the wall of water smashed across the beach and advanced right towards him, barely leaving the heights of the skyscrapers uncovered by the wave.  The Chairperson shouted at him.  “Get down, you fucking fool!”

Wilhelm threw himself down as the wave struck the skyscraper.  He had thought himself used to how the building moved in the wind, even though he had found it terrifying at first; this was much, much, worse.  The building seemed to be shaking as if it was going to fall any moment, crashing down and burying them all in the wreckage.  He realised that the building was taking the brunt of the tidal wave full on; he caught Carola’s hand as she started to pray aloud.  The shaking seemed never ending; the noise of the rushing water was a nightmarish glimpse of hell, a small wave splashed over them with astonishing force…

…And then it was over.  He had been considering what they could do if the building did fall, and knew that there was almost nothing they could do.  The water wouldn’t provide anything like enough of a cushion to support them, and the sheer pressure of the wave would tear them apart even if they weren’t dashed against another building.  The noise seemed to fade and die; moments later, the sound of falling buildings caused them all to scream aloud.

Carola held him tightly; he held her back, expecting that any moment, the building would collapse and it would be his last few moments alive.  Slowly, the shaking came to an end, replaced by the noise of rushing water and gasps from some of the others on the roof.  He laughed aloud as he realised that they were alive; he glanced down at Carola and saw her, soaked to the skin, the clothes she was wearing sticking to her body and revealing her curves for all to see.  He felt a sudden hot rush of arousal, he saw it mirrored in her eyes, and paused for a long kiss before looking over the edge of the rooftop.

“My God,” he breathed.  He could see, in the distance, the first glimmers of dawn; even so, it was a real struggle to make out anything in the gloom.  “Carola…”

The city was as dark and silent as the grave.  The fires had been put out by the sheer pressure of thousands of tons of water passing over them, water that was now receding back towards the sea.  Wilhelm tried to remember what had happened in any of the asteroid disaster movies he had seen in the past, but all he could remember was that they had included half-naked woman and a couple making love on a surfboard just before the wave picked them up and tossed them into a hotel room, complete with impossibly dry bed.  Dawn was rising, slowly, and as the sunlight started to glow down on the city, he felt as if they were all alone, an island of humanity in the wreckage of human civilisation.

“Call that a crazy adventure?”  Someone was saying.  He heard him as if his voice was coming from a far distance.  “No adventure can be called crazy unless lesbian vampires with chest sizes that can only be described in imaginary numbers are…”

“Stop quoting that movie, Bruno, and pay attention,” the Chairperson said.  Her voice was as sharp as a whip.  “We have to remain up here long enough for all the water to flow back…”

Someone else called out a question.  “How long will that be?”

“And then we might have to make our way out of here,” the Chairperson continued, as if the speaker hadn’t spoken.  “I don’t know how long this building is going to remain stable, but if there were some real aftershocks, there might be earthquakes and that might destroy the building.  Don’t go near any bodies; they might already be spreading diseases in the water…”

Wilhelm looked down at the ground.  He could already see fish, lying on the ground; the luckier ones trapped in massive puddles, others dead and dying.  He held Carola tightly, realising that by a miracle, they had somehow survived.

He almost envied the dead.

Chapter Twenty-One: Aftermath, Take One

Eastern Seaboard, USA

“My god,” someone said.  “They really went jihad on their arse…”

“Silence in the ranks,” Captain Christopher Fardell said, automatically.  They were walking slowly, in full armour, towards Virginia Beach…and all around them was chaos.  The tidal waves had wrecked havoc, right along the seaboard; he’d heard on the grapevine network that waves had smashed up the Potomac and devastated Washington.  “Maintain formation; stand ready for…”

What?  He didn’t know himself; the unit had remained safely in the shelter until the first asteroid had hit, when they’d finally received orders to advance to the east and see what they found.  The tidal waves might have receded in the hours since they had first struck the coast, but there seemed no limit to the devastation; they walked through a small town he’d spent time chasing a girl in, once.  He didn’t recognise the town at all; the waves had shattered buildings and worse.

They advanced in careful formation, treating the ruined coastline as if it was enemy territory, weapons raised and primed.  There had been no information on what weapons might affect the aliens; they’d brought along hand cannons as well as plasma rifles, enough firepower to wreck an old-style armoured division if they encountered it through sheer luck.  There was no way to know what the aliens might have to throw against them; he'd seen theories suggesting that the aliens would be complete novices at ground combat, or that they might be as good as the Americans…or even better.  It made Fardell wonder; there hadn’t been a Great Power war since the little spat over Taiwan, and that had been fought mostly at sea and in LEO.  Just how good were they if they had to fight a similar force on the ground?  He’d trained, of course, endlessly; training was never anything, but a pale substitute for the real thing.

Bodies lay everywhere, some of them almost intact, others gruesomely mutilated by the tidal wave and the debris it had tossed in its wake.  He'd sensed the power of the wave from their shelter; if they’d been slightly less well protected, it would have been time to really test the warranty on the suits.  The aliens had wrecked horrific damage…and, from some of the brief reports flashed to him, they’d damaged or crippled many of the armed National Guards units in the area.  If he had been a paranoid man, he would have suspected that the aliens had intended to wreck such havoc merely to clear the landing sites.  There had to be survivors somewhere, but where?  The medical services in the affected area had been crippled; who knew where they were to send refugees?

“I can’t raise anyone at all,” the communications expert, Shawn O’Malley said.  His voice was nervous; the microburst transmissions system had vanished with the satellites, unless they were close to a relay post…and the relay posts that would normally have provided a back-up system had vanished when the wave hit.  Some of them would be established by FEMA as soon as they recovered from the shock and started to carry out their duties, but until that happened the company was on its own.  Radios were completely useless; between the aliens and the effects of the impact, the airwaves had been disrupted beyond easy repair.  “It’s like there’s nothing out here at all.”

Fardell wondered just what the soldiers who had gone into New York after the nuke had hit had thought, when they had advanced into a radioactive disaster site.  They’d carried out their duties bravely, but they’d had much more support from FEMA and other government agencies; his force was more or less completely on its own.  The aliens had disrupted the communications network badly enough so that the emergency services would be completely overwhelmed.

“Don’t let it get to you,” he snapped, wishing that he could find more comforting words to saw.  Some of the soldiers came from the same general area; they would be seeing their homes and families devastated by the alien strike.  His own family would be safe, he thought, but if the remains of space habitats had fallen all over the Earth, who knew what effect they could have on the global system?  The entire discredited global warming movement would have a field day.  “Remain focused on the job; understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” O’Malley said.  His voice was starting to sound more professional; Fardell had a sense of just how much chaos there was going to be, right over the world.  The asteroid – the only one you know about, his mind whispered darkly – had come down in the Atlantic; Britain, Ireland, Europe, North Africa and Latin America would feel the impact.  The waves might have wrecked chaos all over the world.  “I’ll try.”

“Good man,” Fardell said.  He pushed as much confidence into his voice as he could.  “Keep in line now; we’ll fuck up those alien bastards as soon as we get our hands on them.”

The sky seemed to be changing rapidly as they advanced.  Clouds, strange ones, were filling the sky, obscuring the fiery trails as pieces of debris fell out of the sky and headed down towards the planet below.  He wondered what that meant, before remembering part of the briefing; the impact had vaporized tons of water, which was now condensing in the atmosphere in preparation for falling down towards the ground as rain.  He cursed under his breath; the rain wouldn’t have much impact on the suits, but mud would make it far harder for them to operate on the ground.  He could only hope that it would blow over quickly; rescue work would be much harder even if there was only a small rainfall.

“Captain,” O’Malley said.  “I had a microburst from command; they want us to continue probing for survivors; someone has a refugee camp set up for refugees and they’re working on ambulances now, but all aircraft are being shot out of the sky!”

The aliens, Fardell thought.  Human Great Power soldiers wouldn’t fire on medical evacuation aircraft, but the Wreckers would do so gleefully…and the aliens could hardly be expected to behave by what humans considered civilised standards of behaviour.  Besides, everyone knew that orbital weapons platforms could shut down air traffic whenever they could operate freely; the USAF had devoted so much effort to building stealth fighters just to ensure that Chinese or Russian OWPs didn’t have too much success.  He wondered how they would do against the aliens…

“Good,” he said, shortly.  “Get a download of whatever emergency camps they’re setting up and let us know so we can push people towards them if they’re able to walk.”

Half an hour later, they encountered their first live survivors, a group walking out with their clothes torn and their bodies bruised.  “We were mugged,” one of them protested, as soon as they realised that the soldiers were American and not aliens in powered battle armour.  “They took Betty and Carla and stripped us and drove us out…”

Fardell wasn’t entirely surprised.  The street gangs had been a major problem in the area, ever since the conscription program had come to an end and left them back on the streets.  If the waves had slaughtered policemen and National Guardsmen in job lots, the odds were that the gangs had probably felt like they could get away with anything.  His lips twitched; they were in for a surprise.  The President had declared a state of emergency – he wondered briefly what had happened in Washington – and he was authorised to use deadly force if his force was in danger, or if he had to stop looting.  The decision wouldn’t be hard at all.

“We’ll take care of them,” he said.  Plasma weapons were carefully regulated and, unlike chemical-propelled weapons, easy to detect and track.  The police kept a close eye on what the gangs might have; a plasma weapon would have been seized under the handful of remaining gun and weapon laws.  The odds were that they would have nothing that could scratch his suits.  “You have to head towards one of the emergency camps.”

He gave instructions, as best as he could, and ignored some of their questions.  They finally headed off towards the camp, where he hoped they would find food and water; feeding people wasn't a problem in 2100.  They could be fed on algae-based foods, which had the advantage of also cleaning the water almost completely, although disease was going to be a problem.  Short of nuking the entire eastern seaboard, he didn’t see any way of preventing the bodies from decaying rapidly in the unnatural heat.  Disease would spread rapidly and infect the people who were trying to leave the cities…

They encountered more survivors as they tried to reach Virginia Beach.  Some of the survivors hadn’t seen any gang members, or hadn’t been willing to admit to it; others had been lucky to escape with their lives.  One man had seen his wife torn from him and added to a slave camp of women, run by the Neo-Draka Gang.  He had been forced to flee for his life; his wife’s screams had followed him as he fled.  Fardell didn’t know much about the Neo-Draka, but he already knew that they were going to suffer when the battlesuits caught up with them; they sent the survivors back towards the support formations and headed further into the city.

“The skyline is not what it used to be,” Lieutenant Gunnard Fredrickson said.  His voice was awed; the onboard computer in the suit projected an image of the entire area as it had been, a day before.  The skyscraper skyline had been altered; some of the skyscrapers had fallen down, others had remaining standing, but looked utterly ruined; he glanced at them through his telescopic visor and saw shattered windows – which the designers had sworn blind couldn’t be shattered, he thought irrelevantly - and damaged buildings.  “I think that…”

A shot cracked out and bounced off the armour.  Hostile-engagement programs immediately snapped into life; the sniper was rapidly pinpointed as hiding inside a ruined building on the very edge of town, risking his life to shoot at the soldiers.  The computers suggested that the weapon used had been a light hunting rifle, practically little more than a kid’s toy; he was almost tempted not to respond.

He remembered the crying husband and fought down temptation.  “O’Malley, take it out,” he ordered.  O’Malley needed something to do besides collecting information that terrified everyone who heard it.  The soldier lifted his plasma cannon and fired a single plasma pulse into the building, which shattered with an overwhelming burst of fire and force; Fardell guessed that the gang-bangers had stored some of their ammunition in the building.  “Good shot…”

He activated his loudspeakers.  “THIS IS THE UNITED STATES ARMY OPERATING IN AN EMERGENCY ZONE,” he thundered.  Every schoolchild was taught those words, along with what they had meant, and still meant whenever there was a major emergency.  Looters and criminals would not be tolerated in an emergency zone; Fardell would be quite within his rights to shoot them all on sight.  “YOU ARE ORDERED TO COME OUT UNARMED WITH YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR.  YOU WILL NOT GET A SECOND CHANCE!”

There was a long pause.  Another building started to spit bullets at them.  “Take it out,” Fardell ordered shortly.  Fredrickson did the honours.  “COME OUT UNARMED OR YOU WILL ALL BE KILLED!”

He saw the first man – no, a boy; he couldn’t have been more than fourteen – advance slowly with his hands in the air.  Fardell felt nothing, but contempt; the boy had doubtless enjoyed the chance to push people around, but had folded at the first real challenge and would spend the rest of his youth breaking rocks in a jail.  Maybe some of them would be offered the chance to join the army, but he doubted it; they might well be too far gone for any real development.  They trembled as they walked forward; he wondered how they would have felt if they had been ordered to come out naked, as had happened during some stages of the Wrecker War.  Suicide bombers had posed too much of a threat to worry about male and female dignity.

“You, you and you, guard them,” Fardell ordered, using the speakers on his suit to ensure that the prisoners heard them.  “If they give you any trouble, mow them down at once.”

The prisoners looked cowed as their guards ordered them to remain on the ground with their hands firmly on their heads.  After one prisoner started to protest and was shot down, the others reminded quiet…and shaking in their shoes.  Fardell left them under guard and led the remainder of his men probing forward into what had once been an industrial estate before the waves had come.  They found the women sitting in a hall, their hands handcuffed to railings, but otherwise unhurt; the Neo-Draka hadn’t had any time to carry out the more violent aspects of their repulsive philosophy.  They hated women, they believed that women existed purely to serve the strongest men; whoever the original Draka had been, he was sure that they had been nothing like their future counterparts.

“We’re the army,” he announced, to general cheers.  “You’re safe now!”

They waited long enough for the remains of the police force to appear and drag the gang members off, before advancing further into the ruins.  The Neo-Draka hadn’t been the only gang to try to use the devastation for their own advantage; some of the gang members they encountered sounded almost astonished that the army had reacted so quickly to their challenge to the government.  Fardell didn’t tell them that their orders hadn’t been cut with the gangs in mind, although it was one solution that everyone might have liked; a force of battlesuits could have cleared out the gangs without much bother.  If some of them had been caught earlier…

The rain broke with a crack of thunder; moments later, they were almost swimming through muddy rain as the rain fell down, splashing everywhere and making movement almost impossible.  He’d never seen so much rain before; he wanted to pull his entire unit out of the city before the sudden changes in the weather caused more devastation.  The visibility fell sharply as the company fell back slightly, finding clear ground before encountering a FEMA truck that had somehow survived the tidal wave and had been deployed with an escort of armed soldiers.  The specialists had established a protective tent; he took the chance to take a break from the suit gratefully.  The suit remained to one side; he wasn't worried about someone trying to steal it with the armed guards and the suit’s own security measures.

“Have some soup,” Mitchell Sartin said.  The FEMA officer had introduced himself briefly, and then returned to his work of trying to coordinate the rescue and recovery operation, something that seemed almost impossible in the chaos.  Fardell sipped the chicken broth gratefully.  “You did well with the gangs.”

Fardell nodded.  Sartin looked old enough to have served in Florida during the encounter with Hurricane Erica; the chaos had almost made the asteroid strike look normal.  Almost.  There was real strength hidden in his body, but his hair was thinning and Fardell privately placed his age in the late forties.  The Justice Party had done some real good at one time; they had repelled much of the age-discrimination in federal service.  Florida had been a bad one; Cuban factions had fought black and other Hispanic factions before the then President had overruled the State Government and sent in the Marines.  The nightmare hadn’t ended for years.

“Thanks,” he said.  He wanted more soup, but there was very little to spare; the armoured soldiers would be returning to the disaster area – the untamed area – as soon as they were refreshed.  The aliens might not have intended the strikes, but they had overloaded all of the emergency procedures that had been carefully planned during the Wrecker War.  They would be lucky if there wasn't mass starvation in the days ahead; they’d pulled thousands of people out of the wreckage, right along the coast, which meant that millions might have died, or had been swept out to see, or…the rain kept pattering down, almost deafening him.  “How bad is it elsewhere?”

“Bad,” Sartin said shortly.  “That said, it’s not as bad as Florida; most areas are pulling themselves together pretty well to try to organise emergency services before they collapse completely, and a lot of people are managing to help others, as long as there are no gangs around.  It’s going to be bad, but we can save a few thousand people who would otherwise have died…”

Something echoed though the sky as the rain slowly started to fade away.  There were still clouds, and the unnatural heat, but Fardell was sure that there was something else out there, something oppressive.  He pulled himself upwards and staggered to the edge of the tent, looking out up towards the dark skies, which had started to glow.  He wondered, grimly, if someone had fired a nuke, but instead there were strange lights flickering in the sky, strange powerful lights that seemed to be coming closer…

He could hear them now, a roaring sound that beat at his ears until his implants automatically stepped down their reception; all around him, men and women were falling to the ground, covering their ears, or trying to remain upright as the sound beat down on them.  He ran for his suit, opening it up and climbing into it as the sound started to change; he was sure, now, that he could see movement within the lights, strange shapes…coming down towards the coastline.

“Now, that’s not fair,” he protested, screaming at an uncaring sky.  There was no way that anyone could doubt what was happening.  “Oh, come fucking on…”

The aliens had begun their invasion…

Chapter Twenty-Two: Aftermath, Take Two

Eastern Seaboard, USA

Washington had been hammered by the waves.

The President had watched alone, unwilling to face others, as the images were beamed down into the bunker.  He had known – he had always known – that one day he might be in the bunker, safe from attack, while a Wrecker nuke or a global war devastated the city above, but the asteroid had been worse.  He had ordered people to remain in their homes; millions of American citizens had just died…and it had all been his fault.  He could have issued orders for people to flee to high ground, he could have had refugee camps prepared…hindsight showed him, all too clearly, just what he had done.

My fault, his mind chanted, time and time again.  My fault…

He wasn't sure how long he had sat in the comfortable office – even in the bunker, Washington insisted on keeping the President in comfort – staring at the nightmare.  Millions of people had died, millions more had been rendered homeless; the President knew that America could feed the refugees, but he didn’t know where they could house them, or even if the aliens would let them have the time to move people before they invaded, or before they decided that there were plenty more asteroids that could be dropped on Earth.  The handful of weather reports suggested that the weather was going crazy; the President had read enough classified reports to suggest that the entire world would be swept by wind, rain, and worse.  The only possible advantage was that it might make it easier to operate without the aliens seeing; cloud cover would provide some camouflage from prying alien eyes.

A picture of his wife sat on the desk; she’d been sent to one of the command bunkers, out in Nevada.  She’d wanted to remain with him, but he’d insisted; at that moment, he wanted his wife back with him, or even to hear her voice.  Radio and satellite communications were down; the landlines were being devoted to trying to pull the nation back together and gaining some reports from the rest of the world.  The President, perversely, half-hoped that America had taken the worst of it; the other Great Powers would have been available to fight the aliens.  He doubted it; if an asteroid had come down in the Mediterranean, both Europe and the Caliphate would have taken a beating, while a Pacific Ocean strike would have hit China, India and Australia.  The death toll could be in the billions.

A voice, at the door to his office.  “Mr President?”

He looked up.  Colonel Garth looked haggard; his face tired and worn.  “Yes?”  The President asked shortly.  “What’s happened?”

“We have some basic reports from the rest of the world and FEMA,” Garth said.  “Would you like to come through into the briefing room?”

The President nodded and followed Garth through one of the main control centres and into the briefing room.  The control room looked overwhelmed; the big map of America was covered with red blotches, while the overall world map was dull and dark.  Information would have normally flowed in from satellites, but the aliens had killed them all; America had been blinded as never before since the dawn of the space age.  The Taiwan Conflict hadn’t wrecked anything like as much damage.  The operators seemed to be talking rapidly to each other in hushed voices, trying to drag up information that might not exist any longer, or had simply not come in yet.  There were hundreds of thousands of sensors around the country, but the aliens had destroyed many of them.

General William Denny met them as they entered the conference room.  “Mr President,” he said, shortly.  The President wondered if his friend blamed him for the deaths of thousands of civilians; he blamed himself.  He half-wished that he had died with them.  “We have some information uploaded now and it’s not good.”

The President had expected that much.  “Forget formalities,” he said, as he took his seat.  The handful of officers and political advisors sat down with him.  “Just give me the full facts, or at least as much as we know.”

Denny nodded once.  “As you know, Mr President, the bases and facilities across America and the handful of facilities we have outside the country, along with the space-based defences, upload a status report every four hours to the Pentagon’s computers,” he said.  “That information is then shared with the military datanet and placed on open access for cleared personnel.  The aliens might have wiped out the satellites, but we maintain secure landlines with most of the bases; regretfully, I must confirm that every space-based system that we deployed – and the others deployed by the Great Powers – has been destroyed by the aliens.”

He paused.  “The information makes it clear that we have been targeted directly on Earth,” he continued.  “At last update, twenty minutes ago, most USAF and USSF bases were targeted and destroyed from orbit, we think with KEW weapons comparable to our own designs.  Bases that actually launched missiles or engaged with laser weapons were targeted first; ground-based radars and airbases were targeted second.  Uploaded information from the FAA makes it clear that civilian airfields were targeted as well; Kennedy Airport has been devastated by a strike, along with every other major airport in the country.  We believe that these steps are only a prelude to a full-scale invasion.”

His hand traced a line over the map.  “The impact of the asteroids caused considerable damage,” he said, his voice quavering for the first time.  “Further alien strikes have been reported; a handful of obvious army bases, including Fort Hood, were struck from orbit; the remainder seem to have been left untouched.  The aliens have, however, struck at both road and rail transport networks; there are very clear reports of alien weapons striking the handful of aircraft we had in the air.  I have ordered the USAF to deploy a handful of stealth fighters to determine if the aliens can actually track them.”

The President winced inwardly.  The pilots might be swatted without ever knowing what had struck them, but they needed – desperately – the information that they might provide.  So many had died already; would it not be a better choice to husband what assets they had remaining to prepare for the invasion?

He said as much.  “We need to know, as soon as possible, just how capable the aliens are,” Denny assured him.  “We can’t track one of the latest stealth fighters with space-based radars; the aliens might be advanced, but they’re not that advanced over us.”

“I see,” the President said.  He felt weak; how had Roosevelt, Lincoln, Bush or Culpepper felt when they took the nation into war?  How had they coped?  “What happened in orbit?”

Denny looked at Admiral Nelson Oshiro, who looked down.  There was the tiniest trace of despair in his voice as he spoke.  “They kicked our asses,” he said, his eyes grim.  He’d lost hundreds of his own people; the combined space forces of the Great Powers had fought in place, killed, and had been killed.  “They landed a handful of sneaky blows through low-powered missiles coasting in on a ballistic course, and then engaged us directly.  A handful of their large craft proved to be carriers for smaller warships; we experimented with the concept, but saw no reason to actually build a working model.  It was planned for perhaps the next twenty years, when we had more in the outer solar system to protect.”

The President smiled humourlessly.  “The horse has firmly bolted on this issue,” he said.  “What happened?”

“Everyone fought bravely; no one ran or broke,” Oshiro said.  “The aliens hacked away at the defences with several weapons we knew, but never deployed, including rail guns targeted on targets that couldn’t change their course or speed, and mass drivers launching kinetic weapons against the asteroids.  Alien radars and lasers are better than ours; their lasers, in particular, are much more powerful and efficient than anything we were ever able to deploy.  The net result was that the aliens gained control of LEO.”

He looked up and met the President’s eyes.  “They fired on the space habitats,” he said, his voice stunned.  No one had seriously considered firing on the space habitats; everyone knew that if it went wrong, it would be a massive own goal.  “Some of them, such as Orbit One, shattered and scattered thousands of pieces of junk through space, most of which fell down into the atmosphere and burnt up.  Larger chunks made it through the atmosphere and fell over Earth; I’ll let FEMA brief you on those.  The asteroid habitats either shattered or fell out of orbit; at least four asteroids struck Earth largely intact.

“The overall situation is simple,” he concluded.  “The aliens control LEO and have cut us off from the moon, as well as destroying our orbital factories.  We have a weak laser link to the moon, but the aliens are jamming radio, although atmospheric conditions may be playing their own role in disrupting radio signals.  In short, the aliens can hit us on the planet where they like…and land wherever they like.”

The President looked over at the FEMA representative.  “Do I want to know?”

“No, but you need to know,” Rosie Boyd said.  She was older than the President, around fifty years old, but still going strong.  She’d spent time as the American liaison officer to the United Nations Global Disaster Committee; she’d been trying to raise her old contacts to find out what the rest of the world was like.  “It’s not good news.”

She stood up and paced towards the map.  “At least three large asteroids – the slag heaps, in popular parlance – were knocked out of Earth orbit,” she said.  “One of the observatories reported that the aliens blasted one that would have impacted somewhere in Africa, but that report must be taken with a pinch of salt.  In addition, thousands of pieces of junk, some quite small, others much larger, rained down upon the planet and wrecked additional havoc.  I must stress, however, that all of this data is somewhat preliminary; the chaos across the world is making it harder for people to know just what is happening.

“From what we have learned, however, we believe that one asteroid came down somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, a second somewhere in the Pacific, a third in China and a fourth that disintegrated and scattered various chunks of debris over Europe and Africa.  The results have been global and serious; we were actually unable to contact anyone in India, while the highest-ranking Japanese officer we were able to speak to was in a mountain bunker.  Our information is therefore somewhat limited.

“America first,” she continued.  Her voice became much brisker.  “We had massive tidal waves right along the east coast, perhaps killing as many as five million people, with additional massive infrastructure damage.  The impact in the Pacific Ocean added to our woes; tidal waves hit the Panama Canals and destroyed much of the equipment, along with the habitations in the area.  Panama City itself has been drowned; tidal waves lashed the coast again and caused thousands of lives to be lost.  We do not yet have exact figures, but we believe that they could reach well into the tens of millions.  The coming weeks will be the most vital; FEMA is already working to save as many lives as possible, but the medical and military infrastructure in the area has already been devastated.  In many cases, those personnel will be the ones who need help; disease and deprivation are likely to spread rapidly.  In a handful of places, gangs have already tried to take control, even to the point of attacking aid workers.”

The President glared around the room.  “I want them put down as harshly as necessary,” he snapped, relieved to finally have a target for his anger.  “General, please see to it that the troops know that they’re ordered to engage the gangs and prevent them from interfering with rescue efforts.”

“Yes, Mr President,” Denny said.  His lips skinned back from his teeth.  “It will be a pleasure.”

Rosie nodded tiredly.  “In the long run, we will have to ensure that as much as possible is saved from the devastation and repaired,” she said.  “The devastation will have a major effort on our economy; the Panama Canal is wrecked until we can get a team of engineers into the area to have a careful look at it, although global shipping has more or less come to a halt after the chaos.  There are probably thousands of surviving ships out there, but with the harbours as battered as they are and radios non-functional, we could see an entire line of mini-disasters as ship captains try to find harbour.”

The President nodded once.  “I see,” he said.  He didn’t, not really.  “How long is it going to be until we recover?”

“Years,” Rosie said flatly.  “My office hasn’t even begun to make long-term predictions, but one important point is that our transport network has been hammered and our supplies of Helium-3 have been cut off.  Worse, perhaps; we’ve lost all of the orbital industrial stations, so replacements for some of the most important equipment won’t be available.  We’re not even in a position where we can beg the rest of the world for help; they’ve lost too much to be able to provide much help, even if they were willing.  In short, Mr President, large parts of America are about to return to the state they were in 1800…if not worse.”

I can’t cope with this, the President thought.  How could anyone cope with disaster on such a scale?  I don’t have a choice.

“The rest of the world is, at best, in a similar state,” Rosie continued relentlessly.  “China was struck by an asteroid that landed in the west; the shockwave and earthquakes alone devastated a large part of the country, while parts of its coastline were devastated by tidal waves from the Pacific strike.  Japan, Indonesia and Australia suffered heavily; we believe that tidal waves also washed over the Caliphate coastline and parts of Africa.  Britain and Ireland got part of the tidal wave that washed over here; we believe that their death toll is very high, while chunks fell down all over Europe.

“Global weather conditions have become even more chaotic in the last few minutes,” she said.  She tapped the map as she spoke; the President was relieved that there weren't any pictures.  “Rain started to fall over the eastern seaboard very quickly, heavy rainstorms that seemed to come and go for no apparent reason; we believe that the effects of the different strikes are playing off one another.  Europe and North Africa are reporting very heavy rainfall; it should be noted that while Gibraltar was wiped off the map, most of the areas inside the Mediterranean remained almost untouched.  That’s a short-term effect; in the long-term, the rainfall may destroy the farmlands the Caliphate created to feed its population and cause millions to starve.  They’re going to have to set up algae farms as quickly as possible – we’re going to have to expand our own as well as soon as we can, if not now – just to feed their own people.”

She shook her head.  “Globally, Mr President, we could be looking at something like the death of a third of the human race,” she concluded.  “The long-term effects of the weather changes alone will certainly imperil our future, regardless of what the aliens might do to make it worse.  We can’t even predict how the weather will change – it’s that chaotic – and all of our early warning satellites have been destroyed.”

The President met her eyes.  “How long until you have any idea what will happen?”

Rosie shrugged.  “We think that most of the water that was vaporised and dumped into the atmosphere will return to the ground and sea within the next few weeks,” she said.  “Once that happens, we might be able to do some long-term projections, perhaps with the help of the remainder of the world.  Our data for America alone, Mr President, is too vague for us to make any real determination of what might happen…and the weather, of course, is a global force.  We have no information on Africa, or the interior of China; it could take years before everything settles down, or the weather patterns may be completely changed.”

“Please keep me informed,” the President said.  He held her eyes tightly with his own; there were steps he needed to take, steps she had to understand.  “You have total authority; cut through all of the red tape and get help out to the people who need it, understand?”

Rosie nodded.  “You must understand,” she said.  Her voice held a certain quiet desperation; the President realised that she feared he expected her to produce a miracle.  “The best we can do is limit the damage.  Millions will die, regardless of what we do.”

“We have to try,” the President said.  He pushed as much determination as he could into his voice; it was more important that saving votes or even proving that he deserved to sit in the White House and make policy for thousands upon thousands of people.  What was America for if it couldn’t look after it’s own people?  “We owe it to…”

An alarm rang.  The President looked up.  “What’s that?”

“That’s the emergency alarm,” Denny said.  He jumped up and checked the main computer; the President saw his face go very pale.  “Mr President, we just had word from the passive sensors we have deployed; something is happening in orbit.”

He looked up towards the ceiling, then back towards the President.  “Mr President, the aliens are landing,” he said.  The President almost felt his heart break under the sheer impact of the news.  “We’re being invaded.”

Chapter Twenty-Three: Invasion, Take One

Eastern Seaboard, USA

The skies above Washington were…strange.

Captain Wilbur Hawking had fought in several locations where all of the Great Powers had denied that any conflict at all had ever been fought.  He’d flown a highly-secret mission into Mongolia for a purpose that had never been explained to him, years after the mission had been carried out; he’d carried out a classified strike mission against a Wrecker base in Antarctica, for God’s sake.  He was no stranger at all to strange weather conditions…and he was flying perhaps the most advanced plane in the world.

He was absolutely terrified.

The asteroid, he’d been briefed, had tossed a great deal of water into the atmosphere, some of which was now pouring down in rain, some of which was billowing around in strange clouds, that seemed perpetually on the verge of spilling their contents down on the ground below.  The wind conditions seemed to be endlessly chaotic; at one point, he'd feared that the Shadow was about to be thrown down and dashed against the ground, at another point, he had never seen better flying weather.  Linked into the fighter’s computers through the implant in his head, he could practically sense the ebb and flow of the weather, and how it was affecting his craft.

He nervously glanced down at his threat receiver as the aircraft flew onwards, its passive sensors collecting data on the weather formations and transmitting it back to the hidden USAF base though an encrypted microburst transmission that was – in theory - undetectable.  He was sure that it would have been undetectable by the Russians or the Chinese, the two Great Powers considered most likely to start a war with America, but the aliens might be able to track it.  Ground-based lasers and plasma cannons had almost destroyed the USAF as a fighting service; what might the aliens be able to bring to bear on him if he was discovered?  He had no illusions; a burst from a human laser that scored a direct hit would utterly destroy the Shadow.

He felt the aircraft quiver as another gust of wind slammed against the airframe.  The Shadow was the latest and greatest fighter produced by the USAF, a hypersonic stealth fighter that could reach the very edge of space and punch the face of God.  In theory, it was undetectable except at very short ranges, using the most advanced active sensors in the American arsenal, but who knew what the aliens might be able to do?  There had been a theory that the Shadow could be tracked by the effects it left in the atmosphere; now, Hawking was convinced that no one, not even the aliens, would be able to pick his craft out from the chaos.  The question was simple; what now?

His orders had been to recon the area and provide what information he could for the planners back in Washington – who were likely to be drinking salt water themselves, part of his mind reminded him – who would be planning to somehow rebuild the country.  Hawking was as patriotic and determined as anyone else in the USAF, but looking at the chaos, even from his height, he felt near-despair; how long would it take to rebuild?  He had remained high to avoid being slammed into the ground by a sudden gust of wind, but he didn’t dare go too high; the aliens might notice him and swat him with a laser from orbit.  The Shadows could be armed with ASAT missiles, but Hawking doubted that they would do any good; the aliens would have plenty of time to notice and take countermeasures.  He would fly the mission, of course, if ordered, but it seemed nothing more than a fancy way to commit suicide…

A databurst flickered out at him; tracking stations were reporting something odd within the air formations that had been created by the asteroid impact, bursts of heat that seemed somehow odd – and sinister.  He accelerated slightly, taking the Shadow up over the coastline and out towards the sea, peering ahead with the passive sensors the aircraft mounted as well as the familiar Mark One eyeball.  The rolling ugly clouds seemed to be being disputed by something, something rising from high above; he took his life in his hands and accelerated again, heading right through the clouds and rising above them.  The Shadow shook like a demon – he could have sworn he saw bursts of blue lightning flickering through the dark clouds…but it made it, passing through what seemed like miles of clouds and up into the blue-grey sky.  

“My God,” he said.  Further words seemed to fail him.  He had expected the streaks of light, like something out of a movie, where the wreckage of the battle in orbit was falling towards the ground, but it was the sight ahead of him that filled him with awe…and fear.  “What the fuck are they doing?”

He’d seen – everyone in the USAF and the USSF had been briefed on them – the original plans for SSTO spacecraft in the early days of space flight.  The concept had been harder to get to work than many people had thought, but there had been some success; basic passenger shuttles taking colonists up to the inter-orbit ships and the bridge ships were SSTO-capable.  The basic designs were simple; cone-shaped spacecraft flying up and landing with ease.

The aliens had taken the concept to a ridiculous extreme.  He’d read, once, a paper in which a retired military expert had proposed a landing craft that would have inserted an entire battalion from orbit to a trouble spot within moments, an idea that hadn’t found much favour in the USAF – which would have lost another of its responsibilities – and the USSF, which would have had to carry out the damnfool idea.  The aliens had no bases on Earth; they literally had no choice, but to land using SSTOs…and they had taken the idea and run with it.  The craft falling towards Earth were massive…

The dispassionate flight computer recorded their size, speed and probably landing zones; somewhere along the east coast of America, near Washington and Fredericksburg.  They were falling rapidly, rockets using fusion flame – a violation of an international treaty, part of his mind gibbered at him – working hard to slow their descent, while drones and other craft seemed to be being launched from the cones as they fell lower.  The drones seemed to be having problems with the weather; he hoped that they would all fall out of the sky before they managed to start sending useful information back to the aliens.  His onboard sensors reported alien radars and alien scanning systems probing around for possible threats as they descended…

“Not bloody likely,” he muttered, as he realised just what the aliens had done.  Any army or National Guard units in the area affected by the asteroid were not likely to be in any shape to put up a major fight against the aliens; there was a good chance they would be able to establish a beachhead without any problems at all.  They’d already killed thousands of people; given a chance, they would kill thousands more.  He muttered a single command to the computer.  “Transmit.”

He waited, just long enough; Higher Command might want him to engage the aliens.  He was far enough from their position to be fairly sure they hadn’t noticed him, but he wanted – needed – to hurt them.  He was the only Shadow anywhere near the alien formation, although there were others that had survived the tidal waves and the alien bombardment; he might have the best chance the human race was ever likely to have to take out some of the alien landing craft…perhaps, if he was very lucky, all of them…

A quick glance at his scanners revealed that that wasn’t likely.  A second wave was already breaking into the atmosphere.  The alien craft were likely to force a landing, whatever else happened; all he could do was give the guys on the ground the best chance they could.  He held his breath as another alien radar swept across his position; the aliens didn’t seem to notice him, but…

The communicator buzzed. The encrypted message was simple; go get them.

“Yes, sir,” he said, and interfaced his mind completely with the Shadow’s computers.  A moment of hesitation, and then the fighter leapt forward, weapons systems already coming online and taking their targeting information from the passive sensors.  The only good thing about the situation was that there was no need to use the active sensors – which would have almost certainly drawn fire, unless the aliens were completely stupid or had their landing craft unarmed for some strange alien reason – with the sheer power of the alien craft revealing their location.  “Engaging the enemy now…”

The lead alien craft was a massive cone, descending above a brilliant yellow-white fusion flame; he fired a pair of missiles at it and threw the plane into an evasive manoeuvre, just in time as a burst of alien plasma fire shot through the space he had occupied seconds before the launch.  The missiles lanced towards the alien landing craft; one of them was wiped out by a laser beam, the second struck the side of the landing craft and detonated the plasma warhead in the missile.  The brilliant flare of white light consumed the craft; Hawking whooped and launched his remaining two missiles, both of which were knocked out of the sky by alien lasers.

“Time for up close and personal,” he muttered.  No one had flown such manoeuvres – at least no one willing to admit to it – outside training school, but every pilot had been looking forward to the chance to try.  He activated the plasma cannon on the Shadow and lanced closer to the alien craft, firing bursts of streaming plasma towards the aliens, who retaliated with their own plasma fire and dangerous laser fire.  The computers reported that the alien sensors had grown much more powerful in the last few seconds; even as he strafed the side of a landing craft, they managed to burn through the stealth and reveal his position.  He threw the plane down towards the land as the aliens targeted him; for a terrifying moment of time, he thought that the aliens had filled everywhere with plasma fire, but somehow he survived, pulling out of his dive seconds before he hit the ground.  The ground had been almost close enough to touch…

He streaked away as fast as he could as more alien craft appeared, heading down and down towards the shore, landing all over the east coast.  His computers estimated that hundreds of humans could be loaded in one of the craft; how many could the aliens fit in?  They still had no idea just what the aliens looked like; he’d heard that observatory telescopes had been looking for alien bodies in orbit, but if there were any, they’d remained unnoticed.  Human bodies had fallen down into the atmosphere or remained trapped in orbit; he wondered if the aliens would launch a clearing operation, or if the bodies would just be left up there, forever…

A new order came in; return to base.  He nodded once, grimly, and headed away from the battlezone.  He hoped that the men down there could destroy the aliens before they became established, but he knew, somehow, that they would be lucky to escape before they were wiped out.  The aliens had brought too many of their people to the party…and, if some of the early speculation of invasion possibilities were accurate, they might well be landing all over the world.  The last war Americans had fought on American soil had been the operations in support of the annexation of Mexico and much of Latin America; none of them had been anything more than a police action.  The last major war had been the civil war…and that had been nearly three hundred years ago.  The Wrecker War didn’t count; the terrorists had only spread terror, terror that had only fuelled the determination to exterminate them, by whatever means were necessary.  The aliens might have killed millions of Americans in the opening round…and, from what he could see, they were serious about taking the rest.

He ground his teeth.  It wasn't going to happen.

***
He'd been kept in suspension since the final flight to one of the warships for the transit to the human star; he’d been awoken two months before the fleet had entered the human solar system and commenced offensive operations.  It had been a period of extensive training; the Oghaldzon had had trained and experienced soldiers, but the human way of warfare was something different.  Oghaldzon fought to protect their civilisation from the practitioners of ThrillKill and MemeKill; humans seemed to fight at the drop of a hat…and how they fought!  Their broadcasts seemed to suggest that they were racially insane when it came to fighting; no Oghaldzon force would fight to the last man if surrender was a possibility, and it would always be a possibility.  Oghaldzon wars were fought to defeat ill ideas, never to exterminate or crush ideas, unless a particularly dangerous ThrillKill or MemeKill gained control of an army.  The idea of exterminating the opposition on general principles was alien to them.

Warag-Soldier-Infantry checked his armour as the landing cone made its final approach to the destination.  Warag and his comrades were nervous; in human terms, they could be considered light infantry, or even policemen.  Before preparing the operations against the humans, they had served mainly to suppress isolated outbreaks of ThillKill; ever since the final MemeKill War, they hadn’t been required to fight a major war.  They had experience; Warag suspected that his family – the soldiers were a family in Oghaldzon terms – was ill-prepared for human warfare.  They would learn, rapidly, but would it be quickly enough?

The area of Earth that had been selected as a landing zone had been devastated by the tidal waves the Oghaldzon had accidentally caused.  They themselves always ensured that any orbiting asteroid was fitted with a nuclear device to blow it apart if there was a real danger; by the time they realised that the human asteroids either didn’t carry such devices, or that there as no one left to trigger the explosions, it had been almost too late.  Warag mourned for the millions of humans who might be killed because of the stubbornness of their masters, who practiced the forbidden passions, but it would make establishing a beachhead much easier.  The principle wouldn’t change; the humans would throw everything they had at the landing zones before the Oghaldzon could deploy, and anything that delayed that was fine by him.  His implant recorded a constant stream of intelligence from drones as they were deployed out of the landing craft; the human cities below were in ruins.

An alarm sounded.  “Prepare for landing,” a voice snapped, the clicking echoing out in the darkness.  Warag caressed his people with his sonar; the fifty-one infantry soldiers were among the best that the Oghaldzon could produce…and they had trained extensively for their mission.  It wasn't going to be easy; Warag would have preferred the devastation to be much greater, but that would have been a ThrillKill crime…and a pointless one.  “Landing now…”

The noise of the final bursts of fusion flame from the drive echoed through the craft, and then there was a single bump, shaking the craft…and then the hatches opened.  Warag didn’t have to issue orders; the infantry were already heading out of the hatchers and spreading out, the two weapons that each of them carried raised and ready for action.  There were no signs of any live humans; outside the charred regions caused by the fusion flame, there were only dead bodies and a strange, unpleasant smell.  He hoped that the researchers were right about human diseases not being able to spread to the Oghaldzon; the decaying bodies would have to be exposed to a fusion flame before they proved deadly to the humans they had come to save…

“There’s no sign of any organised human opposition,” Kodak-Soldier-Infantry reported.  The clicking of her voice was relieved; they all had weapons and training…and heavier vehicles were even now starting to emerge from the landing craft, spreading out to maintain a perimeter where the Oghaldzon could operate without hindrance.  Most human aircraft had been shot out of the sky or had been knocked down by the weather, but the Oghaldzon deployed laser platforms anyway, just in case.  “The drones are reporting hundreds of live humans heading away from us, but none of them seem to be soldiers.”

Warag clicked a reproachful tone into his voice.  “We might not recognise a human soldier until he started to shoot at us,” he said, warningly.  Dull throbbing echoed across the sky as more landing craft appeared, bringing down more soldiers and equipment; soon, they would be able to secure the remains of the human city and advance inland.  “Keep a careful watch and always err on the side of caution.”

He glanced around, his sonar clicking like mad; the humans seemed to have no sense of aesthetics when it came to building.  They were all ugly great blocks; the dim light of the cloud cover didn’t hide much from the Oghaldzon, who had evolved on a much darker world.   The damage had been extensive; in some ways, they had actually done the humans a favour.  A line of armoured assault vehicles glided past, followed by an automated laser station and more infantry; Warag issued orders and the infantry family spread out, taking up the positions that had been issued to them.  It wouldn’t be long before they saw combat against the humans.

He peered into the west, out over the land.  The humans were out there somewhere, gathering their strength and preparing to hit back as hard as they could.  It was what he would have done.

He was equally determined to ensure that they failed.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Invasion, Take Two

Eastern Seaboard, USA

“Oh, come on,” Markus Wilhelm demanded, as the first of the alien craft appeared.  “What the hell did we do to deserve this?”

The small group had spent an uncomfortable day on the roof.  The Chairperson had forbidden anyone from going into the interior of the skyscraper for the first few hours, but finally, faced with rebellion from the handful of people who lived elsewhere in the city, she had relented and allowed them to leave, warning them to be careful.  Wilhelm had accompanied them as far as the stairwell, watching how the interior of the skyscraper had been transformed overnight into a derelict ruin right out of a horror movie, complete with half-naked girls.  Water flowed everywhere, heading down towards the surface; dead bodies were scattered everywhere, along with half-alive and dead fish, crabs and other monsters from the depths.  Wilhelm had never liked crabs – their mincing claws had always scared him as a child – but he was almost relieved to see some signs of life apart from their small group.  The remaining ten survivors had returned to the roof, gazing out over their eerily silent city.

It wasn’t quiet silent.  From time to time, they heard gunshots and shouts, some of them very loud in the silence.  The Chairperson had guessed that looters had come to call, but warned them to remain quiet; they knew nothing about the situation on the ground and the rapidly changing weather didn’t reassure them.  As clear skies because cloudy skies, giving birth to a thunderstorm right out of nightmares, they huddled as best as they could under whatever shelter they could find.   Gusts of wind shook the skyscraper; Wilhelm wondered just how long it would remain standing after the tidal wave and the downpour.  

The radio was no help; it only revealed that the airwaves were full of static and strange chaos, something that sent a chill down his spine.  He’d thought that he had heard a human voice speaking once, but the jamming – the Chairperson thought that it was jamming – resumed, stronger than ever.  He hadn’t been able to make out the words.

“They’ll be sending recovery teams into the chaos,” the Chairperson repeated, for the tenth time.  Stuart, one of the men on the roof, had been loudly advocating that they should attempt to make their way west and out of the city.  “Once they find us, they’ll send help; we should see helicopters soon, hunting for groups like ours…”

There hadn’t been any helicopters; Wilhelm found that more ominous than he liked to think.  Helicopters, as far as he knew, had short ranges; it was possible that every helicopter within range had been destroyed by the tidal waves, but surely they could have brought some from outside the effects of the tidal wave?  Had the wave swept over the entire country?  It seemed impossible, but…

They glanced up as they heard the faint noise of an aircraft, but there was nothing to see in the sky; the choppy wind conditions would make flying difficult.  He hoped that that was the real reason for the absence of helicopters and other flying craft; he didn’t want to think about the alternative.  The skies were still raining fiery streaks of debris down onto the planet; was that making flying operations difficult, or…

A new sound split the air, a dull thrumming that grew and grew in intensity, even as the cloud cover started to glow and split open, revealing blinding yellow-white lights that seemed to be falling gently towards the coastline.  The noise rapidly became painful; he clasped both hands over his ears as it grew and grew, finally dulling slightly as the vehicles – alien craft, his mind whispered – completed their descent.  He staggered over to the edge of the roof, ignoring the shaking gusts of hot air and bursts of light that seemed to be almost directed at him personally, and peered down towards the alien craft.  It was massive; he’d seen ocean liners that were smaller than that, and…

There had been the remains of a skyscraper there; they’d seen it and thanked God that its fall hadn’t smashed against their skyscraper and started an obscene game of dominos.  The remains had now been melted by the sheer heat of the fusion flame; the aliens had created themselves a landing pad and firm foundation for their invasion fleet through simply melting anything under their landing.  He hoped – prayed – that no one had been caught under the flames; they had to have died without knowing what had ever hit them.  The alien craft, a massive cone almost as large as the skyscraper, had landed; there were a sudden slap of a wave of cold against his face, and then there was silence.

The Chairperson moved up beside him.  “Get your scope,” she snapped.  Wilhelm nodded, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it, and recovered it from where it had fallen, near Carola.  He gave her a brave smile as he peered down at the alien craft; the side of the craft was opening now, revealing…for a moment, his mind refused to take in the shape of the deer-like aliens, or the almost toy-like weapons they carried in their hands.  He’d owned more impressive toy water pistols when he was a child.  The Chairperson was more impressed as the aliens spread out, securing the landing zone; he heard her muttering under her breath about trained soldiers and the lack of resistance.

“We should fight them,” she said, hoisting her weapon.  “Get your guns and…”

“No,” Carola said, sharply enough to draw everyone’s attention to her.  “We’re not soldiers and there are civilians present here” – a drone buzzed over their heads; Wilhelm looked up and saw the alien machine looking at them before it flew off into the distance – “and we are not prepared to fight a war here.”

The Chairperson looked at her as if she had sprouted a third eye, or perhaps grown a beard in the blink of an eye.  “The country is being invaded,” she snapped.  “We have to do something…”

“Then get out of here,” Carola snapped.  A line of yellow-streaks across the sky revealed the presence of a missile battery; Wilhelm suspected that someone was engaging the aliens, judging by the direction of the missiles.  He silently wished them luck.  “There’s no point in getting ourselves killed for nothing…because they already know we’re here and there’s no chance of even killing one of them.  There are training soldiers out there!”

The Chairperson made a wordless gesture of contempt, picked up her heavy weapon, and headed down towards the stairwell.  Stuart joined her; Wilhelm would have – maybe – joined her if Carola hadn’t been there, but she was right.  There was little point in putting up a fight they would almost certainly lose.  The noise of more alien craft appeared; he saw what he guessed were alien tanks and alien fast patrol bikes, practically flying through the air like the vehicles from Star Wars.  The sight almost made him smile, despite the surreal nature of the view; the deer-like aliens – with only three legs – were moving rapidly out through the city, around the city, and further into the country.  Judging by some of the landings he had seen, the aliens had landed around the city as well, expanding the area they controlled with ease.  Was there anything that could stop them?

He heard a gunshot, then a handful of gunshots, and then an explosion that almost shook the building.  He heard one of the girls scream, her brother comforting her as best as he could; the aliens had shattered their comfortable lives and replaced them with chaos.  Was there anything that could stop the aliens?

***
Roughly three kilometres to the west, on the edge of the build-up area, Captain Christopher Fardell was having similar thoughts.  The battlesuits had armoured up again as the aliens had started to land, relying on the audio-discrimination software built into their suits to allow them to locate the real alien landings and separate them from the countless false reports that were filtering into what remained of the command chain.  The aliens seemed to be coming down to the north and south of Washington, with landings reported almost as north as New York and as west as Richmond.  The damage to human installations was much reduced the further inland they considered, but almost everywhere on the coast or near a river had been badly damaged.  Washington and Baltimore had been hit badly by tidal waves; judging from the alien landing positions, they intended to close in on Washington as rapidly as they could and crush the human government before it had a chance to react.

Bastards, he thought, knowing that the battlesuits were, in a very real sense, already behind enemy lines.  They had their links to the main military datanet, but there was a great deal of hysterical shouting and even more confusion; they had already recovered orders to evacuate, which had then been countermanded and replaced by orders to hold the aliens as long as possible, to orders to launch a recon mission and then pull out to join the main defence lines where – when – they were formed.  Intelligence was important, but he would have preferred to have a mission that had a hope of actual success; unless the aliens were stupid, they would have secured the area around their landing craft as soon as they landed.  If there had been resistance, either civilian or the remains of the military in the area – FEMA had organised the survivors into units that might be of assistance – there was no sign of it…

“Missiles,” O’Malley snapped, as a line of missiles rose up and headed towards one of the alien landing zones.  Fardell remembered that there had been an anti-aircraft site somewhere nearby and it had clearly survived the tidal wave enough to take a hand in the defence of the area.  Moments later, there was a shattering explosion from the west; no more missiles rose to challenge the alien craft.

“Fuck,” Fardell said, as calmly as he could.  The battlesuits were still advancing, but he ordered them to spread out more and present as little of a target as they could, helped by local knowledge and – perhaps – the knowledge of what they could do against a prepared enemy.  They’d crept up on Wrecker bases before, with scrutinising programs examining the feed off countless civilian satellites that somehow seemed to be always orbiting the area that American forces were operating in; they could do it again against aliens who wouldn’t know what to look for.  He could see, in the distance, the shape of the alien landing craft; smoke rose from where the craft had landed.  He tried to formulate a thought of a missile striking the craft and setting it on fire, but he knew better than to convince himself that the missile attack had been that useful; a single assumption could prove fatal.  The Wreckers, by and large, fought by the same rules as the American Army; the aliens might not even share a playbook.

“They can’t intend to get that thing off the ground,” De Boer said.  He had once harboured hopes of transferring to the Space Marines, the imaginative name for the handful of Marines who served in space and on the various colonies, and had spent years reading everything he could about spaceflight.  “It’s far too large to take off again; I’m surprised they actually managed to get it down without losing control and crashing against the ground.  It should have crashed…”

“Perhaps it did,” O’Malley suggested.  His voice held a certain undisguised optimistic feeling.  “Perhaps they’re all dead…”

A whining noise in the direction of the alien craft put the lie to his words.  Fardell used hand signals as the force spread out, taking up positions as two alien craft came into view, hanging just above the ground and heading towards them.  For a moment, he almost burst out laughing; the aliens, flying skimmer bikes that hovered just above the ground, looked…silly.  He hadn’t felt so much like laughing since watching Death to Osema, a movie about the final stand of Al Qeida Prime in Afghanistan; the movie had featured so many people and units with little resemblance to reality.  No one, even in the most under-trained and inexperienced unit in the worst army in the world, would go into battle with a low-cut bra on, and no terrorists, certainly none of the smart ones, would be distracted by a semi-naked girl on the battlefield...

He saw the human bodies, scattered around the area, and ground his teeth.  The deer-like aliens might be humorous in appearance, but there was nothing funny at all about their actions; they were going to pay for what they had down.  The skimmers came closer, the aliens moving rapidly from side to side to prevent someone taking a bead on them, a precaution that would be completely useless against his own people.  They had already practiced against high-speed targets…

“Fire,” he snapped, and unleashed a burst of heavy fire from his hand cannon.  The hand cannon had been designed – so the rumour went – by a man with an incredibly small penis; it overcompensated to the point of being heavy and almost impossible to use, only a man wearing a battlesuit could carry it comfortably, let alone handle the recall.  The first alien seemed to stagger; he felt his mouth fall open as the bullets barely sliced though his – or hers – armour, before falling off the bike, which exploded in a burst of fire.  The second alien died when his bike exploded.

“The bullets weren’t as effective against their armour as we had hoped,” O’Malley noted dispassionately.  Fardell nodded; an unarmoured human who had been stuck with a hand cannon burst would have been ripped apart in a shower of blood and guts.  The alien armour would hold up well against handguns, maybe even assault rifles and grenades.  “Sir, there’s more of them…”

Fardell muttered a second curse as a line of alien infantry came into view, carrying strange dinky-like weapons that seemed somehow deadly and dangerous as they advanced, their dome-like heads unmoving.  He could hear…something, right on the edge of his perception; click-click-click…  The audio-discrimination programs could barely get a grip on it; it was as if the aliens were using it for something, perhaps talking, perhaps something else.  He forced himself to concentrate as the aliens opened fire, their weapons…strange flickering bursts of red light, not automated weapons.  The US Army had tried to develop a handheld laser weapon for years, but had never succeeded; the aliens, apparently, had succeeded…

“Return fire,” he snapped.  Alien weapons had targeted one of his people; he watched in a kind of numb horror as the beams of light burned through the armour and roasted the soldier inside alive, his scream vanishing as the suit toppled over and crashed, before the self-destruct systems registered the death of the occupant and destroyed the classified systems to prevent them falling into alien hands.  The heavy hand cannons returned fire, tearing chunks out of the aliens; the aliens sought cover and advanced in a dance, their weapons cutting through cover and targeting the humans in their armour…

“We have an incoming tank,” O’Malley said.  Fardell saw it, clearly; an alien-designed tank that carried a strange antenna on the top, dancing with strange sparks of light.  The antenna seemed to flicker suddenly, casting an unearthly light over the entire scene, and then a ball of fire launched itself towards the soldiers.  Plasma fire was fast, but much slower than light-speed weapons; the alien weapon, whatever it was, positively dawdled by comparison, but it hit a wall that was sheltering two of the battlesuits…and vaporised it.  The explosion was powerful enough to knock Fardell over; the aliens advanced through the chaos, their weapons flickering out and killing two more of the battlesuits, even as three of their own number fell to hand cannon fire.  The alien tank was powering up again…

“Die,” someone shouted.  A burst of human plasma cannon fire splattered out and slammed into the alien tank, which exploded with a thunderous explosion; a massive flash of otherworldly light that seemed somehow to flicker around the battlefield for long minutes after the tank was destroyed.  Fardell wondered, just for a moment, if they could win the skirmish, but then the ground shook; an explosion shattered the battlesuit that had fired the plasma blast…

Plasma cannons can be detected from orbit, Fardell thought, his mind reeling under the impact.  They had been plunged into a fight they couldn’t win; they had to withdraw as best as they could, get what they had learned out as quickly as possible, and then rejoin the defence lines and fight with much more advanced knowledge.  The thought chilled him; for the past fifty years, the Great Powers had ruled LEO and used the advantage ruthlessly against their Wrecker enemies.  Now…the aliens had taken control, and that meant that they would be able to do to the Great Powers what the Great Powers had done to the Wreckers; orbital bombardment, precise destruction of targets such as radars and radio transmitters, insertion of troops wherever they pleased…if De Boer was correct about the aliens being unable to take off again, they had every reason to remain where they were, and, perhaps, the technology to hold on to wherever they took.  The only way to fight them would be to get close enough to fight where their own troops would be included in the footprint of any orbital strike…

He cursed as the battlesuits fell back; the aliens seemingly uninterested in pursuing them to destruction.  There was no guarantee that the aliens would care about the lives of their own people, after all; they might have looked a little like Earthly deer, although with three legs and six arms - but they were definitely not Bambi…

Chapter Twenty-Five: Invasion, Take Three

Eastern Seaboard, USA

“Unit Nineteen, advance towards human construction#45373,” the coordinator ordered.  “There are human survivors present in the building.”

“Understood,” Warag-Soldier-Infantry said.  The coordinator hadn’t given any orders as to how the task was to be accomplished; the information the Oghaldzon had collected on the area, such as it was, had been made available, but it would be Warag’s task to determine how to take the humans prisoner, and then carry it out.  Centuries of experimenting with different procedures had convinced the Oghaldzon that the Oghaldzon on the spot was the best placed to determine how to carry out any mission; no one in orbit, or even back in the larger landing ships, would have the view he would have as the closest person to the human positions.  “It will be done.”

The information was sparse, as he had expected, even thought it was being updated rapidly as drones spread out, backed up by Oghaldzon on the ground, encountering a handful of human forces that fought and died.  For the Oghaldzon infantry, it was a chance to come to grips with their foes; any hope that the human soldiers would have been cured of their madness by the sheer impact of the tidal waves had been rapidly lost as the humans fought, killed, and were killed.  It was a strange running battle; some units had penetrated for hundred-steps – no, kilometres, he reminded himself; I have to think in human terms – into the hinterland without making any contact, others had been engaged almost as soon as they had emerged from their craft.  Some drones had been shot down by human forces with handheld missile launchers; they weren’t worth the effort of targeting them from orbit.

Closer acquaintance with the human city hadn’t improved it in his eyes.  It remained stunningly ugly, even with the almost pretty way the water sparkled as it ran back towards the sea, leaving hundreds of human bodies and smaller creatures in its wake.  The bodies would have to be burned soon, he knew; the humans themselves would become infected with human diseases, even if the Oghaldzon themselves were immune…but he wasn’t sure that they were.  If the humans could eat Oghaldzon food, it was quite possible that one of their diseases could spread into the Oghaldzon, or perhaps vice versa.  It wasn’t unknown, back home, for a disease to affect several different species on the Oghaldzon homeworld; did human diseases have that same method of spreading across boundaries?  

Their target building was a massive tower, reaching up into the sky, although it was tiny compared to the orbital tower that had been constructed back on the Oghaldzon homeworld; the humans had to be short of space.  There was little sign of the kind of overpopulation that was a serious problem back home; the Oghaldzon tended to breed large numbers of young, but the inherent limitations of the human reproductive system would limit the number of human young who could be birthed at any one time.  He remembered a police action against a ThrillKill cult years ago; the tower would make the perfect place for an ambush, not least because they knew nothing about it’s layout, or anything about how many humans might be inside.  The drones had been launched out to try to locate other groups of human survivors, but clearing the city was going to be a long, dangerous work; a group of researchers, heavily guarded, had started the task of converting a human field into a prison camp for the first human prisoners.

“Spread out,” he ordered.  The infantry moved forward, awed into silence by the size of the human building; the clicking of their sonar echoing around the area as they hunted for the entrance.  The building was, unsurprisingly, almost opaque to sonar; there would be no way of knowing what was inside until they found a way to enter; the humans, possessing no sonar of their own, hadn’t made any provisions for the Oghaldzon.  Warag wouldn’t have trusted them if they had; ThrillKill cults were very ingenious when it came to luring police and soldiers to their doom.  “Find the way in…”

A gunshot echoed out; seconds later, something slammed against his armour, glancing off and leaving him sore, but alive.  Two of his soldiers fired burst of laser fire up toward the location of the sniper; their sonar had produced a hint of where the bullet had come from.  More human weapons boomed out, the noise appallingly loud; he wondered how the humans could even stand it.  Was their hearing so much worse than that of the Oghaldzon?

“Plasma fire,” Kodak-Soldier-Infantry said, launching a plasma ball towards the location of the sniper.  The explosion shattered the side of the building; Warag dimly saw a single human body falling, the entire frontal region torn away by the blast, before it crashed into the ground and smashed.  A second body fell, the human, still alive, struggling to survive…but no to avail as one of the soldiers swept his laser across his body.  Warag realised, as the body hit the ground, that he’d been wrong; the increased development of the front meant that the human was a female, not a male.  

He studied the human body thoughtfully for a long moment, sweeping his sonar through the body and noticing something of how it all went together, much more complicated than his own body, or even Kodak’s body.  How had the humans coped with their own children growing inside them?  What effects had that had on human development?  If a pregnant – the very thought was almost repulsive – woman was almost helpless, did that explain something of how the humans treated their women?  If not – and this female had clearly been a soldier – then how did they even live?  How could they develop much faster than the Oghaldzon?

Two of his soldiers had found the entrance; the unit broke into the building, their feet clattering over as they searched through the dim ground floor – sonar ensured that lighting was not a problem – and then found the stairs.  There was no trace of power, but he wouldn’t have risked using the human elevators in any case; the unit slowly expanded up the stairwells, leaving sensors behind them to monitor for human movements.  The entire skyscraper seemed to be deserted, apart from the bodies; some of them were clearly human young.  One of them had been holding what looked like a miniature four-legged Oghaldzon; he studied the plush toy without really understanding it.  Perhaps, he wondered, it was something to comfort the child; human children developed their intelligence sooner than Oghaldzon children.  They had to face questions of existence while they were still unready to understand them…

He didn’t remember anything of his own childhood; few Oghaldzon ever did.

The corridors were narrowing; he sent a smaller drone ahead of them as they climbed the stairs, aware that they were very much in an alien building.  It hadn’t been designed for Oghaldzon; he was uncomfortably aware that they could encounter a human ambush at any moment, one they would be unprepared to face.  The sooner the human city was knocked down and rebuilt, the better; it could hardly be made more irritating by a direct nuclear strike.  A single human grenade – the database was filling with details of human weapons as they were encountered – would kill most of them if it went off in the stairwell; he wasn't remotely convinced that the building was safe for any of them.  It creaked…

The drone reported back; there was a small group of humans, eight in all, waiting for them at the top.  The report suggested that the humans didn’t intend to fight; they were waiting without preparing an ambush position, but they had to be careful.  They might not recognise a human ambush until they realised they were being fired upon.  He ordered most of the force to remain behind; leading only four soldiers to the roof, stepping out with weapons raised and sonar senses clicking away…

The live humans were watching him; there was a small pile of weapons in the corner, all looking much cruder than the laser rifles his people carried, although the humans seemed to prefer chemically-propelled weapons.  He could see some advantages, but the Oghaldzon had developed lasers very quickly and hadn’t considered projectile weapons worth the effort.  The humans, three males, five females, were watching him nervously; he wondered just what an adult Oghaldzon looked like to a human.  He had never seen a humanoid creature on the homeworld.

He triggered his speaker.  It was – barely – possible for an Oghaldzon to speak words that humans could hear, but it was painful and unnecessary.  “You will accompany us,” he said, using the words the researchers had insisted upon.  His sonar swept over the humans; they carried nothing he recognised as weapons, but human weapons could be anything.  Some of the items in human pockets made no sense.  “Remove all of your clothing and accompany us.  Do not attempt to resist.”

He watched as the humans slowly and reluctantly disrobed.  Clothing was optional among the Oghaldzon; the uniform he wore was more of a protective outfit than anything that showed his rank among the infantry family, but the humans seemed to value their clothes.  He studied them through his eyes, wondering; the humans were more limber than he would have believed, almost certainly much better at climbing than any Oghaldzon would ever be, but he guessed that he was faster than them on the ground.  They also lacked sonar; it should give his forces an advantage if they had to fight humans in open terrain, although he would strongly prefer to avoid fighting humans in built-up areas.  They would have the advantage there.

“Accompany us,” he ordered.  He noticed that the male humans were showing signs of trying to protect the female humans, something that wouldn’t have impressed the Oghaldzon, who embraced the concept of sexual equality to the point that they didn’t accept any chance of females being inferior.  It might have made more sense if a pregnant human female was defenceless; she would need help and support from a male to survive in the jungle of human existence.  “Do not attempt to deviate from the route.”

The humans moved as if they were going to fall over; he wondered how they remained balanced as they made their slow way down the stairwell.  Some of his unit were laughing at the humans, their expressions hopefully unreadable by the human captives, who might be infected with ThrillKill.  So far, they had behaved themselves, but anyone infected with ThrillKill was dangerous and unpredictable.  They might decide to attack an Oghaldzon with their bare hands, or they might try to grab a weapon…although he suspected that they wouldn’t be able to use a laser rifle.  The human weapons had been cruder, but much simpler; an Oghaldzon needed to use two hands to handle one of their weapons, and a human would find that tricky.

“Move,” he said, pushing the humans forward into captivity.  He sent a brief update to the coordinator as they finished stripping the human building, scattering sensors everywhere; if there were more humans, they would trigger an alarm sooner or later.  “You will be well treated if you cooperate.”

Moments later, it darkened suddenly, and then the skies opened.  

Warag ignored it.

***
Markus Wilhelm kept one arm wrapped around Carola’s shoulder as the aliens prodded them onwards, silently cursing himself for a fool; they should have left the city as soon as the aliens had been detected, no matter that that would have left them twiddling their thumbs for six months before the invasion began.  He glanced down at her drawn features and her arms, crossed over her bare breasts, and silently promised her revenge as soon as he could.  There was no reason to assume – rather the opposite – that the aliens would be interested in her, but other humans would be interested in looking at her.  The aliens had stripped their dignity from them as if it had been nothing; they didn’t even have the excuse of being interested in tormenting their captives.

They walked in silence.  The aliens didn’t seem to care about handcuffing them, or securing them; they had made certain that the humans were carrying nothing dangerous before leading them out of the skyscraper and into the ruined city.  It was a nightmare; the stench alone almost made him sick as it rose in the unnatural heat, moments before the sky darkened and hot rain poured down on them, splashing all over them.  The aliens ignored it as the rain poured down; they didn’t even seem concerned about the weather as they led them directly towards one of their ships, then past it and back into the city.  He wondered where they were going as other human captives joined the group; a gang member who was staring at the women as if Christmas had come early, an older man who was bleeding from a wound to the temple, but whose eyes were bright and keen.

“Come here,” the gang member said, addressing a woman – barely entering her teenage years, but already a stunner, with breasts that would catch any man’s eye – who flinched back.  “I said, come here…”

He reached out and groped her bare breasts, making her scream.  A moment later, one of the alien weapons flickered red and the gang member fell to the ground, a smouldering hole burned right though his head.  The aliens didn’t seem to care; the one that had fired the shot stamped on the body with his single hindleg, several others followed suit, but with no other sign that they had just killed a man.  Wilhelm wasn't sure how to feel; on one hand, he would have been terrified about Carola’s safety anywhere near the former gang member, on the other hand, the aliens had swatted a life that couldn’t have caused them any harm.  It was a sign, he was sure, of how the aliens thought; he just didn’t understand it.  If they had cared nothing for the humans, they could have just mowed the entire group down, but if they had just wanted the humans as slaves, would it have mattered to them if the humans attacked each other or not?

The rain kept coming down; the groped girl cried silently as the rain suddenly blew very cold, then hot, then back to cold…all the time, utterly ignored by the aliens, who kept on their operations as if it was irrelevant.  There were thousands of them swarming around, entering the city or sending their vehicles – strange tanks, even stranger skimmer bikes – into the city and buzzing about overhead.  There was a massive explosion in the distance; he saw a tower block slowly tip over and crash, grimly he hoped that a few hundred aliens had been killed in the shattering impact.

Carola looked up at him, her face streaked with tears, or maybe rain water.  It was impossible to tell; he naked body was shivering against his.  “They’re taking us to the golf course,” she said, her voice surprised.  Wilhelm could have kicked himself; they’d watched games before when the course had become one of main attractions in the city.  “Look.”

Wilhelm saw; she was right.  The aliens had rigged up massive tents with the help of a handful of humans wearing the remains of uniforms he recognised from television shows, FEMA-trained disaster relief experts.  He wanted to hate them for cooperating with the aliens, but what else could they have done?  If the aliens weren’t interested in keeping the humans alive, the FEMA experts might be the only hope they had; they’d already set up a small food kitchen and shelter for the drenched human survivors.  Their escorts pushed them forwards into the perimeter; the alien guards noticed their arrival, caught up with each of them, and snapped a bracelet around their wrists.  A second later, it tightened, just enough to prevent him from removing it with ease.

“Do not attempt to leave the compound without permission,” the alien said, and left them alone.  Wilhelm watched the aliens marching away and felt a wave of pure hatred; they’d stuffed nearly a hundred naked humans inside one compound, somewhere where there would be no discipline, or…

“Welcome to our humble home,” a very tired man said.  He wore the FEMA uniform; the only humans dressed were FEMA officers.  Wilhelm wanted to tear the uniform off him and give it to Carola, but he resisted the temptation.  There was no way to know how the aliens would react to that.  “You have to be very careful here.”

Carola nodded once.  “We will be,” she said.  “What happens if we are not careful?”

“They shoot anyone who offers violence against another human,” the man said.  He extended a bony hand.  “Mitchell Sartin, FEMA.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Wilhelm lied.  The name meant something to him, but he couldn’t remember where he had heard it before.  “What’s happening outside here?”

“I don’t know,” Sartin admitted.  His face crumpled.  “There was a group of armed soldiers around, but there went off to fight the aliens when they started to land and God alone knows what’s happened to them; the aliens surrounded the remains of my refugee camp before we could get out.  Those of us who were willing to help were brought back here; the others were just left in the camp, once they had stripped us and the weapons were removed.”

Wilhelm winced.  The reminder that everyone, with only a handful of exceptions, was naked hadn’t sat well with him.  “What are they going to do to us?”

“I have no idea,” Sartin said.  He looked over towards the hulking shape of one of the guards, right outside the limits of the golf course.  The rain chose that moment to stop; bright sunlight beamed down on all of them, before clouds started to form again.  “All I can tell you is that I don’t think it’s going to be pleasant.”

Chapter Twenty-Six: Escape from Washington, DC

Near Washington DC, USA

The main landing craft had been designed for more than just the rapid transport of troops and ground forces to the surface.  Yatha-Soldier-Command, commander of the invasion forces (America), had insisted on the deployment of both a mobile command centre and supply base as soon as he had realised just how bad the weather was likely to become.  From the centre of one of the massive landing ships, cones planted firmly on Earth by the heat of their drives, he commanded the invasion force as it spread out and secured the general landing region.

The main computer, directly linked into him though his implant, was updated constantly by the advancing forces.  Each unit larger than a single infantry soldier automatically transmitted a microburst situation report to the main computer, which promptly updated the overall tactical map.  The results seemed to be chaotic, but an hour after the first forces had landing, Yatha was confident that the humans wouldn’t be destroying his forces anytime soon.  The dangers of fighting a determined human force right from the moment they landed had been obvious; Yatha was privately delighted that the tidal waves had disrupted all opposition.  There were places where the humans had fought like mad ThrillKill cultists, places where the humans had melted away at the first touch, and places where there was no opposition at all.  Human civilians generally fled from the Oghaldzon; those who had been captured would have to remain in the camps until they could be confirmed free of ThrillKill and invited to take part in rebuilding their world.

He nodded once to himself as the next set of landing craft headed out of orbit and down towards the planet.  As the advancing infantry and armoured support cleared possible landing locations, the craft could be brought down to the surface of the Earth, incidentally reinforcing the successful advance.  He had nearly a million Oghaldzon under his direct command; the reserves could be committed if they were needed, but he suspected that they wouldn’t be needed for a while.  The humans, judging by their own buildings, could not have suspected just how many Oghaldzon had been brought along by the intervention fleet.

An alarm flickered up; a human force had dug into a small set of buildings and was fighting to hold the Oghaldzon back, a futile effort as the commander on the ground called in an orbital strike.  The human buildings might have held up to the tidal wave, but the direct impact of a tactical KEW shattered them; the handful of survivors either fled or were captured.  Time was now all-important; they'd landed among disrupted human forces and they were jamming all human radio communications, but given enough time, the humans would have a chance to regroup and concentrate their forces against the Oghaldzon.  In theory, any major human force could be spotted and destroyed from orbit; in practice, so far, the humans had proven to be experts at placing ambushes.  Some humans had retreated, leaving hundreds of booby traps in their wake; his soldiers were learning quickly, but they lacked the experience that might have saved their lives.  The only real consolation was that the humans were equally unprepared to operate as an underground force; they had made mistakes because they hadn’t understood that they no longer owned the skies.  That, too, wouldn’t last; defeat was a good teacher.

He studied the human political map, such as they had pieced it together; researcher teams would be coming down as quickly as possible to search through human libraries, maybe even computer systems when they were located.  The humans who called themselves Americans – a strange concept for the Oghaldzon to grasp; they had always been one nation, apart from the cultists…but then, they’d had to fight wars to prevent the cultists from winning – had the centre of their nation in the city called Washington.  Apparently, there was a human sub-region called Washington as well; the researchers had become very confused before asking their human prisoners about the mismatched names.  They were still wondering where Old York was.

He clicked in irritation.  It didn’t matter, not while victory was in their grasp.  Once Washington fell, the human state would fall apart and they would be able to purge America of the ones who were infected, offering the humans a chance to change their ways though exposure to the Oghaldzon society that would be established on Earth.  It would take time, cycles and cycles of time, but the Oghaldzon were patient.  Once they destroyed the human forces on Earth – a certainty, now that they had taken control of space – they would have the time to do the job properly.

He developed orders in his mind and issued them through the computer network.  He had established and secured major footholds to each side of the human city; now, it was time to expand his control, seal the city off, and then take control of it directly.  The tidal waves had already devastated large sections of Washington; all his forces had to do was smash the remaining human defenders in the area and take the city.  The main priority would be capture of the American leader, their ‘President;’ if he remained true to his MemeKill beliefs, he would remain in the city, secure in the self-delusion that nothing could kill him or his ideas.  Oddly, the mere act of fleeing could shattering his followers faith in him; Yatha almost hoped that the President would flee for his life.

He finished issuing orders and sat back.  All he had to do now was wait; his soldiers knew what to do.

***
Five Shadows had flown into the combat zone around Washington since the alien invasion had begun; three of them had been shot down directly and the fourth had been damaged by the alien weapons.  Captain Wilbur Hawking was grimly aware that his aircraft was the last in the region; other Shadows had been called from other air bases, but several had been destroyed on the ground by the aliens.  Sooner or later, the aliens would track down the hidden airbase and destroy it, leaving him trapped in the sky…or one of their near-misses would be close enough to actually destroy the aircraft.  He had no illusions; if he tried to eject, the odds were not in favour of survival.  

He hummed the words to Voodoo Child under his breath as he swept in, barely above ground level, leaving what he hoped was a line of very unhappy aliens and broken windows behind him.  The aliens themselves had been distributing more of their radars and sensors systems around; a helicopter that had somehow taken off from Washington had been speared with a burst of laser light and disintegrated when the fuel tanks had exploded.  He suspected that the more they linked their systems together, as the united states and the other Great Powers did, they’d eventually manage to track the Shadow well enough to destroy him and any other pilots who tried to fly near them.  The aliens were spreading out; passive sensors had tracked alien landings as far west as Richmond, the alien floating tanks making predicting their movements much harder, while the damaged ground infrastructure made it almost impossible for an serious defence to be mounted.  He'd been briefed that Continental Command was attempting to pull together the surviving forces for a defence of Washington, but with the aliens overrunning Philadelphia and advancing towards Maryland, the capital would be caught in a pincer.  The USAF – which effectively meant him and any more Shadows that joined the fight in time to make a difference – had to delay them.

An air-search radar lit off, bare kilometres from his position; he accelerated towards it even as he selected a modified HARM missile and launched it towards the alien radar, following up with a series of cluster bombs launched towards the alien ground forces. The aliens hadn’t known he was there, he realised; their hasty attempt to shoot him down missed by several kilometres, literally.  He swept into a course change and powered up the plasma cannon; the aliens would be somewhere around, and when they appeared, moving up the interstate, he intended to hurt them.

Missiles, drives blazing rapidly, appeared, heading towards the alien positions; he hoped that some of them actually found their targets.  The aliens were good at shooting down missiles; the targets, bridges and known alien landing sites, were very well defended.  He squeezed the trigger as he passed over a bridge with a set of alien vehicles positioned to cover it; explosions shattered the aliens and sent them scattering for cover.  He almost laughed…

“Here come the drums,” he shouted, and shot an alien drone out of the sky.  He cursed the limited weapons he carried; the plasma cannon was a good weapon, but it wasn't the easiest system to aim.  The weapon didn’t always fire in a straight line; no one had ever been able to provide understandably outraged pilots with an explanation, or a fix.  “Here come the drums…”

He swooped low over a ruined town, and then made a rapid course change, giving the alien landing craft a wide berth.  The missing Shadows had all been piloted by good men, almost as good as he considered himself to be, and they had all done well…until they had flown too close to a landing craft.  The aliens had gone a little crazy with the defences surrounding the landing craft; the massive cones had been very – very – easy to find and almost impossible to attack once they were on the ground.

“We need some artillery,” he muttered.  Missiles, from MLRS to single-shot weapons, were easy for the aliens to shoot down.  The problem was that if they detected such weapons, they would drop a KEW on the source from orbit, killing the crew and certainly destroying the weapon.  Was there anything that could stop the aliens without taking LEO back from them somehow?  Any major attack force would be noticed forming on the ground and smashed from orbit.  “We have to find some way of getting at them under cover…”

He launched a missile towards an alien convoy, and then flew low over it, spraying the entire force with plasma fire.  The aliens struck back with their strange plasma weapons, the eerie glowing balls of light that seemed to creep through the air, but they were easy to evade.  The sight still sent a shiver creeping up his spine; he’d never seen anything act like that, not even ball lighting.  From the reports on the ground, the balls punched through whatever they struck, shattering them and perhaps even causing limited fission – it had to be limited, or the blasts would be far more dangerous – but they could be dodged.  His final missile struck the launcher and he flew as low as he dared, heading back towards the base and hoping to rearm before the aliens hit Washington.

He had a score to settle.

***
The big display was changing every few moments, but no one was sure just how accurate it’s information was; the tidal waves had caused more disruption than anyone had expected, before the war had begun.  Information suggested that the aliens had surrounded Philadelphia, but there were rumours that suggested that they were going to launch an attack on the city by main force, or that they had merely sealed the city off and demanded it’s surrender.  The President stared at the board, wondering if he could pull some information from it by sheer force of will, but there was nothing he could do.  He had once been the most powerful man in the world – although the other Great Power leaders would have disputed that – but now, all he could do was watch his country disintegrate under the alien pounding.

He looked up as there was a knock at the door.  “Mr President, we have to get you out of here,” General William Denny said.  “The aliens are approaching Fredericksburg and heading up towards Waldorf; those damned tanks of theirs can actually glide across the water like a hover boat.”

The President felt cold.  No one had invaded Washington since 1814, when the British had invaded and burned the city.  Judging from some of the reports, the aliens had destroyed the city – or at least large sections of it – before they had even bothered with the invasion; the chaos in the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay was proof enough of that.  He wanted, desperately, to remain in the bunker, but Denny was right; the bunker was no longer proof against attack.

“I understand,” he said, standing up.  Several heavily-armed soldiers, wearing the uniform of Tomb Guards, although the combat dress that had replaced the more formal wear that had been required for the post before armed terrorists had come to Washington, appeared at the corner of the door.  “What’s the current situation?”

“You’ve inspected the Tomb Guards before,” Denny said, nodding to one of the soldiers.  By long custom, Tomb Guards carried no rank insignia, just to ensure that none of them outranked the Unknown Soldiers buried in Arlington.  Most of the custom had survived the Wrecker War intact, but some details had changed; if Washington was attacked, the Tomb Guards were granted leave to leave their posts and join the defence without any stain on their record, although the men in the bunker were more likely to be the off-duty soldiers at the time.  “Captain Schaefer will get you out of here or die trying.”

Captain Schaefer, a big burly man, saluted the President; the President awkwardly returned the salute.  “William, you’re coming with us,” the President said, seriously.  “You can’t stay here…”

“Most of the staff are going out through the roads,” Denny said.  His voice was very grim.  “Someone has to remain here to coordinate as best as we can, because the remaining soldiers out there are going to hold the line for us as long as they can.  That's my post, Mr President; I’ll leave with the final group if the situation calls for it, but if we are lucky, we might be able to keep operating the bunker right under their very noses…if they have noses.”

The President refused to be distracted.  Whatever the humour inherent in the alien appearance, there was no disputing the fact that they might have killed over a billion people on Earth already and were crunching their way through human defences at several different locations.  It might be hours at most before the aliens broke into Washington and took the city; one of their pincers would surely break through into the city and almost certainly locate the bunker.  There were enough links to the bunker from the remains of the White House for any careful survey to locate the bunker…and, once the aliens had sealed off the city, escape would become almost impossible.  

“You have to come with us now,” he insisted.  “Please…”

Denny shook his head.  “Please don’t make it an order,” he said.  “You have to trust me on this one; without what little coordination we can manage, the aliens are going to march right in to the city.  They’re already moving faster than we can move and acting to reinforce their success; you have to get out of here to keep the country together, understand?”

The President held out a hand.  “I understand,” he said.  “Keep yourself safe, understand?  That’s an order.”

“I’ll do the best I can,” Denny assured him.  “Captain Schaefer, keep the President safe; you know the extraction route and the procedures.  Good luck.”

Captain Schaefer didn’t salute; he merely nodded once and encouraged the President to follow two of his team out into the main control room, which had darkened.  Half of the consoles were now unmanned, the remaining handful that were manned occupied by grim-faced experts who were trying desperately to reach command networks that were failing, or had failed, almost certainly signifying the destruction of vast quantities of command hardware by the aliens.  The President wondered what was happening on the other side of the world; the aliens had landed in five separate locations, something that chilled him.  There would be no way that any of the Great Powers could help one another…

“The aliens don’t shoot at stealth helicopters,” Captain Schaefer explained, as they walked quickly down the long corridors.  The President realised numbly why Captain Schaefer hadn’t saluted the General; he was convinced that they were already in a combat zone.  The Tomb Guards kept their weapons slung over their shoulders, but he was sure that they could draw them and lay down a massive hail of fire at the slightest notice.  “We tested this with a series of flights well away from the alien landing zone; they just seem to ignore them.  We have Air Force Five in a secure location; the only problems remains getting you to it.”

The President found himself gasping for breath, but forced himself to move faster; he’d never been this far down in the complex before and couldn’t help, but notice how the lighting flickered on and off as they passed a series of proximity sensors.  There were a dozen questions on his tongue, but he held them down; there was no time to waste.

They reached a door with enough armour to hold back a tank.  “The Tomb Guards were ordered to prepare a plan to assist in the emergency evacuation of Washington of People of Extreme Importance by President Culpepper, back in the days following New York,” Captain Schaefer explained, as they entered a room with a dark tunnel at one end.  The President stared at it, and then blinked as a hatch opened, revealing an armoured jeep; one of the soldiers jumped into the driving section, while Captain Schaefer encouraged the President into the rear seat.  Two more jeeps appeared; one went ahead, the other followed behind them, closing the doors as they moved.  “The VIP would be taken down these tunnels to a secret bunker, where they would be flown at once to the National Command Centre, or alternatively one of the Secondary Command Centres.  If everything goes to plan, we should be well on our way by the time the aliens break into Washington.”

The President looked up at him.  “What happens if we are not on our way by then?”

“I don’t know,” Captain Schaefer admitted.  “You can get away with a great deal during the chaos of an invasion, just as we found out in Iraq and Mexico; we might manage to escape anyway.  If not, then we – you – might fall into enemy hands.  If that happens, then I don’t know what they would want with you.”

The jeeps sped on into the darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Fall of Washington

Washington DC, USA

“Here’s the situation, as we understand it,” a tired-looking officer said.  Captain Christopher Fardell leaned forward and tried to profess interest, but they were all tired and exhausted; they’d been fighting all day when they encountered aliens on their attempt to reunite with other American forces.  The aliens had accidentally trapped thousands of American soldiers behind enemy lines – adding insult to injury as most of those soldiers had been scattered from their units, or wounded, or trying to assist with recovery operations – and many of them had tried to fight their way out.  Judging from the relatively few soldiers to the south of Washington, not all of them had made it.  “The aliens are launching a three-prong attack on Washington.”

The map had been drawn on, rather than a computer display; the map itself had been taken from a schoolhouse, something that more than anything else showed just how badly the United States had been hit.  In theory, every soldier was supposed to carry a terminal that would link him into the national military datanet; in practice, the alien attack had disrupted all of the carefully planned coordination plans.  It didn’t help that the soldiers gathered near Quantico were a mixed bag, from Marines and Regular Army soldiers, to National Guardsmen and even a few hundred volunteers from the civilians who professed some kind of military training.  There hadn’t been any time to check their references; as long as they had the weapons, they had been allowed to join the defence.

The officer, Colonel Harrison, looked around at them.  “The first prong is coming from the north, the second more or less from the east, launched through Ocean City, and the third coming up from Fredericksburg.  At last report, the aliens had sealed off Fredericksburg, but have not tried to take the city directly; a shame, since we had at least ten thousand armed people within the city.  Reports are vague, but it looks as if the aliens have detained any human they meet, ordering them to strip and then placing them in hastily established concentration camps.  It doesn’t look as if they are actually harmed, but any form of resistance or misbehaviour is punished by death.”

Fardell scowled to himself, an expression he knew was shared by most of the other soldiers and civilians.  The United States had invented the Carrera Protocols, which included ordering surrendered citizens to strip completely – women were allowed to keep their panties – in order to ensure that none of them were trying to carry a bomb up to the soldiers and blow them up, and it seemed that the aliens agreed.  How tight a control would they keep on their captive humans?  Naked men and naked women didn’t go well together in a stressful situation; he remembered the Neo-Draka and wondered what had happened to them and the FEMA team.  The thought of subjecting American women to such treatment was horrifying; American women generally didn’t commit suicide bombings.

“Our mission is to stall the aliens as long as we can,” Colonel Harrison said.  He’d already sent a set of men with deer rifles and other hunting weapons into Prince William National Park to see if they could form the beginnings of a resistance movement.  “Once we get the retreat order, we are to fall back to bases inside the continental united states, abandoning this area for the time being.”

Fardell winced and knew that others were sharing the same response; retreat?  Hell, we just got here!  On the other hand, the aliens had taken one hell of a bite out of the entire military position; perhaps it was better to reform and regroup somewhere well hidden while preparing for the counter-attack.  He would have been happier launching his own counter-attack, but that was out of the question until the forces had been gathered and something – anything – had been done about the alien control of space.

De Boer injected his own comment as the battlesuits spread out.  The entire area hadn’t been that badly devastated by the waves, but the weather had turned entire sections into a sea of mud, somewhere that could be used to camouflage an entire infantry division.  The small defence force had spread out; lacking even the manpower to hold off one prong for long, the defenders had intended to bleed the aliens and fall back in good order, something that was among the most dangerous manoeuvres any military force could be asked to carry out.  Failure would be disastrous; Fardell didn’t know how the aliens would treat military prisoners and he didn’t want to find out the hard way.

Time passed slowly.  The alien jamming field, transmitting static and occasionally strange clicking sounds that made no sense at all, kept the scratch division out of its normal extensive contact with the datanet.  More microburst transmitters had survived further from the coast, so they had some communications; Colonel Harrison seemed to believe that the aliens were gathering their forces to launch their attack simultaneously.  He might have been a pen-pusher, although he had to have some experience, but Fardell could find no reason to dispute his logic.  The aliens would certainly try to put the boot in as hard as they could.

He glanced over towards a broken warehouse, damaged first by the tidal wave and then army engineers, hiding the massive Petraeus tank that had been one of three survivors of an armoured division.  From what he’d heard from the tank crewmen, they had been lucky to survive; the aliens had struck the division from orbit, missed a handful of tanks, and when the weather had changed, they had moved to firing positions.  The crewmen were braver than Fardell considered himself; the Petraeus might be massive and proof against almost anything the Wreckers could bring to bear, but alien KEWs would smash it with ease.  It wasn’t the only regular weapons system that had become more dangerous to the users than to the enemy; the entire set of plasma cannons had been removed and set up for an automated firing sequence, just to prevent the aliens using it as a targeting indicator.  They'd get in a handful of blows…and then the aliens would destroy the cannons with ease.

“They’re coming,” Colonel Harrison said.  He’d found a position to observe the entire battle; he’d taken to it more than he would have taken to the more normal bunker with computer feeds reporting every time a tanker farted on his seat.  Fardell’s lips twitched at the black humour; the REMFs would have to get used to thousands of changes in the way the army did business, the only question was how many soldiers would have to die before they learned that lesson.  “Fire when you see the whites of their eyes, unless they open fire…”

Fardell waited as the aliens came closer.  The human forces had dug in carefully, but there was no way they could protect themselves from a KEW without digging too deep to actually fight the aliens.  The aliens would have to be close enough to make striking the human positions from orbit difficult…assuming, of course, that the aliens cared about their own lives.  The American Army had plenty of experience with radical fanatics of one stripe or another who hadn’t cared about their own lives, but most of them had taken very little effort to kill; they’d been that eager to die.  How much did the aliens care?

He tensed.  Any closer and the alien tankers would see them, or the skimmers would go somewhere they could see something that would alert them…what was strange for an alien, anyway?  No Russian or Chinese commander would have moved at them like that, but then, the Russians or the Chinese would not have had the advantages the aliens possessed, they would have been fighting on even terms.  It was hard for any soldier to accept; a day ago, the American Army had been the most powerful force on the surface of the planet, now it was trapped into fighting a guerrilla war against an overwhelmingly powerful force.  Whatever happened, it was going to hurt…

“Fire,” Colonel Harrison snapped.

The Petraeus tank fired first, a single shell that arced through the air and struck an alien tank head-on, blowing it up in the same eerie flickering light he’d seen before, when the aliens actually landed.  The crewmen fled from the warehouse as the tank fired again, and again, firing on automatic as the automated plasma cannons opened fire, seconds before…something streaked down from orbit and shattered the warehouse and tank alike.  The plasma cannons drew fire next; a single line of KEWs fell from orbit and detonated them, just after they struck several alien targets and destroyed them.  An alien infantryman, too close to a very near miss, ran around burning moments before someone snapped off a shot and put the alien out of his misery.  The aliens seemed surprised…

But they recovered quickly.  The red flickering lights of their lasers flickered through the smoke, seeking targets, and death followed in their wake.  Flames flickered into life as laser beams ran across hedgerows and planted gardens; Fardell remembered the people who had had to leave their homes and hoped that they wouldn’t be upset about the devastation of their homes by the fight, even as the battlesuits moved forward to add to the chaos.  He lifted his hand cannon, took careful aim, and sprayed a hail of bullets across the alien footsoldiers as they advanced, who danced back and returned fire.  The battle was eerie; one moment there would be nothing, then the flickering light of a laser weapon, and then nothing again, the aliens had changed too many rules…

“Fall back,” he snapped, as the aliens brought up their own heavy weapons.  He took a chance and gambled, standing up long enough to fire a burst from his hand cannon at one of the alien tanks, cursing as he saw the bullets bounce off.  It wasn't that much of a surprise – he’d seen the same happen during exercises with Petraeus tanks – but Fardell found it irritating.  Their normal weapon for dealing with enemy tanks was to use plasma weapons, which might as well as been calling the aliens to get on with killing the defenders; they would have to find other weapons to handle the aliens.  One of them, mines, had been scattered throughout the streets, but he saw the aliens sweeping the ground with lasers and cursed again; the mines were being detonated before the alien tanks hovered over them.  “Get to the second defence line…”

Virginia and Maryland National Guardsmen had dug into Dumfries; the aliens now hit their positions, fighting the Guardsmen hand-to-hand in the town.  Some of the guardsmen had come from the town; they knew much more about it than the aliens could ever hope to know.  The aliens took losses, fell back, and Colonel Harrison ordered the Guardsmen to retreat.  Before they could retreat, if they had been disposed to obeying an order many of them would have considered to be treacherous in the extreme, alien weapons fell from orbit and devastated most of the town.

“Bastards,” O’Malley hissed, as the smoke and dust rose, revealing the aliens advancing carefully through the town.  Their concern for civilian lives, assuming that they had ever had any, had vanished; they charged through the debris and reached the second defence line.  The battlesuits engaged again, fell back, engaged…but they couldn’t slow the invaders.  A MLRS belonging to the National Guard launched its entire load of missiles before the aliens could take it out from orbit; Fardell watched in horror as alien lasers swept most of the projectiles out of the air before they could do any real damage.  A handful landed on alien vehicles and killed them; most of them had been completely useless.

“Drones,” he snapped, as he felt the presence of a handful of alien drones ghosting over the city.  His targeting systems went to work, targeting the drones with his hand cannon; one of the drones fell to the ground and sparked out in a small explosion, the others danced away, moments before he started to run.  Seconds later, a KEW impacted, barely far enough from him to avoid causing any real damage.

“Sir, are you ok?”  O’Malley asked sharply.  Fardell felt as if he had been kicked in the ass by a particularly large quarterback he remembered from High School.  “Sir?”

“I’m fine,” Fardell snapped.  The question hurt somehow.  “Get back to kicking those alien bastards off this damned planet!”

Colonel Harrison broke into the conversation.  “We have to bug out, now,” he snapped.  Fardell opened his mouth to protest.  “They’ve broken though the defences in the north, they’re going to enter Washington at any moment, and we have to get out of here before they pocket us and destroy us.”

Fardell wanted to believe that it wasn’t possible, but he knew how fast the aliens could move and just how dangerous they could be.  “Yes, sir,” he said, reluctantly.  He started to issue orders to his troop, trusting them not to argue; they had to avoid presenting a target for the aliens as they started to slowly strangle Washington.  “We’re moving now.”

The battlesuits all held maps of the area; it was easy enough to break contact and find their way to one of the pre-positioned catches of supplies they had taken the precaution of scattering around the area.  Fardell wondered just how the planned resistance movement would go; there had been very little time to set anything up, mainly using whoever was willing take part with a handful of regulars and National Guardsmen as stiffeners.  Behind them, the aliens completed the destruction of Dumfries and advanced carefully towards Washington.  They would be there within hours at most.

***
The human capital city was ugly; it seemed to be a dominant feature of human construction.  The researchers had tried to explain that Washington was only the capital of one particular human subset, but the infantry hadn’t really understood, any more than they had understood the determination the humans had shown in holding what was, in the end, a worthless patch of land.  Parts of Washington had been held by determined opposition, so determined that the Oghaldzon had pulled back and struck the location from orbit, other parts had been held by gangs of young men who had been abusing their fellow citizens when the Oghaldzon encountered them.  They had simply been mown down and their bodies left to rot.

Warag-Soldier-Infantry advanced carefully through the burning city.  The humans had had the opportunity to leave traps set for the advancing aliens, including a very nasty trick with a spring and fanged edges that was apparently designed to trap an Oghaldzon-like creature on Earth.  Warag and his comrades had learned rapidly; anything that looked remotely suspicious was blasted with laser fire from a safe distance, although the ‘safe distance’ hadn’t always been safe enough.  Tripwires, exploding devices hidden in the ground, the occasionally human who had sacrificed himself to kill a handful of Oghaldzon…all of them had taken a toll.  The city would be in rubble by the time the last human had been killed, driven out, or captured.  The flames along would consume much of the city; the only advantage was that it would destroy much of the cover the human soldiers had used to such good advantage.  If the Oghaldzon hadn’t had their body armour…

He dismissed the thought; philosophy in a fight tended to mean that the Oghaldzon doing the thinking was about to die.  He concentrated as they marched through the remains of a cemetery, made even more gruesome by the remains of humans who had dug in and fought to the death to hold the burial ground.  The Oghaldzon didn’t bury their dead; Warag didn’t care that the humans did this, but their willingness to die to save a handful of bodies from the Oghaldzon surprised him, not least because the Oghaldzon were hardly going to do anything to the bodies.  The bridges across the river had been shattered, either by the waves or by the human defenders; they waited for a troop transport and a series of tanks to arrive and transport them across the river, towards a massive white house.  Oddly, it was the first pretty piece of human architecture they'd yet seen, even though most of its windows had been shattered by the waves.

His earpiece buzzed.  “That is the centre of human government,” the coordinator said.  “Approach with extreme caution.”

Warag would have hesitated if he could have done so; almost every Oghaldzon who became infected with MemeKill became convinced that he or she was invincible, or a tactical genius, or something like that.  It didn’t help that many of them had a grasp of how their opponents thought through some strange arcane process.  The infected person would remain in the centre of their power, blithely confident that they couldn’t be hurt, until the sane soldiers broke in and arrested them.  The human President could be inside the building, preparing his final stand, surrounded by his most fanatical followers…

He issued orders quickly as other companies came forward to join him, searching the White House lawn for traces of enemy activity before surrounding and attacking the White House itself.  Missiles took out parts of the wall; the infantry moved forwards, weapons raised, and saw…nothing.  The building had been damaged by the waves, and then by the missiles, but he had expected opposition.  Had they all been killed by the waves?  The evidence suggested against it; the infantry kept moving, heading through the building, searching for any humans.  They encountered a handful of small traps, killing seven infantry, but no humans.  Even the slaves had vanished…

The absence of fanatical opposition was puzzling.

They broke into a large room and found…nothing.  There was a desk, one suitable for a human, and a set of human flags, but no sign of humans, apart from a note on the desk.  He pointed his automated translator at it; it produced a translation after some thought – ‘we’ll be back.’

Warag almost collapsed in shock.  If the MemeKill stereotype wasn't holding true – and it normally did, because that was why it was a stereotype – what had happened?  Just what had they encountered on Earth?  Part of his mind whispered an answer; aliens…

For the first time, he understood what that meant.

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Quartered Safe Out Here

United States National Command Centre, USA

The stealth helicopter ghosted over the forest in the dead of night.

The President looked up from his seat as the helicopter came in to land on what looked like a deserted forest clearing, landing with nary a bump.  Captain Schaefer moved quickly as the hatch opened; his men spilled out, secured the area, and then invited the President to walk quickly along a path towards an old logging cabin.  Inside the cabin, they were met by more guards, who insisted on checking everyone’s identity before opening a hatch in the floor, revealing yet another tunnel.

The President’s lips twitched.  He was getting sick of tunnels.

A small underground train waited for them; they boarded it and it sped off into the darkness.  Several minutes passed in the dark tunnel, and then the train came to a halt, passing through a set of blast doors before finally stopping at a small station.  A man wearing a Colonel’s uniform waited for them as they disembarked; the President liked him on sight.  He had an air of solid reassuring competence and confidence surrounding him.

“Mr President, my name is Colonel Travis,” the officer said.  He shook the President’s after saluting.  “Welcome to the National Command Centre.”

Captain Schaefer seemed to relax slightly as they headed up a long flight of stairs.  The President understood; if the aliens were able to land and occupy the National Command Centre, the war was as good as lost, at least the American part of the war.  He wondered, again, how the rest of the world was coping; any nation with a seacoast, and that included all of the Great Powers, was likely to be in real trouble even without the aliens landing and seizing territory.  Assistance from Russia or China was likely to be impossible…

“The complex actually isn’t that large,” Travis said, as they entered the ground floor.  It was designed like the bunker under Washington; a set of consoles, operated by grim-faced officers in uniform, with a set of large screens displaying images from hundreds of sensors and cameras scattered all over America.  Despite the best efforts of the ACLU, the entire country had been covered in sensors watching for Wreckers; at the moment, the President was more than relieved they existed.  He almost flinched back from an image of one of the aliens, holding a toy-like gun and marching forwards towards an unseen sensor.  “Most of it is buried deep under this mountain; it would take a major series of KEW strikes to expose and damage us, or the infrastructure we have created here over the years to provide command and control functions for the nation in a time of danger.”

He waved a hand around the complex.  “We actually have liaison officers and representatives from most federal organisations, including the State Police and the FBI, in the complex,” he continued.   “That gives us an unmatched ability to gather intelligence on what might have caused any problem and how we should respond to it, subject to the President’s approval, of course.  The small defence force, a company of Marines, have barracks and other facilities in the lower level of the complex; Captain Schaefer, you and your men are welcome to use them to refresh yourself and prepare for future deployment against the aliens.”

Captain Schaefer nodded and dismissed most of the platoon.  “I was ordered to remain with the President,” he said, and determinedly stuck with him.  Colonel Travis didn’t argue.  “How safe is this complex?”

Colonel Travis didn’t question his right to know.  “We’re supposed to be completely unknown to anyone not cleared to know,” he said.  “The odds are that the Russians and the Chinese have a vague idea where we are; the complex has been up and running for the last thirty years and that really means that some eagle-eyed Chinese recon officer might have put a picture together, over time.  The aliens are unlikely to be able to spot us from orbit; we’re not radiating anything that might attract their attention to this location.  The only real danger is that they might capture someone cleared to know about this base in Washington; there were at least seven, not counting yourselves, within the city when the aliens landed.”

He opened the door to a small conference room; the President smiled when he saw General Jessie Bark and Admiral Nelson Oshiro waiting for him.  He ignored their salutes and shook both their hands; his grin only grew wider when the Secretary of State, Janet Richardson, and the National Security Advisor, Casper Henderson, entered.  They both looked relieved to see him; they had had to maintain radio silence as they fled east and there had been no way to inform them that he was in fact alive until they reached the landing zone.  He clasped their hands as they came over to him, feeling as if there was no longer anything that could stop them; they’d stopped running, and now there was a chance to formulate a plan to hit back.

“Mr President,” Jessie said.  The President nodded and took the seat she had indicated for him; it seemed as if Jessie was going to give the briefing herself, rather than leaving it to a more junior officer to handle.  That invariably meant bad news.  The display blinked to life; every time she spoke, it focused in on a particular image or list of updates, such as they were.  The chaos had scattered the entire defence force along the eastern seaboard.  “As you know, America has been invaded by the aliens – the Oghaldzon” – her voice stumbled over the strange human attempt to pronounce an alien word – “if we take their broadcast seriously – along with four other locations around the world.  The first battles were very costly…and, I regret to saw, we lost.”

The President heard the bitterness in her tone and winced; the Oghaldzon were likely to regret ever meeting her.  “Apart from the landing in Virginia and Maryland, they landed in four other locations; southern France and northern Spain, Egypt, south of Moscow and near Karachi, but with landings heading in the direction of Delhi,” she continued.  “That means that four out of six Great Powers have been targeted; tidal waves and the asteroid impact have wrecked serious damage in China and Japan.  Our information is very sparse, Mr President, but the senior Chinese officer we have been able to talk to told us that the entire country was in chaos.  We haven’t been able to get in touch with Beijing at all; there may be some remains of the government, or the aliens might have destroyed it.  There’s no way to know.

“Japan was hit badly by tidal waves, hitting almost all of their cities and killing millions,” she said.  “We believe that every nation involved in the Co-Prosperity Sphere was struck, with Korea coming off the best, and Japan, Taiwan, and the various Indonesian islands coming off the worst.  They may have lost more than two-thirds of their population, Mr President; we can certainly expect very limited help from them.”

The map changed again, revealing the Middle East and Europe.  “We have much better information from the Caliphate and the Europeans,” Jessie continued.  “Tidal waves struck the Caliphate and much of Europe’s west coast; every city along there, including Mecca and Medina, got drenched.  Europe got off lightly, comparatively; Ireland was struck, along with parts of France, Spain and the surrounding areas, but the heartland was more or less untouched.  The long-term effects, however, are likely to cause the deaths of thousands more; the Caliphate, in particular, had created thousands of kilometres of farmland in Arabia and Iraq.  Between the waves and the massive rainfall, the farmland is likely to be destroyed, causing mass starvation.  They’ll have to set up algae farms; it was such a boost for them when they shut them all down, and now they’ll have to reopen them.”

The President tapped the table, unwilling to listen any more to the details.  The scale of the disaster was too large for him to cope with, for anyone to cope with.  All of the Great Powers had been hit and weakened badly by the asteroids alone, and the aliens had landed to make their victory certain.  He had to pull a victory out of it…and he could see no way to win, unless Area 51 could pull off a miracle.

“That’s a matter for another time,” he said.  He forced his voice to remain flat.  “What is the current military situation in America?”

Jessie nodded once and altered the display.  “Washington has fallen,” she said, flatly.  “So far, the aliens haven’t discovered the bunker; we hope to bring out the handful of remaining vital personnel and insert combat troops as soon as possible, but for the moment, the situation on the ground is way too confused to allow us to do much more than regroup and prepare for the next stage.  At the last report, our troops were regrouping at several different locations, carefully spread out to avoid drawing notice from orbiting spies.  Mr President, I cannot make that clear enough; every time they see a tank, they smash it from orbit.  We can hurt the aliens; as yet, we cannot push them into the sea.”

The display focused in on one of the alien landing craft.  “The USSF experts I talked to believe that the aliens cannot take off again,” Jessie said.  “Just how they intend to move their soldiers around the world is something of a mystery; we studied the concept of orbital insertion, but never really figured out a way of overcoming the inherent limitations.  The aliens have solved them by the simple expedient of using fusion drives to land…and they cannot leave.  They have to win, or die; those craft are just too heavy to make orbit.

“And, so far, they’re winning,” she continued grimly.  “Their main weapons appear to be lasers and a handful of other directed energy weapons, including something that caused very limited fission in the target, causing a massive explosion.  They have hover tanks and hover bikes – both concepts we studied and rejected because they were too complex for the battlefield – and they are capable of moving at astonishing speed.  We seem to have the advantage in house-to-house fighting – the aliens are much less agile than we are – but if they find an impossible target, they strike it from orbit.  They don’t seem to be very good at detecting Shadows and other stealth aircraft, but they’re leaning…and everything that doesn’t have stealth is dead if it tries to fly near them.  Worst of all, they’ve inflicted serious damage on our network of bases and ships across the world; most of the USN and the other global world navies have been destroyed from orbit.  The stealth ships and submarines, again, have been spared, although we have lost several to the tidal waves; one stealth ship was far too close to the impact in the Atlantic to possibly survive.  With your permission, I have ordered one of the Pacific Fleet ships to visit China and try to find out what’s happening; it’s quite possible that we have a sixth alien invasion force somewhere in China and we wouldn’t know about it until too late.”

She paused.  “Overall, the situation is grim,” she concluded.  “We can bleed the aliens, hurt them, but we cannot concentrate our forces for several weeks to hit them back.  We also know very little about what is happening with the other invasion forces; information is almost completely lacking.”

The President wanted to put his head in his hands.  There was no time to show any weakness.  “What about the civilian population?”

Jessie looked at Janet Richardson, who looked grim.  “It’s bad,” she said, “but not as bad as we feared across most of the country.  It’s worst in Latin America, where the tidal waves caused significant damage, but the mountains provided shelter for large numbers and local army units provided security for the civil population.  In the long-term, there will be massive shortages of food and shelter, as well as a dangerous disease environment caused by rotting bodies, but we could deal with that – provided, of course, that the aliens didn’t interfere.  The interior of the old United States is much less hit; we have been setting up refugee camps and working hard to evacuate people from the path of the alien advance.  Not everyone has been willing to leave; we have reports of individuals remaining behind to take pot shots at the aliens.”

She looked up.  “In the long term, however, we are looking at a major disaster…another major disaster, I should say,” she continued.  Her face was very pale; she held the President’s eyes in a death grip.  “The national economy has collapsed, more or less completely, and martial law exists in large parts of the country.  If it wasn't for the algae farms, we wouldn’t be able to feed the refugees; even so, there has already been some resistance to FEMA officials trying to requisition food supplies from farms for the refugees.  Some places are pulling together and helping people, other places are trying to seal themselves off from the refugees, or worse.  It’s going to get worse before it gets better…

“But even that is not the worst,” she concluded.  “We are dependent upon supplies of Helium-3 from the moon and Jupiter to fuel the fusion plants scattered around the country.  We intended to build a reserve to last six months; at the moment, we can roughly ensure that the supplies lasted for half of that, assuming that the aliens didn’t interfere with the supplies and their transports, and they almost certainly would.  There are only a handful of power plants that are not dependent upon Helium-3…and all of them together can’t supply everything we would need, even under ideal conditions.  In short, Mr President, within three months at most, the lights will go out right across the country.”

The President rubbed his eyes.  “I see,” he said.  “Is there any way that we can prevent the disaster from happening somehow?  Other supplies we can tap?”

Janet shook her head.  “There are no other sources of supply that would make economical sense,” she said.  “It never really took off until we had secure supply lines from the moon, and later the gas giants.  As long as the aliens continue to blockade us, we will be unable to refuel the power plants, or establish new ones.  We can work to set up some alternatives – there were developments in solar cells, for example, that never took off because of Helium-3 – but we cannot cover the entire country in the time we have left.  The best we can advise is rationing power as much as possible, only transmitting power to essential uses, but that could cause considerable unrest…and the aliens hacked up some parts of the power distribution network.  There are places in the country that have power, places that don’t, and no obvious reason why the aliens had treated them in such a manner.”

The President looked over at Admiral Nelson Oshiro.  “Is there no way that we can get supplies through the blockade anyway?”

“Blockade-running is always a complicated process,” Oshiro said.  “At present, the answer is almost certainly that we can’t; the moon, for example, normally launches capsules of Helium-3 via mass driver, which were then scooped out of space and parachuted down to Earth.  We could fit a capsule so that it could make the trip through the atmosphere without support, but it would be difficult to do it without it being detected and shot at from orbit.  There might be some possibilities, and my office has teams working on them now, but as long as the aliens are using active sensors in orbit, sneaking anything through the blockade would become almost impossible.  There are a handful of possibilities, but…”

He shrugged.  “We also don’t have much in the way of communications with the moon,” he continued.  “Radio is out; the aliens keep jamming it.  Laser communications were largely dependent upon relay stations, which the aliens destroyed…apart from one, a Chinese station that we have managed to take over for a short period.  The Chinese codes that they gave us are due to expire pretty soon and there’s no one we can ask for the next set of codes.  I have the NSA trying to crack the codes, but if we make a mistake, the entire system will shut down.  Direct communications are somewhat limited; we would have to try to organise it without perfect communications and no way of enforcing what we asked.”

The President stared at him.  “You are suggesting that they would refuse?”

“Any missions launched along those lines would either be a waste of time or suicide,” Oshiro said grimly.  “We can ask, but I strongly recommend that we don’t try to force the issue, not now.  Lunar politics are volatile enough at the best of times and this is hardly the best of times; some lunar politicians will see it as a chance to make their independence stick.”

The President composed himself.  “We have two problems then,” he said.  “We have to get rid of the aliens, at least kick them off American soil, and we have to rebuild as much of the country as possible.  Can we do that?”

Oshiro shrugged.  “We have to wait for Area 51 to produce the fleet and use it against the aliens,” he said.  “If we can take them out of orbit, our victory is certain; without it, we might manage to hammer, maybe even destroy, the force on the surface, but there would be no hope of turning that into a real victory.  We need time, Mr President; we need enough time to prepare properly and take the offensive against the aliens.  Only then can we win.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Ten Things You Would Rather Not Know

Seeker for Truth, Earth Orbit

Oolane-Researcher-Seeker studied the two humans through the pickups before chiming the hatch’s sensors, allowing them slight warning of her entrance.  The humans hadn’t changed much; they either spent their time talking, or trying to sleep.  The researchers had recorded their conversation and analysed it; much of it had rotated around their possible fate at the hands of the Oghaldzon, or occasionally around mating.  They hadn’t mated, as far as the Oghaldzon could tell, but perhaps they were moving closer towards it; the female had stopped trying to hide herself from the male, and the male had grown more comfortable with the female – perhaps.  It was easy to remember they were aliens; their expressions could quite easily be ones of eternal hatred, or even madness.  

The researchers had made several conclusions concerning the human race, none of them good; several of them threatening the stereotype that the Oghaldzon had applied to humanity.  One odd point was that humans acted in a variety of strange ways; one human would surrender, another would fight to the death, or even embrace his or her death just to kill a single Oghaldzon.  One force of humans had fought to the death for a cemetery, while their governing complex had been abandoned and left to the Oghaldzon.  It was a mystery, one that had only deepened when more humans had fallen into Oghaldzon captivity; some humans would quite happily attack their fellow humans, even to the point of forcing a mating…and it was always males on females.  They had never observed a female forcing a male to mate; the very concept of forcing a mating perplexed the researchers.  But then, of course, the human biology was very different…

Her mating crest flexed, as if in agreement, a response to the floating sperm particles released by a male, perhaps responding to her or another female.  One problem caused by suspension was that the different sets of males and females hadn’t synchronised into one overall pattern.  It would have an effect on the future; normally, a space-based Oghaldzon would go to one of the motherships to release her young, but the timing was now somewhat eccentric.  The Oghaldzon didn’t care for their young, not in the way that humans did, but losing children was…wasteful.  The ideas of the culture had to be continued, after all; the only reason why so many Oghaldzon had been sent to Earth was to ensure that a reservoir of sane intelligent entities were present to assist in curing the humans of their madness.

She stepped inside; instantly, the human female moved to cover her mating organs, much to Oolane’s quiet amusement.  It was remotely possible that she had picked up on the mating scent running through the air, but even if she had, there was no way that she could filter an Oghaldzon sperm cell out of the air and use it to fertilise her eggs.  Human pregnancy had no Oghaldzon equivalent; Oolane would grow her children on her body until they reached a certain point, where they would fall off and develop on their own, first as unintelligent creatures, and then go through the metamorphous into intelligent thinking beings.  Human children, by contrast, were brought up almost at once into human society; it had shaped humanity as much as their own mating patterns had shaped the Oghaldzon.

“I greet you,” she said, shaping the words through her speaker.  She sometimes practiced speaking human words directly, but she preferred to rely on the translation software when it was something genuinely important.  “I trust that you are well?”

Humans chose to spend time on meaningless pleasantries; the Oghaldzon, who tended to focus on statements of fact, found that amusing.  “Yes, we are well,” the human female said.  Her name – Samra – was meaningless to the Oghaldzon; they tended to name themselves after points of principle, or fact.  Her mate – if mate he was – lolled on the sleeping mat; he, at least, didn’t try to hide anything from her.  It was a waste of time – her sonar could have seen everything he had – but he wasn't trying.  “What do you want to talk about today?”

Oolane gave the Oghaldzon version of a smile; her mouth, unsuited to smiling, didn’t move.  They had talked, time and time again, about all manner of different subjects, from human politics to biology and religion.  The Oghaldzon didn’t really have a religion, although some of their researchers, uncovering quantum theory, had accepted the presence of a ‘cosmic observer’ who kept everything in existence.  The humans seemed to worship the observer, calling him ‘God’ or ‘Allah’ which were either the same entity, or two of the same entities…human religion made little sense to the Oghaldzon.  If God/Allah existed, and he punished misbehaviour, why did so many humans not behave?  Why had he issued so many contradictory orders to the different human sects?

“Our forces have landed on the surface of your planet,” Oolane said, as dispassionately as she could.  She wanted – needed – to think of the humans as something other than enemies; her researcher might point the way to developing ways to bring the human race into space as friends and allies, not eternal enemies.  “We require your input in the developing situation.  We would also like to know why you did not equip your asteroids with destruct devices.”

She watched the humans carefully.  One advantage of having a force on the surface of the planet was access to human libraries, all of which contained vast tracts of information – much of it contradictory – on how humans thought.  It wasn’t easy to read human expressions, but she was learning; it was a shame that they had no baseline for detecting human lies.  An Oghaldzon could always tell, though sonar, if another was lying; in theory, they could do the same for a human, but there was no way to know what signs meant a human was lying.  The human male’s heart was beating rapidly; he, at least, had understood the possible consequences of the asteroid question…

***
Samra had expected it; they had both expected that the Oghaldzon would attempt to land on Earth at some point.  The explanation they’d been given about why the Oghaldzon had come to Earth had implied, as Reynolds had put it, that the Oghaldzon would need boots on the ground to enforce their will.  Even so, it was a shock…and the comment about asteroids had worried her.  What did that mean?

She asked.  “Five of your asteroids fell out of orbit and struck the surface of Earth,” Oolane said, seemingly dispassionate.  “We destroyed others, shattered them, once we realised that they were not being destroyed, but considerable damage was done before we realised the danger.  Why were they not destroyed by your people?”

Reynolds spoke first, his voice a hiss of anger.  “Maybe you killed the people who should have destroyed them,” he said, his voice growing colder and colder.  Samra put a hand on his to prevent him doing something stupid, like attacking Oolane or trying to break out.  He had warned her that they were almost certainly being observed constantly; if he killed Oolane, by some dark miracle, others would come and kill the pair of them.  “Where did they hit?”

Oolane showed no reaction, but a holographic image of Earth appeared in front of them, showing the battle; Samra noted with a moment of vengeful pride that several Oghaldzon ships had been destroyed by the fighting.  The asteroids fell, one of them towards the Atlantic, the others heading into the Pacific, China…one of them shattering and scattering debris all over Europe…and then the tidal waves started to expand.  She watched in growing horror as the waves lashed against Asia; Japan, China, India, the Caliphate…the waves marched up the Red Sea, washing over the cities there and…

It was Reynolds who put a hand on hers before her horror could become rage.  No one had wrecked so much damage on Mecca, not even the religious policemen who had threatened to destroy the city to prevent it from falling into the hands of the forces of Reform Islam, not even the American millionaire who had lost his family in New York and intended to wreck the bloodiest possible revenge.  The city had been threatened before; now, the entire city might have been wiped off the face of the Earth.  The entire Caliphate might have been destroyed; the projects that they had been so proud of shattered and wrecked, the population slaughtered like bugs…

Her gaze slipped east.  London might claim to be the political capital of the British Commonwealth, but it was India that was the economic capital…and India had been hammered by tidal waves.  It would have been struck by earthquakes as well; the asteroid that had come down in China would have sent shockwaves echoing everywhere.  She had had family in India, one of the few thousand Muslims families that hadn’t migrated into the Caliphate; had they been wiped out by uncaring aliens, or were they trying desperately to survive in a world turned upside down?

Tears dripped from her eyes, floating free in zero-gravity; Reynolds gave her a hug and she relaxed into his arms, almost forgetting the looming presence of Oolane, waiting patiently for her to recover.  The images continued to play; she saw Oghaldzon marching through a ruined city, saw a handful of the aliens moving in front of the White House and entering it, others moving towards a mosque and destroying it when fire poured from the windows…

The image returned to the White House; she felt Reynolds tense against her.  She had just seen enough people die to exterminate the population on the moon several times over, but it was completely beyond her ability to grasp; for Reynolds, the American was seeing the centre of his country violated and desecrated by aliens who didn’t even have the decency to intend to desecrate it.  It was meaningless to them…and that was worst of all.

“We have a question,” Oolane said.  The image focused up on a printed page; WE’LL BE BACK.  “What does this mean?”

Reynolds pulled free of her.  “It means that they’re going to come back and destroy you all,” he snapped, his voice filled with defiance and pride.  The odd clicking sound that always surrounded the aliens seemed to grow louder.  “You’ve killed billions of humans under those asteroids, and you’ve killed thousands of others in your invasion!  We wanted meet you in peace, not to fight you for the possession of our own solar system, but now we know what you are, we’re going to fight you until one or the other of us is exterminated!  We’re going to send ships to your homeworld and strike back, we’re going to hurt them…”

Samra reached out and pulled him back, hard.  She had never willingly pulled a man to touch her, particularly not when she was naked, but there was no choice.  His eyes frightened her, they were bright with unshed tears and hot with fury and rage.  He didn’t calm as she held him; she felt his body against hers and it didn’t calm him.  She would have almost welcomed him forcing her to have sex with him, just so that he would stop providing the Oghaldzon with reasons to exterminate humanity, but he just lay against her.  Like her tears, his floated across the room, drifting with what she thought was pollen, floating in the air.  

Oolane had watched it all, unmoved.  “Your race is contradictory,” she said, very calmly.  The dispassionate voice – how Samra hated that voice – showed no trace of her real feelings.  “You can be docile in some situations, and endlessly resistant in others.  Why do you not accept the dangers in how your own society works?”

Samra held him while she spoke.  “Because we work to overcome the dangers?”

“You do not,” Oolane said, flatly.  “You permit dangerous ideas to spread; you allow people infected with those dangerous ideas to exterminate other ideas.  You abuse your own people.  You brought a dangerous arms race into space where it could have exterminated your own race; you treat the people who fuelled your civilisation like criminals.  Your willingness” – she pointed one of her forearms at Reynolds – “to hold our entire race accountable for what happened though an accident and human negligence is entirely in character with what we have observed.”

They must have intercepted broadcasts – documentaries – on the Lawton Rebellion, or the Chinese Lunar Rebellion, or maybe even the foundation of the Rockrats, Samra thought, her mind spinning.  In the end, all human wars had been based around the twin desires for resources and security; the Oghaldzon might not need the human star system for its resources – despite the whining of various eco-friendly groups, not even a billion times a billion Rockrats could exhaust the entire solar system of asteroids in less than a million years – but they had certainly worried about their security.  She remembered the Message Bearer project; if the Oghaldzon fusion drive was duplicated, and she was sure that it would be duplicated by one of the science colonies out in the belt or the outer solar system, there might be hundreds of human asteroid-based colony ships heading out into space.  The Oghaldzon…would be unable to compete; from what Oolane had said, their colonies were always much larger than human colonies, and they had over a billion settlers with them for Earth.

“You will answer me a question,” Oolane said.  “If we invited your people to surrender now, what would they say?”

Samra looked at Reynolds, who looked back.  “I don’t know,” Samra said, finally.  She was tempted to declare that the human race would never surrender, but she suspected that that was untrue; the vast majority of the human race would be happy as long as their basic needs were met and they had a chance to live their lives without interference.  “You killed so many people that no one is likely to take you at your word.”

“Those people died because of human negligence,” Oolane said.  “We did not kill them.”

“You certainly took advantage of the devastation,” Reynolds pointed out.  He seemed to have calmed down slightly.  “The asteroids would not have fallen without you and your people, would they?”

Samra spoke before Oolane could say anything.  “They might surrender, but no one knows what life under your rule would be like,” she said.  “Why don’t you tell them that?”

Oolane filed the information away somewhere.  Samra hoped the alien would take her advice; it was the only way in which information would get down to Earth that someone – somewhere – might be able to use.  She suspected that alien rule would be strange, at least at first; violent crime would be punished with extreme force, even the most minor kind of violent crime.  The aliens might even make mistakes; her roommate at the IAU Academy had liked her boyfriends to tie her up and pretend to rape her…and she had almost called the police on them.  The aliens would have shot him without any hesitation.  How else would they treat territory they had invaded?  Would they offer humanity any stake in the future, or would they insist on taking all of the power for themselves?  How would they handle human bureaucrats?  Hell, did they even have bureaucrats of their own?

Her smile vanished.  They might offer to buy Helium-3 from the moon…and it was quite possible that Karl Bova and his cohorts would sell.  If they made an offer, one that would include other items the moon wanted or needed, such as freedom from Earth, it might be accepted.  She kept her mouth shut; she would not offer the aliens the chance to realise that it might actually work.  

“We could inform them of what would await them under our rule,” Oolane said.  “Why do none of your soldiers surrender?”

Reynolds smiled.  “Because, for the last ninety-odd years, every American soldier who was captured ended up dead, or tortured, or beheaded, or worse,” he said.  It would have been a more impressive declaration if they hadn’t then had to explain the concept of torture to Oolane.  “We don’t surrender our soldiers and we don’t leave wounded behind for the enemy.  If they can’t get out, they will fight to the death.”

Oolane looked at him.  “We do not kill enemy soldiers,” she said.  Samra had the odd feeling that she meant it.  “They are simply kept in a camp and prevented from doing any real harm to us or any others of their own kind.”

Reynolds said nothing.

“We require you to tell them that,” Oolane said.  “We also require you to explain that we will not slaughter civilians and we will assist them in rebuilding once we have secured the country.  Will you make the broadcast?”

Samra stalled, frantically looking around for inspiration.  She had made one broadcast already and it had almost killed her, even though Reynolds had reassured her that there had been no real choice at all.  She saw one of the drifting bits of pollen in the air and pointed at it, drawing Oolane’s attention to the tiny white…thing.

“What is that?”  She asked.  It had been puzzling her for a while; most spacecraft tended to try to keep air as clean and clear as possible.  “They just seem to float in and out.”

Oolane seemed completely unconcerned.  “Sperm cells, in human terms,” she said.  Samra felt sick and saw the same expression on Reynolds’ face; the two of them had almost certainly swallowed some of the alien sperm.  Rational thought told her than there was no way she could get pregnant with an alien baby; logic and reason had gone out to lunch.  “Some of them will find a female in season, others will just drift until they are filtered out of the air.”

Samra cursed her curiosity.  She hadn’t wanted to know.

Chapter Thirty: Hidden From View

Area 51, Asteroid Belt

“It’s confirmed, then?”

“I’m afraid so,” Captain Callie Brown said, her dark eyes grim.  “The aliens definitely intercepted the industrial station and the automatics tripped the self-destruct nuke we placed onboard before launching it into the slow-transfer orbit.  We don’t think the blast actually got the alien constant-boost ship they sent after it, but it’s one more nail in the coffin of Earth.”

Admiral Paul Waikoloa stared down at the coffee bulb he held in his hand and wondered what would happen if he screamed in frustration.  He had watched in horror, along with the others on the asteroid, when the alien fleet opened fire on the welcome fleet, and then had advanced against Earth and launched the invasion.  Information was scarce on what had happened next – what little they had had been relayed from the moon to the Rockrats and the colonies in the outer solar system – but it was clear that the aliens had invaded Earth.  There was no way to know how well the aliens were doing, but the asteroids had certainly softened up the opposition; at a rough guess, at least four of the Great Powers – China, the Caliphate, the Co-Prosperity Sphere and the Commonwealth – might have been utterly crippled by the impacts.  The recordings of the battle had been chilling; the observerable effects on Earth worse.

The frustration was getting to him; it was getting to all of them.  Almost all of the USSF – apart from their ships and a handful that had been left at Mars – had rallied to fight the hopeless battle against the aliens, the Oghaldzon, if the captured astronomer had been telling the truth in her broadcast.  The world of the USSF spacemen was a tight-kit group; he had known many of the men who had died in the final battle around Earth.  He should have been there, he felt, even though cold logic told him that it would have only made the final result more human ships destroyed; the ships that had been held back at Area 51 wouldn’t have made any real difference.  The aliens had held all of the cards.  Even so…

He glared down at the status reports.  Nearly a hundred years of the combined ingenuity of humanity had been devoted to spaceflight, once the human race had stopped messing about and really developed it’s off-planet facilities.  The real problem had been in moving items off Earth, so they had developed space-based industries, which had funded additional development for the future…but the industry under his direct control was very limited.  Some industrial stations had been moved to the asteroids before the aliens had opened fire, but the aliens had to have tracked them, which meant he didn’t dare bring them directly to Area 51.  There were bottlenecks in his production, ranging from components for the ships, to crewmen.  He could deploy fifty warships…and, if he pointed them at Earth, he might as well have been throwing eggs against a brick wall.  The aliens had fortified Earth very quickly; he would need more ships and better weapons to make an impact, because he would have only one shot.

“We have too many bottlenecks,” he growled, and thought about it.  The aliens might have surrounded Earth, but if they suspected the existence of Area 51, they were almost certain to try to come drop a hammer on him before he had his fleet completed.  The remaining USAF personnel in the solar system were on the moon, or Mars, and there weren’t enough of them to make a real difference.  If he picked up the personnel from the other Great Powers, it still wouldn’t be enough; besides, the other Great Powers might have their own hidden construction bases.  He hoped so, but they would doubtless be maintaining radio silence as well; there was no way to know, let alone meet up with them.  “Do we have any solutions?”

“We can increase the amount of automation,” Doctor Kelly Jorgensen said.  Her voice was excited; she, at least, was enjoying the challenge.  “It would allow us to reduce the crewmen to six per craft, but it would mean that we would have to refit some of the craft we have already deployed in Hanger 18.  It would also be more costly if we actually had to do in-flight repairs; there would be fewer crewmen available for the job.”

She paused.  “There is some good news,” she continued.  “We have managed to duplicate their laser system, it’s actually a refinement of something we already have, but never developed because the original use for the system included cooking asteroids to force them to expand under flash-heated water.  Quite why the aliens thought of it as a weapon and developed it that way I don’t know, but they have been in space longer than we have and might simply have more experience than we do at such matters.  The sheer size of their fleet suggests that they have a very different economic system than we have…”

“We are getting into waters that, while interesting, are not actually important, Doctor,” Callie said.  “The only thing that matters now is breaking the blockade around Earth as quickly as possible; all of the efforts on this base have to be devoted towards that end, not…ideal speculation.”

Kelly met her eyes with all the fury of her ancestors.  “Understanding the aliens, who have sent a massive fleet across the gulf between stars, might be the most important project in the history of the human race,” she proclaimed.  “Unless we exterminate these…Oghaldzon, or they exterminate us, we will have to live with them.  The history of the human race changed the moment that Samra Hussein detected them approaching the solar system.  We are no longer alone.”

“The aliens are here to reform us, or so they say,” Callie snapped back.  “I can’t help, but notice, Doctor, that they have already killed, perhaps, more than a billion people on Earth…and thousands more will die in the next few weeks.  We have been considering the dangers of an asteroid impact for years; by now, a week after the invasion, there may have been millions more deaths as emergency services break down, disease spreads rapidly, shortages of food and water become rampant…with all due respect, Kelly, you have always lived in space.”

She took a breath.  “In space, we can control the environment,” she said.  “In space, no one starves; we can feed everyone in the habitat by growing algae-based foods rapidly, within a day if we forced it forward.  It may taste like it was vomited out of the back end of a mule, but it is edible and it meets human needs; on Earth, people might be starving, right this minute.  You saw the reports from the moon; China has been hit by an asteroid, India and the Middle East have been battered by tidal waves, the entire eastern seaboard has been swept clean and the aliens have landed there, to add insult to injury…”

“Enough,” Waikoloa said, before she could finish.  “It is true that our main priority has to be defeating the aliens, but we cannot risk speeding up the work here and perhaps doing a shoddy job.  Doctor?”

Kelly composed herself with an effort.  “We can duplicate the micro-mass drivers and rail guns the aliens have deployed,” she said, carefully.  “Again, there’s nothing actually new here; they’re both applications of our current technology that we simply never developed for ourselves.  I’m not convinced that they would actually be useful in a tactical situation, Admiral; the aliens only used them to fire on relatively immobile targets like space stations, or missiles that followed a predicable course.  We might be better off concentrating on lasers instead, although some of the analysts down in the hanger believe that rail guns might come in handy for close-ranged combat.”

She scowled down at the table.  “What we don’t have – yet – is their fusion drive,” she said.  “It seems to defy any application of our own fusion drives and the theory behind them; the current belief is that they actually cause some form of twin fusion-fission in their drives, giving them much more energy – we don’t, yet, have any theory as to actually how they do that?”  She smiled thinly.  “Of course, that could be complete bullshit and they might do it some other way.  It is suggested that we try to capture an alien ship.”

Waikoloa had thought about it.  “I don’t see how it would be possible,” he admitted.  Space piracy had never caught on, mainly because the Rockrats would quite happily hang any pirates they caught, but the USSF had looked into the issue of suppressing space piracy if it actually happened.  “Destroying an alien ship?  Yes, easy.  Capturing one…?”

Callie nodded.  “They could dodge one of our ships forever if they wanted to prevent us from boarding them,” she agreed.  “The IAU wanted to try to run an inspection routine of some commercial ships – meaning our Rockrat chums – in the belt; it not only didn’t work, they discovered that they had had charges filed against them at the freeport nearby and it nearly came to a second embargo before the IAU, under heavy pressure from the Great Powers, backed down and paid compensation.  One imagines that the aliens won’t be doing that…”

“They might,” Waikoloa said slowly.  “What happens if they cut Earth off permanently from Helium-3?”

Callie frowned.  “They collapse the world economy,” she said.  The USSF had run endless simulations; as far as they knew, the other world powers had run similar simulations.  Nuclear fission power had such a bad reputation that when fusion had become available, it had rapidly been replaced by fusion plants; the absence of the Helium-3 they used as a power source would rapidly bring the plants – and Earth’s power supplies – to a halt.  “Of course, with all the destruction in orbit, that might not make that much of a difference.”

“True,” Waikoloa said.  “These days, everything is interconnected; how does the belt and the moon and the mining stations floating above Jupiter get most of their cash inflow?”

Kelly blinked.  “From sales of Helium-3, of course,” she said.  “That’s Political Science 101; why would the powers on Earth be so determined to keep control of the moon, unless they needed a guaranteed supply of Helium-3?”

“Exactly,” Waikoloa said.  “One of the reasons that the government ordered here to be created was that there was a fear that there would be a Great Power war, and the ability to cut them off from Helium-3 – and preserve our own supply lines – would be all-important.  A sudden boost in the number of active American warships would have turned the tide in America’s favour, no matter whom we were actually at war with…and we would have won the war.  Now, the aliens are blockading Earth, and parts of the belt and lunar economy are just going to collapse.”

Callie glared down at the display.  “Those bastards on the moon are likely to try to sell Helium-3 to the aliens,” she snapped.  “It’s not enough that they insist on a veto over all policies on the moon, but they’re going to strangle us, or help the aliens strangle us…”

“Perhaps,” Waikoloa said.  “Or perhaps they’ll have no choice.  Having a massive fleet and an enemy of proven ruthlessness in the area does tend to make people consider appeasement rather than digging in to fight, or at the very least, find out what the aliens would offer in exchange for supplying them with Helium-3 and lunar rock without a fight.  The Rockrats might be able to hide in the belt, perhaps safe from the aliens, but the bigger colonies would be thinking about how they could make their own deals with the aliens.”

He looked down at the map, not really seeing it, his mind drifting out over the solar system.  There were small colonies on Venus, trying to terraform the planet; nearly five thousand men and women, under the impression that they could turn Venus into a paradise.  There were nearly a hundred thousand men and women on Mars, sharing the same belief…and the Mars terraforming project was showing some very real progress.  It didn’t help that the different colonies were showing the same signs of a national – planetary – identity that the moon had shown; China had crushed a revolt on Mars with a great deal of brutality, only a few years ago.  Further out, there were the Rockrats…and the colonies on the gas giant moons; Titan, Ganymede, Europa…

Some of them had been carefully placed; Titan’s development by the Israeli Government might have been a shrewd decision, one that had been loudly regretted by the USSF and the other Great Powers.  Titan supplied water to a dozen different settlements and the Israelis had bargained wisely; given time, Titan might become an economic powerhouse…unless the aliens got there first.  They would want Titan’s resources for themselves; they might even offer to transfer settlers from Israel to Titan.  Did they really want to help the human race, or had they cooked the entire statement up as a lie, to convince their own people to take part in an invasion?

“We really need to take an alien alive,” he mused.  It was a fantasy and he was smart enough to understand it; there was no way that they could take an alien alive, not yet.  “We have to know if they are telling the truth, or if we are in a fight for survival that requires us to exterminate them before they exterminate us.”

“Yes, sir,” Callie said.  “Is there anything we can do about possible traitors in the belt?”

“Not yet,” Waikoloa said.  A thought was bubbling away at the back of his mind, a way of solving both problems at once, perhaps even making new alliances for the future.  “For the moment, our task remains the same; we build the fleet, prepare it as best as we can, and then liberate Earth.  Doctor, continue research on the alien fusion drive, subject only to not transmitting anything that might reveal the location of this base.  We’re not ready to beat off an alien attack.”

“Of course, Admiral,” Kelly said.  She started to clump towards the door in her magnetic boots.  “We’ll continue the development project as fast as we can.”

Callie waited until the door closed before leaning forward.  “Sir, is there any way we can overcome the bottlenecks?”

“The industrial stations in the belt can produce most of what we need,” Waikoloa said.  One danger was the Rockrats getting curious about what was happening to the supplies; they would know that they weren’t going into the local economy, while the handful of corporate stations that had been placed at the disposal of the local USSF officers were only supplying the industrial stations…and nothing else.  It represented yet another problem; it was quite possible that the crewmen on the stations would decide to join the Rockrats and declare independence, something that neither the locals nor Waikoloa could do anything to prevent.  Decades of ill-treatment had left scars, even if most of the corporations had been brought to heel; it was one of the ways that the number of Rockrats just grew.  “We can have it shipped here slowly enough not to alert the aliens, or the Rockrats.”

“Maybe,” Callie said.  Her face darkened slightly.  “What about crewmen?”

Waikoloa looked down at his dark hands.  “I don’t know, yet,” he said.  He wasn’t quite being honest; he had had an idea, but it would almost certainly draw fire from the Pentagon…assuming the Pentagon still existed.  He smiled to himself; forgiveness was easier to seek than permission, and, besides, time was of the essence.  What else could they do?  Insist on every female on the base becoming pregnant and then wait sixteen years for the children to grow to maturity?  He’d have a mutiny on his hands.  “Can you see that all of Kelly’s concepts are passed through the analysts before she puts them into full production?”

Callie took the hint, saluted, and left the room.

Waikoloa watched her go, and then tapped the intercom.  “Lieutenant Cindy Short, please report to the Admiral’s office,” he said, and sat back.  It had been a long time since he had seen Cindy Short; the classified briefing on parts of her past had slipped across his desk, including a note that suggested she should not be trusted.  He’d ignored it; there were few officers indeed with her level of hands-on experience.  The hatch opened and Cindy strode in, her hand already snapping into a salute; Waikoloa returned it sharply.  “Thank you for coming.”

In person, Cindy Wolf came across as short – her name had been used to mock her when she was younger before her fellow cadets had learned how tough she was - and aggressive; she had once been on report for punching a training sergeant in the mouth.  She’d been very lucky not to have been tossed out of the USSF on her ass for that; her CO at the time had suggested that flogging should be brought back into the USSF just for her.  Her short-cropped dark hair perfectly displayed the massive chip she wore on her shoulder.

“I had little choice,” Cindy said.  Her voice was almost accent-less, unsurprising given her origins.  “You called me here.”

“I need you to carry out a mission for me,” Waikoloa said.  There was no point in trying to sugar-coat anything for Cindy; he knew enough about her to know she took every mission as a personal challenge, even to the point of breaking rules to carry the mission out.  “You may know your great-uncle…?”

“Of course,” Cindy snapped, her stance tightening.  Waikoloa guessed that she expected an order to arrest or kill him; she looked as if she would be delighted.  There was a lot of bad blood there, none surrounding Cindy herself, but her particular branch of the family.  “What has that bastard done now?”

Waikoloa’s lips twitched.  “He’s become the Chairman of the Rockrat Association,” he said, and smiled at the expression on her face.  “I want you to carry a message from me to him, an offer that I believe he can’t refuse.  Do you think that you can do that?”

Chapter Thirty-One: A Shot Heard Around The Moon

New Jamestown, Lunar Surface

Governor Hastings II – who was no relation to the most infamous American lunar governor in history – had several strikes against him when it came to dealing with the people he was supposed to rule.  The first one, perhaps the most important one, was that he was a former Marine; on the moon, American Marines were disliked at best, hated at worse.  No one would forget the original Governor Hastings and his decision to use Marines to break a strike against impossible living conditions; even seventy years after the Lawton Rebellion, Hastings was burned in effigy every anniversary of the rebellion.  The second one was that, technically, he was appointed by the federal American Government; unlike every other governor, he was not elected by his constituents, but appointed over them by the President.

It was not, Hastings privately conceded, a very fair deal.  The redistribution measures introduced into Congress by President Culpepper – in which every state accepted into the USA would have one Senator and one Congressman – might have been intended to prevent the Anglo-Saxon parts of the United States being overwhelmed by Hispanics from the newer states down south, but they had had the unintended consequence of effectively disenfranchising the voters on the moon.  There was one senator and one congressman for the moon in both of those august bodies…and over a hundred from states on the ground, all of whom had a vested interest in keeping the price of Helium-3 as low as possible.  The original people who had run the moon had treated it almost like a prison; the first miners had been treated as if they were convicts with no hope of parole.  Even after a handful of reforms had been carried out, it remained obvious to anyone who cared to look that the American citizens on the moon had a raw deal from their government…and felt more kinship with the independent states on the moon, even the Chinese and Russian settlements, than they did with their own government.  Karl Bova’s growing Lunar Independence Front had been stealing voters for years; Hastings had privately calculated that within ten years at the most, there would be a major lunar rebellion, pitting the colonists against all the Great Powers.

It would be a nightmare, he knew; the sum total of military power under his command was a small force of Space Marines, two thousand men in all.  It was something that was bitterly resented by the colonists – an irony for anyone who knew anything about American history – not least because the Space Marines not only policed the settlements, but because they risked drawing the lunar colonists into war.  There had been several Chinese penetrations of American territory recently; the Marines had treated it as an armed incursion, the colonists had treated it as a case of the Chinese getting lost, something that happened too often for it just to be dismissed as an excuse.  The aliens might have provided an excuse for shipping more forces to the moon, and it was true that the numbers of anti-spacecraft weapons in New Jamestown had been rapidly increased, but popular resistance to additional deployments of Marines had been too strong to overcome.  Hastings had seriously considered asking for relief; sooner or later, some idiot was going to fire a shot that would be heard around the moon…

His intercom chimed.  “Andrew,” his secretary said, “Karl Bova and one of his people have arrived to see you.”

Hastings lifted an eyebrow.  He would have been much happier if Bova – and all of the independent states – had vanished into nothingness; they provided an example of what could be done with the colonists free to set their own prices for Helium-3.  Bova’s endless self-confidence had been irritating when they had met; he had once told a Chinese Commissioner that he could give the workers on the moon limited freedom, or one day they would take it for themselves.  The asteroid that had struck China had probably rendered the entire question moot; Hastings had half-suspected that the Chinese Commissioner – a rat of a man whose name escaped him – would call him to ask for the support of Hastings’ Marines, just to put down a rebellion.  How long would it be before the Chinese workers rose up again; this time, there would be no support coming in from China…

He considered, briefly, telling Bova to get lost, but that would have been impolitic, to say the least.  Bova’s position as the Chairman of the Lunar Independence Front, his links with all of the independent colonies on the moon and his ability to alter the price of Helium-3 from some of the colonies as he pleased, made him a powerful man.  He could have removed Hastings from office if he had been willing to pay the political price; Hastings had wondered if the fact he had remained in office was because Bova had decided it would be better to remain with the devil they knew.

“I see, Gloria,” he said.  Gloria Bennett had been his secretary ever since he had taken up his position on the moon, a tall black woman who had been secretary to the last two Governors before they returned to Earth, both of whom had spoken well of her.  A handful of security types had suggested that it would be much safer to rely on someone brought up from Earth, but Hastings’ had overruled them; the colonists were restive enough without adding the suggestion that they were being discriminated against in their own homes to the mix.  Besides, Gloria was very good in bed.  “Send them both in, please.”

Bova was the same arrogant pain in the ass he had always been, Hastings saw, as he stood to shake his hand.  Social conventions were more important on the moon than anywhere else; the original colonists had regulated fistfights to the point that they all had to be held somewhere where there was no danger of inflicting damage on the colony.  He disapproved of the custom of challenging people to fight, but it had become embedded in the lunar colonist mindset…and it did make people much more polite.  The second man was an obvious security type; Hastings examined him with caution, knowing that he was facing a very dangerous man.  He looked harmless enough, but Hastings had been a Marine; he would have bet his life that Bova’s friend – bodyguard? – was implanted with all manner of dangerous weapons.

“Mr Bova,” Hastings said, as he returned to his seat.  Bova had taken one of the seats, but his friend, who had remained un-introduced, had taken up a position behind him, just within range of a hasty move to protect him.  “Might I ask what is the point of this meeting?”

Bova smiled.  “I have a long list of grievances, if you would like,” he said, “but then…we are both practical men.  You may be working for the wrong side, Mr Hastings…”

“Governor Hastings,” Hastings snapped, injecting the comment as sharply as he could.

“As you please,” Bova said, as if it was a matter of small interest to him.  He had once spent nearly thirty minutes explaining, at great length to anyone who would listen, that Governor Barilla, Hastings’ predecessor, was an unelected tyrant and a living breach of the American constitution.  Hastings’ found that worrying; something else had to be on Bova’s mind.  There was an uncanny look in his eye, a mixture of shimmering excitement, anticipation, and nervousness.  “We are both practical men and I believe that we would both like to cut to the meat of the matter, rather than spending ten minutes wasting time by chattering.  Would you not agree, Governor Hastings?”

Hastings, who would not have willingly shared anything with Bova, shrugged.  “That would be accurate enough,” he said.  If anything, the strange look in Bova’s eye had gotten brighter.  “Let us, then, cut to the chase; what is the reason for this meeting?”

Bova leaned back, forcing himself to relax.  “Governor Hastings,” he said, “I would like to ask for your complete and unconditional surrender.”

Hastings kept his face as blank as possible, but a laugh threatened to bubble up hysterically from deep inside his chest.  It was…preposterous, irrational, treasonous…and it was happening.  The thought almost broke though his face and escaped as a giggle; the sheer lunacy of Bova’s words had finally driven him mad.

“My surrender?”  He asked finally.  “My personal surrender?”

Bova didn’t smile; the strange expression on his face had vanished.  “The surrender of all American possessions and colonies on the moon, including the military units,” he said.  Hastings realised in a nightmarish moment that he was serious, somehow.  “If you do not surrender them, I will be forced to take steps.”

“I will have to speak with Colonel Forsyth,” Hastings said.  He met Bova’s eyes, searched them, and saw no trace of a bluff.  “He can inform me of what is actually happening…”

He tapped the code into the intercom and waited.  The Space Marines were based outside New Jamestown, in a set of barracks that had been built to allow them rapid access to the surface, linked only through a single underground tunnel.  He would have preferred to base them somewhere within the city itself, but public pressure would never have allowed that…and, besides, if there was a revolution, it would be better to have his primary force out of easy reach by enemy forces.

It took longer than he would have expected for the call to be answered.  “Sir, thank God,” an agitated voice said.  It took Hastings a moment to recognise Colonel Forsyth’s voice.  “What’s happening?”

“Calm down,” Hastings said.  There was an amused half-smile playing over Bova’s face.  “I need a situation report; calmly, if possible.”

“The tunnel to New Jamestown has sealed and the equipment is registering a vacuum,” Colonel Forsyth reported, his voice thin and reedy.  Hastings felt his blood run cold; if the tunnel was exposed to the lunar surface – or, more likely, someone on Bova’s team had pumped out all the air – the Marines would have to don their suits and walk across the surface to the main colony.  “The spacesuit equipment is not responding; we have no power apart from emergency power, and half of the isolated systems seem to have crashed.”

Hastings looked up at Bova; there was no doubting the existence of the smile now.  “Ask them to check the external sensors,” Bova said.  “You might find it revealing.”

“There are several crawlers out there, with at least fifty men,” Colonel Forsyth reported.  “Sir, what the hell is going on?”

Bova leaned forward.  “We have control of all the vital areas of the colony,” he said.  “We have infiltrated some of the security architecture of the base; you can no longer trust your own computers, and we have three hundred armed men near the position of…ah, Colonel Forsyth and his Marines.  If you order Colonel Forsyth to fight – and I’m sure they will, them being oh so stoic and heroic and other words that end in ‘oic’ that I’m sure will come to me later – there will be a very quick slaughter and that will be the end of the Marines.”

Hastings stood up slowly.  “And what if we do surrender?”

“If you do, you will be held somewhere safe, treated well, and then returned to Earth when circumstances permit,” Bova said.  “You have my word that the hatred that many of my people feel for Marines will not be permitted to be turned into actual action against them…if they surrender.  If not, we will simply burn through the rocky covering with a fusion flame and roast them all.  The final outcome is not in doubt.”

Hastings tried to stall.  “I should seek orders from Washington,” he said.  “The American Government remains in existence.”

“There’s no time,” Bova said, his voice firm.  “Surrender now, or we take you into custody and…deal with the Marines before they can present a threat to us.  The choice is yours.”

Hastings looked him in the eye.  “In that case, under protest, I surrender,” he said.  He allowed some of the pure fury to show in his voice.  “Colonel Forsyth; please see to the surrender arrangements for your force.”  He looked back at Bova.  “There’s a massive alien force out there, watching us and waiting for signs of weakness; what you’re doing here is worse than treason against just America, but treason against the entire human race.”

Bova looked back at him.  “The thing about tormenting people, Mr Hastings, is that eventually they fight back,” he said.  “If America, and Russia, and China, and Britain, and Europe, had treated the colonists fairly from the start, this would never have happened.  You have only yourself to blame.”

He nodded to his bodyguard, who produced a small pair of handcuffs from his pocket, snapped them on Hastings’ wrists, and led him out of his former office.  He wasn’t surprised to see a handful of soldiers waiting outside, wearing the uniform of Lunar City, or the handful of his own people, sitting with their hands cuffed, but the real surprise was seeing Gloria there, leaning against the wall and watching calmly.  She met his gaze and looked away; he understood, in a flash of understanding, that he had been betrayed by one of the people he had trusted completely.

“Come along,” the bodyguard said, escorting Hastings towards one of the elevators to the surface.  Hastings shook off his arm and walked as proudly as he could, trying to forget the look in her eyes…and the fact that he had lost control of an entire colony.

***
“You should have seen his face,” Bova proclaimed, when he returned to the small set of rooms that had been placed at the disposal of Tony Jones.  Jones had wanted to remain at the observatory, or Lunar City; he had doubted Bova’s claim that he could take control of the colony without a single shot being fired.  It had helped that nearly four-fifths of the population was firmly on his side, or even that Hastings just hadn’t been very popular, but even so he was astonished that it had been accomplished without bloodshed.  “He didn’t even know that half of his people had been working for us for years.”

Jones felt an oddly childish desire to prick his bubble.  “If you could just walk in and take over, why didn’t you do it years ago?”

Bova snorted.  “Study the history of some of the lunar rebellions sometime,” he said.  “Every time there has even been a faint suggestion of unrest, the Great Powers flood in a few thousand soldiers and revolt becomes much harder.  Now, there’s an alien blockade around the Earth and they can’t reinforce…and Hastings, to give him some credit, knew that resistance would only end in his forces being slaughtered.  Idiot; one of the companies I partly own offered to build those barracks for him, just because I knew that one day we would have to take them off his hands.”

He shrugged and threw himself down in a sofa.  “Now, all we have to do is wait and see what happens in the other colonies,” he said.  He almost rubbed his hands together with glee, almost intolerably pleased with himself; his plan had come off almost flawlessly.  “I dare say it will go well.”

He was right, Jones acknowledged ruefully.  The Russian and European colonies surrendered without a shot being fired; the British and Caliphate colonies surrendered after firing a handful of shots for the honour of the flag.  There were smaller colonies, outposts, that would have to be swept up, but none of them were important…and most of them thought more kindly of their rivals in the mining business than they did of the governments back home.  It was only the Chinese colony that put up a major fight…and their own people stabbed the defenders in the back.  The orbital facilities had been controlled from the ground; the insurgents had made certain to seize those first, apart from a handful of independent stations that would hesitate before trying to take any action.  Besides, the weapons that had been intended to deal with the aliens could be turned on them quite easily.

The remaining soldiers and governors on the moon – apart from the Chinese Commissioner, who had been torn apart by his own people – had been moved rapidly to secure and hidden locations, somewhere well away from any lunar settlement.  Bova had explained it all; they could remain there until they could be returned to Earth, or perhaps some of them could be invited to remain on the moon; either way, there was no way out of their trap without assistance…and there was no one left to assist them.  The Lunar Independence Front knew all about the military bases on the moon, particularly the ones they weren’t meant to know about…and the ones that various governments had tried to keep hidden from them.  It was much harder than it would seem to hide anything on the moon.

“Good,” Bova said, as the final reports came in.  The important facilities on the moon had been captured intact; they could produce thousands of tons of Helium-3 if they felt like it, although Jones wasn't quite sure what they would do for a market.  The belt?  The aliens?  “Are you prepared for your part of the mission?”

Jones felt a sinking feeling in his stomach.  “You still want me to try and talk to the aliens?”

“Yes,” Bova said, flatly.  His voice allowed no compromise; they had discussed it time and time again, but Jones hadn’t really believed, he realised now, that it would ever happen.  Somehow, Bova’s dreams had seemed impossible to fulfil, as if the entire Lunar Independence Front had been dreaming.  “If we can get an agreement with the aliens, we can build our new society without any interference from outsiders, ever again.”

Chapter Thirty-Two: Just Which Side Are You On?

Freeport One, Asteroid Belt

Space warfare was a complicated business.

Jake Ellsworth strode into the Watering Hole, his mind already mulling over their recent exercises, and took a seat along the counter.  Ian passed him a Screaming Orgasm without comment; the only real advantage of serving in the Rockrat Defence Force – as Kyle Short had called it, somehow managing to keep a straight face while he pronounced the words – was that the pilots got free booze.  It wasn’t enough to keep pilots; there had been nearly two thousand volunteers from among the Rockrats, half of whom had left in the first month, even before the aliens had entered the inner solar system and opened fire.

“You look unhappy,” Ian said, pushing a second drink over the counter.  “How is life on the western front?”

Ellsworth scowled.  The belt had only a handful of people with any expertise in space warfare, most of whom had been reservists for one space force or another, almost all of whom had gone home to fight in the hopeless battle surrounding Earth.  He had been appointed one of the commanding officers, but that had been purely because he had been one of the first to sign up; he knew very little about space warfare.  Oh sure, he knew the theory…but the simulations kept making it clear; the Rockrat character was not suitable for space military forces.

“Tricky,” he said.  “I don’t get no respect.”

Ian shrugged.  Rockrats generally had very limited manpower, so almost any Rockrat who wasn't completely incompetent could write his or her own ticket; the incompetent ones rarely lasted more than a few months before they killed themselves.  There might have been the legend of a Joe Shit, who somehow survived accidents that would have killed a lesser Rockrat, but cold reality always intruded on such dreams.  The eternal collary of that was that no Rockrat would willingly serve under someone who didn’t know what they were doing…and it was far too obvious that he knew very little about space warfare.

“There may be another big meeting tonight to decide which side we should be on,” Ian said, after polishing a few glasses to make himself appear busy.  “You did see the news from Earth and the Moon?”

Ellsworth nodded; they might have been training, but everyone had stopped to watch the battle above Earth…and the asteroids that had fallen and struck the planet.  The Rockrats had been horrified; there might have been a few Rockrats who had wished for Earth to vanish, or to at the very least stop trying to interfere with their lives, but no one had really wanted to kill so many people on the planet.  Earth and the belt were linked together in dozens of different ways, and if the belt hadn’t needed food or supplies from Earth at the bottom line, having access to Earth’s food and products – the belt was one of the largest consumers of pornography in the solar system – was generally a good thing.  And besides, everyone on Earth – apart from Corporate Rats – was human.

The Unilateral Lunar Declaration of Independence was something else.  The Rockrats shared much of the dislike, if not outright hatred, that the lunar colonists felt for the Great Powers and the cartels that tried to keep the price of Helium-3 down.  There were plenty of Rockrats who were descended from lunar colonists and who had spoken loudly in favour of a second embargo to support various rebellions on the moon, but not all of them had been so concerned; the moon was a market for asteroid ore and Rockrats rarely rocked the boat unless there was no choice.  There was a great deal of sympathy for the lunar colonists, but at the same time, they had effectively stabbed Earth in the back.

“Everyone knows,” Ellsworth said.  It awed him, sometimes; right across the belt, countless Rockrats would be having the same discussion, before voting on it when the Association called for a democratic vote.  They could recognise lunar independence – for all the good it would do with the aliens in the region – or they could deny the existence of the lunar state.  The wrong decision could have unfortunate consequences.  “Where do you stand on it?”

Ian smiled.  “I think that people should do more drinking and less fighting,” he said, nodding towards a pair of Rockrats who had been exchanging increasingly bitter insults for the past ten minutes.  One of them, red-faced and florid, already looked as if he had had too much to drink; he seemed on the verge of hurling himself across the table at his partner, who was himself somewhat the worse for wear.  “Want to bet that one of them issues a formal challenge pretty soon?”

“No bet,” Ellsworth said.  Open fighting was banned among the belt; if someone really wanted to fight someone else, there was a place for it, watched by Rockrats who would be quite happily betting on the outcome.  If they fought in the bar, they would be arrested and caned for endangering others; he wondered, briefly, what they were fighting about.  “And stop changing the subject; where do you stand?”

“Interesting little issue, isn’t it?”  Ian said, looking away from the two opponents and back to Ellsworth, who grinned at him.  “You do realise that the aliens have effectively blocked us off from most of our own market?  Even if we can still send supplies to the moon, the destruction in Earth orbit means that they won’t have much of a market for our ore, will they?  If we don’t respond in some way, the aliens might push us around some more, but at the same time, we have a chance to radically redefine the power balance in the solar system.”

Ellsworth gave him his patently Look of Extreme Irritation.  “Why are bartenders always philosophers?”

Ian smiled.  “Because we see you men of the common herd, naked and alone, stripped of all inhibitions by the demon drink,” he said.  “My entire life has been devoted to proving what scum are my fellow men – while proving just how neat in miniskirts my fellow women are – and being a bartender just helps convince me that I’m right.”

Ellsworth laughed.  “I should have known not to expect a straight answer,” he said.  The thought made him smile; miniskirts weren't very popular on asteroid habitats, not least because sudden changes in the gravity or air pressure could send them soaring upwards, revealing everything a lady had to the world.  “If we’re discussing such matters, why do us daring space pilots have free booze, but not a free ticket to the whorehouse?”

Ian didn’t smile.  “Because then you’d spend all of your time in the brothel,” he said.  “Does that answer your question?”

“A serious answer, please,” Ellsworth said.  “Why…?”

“Because even whores have to work,” Ian said dryly.  A whore was a respected woman on the belt; she satisfied the lusts of countless men, and, it was generally agreed, had to be kept happy.  A handful of men had found wives among the women who came to the belt and ended up as prostitutes, but they didn’t remain in the same asteroid; most wives had continued the long tradition of being refugee women from Earth.  It explained Ellsworth’s own face; several different branches of the human family tree combined in him.  “I can make booze free – or almost free – but whores actually have to work.”

“How true,” Ellsworth said.  He eyed the brothel with interest.  “I think that I’ll go see what paradise can be found between…”

His communicator vibrated against his hip.  “Excuse me,” he said.  He brought it to his mouth and tapped the speaking key.  “Ellsworth.”

“Jake,” Kyle Short said.  His voice was surprisingly grim, but then, it had been getting grimmer and grimmer the more the aliens showed just how hostile they could become.  They’d invaded Earth and kicked human butt, they’d trapped Earth and blockaded it from its normal input of supplies from the belt; they weren't to be trifled with.  Some Rockrats had even suggested trying to come to an accommodation with the aliens before it was too late.  “Can you come to my office please?”

“Of course,” Ellsworth said.  A request from the Chairman of the Rockrat Association was as good as an order.  Everyone respected Short; he wondered with a flicker of irritation just how long that would last if Short tried to train spacers in the principles of space warfare.  “I’ll be on my way at once.”

It was only a short walk to the office of the Chairman, placed within the Rockrat Association Headquarters; he passed through a thong of Rockrats looking for work, or opportunities, or even the latest economic news, before entering the private area.  It was unguarded; the consensus was that the Chairman and the members of the board were entitled to some privacy, and no one would break in on them unless they had urgent business.   The entire section had been decorated with paintings; he smiled when he realised that most of them had been drawn by children in Freeport One’s only school.  Education was a serious issue in the belt, but it concentrated around science and practical issues such as ballistics; the soft studies were just not as useful.  From time to time, someone from the belt would try to study a softer science, realise just how badly it fitted into the belt, and give up in disgust.

The hatch was closed, he realised, as he walked up to it.  That was a surprise; part of the unwritten rules was that it had to be left open, even if no one came close enough to check.  He pressed his hand against the door sensor and, moments later, the hatch hissed open, revealing Kyle Short, sitting at his desk.  He wasn't alone; there was a second person in the room, a short blonde woman with her hair clipped neatly around her skull.  She would have been beautiful if she had let herself become beautiful; as it was, his instincts recognised a genuine threat when they saw one.  Even sitting, perched on the edge of a chair, he had the uncomfortable feeling that she was preparing to jump up and bite him.  The air was very tense…

“Jake,” Short said, very dryly.  Ellsworth took the seat Short waved him to and waited to hear what was happening.  “You won’t have met Cindy” – he nodded to the woman; no, Ellsworth realised now, more of a girl – “have you?”

“No, Mr Chairman,” Ellsworth said.  Cindy looked at him, her gaze challenging, before she looked back at Short.  The feeling in the air only grew darker.  “I don’t think I’ve had that pleasure.”

“Cindy is part of my family, several steps removed,” Short said.  Ellsworth blinked; Short, with his half-Chinese, half-Anglo features, could not be related to Cindy, surely.  If there had been a textbook definition of the ideal Aryan woman, Cindy would have qualified with ease; her picture would have been in all the textbooks.  He remembered, a while back, a group of nutters in the belt trying to force-grow improved humans; he wondered, just for a moment, if Cindy was descended from those experiments.  “All you have to know is that there was an argument and my branch of the family does not often talk to hers.”

Ellsworth could fill in the rest of the story now; Short’s father had gone out to the belt, married a Chinese woman refugee from Earth, and had mixed-race children.  Cindy, who looked around sixteen – which could place her age as anything from fourteen to thirty in the belt – and her family had remained on Earth.  It wasn’t that uncommon a story in the belt; Ellsworth had met plenty of brothers – technically, half-brothers – who no one would believe they were actually related.

“That is very interesting,” Ellsworth said, after a long pause.  It might have been interesting, but all it was – all it could be – was gossip…and the belt didn’t really share such private information.  “Might I ask what it has to do with me?”

“Cindy works for the United States Space Force,” Short said.  “She has something of a preposition to put before you.”

The obvious joke rose to Ellsworth’s lips, but he forced it down; there was neither time, nor the moment.  “A preposition,” he said, tasting the word.  “Didn’t the USSF and every other space force in existence just get its ass kicked?”

Cindy uncrossed her legs and leaned forward.  There was nothing remotely sexual in the movement; it was more like watching a tiger licking its lips before prowling forward to prey on the hapless, hypnotised, sheep.  Her body, Ellsworth couldn’t help, but notice, was very muscular; wherever she had been, she had had to have been spending much longer on the exercise machines than USSF regulations ordered.  

“Not all of it,” she said.  “As my great uncle said, we have something of an offer for you.”

Ellsworth forced himself to lean back and relax.  “I’m all ears,” he said.  “What do you have to offer?”

“My great uncle says that you can be trusted,” Cindy said.  “I want you to swear, now, that you won’t share anything I tell you with any living soul, unless I give you permission to share it.”

Ellsworth felt a flicker of irritation.  “The word of a Rockrat is always good,” he said.  It was true enough; a Rockrat with a habit of breaking his word would very rapidly discover that the remainder of the community wanted nothing to do with him.  “However, seeing you insist, you have my word.”

Cindy spoke briefly, her sentences short and choppy.  “We have established a secret production facility out in the belt,” she said.  “The idea was to prepare for a possible war between the Great Powers.  The base was never meant to produce a war fleet on its own.  The net result is that we have a shortage of real manpower.”

Her breathing had grown louder; Ellsworth realised that going that far was difficult for her.  “We need you to provide the manpower,” she said.  “We are prepared to offer you the posts onboard the ships.  It might be the only way of saving Earth.”

Honesty and ambition struggled in Ellsworth’s mind.  Honesty won.  “It’s an interesting idea,” he said.  “However, we have been having problems just training with the ships we do have.  We…well; it’s very much a case of the blind leading the blind.”

Cindy nodded, unsurprised.  Ellsworth wondered just how much Short had told her before he’d been summoned to the meeting.  The thought of a secret base in the belt wasn’t surprising; the Rockrats had more than a few secret installations that they’d never bothered to tell the IAU about.  The IAU had been silent ever since the aliens had opened fire; Ellsworth knew that around two-thirds of the Rockrat population would raise a glass to the aliens if they had exterminated the bureaucratic organisation.  Even so, the sense that there had been a military base – close by, or Cindy would never have been able to come to Freeport One, but not too close or a Rockrat would have stumbled across it by now – was a violation.

“I brought along a handful of training officers,” Cindy said.  “I myself am going to remain on Freeport One until the outcome of the conflict is decided, one way or the other.  The other Rockrats will be told that the spacecraft are being produced by a Rockrat group and they won’t know anything about American involvement.”

Ellsworth balked.  “Ah…Cindy, that won’t work,” he said.  “The belt operates on a principle of openness.  I can’t tell people that those spacecraft are from a base most of them will know perfectly well does not exist.”

Cindy blinked.  “You cannot tell them that the Association established a secret base?”

Short spoke before Ellsworth could say anything.  “Any use of Association funds or equipment would have to be voted on,” he said.  “It would be far too easy for anyone with an inquiring mind to piece the deception, they would realise at once that we had lied to them, and demand a full conclave to establish the truth.  Whatever the outcome, I would be tossed out of office; they won’t tolerate me lying to them.”

Cindy shook her head.  “Sir…Kyle…Uncle…we dare not let the aliens know that we have a fleet in production,” she said.  “If they find out about it, they’ll come and destroy the shipyard…”

“They would have to find the shipyard first,” Short pointed out.

“If they find the shipyard, they will destroy it,” Cindy said.  “Once that happens, the entire war is almost certainly lost; the aliens can hammer away at positions on the ground from orbit, and then…well, they can just keep dropping asteroids until the governments down there bend over, lower their trousers, and spread their legs.  Out here?  Well, they might not want Rockrats around; you must know your own history, right?  Destroying Freeport One would always have been easy; a single nuke in the right place would shatter the asteroid…and the aliens have certainly proven themselves ruthless enough to do something like that.  You could be looking at the end of human independence…”

Ellsworth coughed, just loudly enough to get her attention.  “Perhaps there is a way around the problem,” he said.  He found himself liking Cindy, oddly enough; she would have made a good Rockrat.  “Why don’t we tell everyone that we are putting together the manufacturing equipment from the stations that were boosted out here before Earth was blockaded, and train on that basis?  If the aliens catch wind of it, they’ll think they have time to let us invest all that effort before they come along and destroy it all.  If someone – later – realises the truth…well, at least we built the force beforehand, so whatever the outcome, we can launch the counterattack.”

Cindy’s eyes narrowed.  “No one mentioned a counterattack.”

Ellsworth laughed at her.  “Oh, come on,” he said.  “What else could it be for?”

Chapter Thirty-Three: Desperate Men Demand Desperate Measures

United States National Command Centre, USA

“The conference room has been set up, Mr President,” Colonel Travis assured him, as he led the President and the ever-present Captain Schaefer down a long corridor into a secure conference room.  The two weeks the President had spent in the National Command Centre had convinced him that some of his predecessors and their cabinets had been paranoid, although some of their precautions had come in very useful when the aliens had begun their invasion.  “We have an encrypted undersea link to the various world bunkers; they should find it impossible to trace us back to this location.”

“Good,” the President said, shortly.  Inside, he was composing himself as best as he could; he disliked video conferences at the best of times…and there was no way that the current situation could be considered anything other than a disaster.  “Captain Schaefer, please could you remain outside and ensure that I’m not disturbed?”

“Of course, Mr President,” Captain Schaefer said.

The President stepped through the door and took a moment to revel in being alone, just for a few minutes; the endless security surrounding him was wearying at the best of times.  He had known when he had accepted the nomination, of course, that the American President had held the dubious title of the world’s most temping terrorist target for over a hundred and forty years…and that the Secret Service had evolved hundreds of little security measures to protect the President, but he suspected that the Secret Service would be happier if the President remained in a bunker all the time, handling all of the nation’s affairs through video conferencing.

It wasn’t possible; a President had to get out there and press the flesh.  He knew that there had been hundreds of plots, mostly Wrecker attempts to strike back at the man who had ordered the deaths of hundreds of their comrades, against him; most of them had been neatly foiled before he had ever been in any danger.  A handful of plots had almost reach fruition; he had once joked that the only way any member of the public would ever find out about those plots was if they actually came out into the open and took the shot, or triggered the bomb, or…

But it grated on him.  Part of him felt a kind of guilty relief at being in the National Command Centre; here, he was safe from almost everything, apart from an alien attack.  The Secret Service couldn’t protect him from that; their presence had dwindled, leaving only Captain Schaefer as his bodyguard and escort.  The President half-wanted to order him back to the lines, but he’d been reluctant to do that; Captain Schaefer’s determination to protect him and make the sacrifice worthwhile was important.  Almost all of the Tomb Guards had died in the defence of Arlington; Captain Schaefer had never quite forgiven himself for not being there to die with his comrades.  The President understood that.

The conference room itself was small and simple; he took a seat and waited for the computers to make the link up with the other computers.  It was just another reminder of just how much things had changed in the last three weeks; normally, any conference of the Great Powers would be carried out in Geneva, with face-to-face meetings and some private discussions, apart from the primary purpose of the meetings.  Meetings weren’t called very often; until the aliens had arrived, they had mainly been called to introduce new world leaders to their peers, and to discuss the growing activist movement on the moon.  He could almost feel it working; the computers matching up with their counterparts…

It was so slow!  It had once been possible to download an entire gigabyte in seconds.  Hollywood, Bollywood and the BBC had all faced almost effortless competition from people who thought that their prices were too high; pirate copies of movies got on to the datanet and were distributed across the globe within seconds.  A handful of landmark lawsuits had ensured that hunter/killer programs had been banned – they just weren’t smart enough to destroy only one file that might match the illegal files – and the copyright pirates had won the day.  People, in the President’s view, were generally honest, but hated to be cheated; given a chance to even the score a little, they would take it.  But even that part of the global economy had come to a halt.

Faces started to appear in the monitors facing the President; the European, the Russian, the Muslim, the British…two empty black view screens gazed accusingly upon the President, a reminder that neither Prime Minister Akira Miyu or President Liu Jianfeng had survived…or, if they had, they hadn’t made contact.  The Kelly Johnston had reported on chaos within China; the tidal waves had destroyed Hong Kong and a dozen other cities along the Chinese seacoast, while the earthquakes had shattered much more of China.  Japan’s cities were mostly along the seacoast as well; just how many of them had drowned under the pressure of the tidal waves.  The President knew that the damage was almost completely beyond calculation.

A new face had joined them, flickering into existence; Prime Minister David bar Ellis, of Israel.  Israel wasn't a Great Power – despite its more or less uncontested ownership of Titan, it would never be a Great Power – but there was no denying that there was an alien force close to Israel, one that could be at the border within days at most.  The aliens moved rapidly; their sheer firepower could blast anything the Caliphate might put in their way out of it, if brute conquest was what they had in mind.  It didn’t seem fair, somehow; between Reform Islam and the European actions in North Africa, the Palestinian Problem had finally been solved…and now the aliens had come to shed more blood in the Holy Land.  Israel was still armed to the teeth – it would be a long time before they trusted their old enemy – but most human conventional weapons were useless against the aliens.

“Thank you all for coming,” President Siegfried Gerwulf said.  The President nodded once; the Europeans had taken two of the alien invasion forces on their soil, although it was questionable if the aliens had actually known that that was what they were doing.  Had they landed near Washington because they knew it was the American capital, or had they intended something entirely different?  “The situation is grave.  Desperate measures must be taken.”

The President winced inwardly.  It was going to be bad.  “Grave is a strong word,” President Aleksandra Zakharova said.  The Russians were also at risk; a major alien invasion force had landed to the south of Moscow and was advancing on the capital, despite all the Russians could do to stop it.  “The war has not been lost.”

“Two of our normal comrades have been lost,” Gerwulf said sharply.  He waved a hand at where the blank screens would be in his apartments.  The President guessed that he was in a bunker somewhere in Norway; there was plenty of European hardware scattered over a former nation that had always been difficult to attack.  “We face collapse in North Africa and France; our ability to reinforce the French is limited because the aliens have blasted much of the transport network.”

The President listened as Gerwulf continued.  It wasn’t that much of a surprise; the Europeans had a fairly small professional armed force and several national military forces that now acted as a version of the American National Guard.  The downside of such an arrangement was that local support wasn't always possible; the European Army had been largely based in the east – because of Russia – and the south, because of the African Exclusion Zone.  Any attempt to move large forces back to Europe would almost certainly be smashed by the aliens from orbit.

“And there is the question of just what they will do if they cross the Suez Canal,” Caliph Baha Ihsan said.  Egypt had joined the Caliphate, suspicious that otherwise Europe would have gobbled it up and imposed its own peace on it; it had to be defended, but, like every other Great Power, the Caliphate was woefully short of combat power now that the alien-caused tidal waves had swept across the country.  The Caliphate had suffered badly; Russia was the only Great Power that had been spared tidal waves.  “What happens if they move on Tehran, or perhaps come west from their landings in India?”

The discussion ranged backwards and forwards before it found a new topic.  “The matter of their broadcast remains an interesting one,” Aleksandra said.  She fixed the Caliph with a look that would have stunned a charging elephant.  “Can we take them at their word?”

The President smiled.  “We have analysed both of the recordings that Director Hussein made for them,” he said.  There was a small, but vocal minority in the United States calling for her to be hung without trial as a traitor, although it would be difficult to determine what she had committed treason against – if she had committed treason.  The entire human race, perhaps; as she wasn't an American citizen, she could hardly be charged with crimes against America.  “They believe that she was doubtful about the first message, but believed much of the second message; in particular, she doubted the concept that our surrendering soldiers would be unharmed.  Without actual direct access to her, there is no way to cross-examine her and find out just what she doubts, or why.”

“We have some reports from Lyon and a dozen other cities that have fallen under alien authority,” Gerwulf said.  “The aliens at first took prisoners; a day or so later, they started merely ignoring the civilian population, apart from feeding them water and ration blocks.  We had one smuggled out of the Occupied Zone and examined it; it’s basic algae-grown foodstuff, edible, healthy, and practically tasteless.  The black market is apparently doing a roaring trade in sauces and other condiments.”

There were some chuckles.  “The aliens are doing pretty much the same in the Russian Occupied Zone,” Aleksandra confirmed.  The President nodded thoughtfully.  “Its basic occupation strategy; feed the population and they very rapidly become dependent on you when you start to tighten the screws.  My guess is that we’ll start to see them registering humans to assist them and maybe, in a year or so, an alien-controlled human army.”

“All they’d have to do is head south, into the Exclusion Zone,” Gerwulf said.

The President injected his own comment into the discussion.  “The aliens have taken much fewer American prisoners, mainly because the areas they occupied were swept clean by tidal waves; most of the population was already on the move out of the area when the aliens landed.  I don’t know if they have started to feed humans they haven’t added to their camps, but if they break into a more populated area, they might just start attempting the same thing.  Incidentally, they have been using some heavy robots to clear bodies, which are then destroyed by laser fire; most human occupiers would put the prisoners to work.”

“With all due respect, that is not the main problem,” bar Ellis said.  His English was oddly-accented, as if he had studied in an upper-class English university.  “This is the main problem.”  He displayed an image; a tower reaching up into the sky.  “It will come as no surprise to you to know that we have…agents within Egypt, in particular interested in the remnants of the Muslim Brotherhood and other such organisations that have ties to the Exclusion Zone and might one day move against Israel.  One of them took it into his head to have a closer look at what the aliens were doing along the border and snapped this picture.”

The President scowled.  Something about the image reminded him of something, something he’d seen a few years ago.  “I see,” he said.  The elusive memory failed to form.  “What is it?”

Bar Ellis’s face was sombre.  “We believe that it’s a space elevator,” he said.  “We used telescopes to check up the line and found one of the alien spacecraft, holding station in a perfect orbit above the endpoint; the…elevator, or whatever it really is, is being built up very slowly.  The process, I am assured, is quite fascinating.”

The President blinked.  “How the hell did we miss this?”

“We’re not quite prepared for an alien invasion,” Gerwulf said dryly.

“It is recommended that all of you check for other space elevators that might be being constructed in the other occupation zones,” bar Ellis said.  “It is quite possible that once the aliens have completed the towers, they will bring down the remainder of their army and then they will expand forwards and hit us again.  As President Gerwulf said, desperate measures must be taken.”

The President glanced at each screen in turn.  “What exactly do you want to do?”

It was Aleksandra who spoke.  “A coordinated assault on all five known alien landing zones,” she said.  The President guessed that there had been some private discussion between her and Gerwulf before the meeting had been called.  The European landlines, away from the pressure of asteroid-caused shockwaves in the ocean, had remained largely intact.  “We know now what the aliens can do; we also know that they are far from invincible.”

“They may not be invincible, but they are very powerful,” the President said.  “Hitting them the way they are, at the moment, is playing to their strengths.  Anyway you want to look at it, that’s a disaster.”

“We already have one disaster,” Gerwulf snapped.  “The Moon has declared independence.  If we don’t have even one victory to our name, there will be no room for negotiation.”  His voice darkened.  “The aliens may have offered to talk with us, but they have time; once they have all of their elevators up and running, they can mass their forces and launch the final offensive against us.  They’re stalling; they know they can be hurt and if they can be hurt, we can make them…amiable to our point of view.”

The President said nothing.  If the information the aliens had transmitted down to the planet, or had a handful of prisoners take out of the Occupied Zone had been accurate, it was humanity’s point of view that the aliens had an issue with.  They really needed an alien prisoner, and there seemed to be no way of gaining one; the aliens took care when they patrolled along the front lines.  Their bodies simply burned to ash moments after they died; field rites or precaution, no one knew.

“Maybe,” he said, stalling for a moment.  “I would have to discuss it with my military officers.  The issue does remain, however; can we deter them from using their overwhelming advantage against us?”

“There are two issues,” Aleksandra said.  “First, we propose the use of tactical nuclear weapons against the alien ground forces, evening the score a little.  Second, we have a little surprise to share; for various reasons, we were hiding a small force out in the Lenin Cluster of Near-Earth Asteroids” – they’d been claimed by the Russians, the President remembered – “and that force will be deployed against the aliens in orbit, backed up by all the ground-based missiles at our command.  The force will launch a two-prong attack; a un-powered missile strike against the alien orbital weapons platforms, and a powered strike against the alien motherships.  There are only ten Russian ships out there, but they can give the enemy a bloody nose before retreating back towards one of our asteroid bases.”

The President wondered, for a moment, if the Russians had a version of Area 51 hidden out somewhere amid the belt.  They’d done well if they had managed to keep the force unnoticed so close to Earth, but apart from a series of probes, the aliens had paid little attention to the asteroids.  He wanted to talk privately to Aleksandra, to ask her to hold back whatever ships she had until they could be merged with the force from Area 51, but it was already too late.  The other world leaders were grasping what she had offered them as if it were a lifeline…

…And it was one, the President realised; she might even be right.  If they could give the aliens a bloody nose, they could certainly impede them from continuing their conquest of Earth, maybe even find a way of bringing them to the bargaining table.  But…the alternative was worse; the aliens might not be able to hunt down every human settlement out in the belt, but they could certainly exterminate the human population on Earth.  How far could they provoke the aliens before they started targeting cities?

Aleksandra looked at him.  Her voice was sharp; the President realised that his mind had been wandering down dark corridors.  “Allen?”

The President gathered himself.  “As I said, I will have to talk to the Joint Chiefs,” he said.  “However, I believe that they will certainly consider the plan workable…unless the aliens bring some other surprise of their own into play.”  He made a show of glancing at his watch.  “Shall we reconvene in twenty-four hours?”

One by one, they said their goodbyes, logging out of the conference.  In the end, only the President and Prime Minster Tim Keck remained.  The president looked at his old friend.  They’d known each other for a long time before Keck had become the Prime Minister of Britain – and, though the strictly fair rotation, first among equals of the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth.  “Tim?”

“They’re desperate,” Keck said.  “So are we; India and Australia are both wrecks, while New Zealand took a beating that might destroy the entire nation eventually.  I don’t like it very much, but it might be our best opportunity to force the aliens to the conference table before the entire global system falls apart.”

Chapter Thirty-Four: The Camp

Near Pittsburgh, USA

The scene had been one of complete chaos when the battlesuits – or the remains of the force – had stumbled into the camp; two weeks later, the camp was still in chaos, with thousands of soldiers running everywhere and few people knowing exactly what they were doing.  General Harrison – he had been promoted in the chaos – had been trying to get the entire area under some kind of control, but the panic that had struck the civilians had threatened to keep the situation eternally on the boil.  

The aliens hadn’t bothered to give pursuit once they’d sealed off Washington and broken into the city; Captain Christopher Fardell could only be grateful.  A pursuit would have been a disaster, but he had other worries just by being so far from the alien positions; the aliens could drop a KEW on them from orbit if they caught a sign of them.  They’d said, in the transmission their mouthpiece had transmitted, that they would respect surrendering soldiers – provided that their own were given the same courtesy – but Fardell wasn’t keen on testing the theory.  Rumour had it that they had captured wounded soldiers, but no one knew for sure; they hadn’t bothered to inform the humans of just who they had captured…if they even knew.

He paced around the camp, angrily; their positions had been carefully camouflaged to prevent the aliens noticing them from orbit, but he knew better than to trust to too much camouflage.  The aliens kept launching their drones overhead, hunting for the remains of the human forces; the forces that were massing, mainly light infantry, would be very vulnerable if they were detected.  It was one reason they were massing so far from the alien lines; it would give the humans a chance to get themselves organised before meeting an alien assault, assuming that the aliens launched an assault.  Rumour had it that the brass was planning an offensive right into the teeth of the alien forces; the arrival of a handful of older heavy weapons from some militia stockpile suggested that there was some truth in the rumour.  Units arrived at the camp, received their orders, and then headed out again, apparently to different operating bases nearer the aliens.

That, at least, made sense; it was important to spread out as much as possible to prevent a single enemy weapon from destroying the entire force, but it was frustrating.  He knew that there were places were the woods were alive with American soldiers, but it was easy to forget when the communications network had either broken down or had been devoted only to commanding the ground forces; they might have made contact with the remainder of the datanet, but using it for anything other than official business had been forbidden.  Fardell understood, and he had written quick letters to his family, but it grated on him; his relatives wouldn’t even know if he was dead or alive…or a prisoner.

A whistle blew; he picked himself up and strode over towards the command tent, neatly hidden under the trees from prying alien eyes.  He passed a handful of medical vehicles and support units, nothing obviously dangerous; the aliens struck anything that looked dangerous from orbit.  An armoured division from Fort Hood, he had heard, had started out on a journey somewhere – he assumed Washington – and hadn’t moved more than ten miles before the aliens destroyed most of the vehicles from orbit.  It was a strange way to fight a war.  

The interior of the tent was surprisingly warm; the strange weather they’d been having had caused them to go through periods of heat, matched with freezing cold and heavy rainfall, sometimes all at once.  The asteroid’s impact had started to lose some of its effects, but it had rained like a bitch over most of America, if not the world.  Floods and dams breaking had caused heavy damage all over America; he’d heard that the Panama Canal and other waterways had been rendered completely useless by the effects of the tidal waves and the flooding.  The handful of other soldiers gathered together still felt strange; the American Army had grown far too used to meetings that involved video conferencing and hardly any face-to-face contact.  He felt as if it were dangerous; with the aliens and their power around, it hardly mattered.  No suicide bombers would get though the battalion out patrolling around the camp…and the aliens might be able to track a videoconference.

“TEN-HUT,” the Sergeant at one end of the room said.  It was another sign of how far they’d fallen; once again, a paper map from a school had been pressed into service for the soldiers.  They stood to attention.

“At ease,” General Harrison said, his voice weaker than Fardell remembered from their last meeting.  Everyone relaxed slightly, but remained standing until he saluted them back and waved them onto the benches; they too had been removed from one of the schools nearby.  The entire civilian population of the area was supposed to have been evacuated, but Fardell knew that there were still thousands of people in the cities.  “As you know, we have accomplished wonders in securing the general area, moving out the wounded to hospitals further inside the country, and organising our reinforcement by light infantry and light armoured units from the various National Guards.  The reserves were, of course, already called up; many of the reserve units are already preparing to enter the war.”

He tapped one part of the map, coloured red with a crayon, with one long finger.  “There are also several Special Forces units and civilian resistance units operating within the known alien occupation zone,” he continued.  “The Donkeys” – the name had been coined by some REMF who’d never had to face the aliens, but it had stuck – “have been patrolling heavily, but we seem to have a slight advantage in insurgent warfare; it helps that we know the entire area much better than they do.  The Donkeys have been using their drones to cover their own flanks; we have not been shooting the drones down because this serves as a way of leading us to their forces.  The Green Berets and others have used this to launch hit and run raids; striking the aliens, getting in a few blows, and then scattering.  We have some reason to believe that this has been pissing the aliens off.”

There were some laughs.  “Regardless, the aliens have been happily establishing themselves in Washington and the surrounding area,” General Harrison snapped.  The laughter died.  “They have been trying to establish an orbital elevator to their ships in orbit, rather like we used artificial piers back during the Second World War.  One of those is already working in Egypt, along the border with North Africa; the aliens are using it to ship thousands more of their soldiers from the motherships to the surface.  Once the elevator over there” – he waved in the direction of Washington – “is completed, they will do the same…and come heading over here with additional troops and equipment.  At the moment, they have a beachhead – an incredibly vulnerable beachhead.  Our job is to destroy it.”

There was a long moment of silence.  “They haven’t been very vulnerable so far,” someone said, finally.  The speaker spoke from the back.  “Can we destroy them?”

“Yes, we can,” General Harrison said firmly.  He flipped the map over to reveal a second map, with several lines drawn on it, leading east.  “The main issue, as we have discussed over the last week, is to remain close enough to alien forces to prevent them from simply dropping KEW weapons on us from orbit.  Accordingly, the main thrust of the counterattack will be carried out by light infantry and battlesuits; several hundred additional battlesuits have arrived and will be deployed as the main supporting force.  We will return to the area as carefully as we can, slipping further Special Forces units into Washington over the next few days, and then launch the attack before the enemy get their act together.  Heavy support, including missiles and long-range guns, has been provided; hopefully, all of those units will be in place before we launch the assault.”

He kept speaking, outlining all of the units that had been committed to the attack, while Fardell thought about it.  Planning on the fly, he had found, was a recipe for disaster; there were too many things that could go wrong and the plan wouldn’t account for them.  Friction was an endless companion of any military force, but the friction in an operation without half of the technological goodies they were used to would be terrible…and the more friction there was, the more holes that would appear in the operation when it was carried out.

“The President has promised a week’s leave to the man who captures an alien alive, but I will have the ass of any man who compromises the mission for that,” General Harrison finished.  “Are there any questions?”

Fardell put up his hand.  “What about attacking when the weather is pretty bad, not at dawn?”  He asked.  “If we have to carry out this mission, we should try to carry it out when the aliens can’t see…”

“They can see,” General Harrison answered, his face grim.  “We only caught on to this by chance; some group that believes we should conserve bats in a forest the aliens marched through had sensors out tuned to detect the bats sonar…and the aliens are emitting plenty of it.  “They fight almost as well as we do in the dark, Captain; judging from some of the footage of the early fights, they can see through some softer items, although not harder items.  It might explain why they’re lousy at house-to-house fighting; the walls would muck up their sonar no end.  The brass has research teams looking for ways to jam their sonar, but nothing as yet.”

He paused.  “The President has authorised the use of some tactical nuclear weapons in the fight,” he said, almost as if it were an afterthought.  “You’ll be briefed on procedures later, and hopefully we won’t have to use them, but if the hypersonic missiles have to be launched, you’ll be warned.  This might be the last chance we have to fight as a united country, gentlemen and ladies; I expect all of you to get out there and kick the Donkeys’ collective ass.  Good luck.”

Fardell scowled inwardly.  Whatever happened, the battle was going to be costly; part of him wanted to flee, the remainder embraced the challenge.  He just knew that it was going to hurt the army, hurt his unit…it was even possible it might hurt one Captain Fardell…

He smiled.  He’d known the job was dangerous when he’d taken it.

***
Thirty-seven miles to the west, Captain Wilbur Hawking was having roughly similar thoughts, although as one of the handful of USAF pilots who had met the aliens and survived the experience, his views were considered more important.  The tiny base had been intended as a rich man’s private airfield at one time; it was a miracle that the Shadow could be landed there, let alone that the aliens hadn’t noticed yet.  There were now thirty Shadows near Washington, a tiny force compared to what Hawking knew would be needed.

“Sir, this is unwise,” Hawking said, as close as he could come to calling the mission impossible.  Fighter pilots were a proud breed; if they were given a mission, they would either carry it out or die trying.  He would have taken on any mission he felt had a chance of success, but this mission looked as if it was impossible, capital ‘I’ impossible.  “The alien network in that part of the city is just too powerful for any aircraft to fly through and remain undetected.”

It was only the strange weather conditions that had saved his life so far; the aliens seemed to have real problems predicting where he actually was in the middle of a storm front, but as the weather started to settle down for the nonce, it would become easier for the aliens to track the Shadows, if only by noting the position of empty spots on some of their more capable sensors and directed plasma fire towards them until the Shadow was hit, or worse.  The aliens were also getting better at linking their systems together; unlike any human ECM officer, they would know what their systems were supposed to be recording…and know what wasn't meant to be there.

“That’s not an issue,” the Colonel said.  His voice tried to sound firm, but there was an underlying note that Hawking really didn’t like, as if he knew something that Hawking didn’t know at all.  “We really do need those targets hit and the men on the ground need some air support, so there really isn’t much to say.”

Hawking glared down at the target information, such as it was; some team of Special Forces had done an excellent job with the equipment they’d been given.  It was apparently an alien barracks – several alien barracks, established near the centre of Washington, using part of a human warehouse and some of their own prefabricated materials.  There was nothing special about it, as far as he could see; there was no obvious reason for the brass to be targeting it so specifically, or for them to be risking one of the priceless Shadows to carry out the mission.

“No?”  He asked.  One advantage of all of the sensors and Special Forces soldiers running through the occupied territory was that they had a pretty good breakdown on what the aliens had deployed…and just what it would do to any unwary pilot who was foolish enough to stray into the alien field of fire.  “They have over seventy air-search radars operating on constant sweep-mode, with plasma cannons and some of their lasers to back them up.  They have expanded their own sensor network to the point where even birds get targeted and blown out of the air; power is clearly not a problem to them.  The fighting has even altered the terrain in some places, so most of my maps will be useless.  There is actually quite a lot to say…”

He broke off, looking down at the map.  “There might be a possibility,” he said, studying it carefully.  An idea had crossed his mind, but he needed more information before he committed himself.  “What sort of support were you going to provide for the soldiers and the civilians on the ground?”

“Missiles and long-range artillery fire,” the Colonel said.  Hawking muttered a curse under his breath; the aliens would notice the incoming hail of devastation, shoot most of it down with their lasers, and be back in position to repel any attack before anyone could react.  Their orbital weapons platforms would drop a KEW on each of the imprudent launchers and guns and that would be that.  “We would be combining it with considerable jamming and remote spoofing of their equipment.”

Hawking thought about it.  If the alien broadcast, telling the Earth about themselves, hadn’t been complete propaganda, it was possible that the aliens would be just a little inexperienced when it came to modern warfare.  They might even not recognise the jamming for what it was in time; they might just…

“It might be possible,” he said, and outlined his idea.  It was crazy and it would require some fanatical flying, but he was confident that he could handle it.  He was the best pilot he knew, after all; all USAF pilots shared that belief, although he was certain that the others were wrong.  “Would that be acceptable?”

The Colonel nodded.  “All that really matters is getting those targets taken out,” he said.  “There are people depending on it.”

Hawking blinked.  “There aren’t alien prisoners under there, are there?”

“No…well, not exactly,” the Colonel said.  There was a curious note to his voice, as if Hawking had stumbled on something important, something he should never have noticed.  “It’s just important that those targets be taken out.”

Hawking nodded, feeling that he’d pushed the Colonel to the limits.  “This attack is going to be coordinated with the other Great Powers,” he said.  The briefing had been long on words and short on details.  “Did they have anything useful to add about alien weapons and tactics?”

“Nothing that we didn’t already know for ourselves,” the Colonel said.  He paused, just for a moment.  “You mentioned prisoners earlier; in both Africa and Europe, the aliens have started to feed the civilian population without bothering to pen them up in prison camps.  What does that suggest to you?”

Hawking studied the map for a moment.  “That there’s a limit to how many people they are willing to imprison,” he said, carefully.  He knew almost nothing about the logistics of holding prisoners; it wasn’t often a USAF concern.  “Why would they have such a limit?”

“At a rough guess, they have nearly five thousand Americans as their prisoners,” the Colonel said.  He met Hawking’s eyes.  “If they expand much more, they will run into populations we can’t move, people who will end up being far too close to the aliens when we fight them…you can probably work out the consequences for yourself.”

“Yes, sir,” Hawking said.  The Colonel had been trying to guilt him; it had worked, to some degree.  America as a whole was being ground down by the mere alien presence; if the war went on for long enough, there would be no need to worry about the future of the country, because it would no longer exist as a single coordinated whole.  “I won’t let you down.”

“That’s good, Captain,” the Colonel said.  “The future of the country may depend on how you carry out your mission…and I do not exaggerate.  The attack goes into full flow in a week, Captain; get some sleep.  You’re going to need it.”

Chapter Thirty-Five: Who Dares To Call It Treason?

Seeker for Truth, Earth Orbit

The shape of the human spacecraft was very visible on the display.

Dataka-War Commander-Fleet studied the image, his sonar clicking through the image – which was of course transparent to his sonar – and resounding with the sonar from the other members of the council.  There was nothing particularly remarkable about the human ship; it reassembled, unsurprisingly, a comparable Oghaldzon design.  Humans might look strange, to Oghaldzon eyes, but they were bound by the same laws that determined how the Oghaldzon could move from star to star.

The humans were brave, he acknowledged, without particular concern.  The Oghaldzon would not have sacrificed themselves for nothing – or what they saw as nothing – but they had their own share of brave soldiers and cowards.  It was possible that the humans merely intended a deception that would destroy the Seeker for Truth, but even so, it would only destroy the Seeker…if they let it get anywhere near their position.  Some humans had been quite reasonable when confronted by the Oghaldzon, others had thrown their own lives away in an often-futile attempt to kill individual Oghaldzon soldiers, often in ways that wouldn’t have affected the overall situation.  It was a puzzle, he knew; it was already causing endless discussion among the soldiers down on the surface of the planet.

He’d delayed calling the council meeting in the hope that new information would arrive, but nothing new had been detected.  The researchers and the intelligence crews had been trying to put together a picture of human habitations in the solar system – and the human politics that supported them – and even though the task had gotten easier with direct access to human research materials on the planet below, they had been having real problems understanding the politics.  It looked as if, far from a cooperative endeavour, the human factions had divided the moon up between them…except, far from agreeing to any dividing lines, they had then started to argue about who would have access to most of the resources, with their own settlers caught in the middle.  The Oghaldzon had not been surprised when they’d realised that the settlers had overthrown the leaders appointed to them by their governments – that was par for the course when MemeKill-infected factions were involved – but they had been surprised by the communication from the moon.

“The question is simple,” he said, addressing the council.  In theory, they were all equal, but in practice the decision was his.  They were in a war zone and a war zone left no time for debate.  “Do we accept the human representative onboard our ship or do we order him to return to the moon?”

Takalak-Researcher-Seeker spoke first.  “We believe that this is the first sign of sanity that we have seen among the humans,” he said, his clicking echoing through the room.  Dataka could almost taste the honesty with which Takalak spoke.  “This may represent the first of many human powers coming to us and joining us, as happened during the MemeKill Wars.  Free of the influence of their comrades down on Earth, they may become worthy allies.”

“And they are aliens,” Reata-Soldier-Command said.  She represented the interests of the soldiers to the council.  “They don’t think the way we do; sometimes their behaviour is almost Oghaldzon, although that of an insane or infected Oghaldzon, sometimes they just don’t behave in any way that matches our own experience.  They cannot be trusted to integrate with us properly.”

Dataka scowled.  The Oghaldzon didn’t fight many wars; their society was too loose for that.  Most Oghaldzon wars happened because an Oghaldzon became infected with MemeKill and proceeded to spread it everywhere, heedless of the possible consequences to the people.  That was bad, right on the verge of disastrous, but it was understood; MemeKill forced its victims to behave in a certain way that made stopping them, putting them down, unpleasant, but possible.  The old nightmare was that, sooner or later, a MemeKill faction would grow so powerful that it would be impossible to stop, shattering the bedrock of Oghaldzon society and sending them back to barbarism.  It was quite possible that it had happened in the past; records were scarce.

But what tended to happen was simple.  The core of the MemeKill faction would be destroyed, or proven rather spectacularly to be in the wrong, and the spell would break.  The other factions – nations, back when the Oghaldzon had had other nations – would break ranks and seek terms…which might just be what had happened on the moon.  Or, as Reata suggested, something completely different might have happened…and, because the Oghaldzon thought in terms of their own society, they might misinterpret it.

“Regardless, it is our duty to force them to integrate,” Gafalae-Speaker-Seeker said.  Dataka had encountered a human word for his duty; priest.  The Truth could not be said to be a religious understanding of the universe, but those who considered themselves Truth-seekers were very important in Oghaldzon society.  “We cannot come to terms with them on anything less than us possessing control over what they do in space, unless they prove themselves to be completely trustworthy.”

He paused, sonar clicking reprovingly.  “If this is an opportunity to at least talk to a human faction, to prevent further bloodshed, for we have killed – or at least played a role in the death of – millions of human civilians,” he continued.  “If they talk to us, and they demand more than we are willing to give them, then we can occupy the moon ourselves; we will have lost nothing in the experiment.”

Takalak clicked for attention.  “My colleague Oolane has asked the humans we have onboard this ship for advice,” he said.  Dataka wondered just how a human would have interpreted that comment; it was possible that Oolane’s children had been sired by Takalak, something that was of enormous importance to the human race, but purely an academic matter, if that, to the Oghaldzon.   “Their response was not pleasant; the female worried that the other humans would take revenge, while the male wanted the other humans to take revenge.  They were both in agreement that the lunar faction should not be trusted.”

“We could protect the lunar faction from their…former masters on Earth,” Gafalae said.  “It gives us leverage over them.  We do not know, yet, what they are offering.”

Reata clicked in agreement.  “Some of the soldiers on the planet below are wondering if we can ever guarantee defeating the humans,” she said.  Dataka shivered; the ground occupied by the Oghaldzon seethed with resentment and armed soldiers, striking out at individual or small groups of Oghaldzon, hurting them.  It might cost the humans dearly, but it was still hurting his people.  “A successful agreement with one human faction might lead to the others agreeing to join us on reasonable terms.”

“If nothing else, we could certainly help them rebuild,” Gafalae added.  “We certainly played some role in the crisis that has killed millions of humans.”

Dataka clicked for a vote.  There were only two dissenting opinions.  “It has been agreed,” he said, finally.  “We will take to the human rebels and see what they are prepared to offer us in exchange for recognition and support.”

“A suggestion,” Takalak said.  “The delegate from the human moon should not be permitted to meet the prisoners onboard this ship.”

There was a brief hum of agreement. “It shall be done,” Dataka said.  “Bring the human ship onboard.”

***
Tony Jones had never felt more naked in his life, even though he was wearing a standard ship-suit with a mask hanging by his side, providing limited protection in the event of an air leak.  The inter-orbit ship was completely unarmed; under normal circumstances, it would have made the run from the lunar stations to Orbit One, where it would have transhipped passengers to each of the destinations.  Orbit One had been blown out of the sky by the aliens; almost all of the human constructions in orbit had been destroyed, replaced by a massive fleet of alien ships.  He’d seen some of the reports from stealthy spy probes; the aliens had been creating orbital elevators to the surface, something that would alter their logistics beyond calculation.

It almost made him sick.  Humanity had experimented with the concept of an orbital elevator, but no one had actually built one on Earth, although one was planned on Mars.  Who knew what would have happened if a single elevator had been operating for ten years before the aliens arrived?  The moon might have swelled with people…although that wouldn’t have necessarily been a good thing.  Bova’s coup would never have come off if half the population hadn’t been firmly on his side and another quarter sitting on the fence.  Their opinions might not matter, he realised, as the alien ship took on shape and form in front of him; if the Oghaldzon decided that they wanted the moon, they could take it and Bova’s coup would come to nothing.

He’d studied, carefully, all the information the Oghaldzon had made available about themselves.  There was, he’d already decided, much to admire about the aliens; they didn’t band into factions, they didn’t mistreat their own people, they even had a form of direct democracy for a government.  Apart from the Rockrats, who were pretty much a special case out in the belt, few human entities had practiced direct democracy; it just didn’t jibe too well with human interests.  The official explanation was that sometimes the great unwashed couldn’t be expected to understand what was actually at stake, but Jones knew better; the lords and masters of humankind didn’t want to let their people actually make choices for themselves.  Who knew?  Their first choice might be to get rid of the leaders.

If what the Oghaldzon said about themselves was true, they had no such problems.  Jones wanted that to be real; he needed it.  He could remember countless battles for the budget with the IAU and the other funding committees, people who had cared nothing for pure science, even though pure science had eventually led to the colonisation of the moon, the rest of the solar system, and had made life better and richer in any number of ways.  What would have happened if humanity had left everything to the bean counters?  The human race would have been still grubbing around in the dirt when the Oghaldzon arrived.  What was the point of endless petty wars over tiny differences?

His face tightened as he remembered Samra.  She’d been a good director – it came as a shock to realise that he was thinking of her as one already dead – and she’d often been treated with suspicion, just for being a Muslim.  The Wrecker War had left deep scars on the face of humanity…but it would never have happened with a united government and an endless dialogue of ideas.  There would have been no delusion about ‘communism works, but it’s just never been done properly’ – the Oghaldzon experimented with it from time to time, relearned the lesson about how it never worked, and terminated it.  There was no need for a regime change; the Oghaldzon simply walked away and abandoned the experiment.  What human regime had ever allowed its citizens to make such a choice?

The craft carefully docked with the Oghaldzon ship.  They’d altered the hatch slightly so it could mate with the Oghaldzon hatch, but he’d been warned that he might have to go EVA; there was no guarantee of compatibility between human systems and alien designs.  All human ships used the same specifications, just to permit a hasty rescue if necessary, but the Oghaldzon had never signed those treaties.  How could they have?  Even if they did in future, there would be problems; they weren’t much larger than an average human, but they were certainly shaped differently.

“The hatch seems to have mated,” the pilot said.  She was a young girl; under other circumstances, he might have tried to chat her up.  His nervousness had made that impossible.  “I'm opening it now.”

There was a pause.  “I’m reading a breathable atmosphere,” she said.  “Good luck, sir.”

The heat struck him as soon as he pulled himself out of the ship; the heat, the moisture in the air, and the dim lighting.  A pair of Oghaldzon stood, facing him; he realised that they had magnetic boots on their feet, or hooves.  Were they hooves?  Coming face to face with the aliens was disconcerting; he had the strangest feeling that the two Oghaldzon were feeling the same way about him.  To them, humans had to look almost comical creatures; they were a far cry from the science-fiction humanoids that seemed to occupy almost every star.

“Come with us,” one said, in an agonisingly flat voice.  It took Jones a moment to realise that it was an automated speaker.  He followed them down the corridor, as soon as his boots had started to generate a magnetic field of their own; there was very little to see in the ship.  The proportions were all wrong, but otherwise it could have been any ship; he felt oddly disappointed.  His escort paused in front of a large door and opened it, revealing a very dark room; the lights came on as he entered, revealing a handful of Oghaldzon, sitting around the room.  They sat like horses, part of his mind whispered; there were no chairs or tables, just a glowing hologram of the Earth in the centre of the room.

“Welcome onboard the Seeker for Truth,” one of the Oghaldzon said.  The voice was still that same maddeningly flat tone. “I am Dataka-War Commander-Fleet.”

There was a long pause.  “I am Tony Jones, officially accredited ambassador from the moon,” Jones said.  “I have been sent to discuss the future of the moon with you.”

The Oghaldzon – Dataka – seemed to move slightly, the great domed head tilting, revealing a pair of eyes that looked almost useless.  They reminded Jones of a hamster’s eyes, dark and beady, but at the same time almost dead.  They’d said nothing about their biology, but there was speculation that they used sonar to see, more than their puny eyes.

“We understood,” Dataka said.  “What do you want from us?”

Jones took a breath.  This wasn’t going as he had planned it; the Oghaldzon were obviously reluctant to commit themselves until they knew what was on the table.  “The moon has declared independence from Earth,” he said, stating a fact.  “We would like your recognition of our independence and agreement to maintain that independence against the Great Powers on Earth.  We would also like to trade with you and the other human settlements in the solar system without your interference.”

He had the odd sense that the alien had smiled.  He didn’t know how; the alien mouth was as expressionless as a hippopotamus’s mouth.  “An interesting request,” the alien said.  “Are you willing to submit yourself to our authority?”

Jones hesitated.  “That would depend upon the terms of your authority,” he said, carefully.  Bova’s guidelines only went so far.  “We are unwilling to allow you to control our daily lives on the moon, but we will recognise your primacy in the remainder of the solar system and certain other matters.  We do not want to trade one master for another when we have a nation to build.”

“And you will build a nation that we can respect,” Dataka said.  It wasn’t a question; Jones wondered just what the alien was thinking behind that impenetrable expression.  Were they really impressed, or were they just agreeing to gain time?  He wanted to believe the former, but it was so easy to believe, too easy.  “What manner of government will you follow when you have organised yourself?”

Jones spoke for around twenty minutes, describing Bova’s grand plans and some of the more practical elements that they had already put in place, such as local autonomy and a federal lunar government to handle matters that affected the entire moon, such as defence and the price of Helium-3.  They’d staged them as best as they could to appeal to the Oghaldzon, but he knew that there was a danger there; if the Oghaldzon wanted to supervise developments, Bova would refuse them and all hell would break loose.  He was prepared to make compromises, but he would not permit the foundation of an Oghaldzon military base on the moon.

“We would consider such a government acceptable, for the time being,” Dataka said finally.  The clicking sound in the background grew louder; Jones realised that the Oghaldzon were talking to one another in their own language, discussing his proposition before making their decision.  “What do you have to trade with us?”

Jones explained, quickly; the moon’s main export was helium-3 and lunar rock.  The trading links to Earth weren’t as important as they had been twenty years ago, but being cut off from Earth had had a small economic effect on the moon.  No one would starve – the moon could feed itself indefinitely – but the effects of semi-permanent unemployment would be…bad.

“We would consider those worthwhile trade goods,” Dataka said finally.  The deadpan delivery almost made Jones smile.  The alien could not have known that he was almost playing for human laughs.  “There are two conditions to the bargain.”

Jones lifted an eyebrow.  “What are those conditions?”

“The first one is that you do not trade with any human settlement that has not accepted our authority,” Dataka said.  Jones winced; Bova wouldn’t like that one at all.  “The second one is that you allow us to send teachers to your schools to attempt to begin the long process of integrating human and Oghaldzon society together.”

Jones nodded slowly.  “I would have to consult with the government on the first issue,” he said.  Bova would definitely not be happy, although there was really very little choice in the matter.  “The second issue should be fine; after all, we do have to learn how to get along in this strange new world.”

The Oghaldzon said nothing.

Chapter Thirty-Six: Wasting Away Inside A Prison Camp

Alien Prison Camp, Near Washington, USA

Someone was singing, loudly.

“Wasting away again in margaritaville, searching for my lost shaker of salt.
“Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame…but I know…it’s nobody’s fault.”

“If he starts singing the March of Cambreadth again, I swear I’m going to kill him,” Carola said, as she rolled over and sat up to glare in the direction of an incredibly fat man who had been dumped in the camp, along with two dogs.  The dogs joined in the singing by howling along at the high notes; the Oghaldzon had been fascinated by the animals, although the dogs didn’t share the aliens’ curiosity.  Whenever one of the aliens came over to them, they fled and hid under the nearest hiding place.  “Won’t someone just shut him up?”

Someone picked up a shoe and tossed it in the direction of the singer, who yelped and fell silent.  There was a small round of applause from the others in the camp, men and women alike; the singer and his dogs had been only remotely tolerated since the first night the aliens had put him in the camp.  If the Oghaldzon hadn’t stamped so rapidly on serious violence in the camps, someone would have strangled the singer by now; like so many others, his mind had been snapped by the experience of first living through the tidal waves, and then falling into the hands of the aliens.  Wilhelm would have found it much more easy to sympathise with the singer if he had been a long way from them; as it was, he would have preferred to have slept longer.

Carola stood up, a view that Wilhelm watched with interest, the dull awareness that every other man or woman in the camp could see everything Carola had had faded slowly, as they had become more used to living in the alien camp.  It wasn’t as if there was much to do; the aliens had sometimes pulled some of them out of the camp and asked them questions, but otherwise they were more or less left to their own devices,  The aliens fed them and watered them; Wilhelm had wondered, distinctly, if the Oghaldzon had considered them pets.

He watched as Carola walked over to the toilet area, joined by several other equally naked women; he had turned his gaze away and stared over the horizon towards the clouds that billowed and hung in the distance.  The weather had become completely unpredictable; they had had several days of sunlight, and then almost continuous rainfall, coming down as if it was trying to wash them all away.  The aliens didn’t seem to notice the rain, but the humans did; so far, they’d had hot wet rain, hot muddy rain, cold rain, hailstorms, thunder and lightning, days of freezing cold sunlight and days when being naked would be a very good idea.  It made him wonder what would happen if the sunlight kept beating down; the human race had invented a cure for cancer, but there was no way that they could gain access to a human medical kit without the aliens assistance, and it seemed as if they weren’t too concerned about the health of their captives.

The skies seemed to flicker again as a light fell down towards them, rapidly revealing itself as a cone-shaped alien SSTO, the bright light of its drive shining out in the sky.  Wilhelm had never claimed to be a space expert, but he had considered becoming a Rockrat once and knew a little about the logistics of space transport, something that the aliens seemed to have overcome through their willingness to use fusion drives in the atmosphere.  It had to have some advanced technology in it somewhere, he had realised; most human fusion drives were much larger, rather more like the drives that had guided the alien landing craft down to their final resting places.  His gaze caught one of them, burnished gold in the sunlight, and he shivered; the aliens had designed them to serve as barracks and working offices for their people once they had landed and been stripped of all of their military gear.  He had to admire their forethought; instead of trusting suspect human buildings, they’d brought their own along with them.  The entire operation had been carefully planned.

“Hi,” a droll voice said from behind him.  He turned to see Carola, who was looking grim; the toilets in the camp were appalling.  The aliens had, at first, only created one set of toilets for everyone, out in the open.  The FEMA crew had rapidly altered that to a set of male and female toilets, but they were still less than clean.  The aliens used fusion flames to get rid of the human waste, and there was certainly enough water for the entire population of the camp to have a shower each day, but it was still unpleasant.  “Something on your mind?”

Wilhelm leaned back into her bare breasts.  “Just a little, yeah,” he said.  “What about you.”

Carola aimed a slap at him.  “Not bloody likely,” she said.  Her voice became mischievous.  “Come on; we may as well eat before we embark upon the rigours of the day.”

Wilhelm snorted and followed her though the camp to the eating area.  The aliens didn’t seem to think in terms of human seating and other arrangements; the first few days, they had eaten sitting on the ground, as if it was nothing more than a picnic.  A week or so after the aliens had put them in the camp, the FEMA teams had gotten it much better arranged; the eating area now had chairs and tables that had been scavenged from the ruined homes and shopping centres, along with some condiments and other long-lasting foods.  There were people in the camp who would kill for fresh meat – there was a rumour that there were cannibals out in the ruined cities, although no one knew where those rumours had originated – but the FEMA teams had banned the collection of meat from the cities.  By now, all of the meat would have spoiled; they’d saved the few hundred people in the camp, but they were determined not to throw their work away.  There were only a couple of trained doctors in the camp; all of them were desperately short on equipment and the aliens didn’t seem to care.

He picked at the bracelet he wore around his wrist and scowled.  His best guess was that it served as a tracking device; certainly, everyone who had tried to escape the camp had failed.  The alien guards, clicking as they patrolled the camp in strictly regular schedules, had seemed stupid and easy to outwit…until the first escapee had ended up being rounded up and tossed back into the camp.  It was lucky that the aliens didn’t go in for either torture or collective punishment; he’d read that during the Wrecker War, Americans had been captured, raped and murdered, or held prisoner for years.  All attempts to remove the bracelet had failed; they just seemed impervious to anything he could bring to bear on it.

“Come on,” Carola said, pulling him towards the simmering caldron.  “You have to keep your strength up.”

Wilhelm snorted as he took a plate of stew and something that the aliens had given them that was almost, but not completely, unlike bread.  The…semi-bread – the aliens had never told them what it was called – tasted strange, almost like a kind of very thick spicy porridge.  It acted like bread, but if it was left alone long enough, it would slowly – very slowly – flatten itself, like water in slow motion.  The stew itself was made using algae-produced foodstuffs; it would have tasted dreadful without the spices and condiments that the cook had inserted into the mixture to make it just tolerable.  He’d seen some people cover the blocks of foodstuff in Tabasco or Catsup just to hide the taste.

He took a bite and gazed around the camp; as depressing as the view was, it was better than looking at the food, and Carola got self-conscious if he stared at her for too long.  There was little to be seen; the FEMA representatives had started to divide the camp into male, female and mixed sections for the couples.  Although there had been some grumbling from the men, Wilhelm suspected that most people were privately grateful; being naked all the time left them vulnerable.  The aliens had killed a handful of would-be rapists and the others had got the message, but it was still a very dangerous environment for unprotected women and children.  Some of the kids thought it was a hoot; others were terrified and could barely be seen in the morning.  The only real giggle had come when one of the young girls had climbed on an alien back and pretended that it was a donkey ride; the startled alien had jumped up and almost bolted like a horse.  The inmates had found it hilarious.

“Here comes Mitchell,” Carola said, as she glanced up.  She covered her breasts automatically as Mitchell Sartin came up to them, his grey hair seemingly greyer than it had been a week ago.  There were only a handful of FEME people in the camp; the aliens let them carry out their work, but at the same time, they kept a close eye on them.  “I think he wants something.”

“I guess so,” Wilhelm agreed.  “Hey!”

Sartin grinned faintly at them as he took a seat.  “You’re up early,” he said.  “What’s the rush?”

“We don’t have anything to do and we’re bored stiff,” Wilhelm snapped, not in the mood for levity.  The FEMA people might be the only ones keeping the prison camp’s population alive, but at the same time, they were working…and working for the aliens, at that.  For the remainder of the population, there was only the ever-present boredom and board games.  “What do you want?”

“The aliens want to interview a couple,” Sartin said.  His face was very pale.  “I don’t know if that’s good news, or bad news, but I decided I’d go look for volunteers before something happened.”

Carola frowned.  “A couple?”

“A couple,” Sartin said.  “They don’t recognise married couples, or merely people in a relationship, or people who are engaged to be married…I don’t think they have sex at all.  They’ve told us a lot about the way their government works, but very little about how their biology works.  It makes sense, I suppose; we might try to hit them with a bioweapon if we knew enough to make one effective.”

Wilhelm had a more practical concern.  “What sort of questions are they going to ask?”

“I honestly have no idea,” Sartin said.  “All I can tell you is that they made the request and I think that someone – some couple – in the camp is going to have to answer their questions.”

They shared a glance.  It was something to do.  “Fine,” Wilhelm said.  He drank his glass of water; there was no shortage of water, but it grew boring after a few hours.  The aliens hadn’t provided any drinks at all, apart from water; it was yet another mystery surrounding them.  “We’ll do it.”

“Come with me, then,” Sartin said.  He moved them out quickly; Wilhelm guessed that he was nervous about the chance of them backing out.  The camp gates weren’t locked; the aliens had no need to worry about locks when they had armed guards and the bracelets, probably with an automated system keeping track of them.  He remembered that there had been a series of attempts to tag children with tracker systems of one kind or another; the ACLU had always managed to prevent it from going into nation-wide use.  It was fine for small children, but older children should not grow up with the knowledge that they were monitored wherever they went.

The outside had changed remarkably; the aliens had been busy.  They’d cleared most of the rubble and started to build their own constructions on it, from what looked like strange pyramidal buildings to constructions that looked as if the Aztecs had built them, a long time ago.  Small robots and teams of aliens moved everywhere; in the distance, just along the coastline, he could see the rising shape of the space elevator, a gossamer thread hanging taut from something far overhead.  They’d tried to study it from the camp – he’d wondered if there was any way to convince the aliens to return his telescope – but they hadn’t been able to make out any details.  Now, the view was still hazy, but he could have sworn he saw something moving up the cable, heading into the clouds.

“It’s working,” he said, grimly.  There had been no sign of any human opposition to the aliens since the first day; the only evidence they’d heard had been occasional gunshots in the night.  “Have they told you anything about it?”

Sartin shook his head.

The building they reached reminded him of a Lego construction; he half-expected to see tiny plastic men marching out before he saw two of the aliens, who interrogated Sartin in brief monotone questions before allowing them to enter the alien building.  He glanced around as they walked inside; it was steaming hot, but very dim, strange tastes floating on the air.  Aliens – Oghaldzon – on unknowable missions passed them as they entered a set of corridors that would have taken three humans at once, finally reaching a small office.  Sartin briefly wished them good luck and pushed them inside; Wilhelm had no time to catch hold of Carola’s hand before the door closed behind them and they faced an Oghaldzon.

“Good morning,” the Oghaldzon said, in the emotionless monotone they used.  It suggested that the alien didn’t really know or care if it was a good morning or not.  “You may be seated.”

Wilhelm saw a pair of human chairs positioned neatly in front of the Oghaldzon, who was sitting, horse-like, on the floor.  He saw down, noticing that it placed him at head-height with the alien; most of the alien’s height was in its neck.  All six arms seemed to be writhing and twisting like snakes; he wondered just what emotion that signified.  Carola sat next to him and took his hand; her eyes were worried.  Just what had they gotten themselves into?

“I am Yehaka-Researcher-Earth,” the Oghaldzon said.  The first word of its name had been spoken out loud with his or her real mouth; the other two words had been spoken through the translator system.  “What are your names?”

“Markus Wilhelm and Carola Eichwurzel,” Wilhelm said.  “Why do you want to know?”

“Human mating patterns are of interest to us, not least because they are radically different from our own,” Yehaka said.  Wilhelm sensed genuine interest and curiosity under the damnability alien voice.  “We do not have mates in the sense that you two are mates; we do not possess such emotions as love and lust for each other…”

Carola smiled.  “And do you have pointy ears as well?”

Wilhelm elbowed her.  The Oghaldzon ignored her, carrying on as if he – or her – was discoursing.  “We do not understand your mating patterns,” Yehaka continued.  “I am a female of my race, so I will address the female first; what do you see in your partner?”

Carola looked at Wilhelm, and then burst out laughing.  “Do you want our entire life story?”

“Yes,” Yehaka said flatly.  Wilhelm wondered just how one told the difference between male and female Oghaldzon; there were certainly no signs of breasts on Yehaka’s massive body.  “I need to know everything of importance to your relationship.”

“We met while we were both doing a night course at one of the universities around here,” Carola said, clearly remembering that night.  Wilhelm smiled; love might not have been in the air, but they had certainly clicked together like two halves of one whole.  “He asked me out; I said yes, and we spent a day watching movies.  I liked it enough to agree to do it again, and then we started spending entire days together, and then weeks on holiday, and then we moved in together and agreed to get married.”

Yehaka leaned forward.  “And then?”

“You arrived,” Carola said.  “Don’t you have a husband?”

“I have no idea which male sired my children,” Yehaka said.  “I have no idea which children are mine.  Have you two mated?”

Carola blushed.  “Yes, we have,” she said, and refused to say any more.  “How does your race mate if you don’t know who was the father of your children?”

Yehaka ignored the question.  “And you intend to spend the rest of your lives together,” she said.  “What benefits does this give you?”

“Tax breaks,” Wilhelm said wryly.  It was Carola’s turn to elbow him.  “It gives us the chance to build a life together for the rest of our lives.”

“But how is that different from what you already had?”  Yehaka asked.  “You were living together, you were…mating on a regular basis, you were captured together and you remained together in our camp.  Why do you get married?”

Wilhelm considered the matter.  A childish explanation would not suit the aliens.  “When our race was a lot younger,” he said, “it was much harder for a pregnant mother to support herself, or her children.  What tended to happen was that the mother would spend time with one particular man, and in exchange for bearing his children, she would be supported by him and only have sex with him. Having sex with another man could destroy that, because the father would never be sure that the children were actually his.”

He paused. “There’s a joke; it tells us about a dying man who asks his wife, mother of their seven wonderful children and one runt, if the runty child is really his,” he said.  The alien might not understand human humour, but he could try.  “He tells his wife that he will forgive her if she confesses now to adultery.  The wife swears before God Himself that the runt is indeed his child, so the man dies happy.”

“I do not understand,” Yehaka said.

“It’s not finished,” Wilhelm said.  “As soon as the man has died, the woman looks at the wonderful children and mutters to herself that it was lucky he didn’t ask about the others.”

“I still do not understand,” Yehaka said.  “This is a morality story?”

Wilhelm shrugged.  “As civilisations developed, the man-woman structure became formalised as marriage,” he said.  “At first, women had no rights, mainly because those sort of societies relied upon brute force and women were just not as good at that as men, an attitude that carried on well past its usefulness.  Later, they gained rights; a woman in a marriage could not be just abandoned, and the father had to spend time supporting the children.  Sexual relations were also formalised, because a woman back then could become pregnant quite easily…and that could be a major disgrace.”

“In short, it became a method of social control,” Yehaka said.  “I wonder…”

A thin whistle, high enough to hurt Wilhelm’s ears, echoed through the complex.  “What’s happening?”  He demanded.  “What the hell’s going on?”

Yehaka had come to her feet in one smooth motion.  “This complex is under attack,” she said.  “Your people have come to kill or be killed.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Counterattack, Take One

Stalingrad, Near-Earth Orbit

It was quiet, very quiet; everyone on the bridge was holding their voices under very tight control.

Captain Marina Konstantinovna Savelyeva had to force herself to speak loudly.  There was little point in remaining quiet – they could have been having a keg party on the bridge and no sound would have translated across space to their enemies – but she found it hard to speak loudly.  The bridge itself was as almost dark and silent as a grave; the four men strapped into the acceleration couch barely exchanged whispered conversation.  There was nothing for them to do, but wait; the normal distractions available to them, from chess to porn, had been pushed aside by their growing nervousness.  They were about to beard the lion in his den…

It would have been better, Marina had privately decided, if they had planned their ambush as a cunning plan, rather than something that they had improvised out of an accidental occurrence.  The Russian Space Force liked to boast that it put its cosmonauts through longer and harder flights than any other space force, and Marina was uncomfortably aware that that was indeed the case.  The tiny Stalingrad might have been classed as a frigate, but it was more like a corvette; the ten crewers under her command were crammed in together, including her and two other women.  There wasn't much she envied the Americans for, but their treatment of women was one thing; a woman had to be tough and twice as good as a man to survive long in the Russian Space Force.  She had lost count of the number of times she’d had to smack a pair of wandering hands in the testicles, including one senior officer, who had tried his best to blight her career.  That officer was dead now, dead in the defence of Earth; Marina almost wished that he had survived, along with his force.  It was going to be nasty.

The force under her command, nine spacecraft, had boosted from Venus before the aliens had opened fire on the welcome fleet.  The trip back to Earth had been a nightmare; she’d ordered the fleet to begin breaking procedures in the hopes they could reach Earth in time to join the defence, but they had barely had time to start the long process before the aliens opened fire and she’d taken the fleet to the Lenin Asteroids.  The tiny shipyard there had been able to refurnish her ships with fuel and supplies, but they had been able to do nothing for their morale; they had watched from their lonely anchorage as the Rodina had been invaded and the aliens had started their conquest.  She had wanted to interfere, or at least to bombard the moon to punish the rebels for daring to stab the motherland in the back, but there had been little point; the brief terse orders they had received had ordered them to remain where they were and prepare for operations.

“We’re coming up on Point Zhukov,” her helmsman said.  He was one of the few who thought that women couldn’t make good spacers; she’d watched with a smile as her tactical officer had once punched his lights out.  There had been no need for further discipline; he’d treated all of the women with the same respect since that incident, and the tactical officer’s career would hardly suffer.  Marina saw no need to make an issue of it; besides, both of them were capable crewmen.  “Do you wish to abort?”

Marina scowled.  The main problem with the plan was that involved using her craft as bait, more or less; if they received no orders from the High Command ordering them to abort the mission, they were supposed to go through with it.  They didn’t know if the aliens knew they were coming; the aliens hadn’t painted her craft with any number of fire control sensors, but they could have caught a sniff of her, run a ballistic track, and left a handful of remote missiles or laser platforms in her path.  Logic suggested that the aliens would have to be crazy to let them slip so close; the aliens were alien and might not think the way humans would think.  

“No,” she said.  Brief flickers of laser light passed between all nine ships; they were committed now.  “We will proceed with our stage of the plan.”

She tensed and forced herself to relax as the ships glided onwards.  They’d used up much of their reaction gas to build to the speeds they had achieved, yet they were almost standing still compared to what they could build up with the fusion drive…except the fusion drive would light up alarms right across the solar system.  The only hope of success was to sneak in, launch their attack, and run for their lives…and that wasn't going to be easy.  The aliens were controlling all of near-Earth space; sooner or later, they would trip an alarm and then they would have to fight for their lives.

The image, chillingly familiar, built up slowly in front of her eyes as the sensors filled in the details.  The aliens had started with a massive fleet of ships, a third of them seemed to have broken up into their smaller warships and were scattered around Earth, or had been converted into small space stations floating in orbit around the Earth.  Five of them, widely spaced, were attached to cables heading down towards Earth; she was impressed with the sophistication of the alien technology, even as her heart grew cold at what it meant for the motherland.  Every spacer knew the fundamental equations involving spaceflight; the aliens were going to use their cables and space elevators to turn the equation on its head.  It would be easy for them to flood their soldiers down onto Earth; how large an army had they brought anyway?  Estimates, many of them tinged with panic, ran as high as ten billion soldiers.

Marina shook her head; it didn’t matter to her.  All that mattered was carrying out their mission and making their escape.  The Russian Space Force had unfinished business…silently, she cursed the commander of the ships that had been positioned around Mars.  They could have boosted for Earth, joined her attack; if nothing else, they would have made her personal survival much more likely.  They were selfish, she decided; it wasn’t as if Mars could be held once the aliens came knocking.

“Ten minutes,” the Helmsman said, very softly.  The looming presence of the aliens, invisible to the naked eye, but very clear on the passive sensors, was growing far more oppressive…and yet, there was just a chance that it could be turned against them.  “Captain?”

Marina glanced down at the chronometer on her chair.  “Transmit the signal in nine minutes exactly from my mark,” she ordered.  “Wait for it…mark.”

“Yes, Captain,” the tactical officer said.  She’d already input the signal; now, all she had to do was wait for nine minutes to pass and then transmit it onwards to the relay station they’d left behind them.  Marina found herself holding her breath; a single mistake at the wrong time could have disastrous consequences.  No one knew better than she just how much could go wrong if they added even a tiny little extra burst of reaction gas to their journey; they could find themselves thousands of kilometres off course, and then the aliens would see them for sure.

They’d made a mistake, the aliens; their massive motherships had been left in high orbit, gathered together for easier defence when they had thought that they had wiped humanity out of the near-Earth region.  Their overconfidence was their weakness; they had made their dispositions under the wrong impressions and that was about to cost them.  She watched as the counter ticked down, and down; only seconds left…

***
Fanaya-Sensor-Seeker had been impressed with the rapid speed of the defeat of humanity; it proved, in her view, that humans simply lacked the long-term perspective to focus on their own good.  Her department had been more concerned with locating the remaining human stations in the solar system, something that had been more than a little tricky as the humans had been careful to hide as much as possible.  Now that the researchers had been examining human books, computers and other materials down on the surface, they’d found so many possible places to look that Fanaya was uncomfortably aware that the task could take Great Cycles.  

It was odd, even for an original thinker, and Fanaya was certainly not one of them, to consider that humanity’s odd nature had given it at least one advantage.  The humans had split into so many groups that tracking them all down and bringing them under Oghaldzon authority would take a very long time, and some of the groups might even try to head out to the stars.  Some of the records had revealed details of a prototype human STL interstellar spacecraft; the Oghaldzon had never considered sending one craft to Earth, but the humans might have made that particular decision.  It would have been ironic if the Oghaldzon had moved quicker and sent only one large ship; the human welcome fleet would have smashed it and then known to be wary of threats from the other side of the interstellar gulf.

She was contemplating how the search time could be cut down when the alarms started to whistle, a noise that shocked all Oghaldzon to full wakefulness, touching some very old memories in the racial subconscious.  She was on her feet at once, staring down at the readings, which were reporting disaster.  Missiles, human missiles, had been launched; they were raging down towards the planet, already kicking themselves up to blindingly fast speeds.  Orders had already been transmitted by the automatic systems; fire authority commands loaded themselves into various automated weapons systems and the point defence of the various starships as the missiles started to alter course slightly before their drives burnt out.  Fanaya didn’t hesitate; it was something that they had all planned for and practiced, enough times that she could do it in her sleep.  She brought up every sensor surrounding Earth, ordering to track the missiles and provide automatic firing coordinates for the defences.  At the speed of the battle, there was no time to seek permission from higher authority…

She watched as the missiles started to reveal their targets, some of them picked off and destroyed by the point defences, some of them lancing towards their targets and entering final assault trajectories.  The computers, running faster than her mind could follow, automatically updated the point defence; lasers and rail guns were reprioritised as the targets became clear.  The humans had launched two waves of missiles; the first wave had been targeted on the anchor ships holding the end of the space elevators, the second had been targeted on the orbital weapons platforms themselves.  The computers knew the danger; before Fanaya had even comprehended the danger, they ordered the defences to ignore everything, even self-preservation, and concentrate on keeping the anchors safe.  Losing the space elevators would be…irritating.  It had been hard enough to establish them in Earth’s chaotic weather conditions.

The battle was raging and all she could see was the rapidly updating screen as orbital weapons platforms started to die, some of them dying with enough of an explosion to cause electronic disruption to surrounding systems.  The computers issued more orders; warships that had been holding station away from the planet started to move towards LEO as missiles started to rise from the surface, joined by lasers and even a handful of makeshift missiles launched from mass drivers.  They had been left intact as war booty; the commander of the defences issued orders and the warships started to engage with KEW weapons.  Moments later, all of the mass drivers and laser weapons had been killed; the smaller missile launchers could be taken out at any moment.  The defences had taken a battering, but it looked as if the humans had shot their bolt…

And then a second alarm sounded.

***
“Now,” Marina snapped.  “Engage the drive, now!”

The entire ship shook as if it had been kicked in its metaphorical ass.  Just for a few moments, the aliens would be looking in the wrong direction – a direction, Marina was certain, seeing the amount of firepower the aliens were bringing to bear on the missiles, that she devoutly hoped they would keep looking in, just for a few minutes longer.  The Stalingrad was pushing forward as fast as it could, the other ships in the small force accelerating behind it, and, ahead of them, their target was becoming aware of their existence.

Part of her hated to destroy it; part of her knew that there was no choice.  The alien motherships were massive, each one larger than some countries; they could carry hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of aliens.  They were targeting alien civilians, or what passed for civilians among the aliens, and she felt a moment of shame, before remembering how many human civilians had been slaughtered by the aliens.  It wasn’t just the motherland, she remembered; now, all of Earth was the motherland, and she had suffered terribly.  They’d seen enough of the effects of the asteroids to know just how badly she had suffered.

“The alien warships are altering course,” the tactical officer reported, her voice grim.  Marina nodded; that was not unexpected, although the alien manoeuvres were quicker organised than she would have expected.  One force was going to round the planet, the other was going to break and try to trap her in a pincer manoeuvre.  It was impressive…and showed that someone, somewhere, was thinking what their…well, whatever the aliens used for brains.  They might have been surprised, but they would ensure that her gains were limited.  “I estimate ten minutes until Force One can engage us, seventeen minutes before Force Two can get back into range.”

Marina smiled.  The defence of the mothership – the motherships – was squarely in the hands of the handful of ships that had remained with them, their automated platforms and their own point defence.  It might be enough, it might not be; whatever happened, the aliens confidence was about to take a major blow.

“Firing sequence one,” she ordered.  The feeling of finally hitting back was overwhelming.  “You are authorised to open fire.”

The Stalingrad shook as it launched a spread of missiles; half targeted on the mothership, the others targeted on the defending warships, which were moving up slowly to block her advance.  She guessed that they were reluctant to use their own fusion flames so close to the mothership; the only advantage it gave them was that she couldn’t be exactly sure where their exact position was, but it didn’t matter.  Unless the aliens were prepared to sacrifice the mothership and everyone onboard, they would have to commit everything to its defence…

“The aliens are returning fire,” the tactical officer said.  Marina nodded grimly; the disadvantage of their current position, heading slightly at an angle to the motherships, rather than right at them, was that the aliens would have a much larger target to aim at.  The advantage was that the aliens would have to run their missiles ragged to have even a slight chance at hitting her.  They might do it, but they would have to work at it.  “Impact of our missiles in nine…eight…”

The aliens did well; they killed all of the missiles aimed at the mothership, at the cost of losing three of their smaller warships.  “Launch second sequence,” Marina ordered.  There was no time for anything, but killing.  “Fire.”

The ship shook again.  “Missiles away,” the tactical officer said.  “Point defence is engaging the enemy missiles.”

Marina nodded once.  “Helm, alter course; tactical, prepare for third firing sequence,” she ordered.  The enemy would be pushing their own engines as fast as they could now; it was only a matter of time until she scored a hit on one of the motherships, if not more than one.  A single nuke might not destroy a ship that size, but she would have bet her virginity that it would seriously mess the aliens up.  “Spin ships; engage the enemy.”

“Missiles locked and ready,” the tactical officer said.  Her voice broke off as a new icon flashed briefly on the display.  “The Leningrad has been destroyed.”

Marina scowled; one ship, ten men, a twelfth of the remains of the Russian Space Fleet…gone.  The Russians had hoped to keep their point defence network together, but once they started to launch missiles, it was much harder to keep everyone moving in the same general direction.  The Stalingrad was rotating now, launching missiles from each of its tubes as they came to bear on the enemy, but it meant that the point defence network was much weaker…

“Hit,” the tactical officer snapped.  A mothership had been hit; judging from the massive wave of escaping air, they’d mortally wounded the ship.  If it was built like a bridge ship, some of the passengers and crew might survive, but maybe not for long.  The spin that normally gave the ship its gravity was tearing it apart in glorious slow motion.  The wreckage alone would make alien operations in near-Earth space difficult.  “We killed one of the bastards!”

There was a small cheer.  “Maintain firing pattern,” Marina snapped.  They had only moments left before the aliens came to extract revenge.  They would put everything they had into exterminating her force, perhaps even trying to chase them as far as the asteroid belt.  They would want her dead, whatever it took; no one had hurt them like that before.  “Helm, stand by to…”

“Incoming,” the tactical officer snapped.  Marina realised in a flash of sudden peace that their luck had just run out.  “Incoming missile…”

The alien missile detonated and wiped the Stalingrad out of existence.

Marina died with a smile on her face.

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Counterattack, Take Two

Near Washington, USA

“Ten minutes to estimated time of attack, General,” his aide said.  “All vehicles and launchers are reporting ready and waiting to engage on your command.

General Harrison glared down at the display, updating rapidly with information from the various units that had been deployed in a wide range of positions surrounding the alien-occupied territories.  The only advantage the delays had given them was that it had allowed them to set up additional microburst relay stations, allowing the battle to be actually coordinated, rather than a series of desperate encounters with alien forces without rhyme or reason.  In theory, he could actually command directly from the hidden command vehicle; in practice, a great deal would depend upon the superb professionalism and training of the junior and middle-ranking officers in the units that were preparing to go on the offensive.

He didn’t like the timing.  The Russian plan – and he had to admit that it might just make the entire operation workable – depended on too many factors, some of them outside his control.  There was little point at fighting at any time other than dawn – the aliens sonar kept them fighting in the dark without apparent loss of efficiency, but they seemed to lose a little during the dawn – but the time was ticking away.  If they waited too long, they would lose whatever advantages the dawn gave them…such as they were.  Harrison wasn’t convinced that the aliens could be incapacitated enough by the dawn to make a difference.  If they reacted quickly, thousands of good American men and women were about to die.

There were hundreds of Americans in the alien prison camps, thousands more in cities and towns that were in the direct path of the alien advance.  It stunned him, whenever he thought about it; the aliens had killed thousands upon thousands of Americans right along the seacoast, but thousands had remained alive, trying to pull their lives back together.  Even without the aliens, the damage caused by the asteroid would have been difficult to handle; the aliens, just by occupying where they were, had made the recovery process impossible.  New York had been reduced to ruins again; historic cities had been crushed like bugs.  Once the aliens started to expand into the countryside, further west, they would start to establish their authority over entire states and, eventually, destroy the United States as an entity.

He knew what was at stake; if they lost, the United States as a whole would be lost.  There were already rumblings of secession movements in what remained of Latin and South America; some governors from Argentina had claimed that the asteroids were an Anglo plot to cut down on the number of South Americans and Hispanics in the USA.  Nearly seventy years of development, careful investment and the occasional bloodbath was being washed away by the aliens; the good governance that had finally been created down south had been damaged by alien might.  It didn’t seem fair, somehow; the people had lived through so much that the last seventy years would come to be seen as a golden age.  Would the aliens succour such movements, as they had agreed to support the moon, or would they push the rebels aside?  Who knew?

“Five minutes, sir,” his aide said.

Everything depends upon things we can’t control, Harrison thought coldly.  He had an entire force of semi-expandable units – expandable in the sense that there was no way to preserve them once the aliens got their act together – ready and waiting for the call to action.  If the aliens were not distracted, they would have a field day picking off targets; they had already picked off far too many vehicles as they tried to advance towards the battlezone.  It was maddening; they’d struck targets with the precision of a surgeon, each KEW damaging and chipping away at American morale still further.  The only advantage they had was numbers, but as the aliens started to use their space elevator, they could start flooding people down into America…and that would be the beginning of the end…

…And no one knew how many aliens there were on the ships.

An alarm shrilled.  “Sir, we have several nuclear detonations in orbit,” his aide said, as various consoles lit up with their alerts.  The one advantage they had was the ability to observe orbit – LEO – through telescopes and other sensors, passive sensors, that belonged to the USAF.  The Russian attack hadn’t failed; it had succeeded enough to make the aliens fear for the existence of their space anchors.  It sounded like something out of a bad children’s science-fiction novel, but he had been assured that it made sense; the space elevators needed something in orbit to hold them taut, or all hell would break loose.  Harrison could only hope that the aliens had taken a few safety precautions; he didn’t want to find out the hard way what would happen if the cable slashed down against the surface of the planet.  “The Russians are moving.”

“Good,” Harrison said.  There was no time to lose; the USSF had run simulations and concluded that the odds were vastly against the Russians even pulling off the second part of their plan.  The bombardment would last as long as it took the aliens to wipe out all the missiles; that might take them hours, or it might take them minutes at most.  Their radars were powerful and they would have no need to remain stealthy; he bet that there would be a window of twenty minutes, at most.  Harrison knew that they needed ten minutes; any time after that would be a bonus.  “Send the signal.”

He paused.  “Order all units to open fire and engage the enemy,” he said.  The tension in his body had finally found a release.  Whatever happened, he and his people would give the plan their best shot…and the aliens would be shaken out of their complacency.  “May God be with us on this day.”

***
Master Sergeant Billy Graham glanced down once at the message as it blinked up on his terminal, then shouted the order to the crew on the truck as he picked up the remote control.  The heavily-camouflaged MLRS launcher had been moved as close as they dared to an alien outpost, bare kilometres as the crow flew, while the launcher had been modified for rapid fire.  Graham knew that their only hope was to get the missiles away and start running; the aliens would respond almost at once to the attack.  The only question was how long it would take them to recover from whatever was happening in orbit and start dropping KEW weapons everywhere.

“Ready, top,” one of his men shouted.  Graham nodded; they’d stood everything down that could possibly be detected, from the engines to the crew’s personal entertainment systems, just on the off-chance that the aliens could detect them through their drones.  A handful of drones had flown overhead, watching for trouble, but they had apparently missed the MLRS.  Graham couldn’t believe that the aliens would have left them there if they had known about them; the only answer that made any kind of sense was that the aliens didn’t know they were there.  “Sir?”

He ignored the attempt to annoy him – sergeants were never called ‘sir’ except by raw recruits and, very rarely, their nominal commanding officers – and checked the firing sequence.  The targeting had been confirmed a long time ago; there might be no way any longer that they could use GPS systems, but they had other ways to calculate their engagement patterns.  It wouldn’t be long at all.

“Everyone out,” he snapped, as he keyed in the first firing code.  “Move, you lazy bastards!”

The crew jumped out and scattered; they knew the risks.  The massive rear of the lorry – seemingly a completely innocent, harmless, civilian lorry – was rising up, exposing the missiles hidden within the launcher.  A competent alien, watching from high above, could hardly fail to notice them; Graham was too much of a pessimist by nature to believe that either the attack in orbit or the hail of ground-to-space missiles launched from right across the world would distract him for long.  They would have enough people on duty to spread the workload; it was what he would have done, in the same situation.

He keyed the second code into the remote control.  “Fire,” he bellowed, and twisted the key.  The noise was deafening, almost at once; he turned and fled from the MLRS as if it was about to explode any second, running for his life as the scream of launching missiles echoed out behind him, the whoosh of missiles in flight replacing it as the MLRS emptied it’s racks as fast as it could.  He tried to count, but lost count almost at once; it was impossible to tell where one missile ended and another began.  He knew that it took nearly three minutes to unload the entire MLRS missile stock…

The ground shook violently and he fell to the ground as the shockwave passed over his head.  His men were scattered around him as a fireball rose in the trees, some trees toppling over as the impact of the alien KEW worked its deadly magic.  He’d seen the results before; trees toppled out as if they were trying to escape the alien touch.  The MLRS had launched most of its missiles before the aliens had destroyed it; he could only hope that it had done enough.

“Hey, top,” one of his men said, his face alight with the joy of survival.  “I haven’t run so fast since the bomb disposal dude said ‘oh shit’ and jumped out of the window.”

Graham found himself laughing.  “I guess we survived,” he agreed.  He glanced down once at the map he’d strapped to his knee; there was little point in trying to advance against the aliens on their own, no matter how much he hated the thought.  Their orders had been simple; launch the missiles, run for your lives, and return to the rendezvous point for further orders.  “Come on; we have to get back to the meeting point and then get stuck into the donkeys.”

His men followed him as he strode off into the woods.

***
The United States had moved hundreds of guns, MLRS launchers, and single-shot hypersonic missile launchers into the combat zone.  On General Harrison’s command, they all fired, launching their deadly cargo into the area occupied by the Oghaldzon.  The Oghaldzon orbital defences, already under attack by the Russian force as it raced towards the motherships, had little time to react; the launchers were designated as targets, but there could be no in-flight interception of the weapons from the orbital platforms.  Their priority was to defend the anchors and the motherships; everything else had suddenly been reclassified as expandable.  Ground-based missiles were targeted only if they posed a threat to orbital installations; the Oghaldzon bases on the ground had to look after themselves.  The space-based defences had their own priorities.

The ground-based defences fared differently.  Unable to take part in the defence of the space-based systems, the ground-based lasers and plasma-cannons found themselves designated to shoot down or deflect a hail of incoming missiles and long-range shells.  They fired as quickly as they could, and shells began to die as they were picked off by the weapons, but many of the missiles had been fitted with seeker heads that homed in on the weapons and the radar stations supporting their engagement.  Some of them were hit as the missiles found their targets and struck without being intercepted, others rapidly reprioritised and engaged weapons targeting them specifically, abandoning almost all of the alien complexes to their fate.  The hail of shells started to slack off as orbital platforms started to use KEW weapons – useless against the Russians – against the human gunners, but the coverage and defence had been seriously decimated by the onslaught.  

For a brief shining moment, the human race held the advantage.

***
Captain Wilbur Hawking brought the Shadow in barely above the waves, trusting in his superb flying skills and luck to keep the aircraft from being struck by a wave.  The Atlantic had been starting to settle down after the asteroid, although he’d seen signs that there were plenty of dead fish in the water, floating on the surface.  It almost made him smile; it was something that would put the eco-terrorists and their concerns in the proper perspective.  The human race had never inflicted so much damage on Earth as the aliens had in one brief horrific moment.

Washington had been surrounded by alien defences, enough radars and passive sensors to pick up a Shadow, and enough lasers and other ground-based systems to ensure that the imprudent Shadow would be brought down.  Hawking had wanted to refuse the order when he’d seen some of the updated data; only his own confidence in his own skills and the cold knowledge that one of the other pilots would carry it out if he didn’t – or die trying – had kept him planning the mission.  It was real seat-of-the-pants flying, much like every other mission since the aliens had arrived; he was going to fly right up the Potomac and strike his targets before the aliens realised that he was even there.

The entire area was devastated as he entered the mouth of the river, flying as fast as he dared and moving from side to side as threats and dangers – beached boats, damaged bridges – presented themselves, evading all of them with speed and skill.  It was dangerous as hell; despite his concerns, he found himself loving the mission and the challenge it had brought to him.  The aliens had manned and defended Washington with their people and technology, but would they expect that someone would be insane enough to actually fly up the river, under most of their defences, and hit them right where they lived?

Hawking hoped not.  The aliens fought well, but they didn’t fight like mad bastards.

The damage was only growing worse as he flew closer, keeping low and glancing down from time to time at his threat receiver, wondering what would happen when the aliens reacted to the incoming swarm of missiles.  If the plan worked, the aliens would have everything pointing towards the west, where the missiles were coming from, overlapping all of their active sensors – with perhaps just a few exceptions – to find, track, and destroy all of the shells and missiles that would be heading towards them.  If the plan worked, and it was a very, very, big if, he could carry out his mission, reverse course, and flash out of the combat zone before the aliens had a chance to react.  If the plan didn’t work, he was dead.

The threat receiver updated rapidly as the aliens started to pulse more radar pulses towards the west, their lasers and plasma weapons lighting up the skies as they fired at incoming threats.  Hawking had to admire their dedication; the weapons they had linked together formed an almost impenetrable network.  If the USAF hadn’t built a handful of stealth aircraft, it would have been wiped out by now…what had survived the alien attack from orbit.  Every USAF base that had even looked remotely like a USAF base had been hit; he’d been lucky that his own base hadn’t been struck.  It would have rendered his life impossible; they’d probably have given him a gun and sent him to the front line.

He checked the onboard map; intelligence had somehow – he hadn’t dared ask how – developed an up-to-date map of Washington, including ruined buildings and alien facilities.  It made him feel angry; he didn’t know if the aliens had started to build their facilities on the remains of the human city as a kind of ‘fuck you’ message, or if they had merely done it because Washington was a city and they felt they should build their cities on it, but he wanted to wipe them all out for that crime.  He altered course slightly, drawing in his breath; a mistake now would prove fatal.  He swept away from the river and rose up, heading right for his targets.

The Donkeys had built their buildings with astonishing speed; they were strange and wonderful to behold, like something out of the porno movie set back in the days of the Aztecs.  He saw, briefly, aliens; not scantily-clad young human women, but the deer-like Donkeys as they glanced up at him, their strange evil eyes looking at him and seeing…he wondered what they saw.  He saw a nude human woman quickly, so quickly he wondered if he had imagined it, as he rose over the building and saw his targets.  A strange calm overwhelmed him as he selected his weapons…and fired.

The Shadow seemed to leap once as the two heavy bombs fell away, heading right towards the alien barracks, their defences already trying to engage the bombs.  He’d been told that the bombs had been designed to be tough; alien lasers would have real problems destroying them ahead of time.  He watched as he yanked the plane around; the first bomb struck its target and detonated, the second followed it in seconds later.  Two massive explosions threw debris and flames into the air…he knew that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Donkeys had just died.  He wanted to shout at them, but professionalism kept him focused on the mission; he still had to get out of the area before the aliens locked onto his craft and…

Everyone’s luck runs out, sooner or later.  An alien ground-based laser had a lucky shot and took it, slicing off the wing of the Shadow.  Before Hawking could react, or even eject, the plane wobbled violently, tipped, and crashed into a third alien building.  He died before his mind had even realised that he had taken one last swipe at the aliens who had desecrated his world.

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Counterattack, Take Three

Near Washington, USA

There was no ‘go’ signal.

Captain Christopher Fardell hadn’t expected one; the signal to start the advance and close the distance between themselves and the aliens had been the sound of the guns opening fire.  It made more than a little sense; the US Army might not have been used to conducting what were effectively insurgency tactics in its own backyard, but it had studied the techniques extensively.  The aliens had overwhelming space power; the only hope for survival, let alone doing anything effective, was to hit them and remain as close to the aliens as possible.  They couldn’t call down fire on their own people.

The battlesuits advanced slowly, crawling forward as they advanced, remaining as low as possible.  The suits were designed to be stealthy – learning to hide from American-built drones had been one of the first lessons the original battlesuits had taught the other Americans – and they emitted almost nothing at all, but a sharp-eyed alien might pick them out.  Their sonar gave them an unfair advantage; the strange parsing of the alien sonar would allow them to literally see through some cover, and perhaps detect the presence of the humans through the hardness of the suits.  They made almost no noise as they crept closer to the alien outpost, but all it would take was one noise in the right place and the aliens would know that they were there.

The aliens had spread out a perimeter from their occupied areas, herding the human citizens – those who had remained in their path – into camps, or sometimes allowing refugees to flee the area.  There seemed to be no obvious reason why they had allowed some civilians to flee, but at least it looked as if they didn’t simply massacre civilians wherever they found them.  If they had been fighting on even terms, Fardell would almost have welcomed the aliens; they were far more…decent opponents than the Wreckers.  The thought made him shiver; what would the Wreckers do in an alien-dominated world?  Would the entire human race end up as Wreckers, using terrorism and desperate slaughter of innocents and guilty alive to fight the aliens to the last breath?  It wasn’t a reassuring thought.

The alien camp rose up ahead of them, a simple structure that had been established in the remains of a small town, somewhere far away enough from Washington to allow hard-working office-dwellers the conceit that they lived in the countryside, commuting to Washington each day.  Fardell’s own father had lived in a teleconference block at first; he had been given a small flat by the company, which he had almost never left while working.  The advantages of not living in the increasingly rough and violent Chicago, he’d explained to his son, had not been great enough to make up for the lack of a social life; it had taken an accident to bring him face to face with the woman he had married and later produced a few children with, including Fardell himself.  He had wondered if that had placed a strain on the marriage; there had been no hatred, no affair, one day, his parents had just…separated.  They were still friends, they still talked, but something was missing.

He forced himself back to the present as he used hand signals to order the nine soldiers to spread out.  They didn’t dare use microburst transmissions so close to the aliens; it might have triggered an alarm.  He glanced through the remote sensor that an insurgent had placed somewhere near, high up a tree, and saw the alien tanks, along with the patrols walking slowly around the edges of the camp.  The aliens didn’t use a routine, he noted with a moment of grudging respect; if there was a pattern to their movements, he couldn’t make it out despite a determined study of their actions.  A routine, he had been taught, bred complacency; by now, the aliens had learned not to be complacent on Earth.

He saw the alien movements before De Boer motioned, pointing it out; the alien tanks and stranger vehicles, some of them very alien, others almost human, were starting to move out.  The aliens had to know that they were under attack; they might either believe that their base was a target – it wasn’t – or they might intend to move to block any possible advance on foot.  The aliens had had time to scout the entire area; it was quite possible that they had left enough sensors scattered around to pick up on one of the advancing companies of light infantry…or even that they had seen Fardell and his men taking up their positions.  They would have engaged them, surely, if they had known they were there?

“Aliens,” he muttered under his breath.  Most Wreckers were predicable; most other human militaries played from the same playbook.  The aliens might not even have read the tactical manuals that would-be officers studied, they might have entirely different ideas on what constituted a successful defence tactic, or even how many losses they were prepared to soak up before going scorched earth.  “Who knows what those inscrutable Donkeys are thinking?”

There was nothing slow about the aliens; they advanced forward, their tanks gliding out with all the confidence of invulnerable vehicles, certain that they couldn’t be hurt.  Under the circumstances that had prevailed during the first two rounds of fighting, they would be right; plasma cannons had been detected and often destroyed before they could fire a single shot; now, however, the human race had adapted.  The small launcher he carried in one hand held a plasma missile; an antitank weapon system that was rarely deployed in combat, and should be a complete surprise to the aliens.

He made hand signals quickly; take aim and sound off silently.  He had the lead target; the other soldiers would take theirs as they appeared, preparing to fire.  Plasma missiles weren't rare because they were unreliable; they were rare because under normal circumstances, it was much more efficient for the battlesuits to carry plasma cannons instead of missiles that could only be used once.  The aliens had foreclosed that option, however; he intended to use the older system to give them a kick in the pants.  He could hear the faint whine of the alien tanks as they moved closer…

“Fire,” he barked.  Any closer and the aliens would have seen them.  They reacted with impressive speed; even as the first missile went raging towards its target, the aliens turned and returned fire with their laser weapons.  They didn’t seem to be shooting at the missiles; he saw fire spreading through the trees before the first missile struck the tank and detonated, releasing an impressive burst of brilliant white light, almost a physical thing on the road.  The illusion vanished as something went BANG; the blast almost knocked him over, end for end.  The other missiles had found their targets; he yelled in delight as the entire alien reaction force was wiped out.

“Sir, we have more alien movement in the base,” Fredrickson said.  Fardell nodded; no one, apart from the most incompetent group of Wreckers, would leave a base undefended unless there was no hope at all of defending it.  “Communications is warning of heavy alien forces forming up and preparing to repel attack.”

“Got ya,” Fardell snapped.  He grinned as he barked orders to the team; the base would be attacked and reduced to rubble before the aliens even knew what had hit them.  “Move!”

De Boer’s voice echoed through the communications link.  “Sir, request permission to use our special weapon,” he said.  The noise of explosions and human firing grew louder; Fardell could see flashes of light in the sky as alien point defence weapons found their target.  “We might not have much more time.”

“Granted,” Fardell snapped, issuing orders as the battlesuits advanced.  They’d got the Donkeys off balance, but how long would that last?  “Stomp them flat!”

Music began to play.  De Boer had been a student of older forms of music; he had suggested that they should go to the battle under a deafening noise, perhaps blinding the alien sonar.  There was no way to know for sure, but if the music touched whatever frequency the aliens used for their sonar, they would be having one hell of a headache.  It might just give the humans the edge, even though Fardell would have preferred to march to war under a more conventional tune.

“Everybody clap your hands 
“Get on up and dance 
“We're gonna stomp all night now 
“Everybody move your feet 
“Get up and feel the beat 
“We're gonna stomp all night…”

***
As it happened, De Boer had been only half right; the music didn’t touch the actual levels of sonar except at very faint moments, but the deafening noise made it much harder for the Oghaldzon to think clearly.  The racket didn’t interfere with the sonar, because the sonar receptors on each of the Oghaldzon could pick out the sonar pulses from the sudden torrent of background noise, but it did affect their ability to hear orders from their officers.  If they tried to use their sonar to talk, they lost the ability to use it to see; if they tried to click to one another, they found that their orders were lost in the chaos.

Warag-Soldier-Infantry had been sleeping when the human attack began, after the unit had returned from a patrol of the surrounding area where they had repelled a small raid by human soldiers, or, as he was starting to suspect, a chance encounter that had surprised both sides equally.  The human terrain was so different to any terrain they were used to that it was hard to get used to it, but they were learning; the unit had wiped out the human force for no losses of its own.  The high whine of the alarm brought him to his feet, weapons already in hand, as the first explosions released blinding light and deafening noise into the air.  He blinked rapidly, his eyes moving to try to wipe the glare out of the half-useless organs, and heard the sound of gunshots overhead, along with the faint noise of Oghaldzon laser weapons.  His unit had started to rush out when the…noise had started.  His translator couldn’t make anything useful from it, even if the words were recognisable…

“All I need is the music 
“To get me high 
“Feeling so alive 
“Leaving all my cares behind 
“Keep doing your own thing 
“And I'll keep doing mine 
“Dancing through the night 
“This where I feel alright…”

Warag reached up one forearm and rubbed at his receptors, trying to push the noise out of them by sheer physical force.  It didn’t work; his head was already starting to hurt just because of the sheer effort of filtering out the human noise from the other sounds, none of which were audible over the level of the racket.  The Oghaldzon heard several frequencies that humans were deaf to, and vice versa, but the racket seemed to be audible on all levels; he could barely hear himself think.  He didn’t normally have to concentrate to focus his sonar, or his hearing; now, he had the feeling that only his eyes would keep him alive in the next few moments.

He snatched up a pair of earpieces and slotted them into his receptors, relaying on the inbuilt audio-discrimination systems to keep filtering out the strange alien input, almost sighing in relief when the noise dimmed.  Earpieces were disliked by the Oghaldzon because they dampened sonar; even though they were meant to allow the sonar pulses to pass through, it was as if the sonar pulses had suddenly been reduced in range enough to almost blind them.  The constant barrage of noise was nothing like the sounds of a battle; those could be filtered out with ease, not like the racket pouring in on them.  

They stumbled out of the barracks, just in time to see the main gate explode inwards as the humans concentrated their firepower on it.  Warag used hand signals from four of his arms to order the unit to spread out and return fire, hoping that support would arrive before the humans punched through the thin line and smashed his force.  Judging from the limited number of tiny projectiles the humans were shooting into the camp, there would be no time for any support; the humans would kill them all before any support arrived.  He saw – not sensed, saw – a human figure diving behind a building; lasers from three of his unit’s members burned through the human building and incinerated the human form.  The ground shook, time and time again, and he found himself starting to push the unit back, wondering if they could disperse into the surrounding area and make it back to safe territory…

Something exploded, far too close to him.  Blackness descended for a long timeless moment, and then he realised that he was flying through the air, seconds before he landed with a bump.  He’d used his reflexes, automatically put his forelegs first as he’d been trained, but his left foreleg had been shattered by the impact and he found himself crashing helplessly to the ground.  Implanted pain-assistance units in his body started to dampen the pain as much as possible, but he knew he wouldn’t be going anywhere; without both forelegs, an Oghaldzon was about as immobile as a human with one leg broken.  If his side won the day, he might survive, but it was far more likely that he would die in the next few moments.

His sonar clicked once, revealing the presence of an armoured human, hidden inside one of their cursed suits, coming up to him.  Warag looked up, too tired to run even if he had been able to move, and saw nothing, but a featureless visor.  It wouldn’t have mattered; the suit couldn’t be penetrated by sonar, and he couldn’t read human expressions anyway.  He’d come over seven Light Cycles to die at the hands of a misshapen creature from a nightmare.

He raised five of his hands anyway; the sixth hung, limp and useless.

***
Fardell had only seen the Donkey through sheer luck as the camp burned to death around them.  The alien had been badly mangled by the blast – he could see small trickles of alien blood glittering on the side of its body – but it was alive, dark eyes looking up at him.  There was no sign of a weapon; the alien was helpless, one leg bent at an angle that made Fardell feel weak at the knees.  That leg had to be broken, which meant…

Prisoners wanted, Fardell remembered.  He looked down at the alien for a long moment; the alien seemed to look back, and then it raised five of its hands in the air.  The hands were repulsive and…weird, looking like nothing on Earth; he had the strangest sense that the alien was begging for help.  Donkey expressions were nothing like human expressions, but he was certain; he could either try to take the alien prisoner, or he could be merciful and shoot the alien in the head.  Respect and duty warred, and duty won out.

“Get a stretcher,” he snapped.  It would be hard moving the alien even with a stretcher; looking at it, the alien might not survive the journey.  They’d sent a brief microburst warning the high command that they had destroyed the alien outpost, but if they sent a second one, high command would almost certainly order them to bring back the prisoner, whatever happened.  “I want this guy taken back alive.”

De Boer peered down at it.  “Are you sure it’s worth the effort?”  He asked.  “There could be any number of tracking devices embedded in the flesh.”

“Orders are orders,” Fardell snapped.  It was not a standard comment for the US Army, but it was understandable in the circumstances.  “Fredrickson, O’Malley; you’re the other half of the team, help us get the alien onto the stretcher.”

The alien was trying to cooperate; Fardell snapped an order for the music to stop before it gave the alien permanent damage…if it gave the alien permanent damage.  He saw what looked like an earplug in the alien’s ear and wondered if the alien had been smart enough to hide from the noise, or if it was merely a communications system like the one in his own ear.  With a little help, the alien staggered onto the stretcher, which the bearers quickly picked up and started to carry out of the camp.

Fardell glanced around as recovery teams quickly entered the camp, hunting desperately for more pieces of alien technology.  The bodies, he noted with a sick feeling, had been destroyed as always; the aliens didn’t let their bodies fall into the hands of their enemies.  Some of the technology was obviously broken, but other pieces had survived, including a laser rifle that had obviously belonged to the wounded alien.

“Check for other wounded aliens,” Fardell ordered shortly.  The camp was searched quickly; they found one other alien, cowering in a manner that reminded him of a dog.  There were more wounds on the alien’s body, strange wounds that reminded him of burns or laser damage; he wondered what had happened to the alien to make him or her so wounded.  At Fardell’s command, the second alien was taken out of the camp as well.

He glanced towards the east, towards Washington.  The noise of battle was growing louder all around them; he looked towards the silver line stretching up into the sky and wondered if it would be cut by the end of the day, or, perhaps, if the battle would end with humanity controlling the space elevator.  Someone had even suggested running a nuke up it and blowing the shit out of the anchor at the end.

He turned and returned to the remainder of his team.

There was still work to do.

Chapter Forty: Counterattack, Take Four

Near Washington, USA

Colonel Garth checked his watch briefly as the seconds ticked down to zero.  It was the most dangerous part of the plan, and the one most likely to hurt the aliens badly if they reacted in time.  The aliens hadn’t located the bunkers under Washington; Colonel Garth wasn’t sure if that had been because their were less curious, on the whole, than humanity, or they hadn’t bothered to look because they were confident that any bunkers had to have been destroyed in the fighting.  They wouldn’t have been exactly wrong; a handful of KEW missiles targeted on various defence strong points had punched through into the bunker network, causing damage that might have been fatal if the aliens had investigated.

They hadn’t, for whatever reason they had in their alien minds, and the bunkers and tunnels remained intact.  Hundreds of Special Forces soldiers had used them from time to time, ghosting through the remains of Washington, but keeping well away from the aliens.  Washington had once had the most advanced security infrastructure in the world, apart from some of the former rogue states; the aliens had been seemingly unaware of the thousands of sensors and surveillance systems that had been scattered around the city, despite the loudly-expressed reservations of the ACLU.  It had provided Intelligence a perfect opportunity to  observe the aliens in their activities, using what parts of the network remained, and it had provided valuable targeting data.  They’d used it to mark the two main alien strongholds in the city; their barracks and some of their smaller facilities.  The only issue had been to keep the aliens from using their stranglehold on the city and their barracks to counter-attack before it was too late.

“The aliens seem to be using the buildings they’ve erected near the White House as a base,” the intelligence officer had said.  “It is important that those buildings be destroyed, along with the defensive stations, before they use them to coordinate a defence.”

The minutes became seconds, the seconds ticked away…

An alarm shrilled.  “Incoming,” one of the sensor officers snapped.  The ground shook violently, and then again, and again; Colonel Garth blinked in surprise.  There had only been two targets marked out for the attentions of the unlucky USAF pilot and he suspected that the third explosion had been bad news.  “Sir, we have our window.”

A whistle blew.  “Go, go, go,” Colonel Garth shouted, sending the cry along the troops waiting patiently in sewers and other pipes that had been connected to the tunnel network, something that would have surprised most Washington residents, who thought of the sewers as nothing more than smelly pipes with rats and the occasional alligator.  “Everyone go, now!”

He followed as quickly as he could, scrambling up a long ladder into one of the higher sublevels, and then on to the surface, wondering at how bright it all seemed as the dawn rose above Washington.  Grim-faced men wearing BDUs ran past him, their weapons spitting fire as they engaged a handful of surprised aliens, who wheeled around and tried to return fire with their strange lasers.  It was too late; most of them had been looking in the wrong direction, towards the west.  Just for a second too long, they hesitated; should they worry about the incoming stream of death, or should they worry about the human insurgents as they fanned out and charged towards the larger alien buildings.

“Sir, keep down,” Sergeant Cady snapped, as the firing grew louder.  The aliens seemed to have maintained a certain reserve in Washington anyway, outside the barracks that had been struck from the air, or maybe they’d simply ordered them out into the human buildings when the first missiles had been launched.  Something - Colonel Garth didn’t know what – had been done to distract the aliens in orbit, but he was under no illusion it would last.  The sky was lit up with missile trails and explosions; the aliens would slowly gain control over the battlespace again.  His job was to ensure that they had no time to react before it was too late.

“Don’t mind me,” Colonel Garth snapped back at him.  A SEAL ran up and nodded once, brusquely; saluting was forbidden in the middle of a combat zone.  It was unlikely that the aliens knew what a salute was, and there was no sign that they used similar protocol themselves, but there was no point in taking chances.  The entire battle was dangerous enough as it was.  “Report!”

“The main alien buildings are surrounded,” the SEAL said.  “The teams would like permission to launch the main assault.”

Colonel Garth didn’t hesitate.  “Launch the assault,” he ordered.  “Remember; prisoners, if possible.”

The SEALs moved at once, running rapidly towards the alien building while antitank weapons and even a handful of grenades cleared the war, stripping the alien walls of their automated defences.  The teams attacked quickly, moving like lightning; they knew that there was not only a time limit, but they were literally moving into the unknown.  Some of the buildings were defended; a building where they had seen human POWs taken in and out of proved to be too heavily defended to take, even with the combined firepower of a SEAL team.  The walls, whatever they were made of, were tough; Colonel Garth guessed that they would need plasma warheads, if not nuclear warheads, to damage them.  He saw a missile strike the wall and explode, leaving only – only – a black scar on the wall.

The interior of the captured buildings was much larger than he had expected; the corridors were generally twice as wide, reflecting the size and nature of the aliens.  They had seen aliens running easily at speeds that would have defeated any human runner, but they were far less agile; the size of the corridors reflected their nature.  They might even have problems climbing up some human stairs; his lips twitched involuntarily as he thought of a group of aliens encountering a staircase and realising that their plan to conquer the universe was buggered.

Another explosion echoed out in the distance, loud enough to be heard; he saw a streak of light, like a pointing finger, in the sky, pointing down towards a target on the ground.  He guessed, from the billowing fireball, that the target had been a human advance of some kind; the aliens had to have been getting their act back together as quickly as they could.  The assault teams were falling back; a handful of them escorting alien prisoners, others carrying loot and other possibly interesting artefacts, including as much alien technology as they could pick up.  One of the soldiers was carrying an alien book, reminding Colonel Garth of a book for the blind; he was tempted to tell the soldier to leave it, before remembering that it could help the intelligence staff to understand the aliens.

“Time to fall back,” he said, as some of his soldiers deployed small man-portable surface-to-surface missile launchers.  The shoulder-mounted weapons could be targeted on known alien coordinates nearer to the alien base, or the lower end of the space elevator.  There might be no better chance to hurt the aliens; the soldiers launched the missiles rapidly, some of them falling to the remaining alien point defence weapons, others striking targets.  “I think…”

A noise drew his attention.  He had expected to see a major alien counterattack as soon as possible; it was why he had deployed a couple of hundred men to slow the counterattack long enough for the main teams to make their escape.  The alien gunships heading towards them weren’t a surprise – they had been expected and planned for – but it was the sight further to the east that filled him with awe…and fear.

***
Yatha-Soldier-Command had been having a difficult time trying to keep track of the different human angles of attack as they materialised.  He had been fairly confident that he could hold the occupied area as long as necessary, not least because he had full-spectrum coverage of the area through observation platforms and KEW launchers based in orbit.  He had been looking forward to the rapid expansion of the base on the ground and powerful thrusts north into the area the humans called New York and New England, or perhaps heading down into Florida.  He would have preferred Florida, himself, but it depended on the general course of the war; either would have brought them into contact with larger human populations and required them to start feeding and supporting them as a prelude to reshaping and rebuilding their society.  It was a mission that he enthusiastically supported; he had already been establishing the foundations of food production and water-cleansing facilities on the remains of the city the humans called Washington.  Now…

Now, there were at least three major human forces – infantry forces – advancing against his positions, all of which were too close to the Oghaldzon forces to allow them to be destroyed from orbit, although they had targeted what targets appeared when they could.  The human bombardment hadn’t lasted long before the KEW weapons silenced the last human gun, but the shells had had a nasty effect, not least through the noise they made.  Some thrillkilling human had come up with the idea of adding screamers to the shells; when they plummeted down to earth, they made a terrible noise that couldn’t help, but irritate his troopers.  His point defence lasers had been targeted for special attention; apart from the human forces that had silenced most of the weapons in Washington, they had knocked out far too many of the point defence systems through their shellfire.  The Oghaldzon had never invented long-range guns like that; they had known, in theory, what they could do, but the practice was something else.  

To add to the chaos, analysis of the plume of flame as one missile vaporised under laser bombardment suggested that the missile had been carrying a nuclear warhead, something unthinkable in such close quarters.  The Oghaldzon had used nice clean dumb bombs dropped from orbit for years; nuclear explosions were best kept out in space where they belonged.  They would have understood using them against an isolated Oghaldzon formation; using them in such close confines would have been disastrous.

He had to prioritise, somehow.  “Withdraw forces from the main points of contact,” he ordered.  He had been forming up support columns to reinforce the units on the ground that were taking a pounding from human forces, mainly composed of flying tanks and support vehicles.  The tankers were used to operating in conditions where they were partially blind; the human use of weapons to attack the Oghaldzon through their sonar was unforgivable.  “Prepare to engage using heavy KEW bombardment.”

His mind clicked cold thoughts for a moment.  “Order reaction forces to suppress the enemy units in Washington,” he added.  A nasty thought occurred to him and he smiled an Oghaldzon smile.  A human soldier would have recognised it – or at least the mindset behind it – at once.  The humans had obviously remained hidden in their tunnels, or hidden buildings under the city; that had been a minor problem until they had mounted an attack on the city.  Leaving them alone had obviously been a mistake. 

“Call one of the pilots,” he ordered.  “This is what I want them to do…”

***
In common with every other pilot, Seeyah-Pilot-Shuttle was confident that he was the best of the best of the best, a delusion that served a functional purpose.  Seeyah had actually had very little to do since the fleet had entered Earth orbit; the life of a shuttle pilot was often quite boring.  He had transported a handful of additional soldiers, technicians and researchers down to the surface; he had later transported them back to the starships high overhead.  The idea of actually entering combat had never crossed his mind…until the humans had opened fire on the spaceport that had been rapidly constructed on the ruins of Virginia Beach.

“Here are your orders,” the headset buzzed.  Seeyah had been nervous enough when the human shellfire had started to come in towards them, even if the point defence had been able to handle it, but the new orders almost made him want to refuse.  He didn’t refuse; he might not have been a soldier, but everyone on the fleet was a volunteer and knew the risks if the humans caught up with them.  “Launch at once along the course indicated and carry out the mission.”

Seeyah’s first thought had been that the planner had been insane; careful plans were a requirement for any form of operation…and there had been no careful plan for the mission, just a handful of half-crazy requirements.  Any number of things could go wrong, from a reaction in the fusion drive to a human launching a surface-to-air missile at the shuttle, but there was no choice; he triggered the drive and launched the shuttle into the air, following a slow course to give the defenders a chance to see him coming and identify him clearly as a friendly shuttle.  The ruins of Washington, smouldering again, grew on his display; he chose his target and lowered the shuttle towards it, drive flaring brightly.

Like all shuttles, the shuttle that Seeyah flew was a simple cone, launched into orbit on a pillar of fusion flame.  The flame was hot enough to melt almost anything; the only thing that had prevented the Oghaldzon – and humanity, for that matter – from turning it into a weapon had been that it relied too much on the target cooperating.  As no one wanted a fusion flame in the face…

***
Colonel Garth saw the shuttle and knew instantly what it intended to do; he couldn’t have said how, but he was as certain as he had been of anything.  He shouted a warning, hoping that one of the soldiers had a SAM missile that could be used to shoot down the alien craft, but there was no time.  The glowing cone lowered itself, the flame so bright that he could barely look at it before his eyes started to hurt; it was like looking into the fires of the sun itself.  The pillar of flame touched the remains of Washington…and, to his horror, the remains started to melt.

“Into the tunnels, now,” Sergeant Cady snapped, dragging him as fast as he could towards one of the tunnel entrances.  Colonel Garth opened his mouth to protest, knowing that the aliens had fucked them in so many unimaginable ways, but it was too late; Cady dragged him into the tunnel and pushed him down into the sewers, just as the temperature started to rise rapidly.  “Sir…”

“Don’t bother,” Colonel Garth said, grimly.  There was no way that a human, or an alien, could escape now.  “It’s too late.”

The walls glowed red and melted, sending a torrent of superhot molten material falling down on the two men, killing them both instantly in one moment of searing agony.  The fusion flame continued to burn, melting and ruining the entire bunker complex; further down, protected by bedrock, the remaining bunkers had been utterly trapped, unable to escape, or even summon help.  Seeyah swept over the remains of the city twice before he had to return to the spaceport for more Helium-3; by then, the damage had been done.  The attack had failed.

***
“Keep your heads down,” Mitchell Sartin was shouting.  The noise of the combat was growing louder; the population of the camp, naked and alone in the midst of the human population, was on the verge of panic.  “Don’t look out of the camp; keep your heads down and pray for your lives.”

Markus Wilhelm joined in the prayers as best as he could.  The aliens had hustled him and Carola back to the camp as soon as the attack started; the alien they’d met had assured them it was the safest place for them.  In the midst of what sounded like World War Four, there seemed to be no safe place; a missile had landed far too close to the camp and shaken it hard enough to shake down some of the jury-rigged structures that had been erected to help save lives.  They’d seen what looked like thousands of alien soldiers, running at a speed that had astonished him – no wonder that no escapees had made it – and heading towards the front, followed by lines of tanks and other fact-moving ground-effect vehicles.  The noise of combat was growing louder; he held Carola close as he heard a dreadful screech, followed by an explosion on the side of one of the alien buildings.  Smoke was pouring from the building; he was suddenly aware of just how flimsy the camp was, just how much damage a shell would do if it landed on their heads.

“I’m scared,” Carola whispered, her body shaking.  Wilhelm had to admit that he was scared as well; unlike the last battle they’d seen, they were much more likely to be killed accidentally by their own side, rather than the aliens.  “Markus, hold me…”

He held her as close as he could, but he couldn’t resist looking out, as best as he could, through a slit in the side of the camp.  He could see signs of combat in the distance, from massive plumes of smoke to the strange trails of weapons reaching up into space and coming down from space.  Flashes of light burst out in the distance; he looked away…and another flash, much brighter than anything they had seen before, turned the entire scene white for a long terrifying instant, before it dimmed and a thunderous shockwave shook the entire camp, a noise like the wrath of an angry god battering at their ears.  Tents collapsed, jury-rigged structures fell apart…and a shadow fell over the camp.  He looked up and saw…

…A massive mushroom cloud, glowing an ugly evil orange-red, reaching up towards the sky.

Chapter Forty-One: Counterattack, Take Five

Near Washington, USA

“That was a nuke, sir,” his aide said.  “It came down somewhere near one of the larger alien bases.”

“I saw,” General Harrison said.  Inwardly, he was horrified; for more than one reason.  The United States had grown used to using nukes in space, where even the largest nuclear blast was a pinprick, but on the surface of the planet a nuke could destroy an entire city; New York had been a grim example of that.  He’d given the order to fire hypersonic nuclear-tipped warheads at known alien staging posts and the anchor for the space elevator…and only one had detonated.  “Do we have any information on the other nuclear warheads?”

The aide worked his terminal for a long moment.  “No, sir,” he said.  “Tracking suggests that the missiles were all shot down.”

General Harrison knew, for one moment, just how frustrated the Wreckers must have felt during their homemade cruise missile offensive; most of the cruise missiles they’d built from off-the-shelf components had been easy to shoot down.  They’d fired nearly a hundred missiles, with thirty nuclear warheads, into the combat zone…and the aliens had either downed twenty-nine of them, or the warheads had malfunctioned.  Warheads did not, in the General’s view, simply malfunction; the odds were that the aliens had killed them.  Large bodies of alien troops remained intact.

He scowled.  “Is there any evidence that the aliens are preparing to regroup?”

“Alien forces are regrouping and consolidating,” his aide said.  General Harrison nodded; it was good sound tactics when an enemy assault had been launched, unless he missed his guess, they would have a counteroffensive under way pretty soon. The growing number of KEW strikes was wearing down his people; the aliens had started to call down strikes at ‘danger close’, far too close to their own people for comfort.  “Sir, several units are requesting orders.”

***
The alien counterattack had materialised out of nowhere.  Just as the battlesuits had started to deploy forward again, they had run into a line of alien tanks, which had promptly opened fire with laser cannons.  They either didn’t carry or weren’t using the fission ball – or whatever they called it – they were merely trying to sweep through the human lines with their lasers.  Captain Christopher Fardell could see some of the beams, hot and vivid in his infrared equipment, and knew they were in trouble.

“Antitank teams, front and centre,” he snapped, as the battlesuits moved quickly for cover.  He cursed the lack of plasma cannons – this close to the tanks, surely they wouldn’t risk the use of a KEW on them – but there was no helping that now, he had to take out the enemy tanks before it was too late.  “Take out the bastards!”

Two missiles launched from the antitank teams as the alien tanks smashed onwards, one going wild and detonating in a warehouse that had been abandoned a long time before the aliens had landed, the other destroying an alien tank in the now-familiar blinding white glow.  Alien soldiers, wearing a strange new uniform, ran forward at impossible speed; Fardell cursed as he realised that whatever disorientating effect the music had been having had been countered.  The aliens moved like soldiers, covering each other as they moved forward, the flicking light of their lasers cutting through cover to strike at the battlesuits.

He lifted his hand cannon and sprayed a long burst across the battlefield, cutting down two of the aliens in a gout of blood and strange alien gore, leaving a mess that couldn’t be completely incinerated by the alien technology.  He made a note to come back and recover the alien DNA as quickly as possible, but he didn’t think that he would have the chance; the aliens were pouring reinforcements out at them as quickly as they could move…and, with the hover tanks, that was very fast indeed.  He glanced down briefly at a small compartment of his HUD; it showed nothing, but bad news.  Every American unit along the line was engaged with the enemy’ reserves were trying to set up a fallback line, but there was no time to make a proper series of defences.  In minutes, the aliens were going to force them back or destroy them through sheer weight of numbers…

Something moved, high overhead, and he rolled on instinct, avoiding a scything burst of plasma fire as it poured down from an alien drone, high enough not to be heard over the racket of the battle, even by the advanced audio-discrimination software embedded in the battlesuit.  He lifted his hand cannon and took aim, relying on the battlesuit’s sensors to guide his aim, and fired a long burst into the sky; something sparked, high overhead, and the drone exploded, chunks of flaming debris falling out of the sky and crashing somewhere around their position.  Fardell scowled; he had hoped that the wreckage would fall on the aliens, or perhaps somewhere where it might do some real damage.

More explosions announced the arrival of a larger alien force.  “I think we may have to fall back,” someone gasped, over the communications link.  Fardell couldn’t argue with their logic; their position was becoming more and more untenable with every passing second.  A force without battlesuit armour would have been wiped out by now; as it was, several battlesuits had been ripped apart and others damaged by alien weapons.  “Captain, we are being outflanked.”

Fardell cursed.  An infantry division had broken; the aliens were pouring though, heading to outflank, cut off, and destroy his force.  They would almost certainly make it unless the humans fell back now, and even then it would be chancy.  The battlefield datanet was reporting that one reserve force was deploying to try to keep the line of escape open, but there would not be enough time for such a deployment before it was too late.  They would almost certainly be destroyed…

“Launch plasma missiles, targeted at the ground,” he ordered.  The unit had only two more plasma missiles left; he heard the astonished mutterings over the command datanet and ignored them.  It might seem like a waste of missiles, but they had to blind the aliens long enough to make their escape; if they were really lucky, the noise of the plasma missiles would deafen the alien sonar as well.  “Fire!”

Massive slow-moving blasts of white fire appeared…and expanded at the speed of light.  Shocked and stunned aliens fell back in horror; Fardell smiled coldly as he realised their armour wasn't as capable as the battlesuits.  It was the first sign of any real human tech advantage and he welcomed it with real delight.  There was no need to bark an order; the battlesuits ran for their lives, augmented legs thrusting them forward; a man in a battlesuit could run much faster than any normal man, at least while the servomotors held out.  He’d run his equipment ragged in the last few hours of heavy fighting; he hoped that it would last long enough to get them through the area, across the  interstate and back to what he devoutly hoped was safety.

“Alert,” his battlesuit’s computer intoned.  “Enemy aircraft in pursuit.”

Fardell cursed.  The aliens used helicopters, not unlike human helicopters, for close-range support of their forces.  They were also tough; he didn’t know what the aliens used to build them, but they had survived long bursts from the hand cannons and one had even survived an antiaircraft missile.  A second had only been destroyed because the blades had been taken out by a missile and it had fallen out of the sky.  A plasma cannon or missile would have done in the helicopters for certain, but he had none of either, not any longer.  Silently, he cursed the aliens; the army was almost certainly in retreat.

He saw streaks falling from the sky, hitting the ground bare kilometres from his position, and wondered who was being targeted.  There were several units in that area; an alien commander, somewhere, had been calling KEW strikes down on them.  Fardell had heard, once, of a former American officer who had called down a KEW on a Wrecker position that had been irritating him; he doubted that the aliens were that wasteful.  Unlike the officer – who had spent the rest of his career in a pointless posting in the Antarctica region – the aliens knew they were in a war for their very survival.  Moments later, he heard the noise as more KEW strikes struck the ground; the aliens were handing out a pounding to someone…

“De Boer, Fredrickson, you’re with me,” he ordered, as he lifted his hand cannon once again.  He selected explosive bullets, knowing that they wouldn’t be enough to penetrate whatever the aliens used for armour; they had to use armour-piercing bullets to break through the body armour the Donkeys wore.  Fardell wanted some of that material; it made American body armour look useless and childish.  “Get ready to give our friends a surprise.”

The alien helicopters either didn’t notice the three battlesuits breaking off from the group, or didn’t care; they came onwards, their lasers swinging as they fired at targets of opportunity.  They swept over a building, lasers setting it afire, and closed in rapidly; Fardell issued his orders and the three battlesuits fired as one, targeting the alien rotor blades.  If they were very lucky – and Fardell found himself praying under his breath – they might just destabilise the enemy…

Fredrickson screamed as an alien laser struck his suit; Fardell saw the suit glow bright red before melting away, slaughtering the occupant without any form of mercy.  It was a terrible way to die, but they’d already had an effect on the lead helicopter.  Something exploded…and the helicopter fell out of the sky, hitting the ground with a noise like thunder.  The second helicopter beat a hasty retreat.

Fardell knew what that meant.  “Run,” he snapped.  There was no time to recover what little remained of Fredrickson’s body; he silently hoped that his former comrade would forgive him.  They were sworn to bring each others’ bodies home, but there was no time left, none at all.  It wouldn’t be long before…

Something hit the ground, only just outside lethal range.  The battlesuit’s computers screamed warnings, red icons popping up in the HUD display, as the force of the blast picked it up and tossed it almost casually towards a rock.  Fardell landed hard enough to hurt, even though the suit; it took everything he had to force his body to move again, triggering the emergency systems in the suit.  Standing and fighting was no longer possible; his hand cannon had been lost in the blast.  He glanced around, dazed, and saw it lying broken on the ground.  For a moment, he wanted to laugh; a weapon that an unarmoured man couldn’t hope to lift had been broken as if it had been a toy gun, like the strange weapons the aliens used.  There was no sign of De Boer.

Slowly, Fardell turned to the west and started to walk.  The alien noose was tightening; if he didn’t get out in time, he would either be killed or scooped up and dumped in an alien POW camp.  He’d heard that the aliens treated their captives well – there had even been jokes made about being shoved into a camp full of naked women – but he was in no mood to find out.  One way or another, he was going back to rejoin the remainder of his unit…and find a way of wiping the aliens out, whatever it took.  They did not deserve to live.

***
Yatha-Soldier-Command had been almost as horrified as General Harrison when the nuclear warhead detonated…and shared one of the reasons with the human soldier.  The nuclear blast had caused considerable damage to one of the staging areas for the further assault; only the fact that the buildings had been constructed of very strong material had kept most of them from suffering major damage.  Everything directly under the blast had been destroyed, including nearly five hundred tanks and ten thousand soldiers.  The loss had been serious.

He sent orders clicking through the command network as the Oghaldzon counterattack started to bite.  The humans had started to suffer badly, just as his own force had suffered; the attack in orbit had been beaten off…and the KEW network was pouring more and more firepower down from orbit.  The War Commander had even authorised the use of small warships to support the KEW platform…and the additional firepower was already having an effect.  Several human units had been struck from orbit and then the Oghaldzon soldiers had moved in, killing or driving the humans away.  There had been some nasty moments; a handful of soldiers had surrendered to ThrillKill and massacred human prisoners before being disarmed by their saner comrades.  The Oghaldzon were unused to battle of such intensity; the mere use of the nuke had stunned many of the soldiers.

Yatha himself tried to keep his thoughts dispassionate; it wasn't easy.  He had kept abreast of the researchers examination of humans and their behaviour, and knew that the humans actually had permanent mating partners.  It was a strange alien concept, but somehow the humans built their closest relationships around sex, rather than anything reasonable.  The closest the humans had to anything reassembling Oghaldzon behaviour was prostitution…and that was apparently looked down upon by the remainder of the human race.  The Oghaldzon didn’t mate in such a strange manner; their families tended to be composed of Oghaldzon who had similar ideas, or served in the same units, or even had political ideas.  There would be soldiers on the ground out there who had just lost their families to the human nuclear strikes; they would be on the very verge of ThrillKill if they hadn’t passed that line already.

“Have the prison camps guarded with the new soldiers from the elevator,” he ordered.  That had been a dreadful risk; if the humans had cut the elevator, it would have either sent the soldiers into a decaying orbit or sent them crashing down to Earth.  There was no choice; the new soldiers would not have had a chance to form families down on Earth.  They would have no reason to go mad and slaughter humans at random, as bitter and alien as that thought was; such behaviour had been almost unknown before they had come to Earth.

He clarified his orders.  “I want them to ensure that it remains safe from everyone.”

He cursed the human commander under his breath.  Was there no end to the President’s madness?  His forces were being cut apart now that the Oghaldzon had recovered from their confusion; the odds were no longer in their favour, but more inclined towards their total annihilation.  He’d sent thousands of tanks and hundreds of thousands of soldiers into the counterattack; the forces he had carefully husbanded for the advance into the more populated regions of the human nation had been deployed and ordered to slice the human force apart.  The battle would make the later conquest easier, but he still regretted the massive bloodshed, even though the humans had swatted thousands of Oghaldzon with one blow.

The battle was progressing at remarkable speed; he watched as contacts were reported, and then either destroyed on the ground or stamped on from orbit.  A kind of madness seemed to have overtaken both sides; he was accepting horrendous losses to hurt the humans, and they had done the same, accepting losses just to hurt his forces.  The death toll was mounting and he knew that many more would die…

Unseen, he silently wept for what they had lost.

***
A KEW had impacted on the relief force, but they’d inflicted enough damage for the battlesuits to cut into the flank of the enemy force that had been attempting to bar their way, chasing them away from the egress route.  The remaining battlesuits had left at once, just before a second KEW came down and shattered the remains of the interstate still further.  Dazed, Fardell walked across the interstate and continued, running into the remains of his unit through sheer chance.  He hadn’t even noticed the effects of the KEW; his mind wasn’t functioning quite right.

“Sir, are you ok?”  O’Malley asked.  The tone of his voice was becoming increasingly worried; Fardell couldn’t focus enough to realise what he was saying, let alone answer him as if he was asking an important question.  It was important, he knew, and yet it was not important.  “What happened to the others?”

Fardell could only look at him bitterly.  The roaring in his ears was making it hard to think.  O’Malley realised something was wrong in that same instant; he snapped an order to two other battlesuits and they picked up Fardell, battlesuit and all, carrying him back towards the west.  Darkness shimmered into existence in front of Fardell’s eyes; he wanted to faint, but somehow, something was preventing him from fainting.  A part of his mind reminded him about the drug implants that were provided for every American soldier, dimming the pain and trying to keep him awake and aware in the middle of the battlezone.

It wasn’t working; Fardell was on the very verge of collapse.

More explosions shattered the area as the aliens regrouped and pushed onwards.  The order to retreat had been given, but there were thousands of human soldiers who never heard it; some of whom escaped on their own, others who stood and fought until the aliens crushed them from orbit, or on the ground.  The battlesuits walked as quickly as they could towards an elusive safety; all they knew was that there would be somewhere where they could rest, recharge the suits, and find medical care for their wounded commander.

As Fardell fell into darkness, the remains of the once-proud force stumbled away from the field of battle.

They had lost.

Chapter Forty-Two: Aftermath

United States National Command Centre, USA

The President didn’t want to hear it, but there was no choice.

“They kicked our asses,” General William Denny said.  His voice was very grim; the only bright spot about the entire battle was that it had provided a chance to get some vital personnel out of the Washington complex before the aliens destroyed it…and the President suspected that his old friend would have preferred to die under tons of molten rock.  General Harrison had remained in command long enough to coordinate the retreat, insofar as it could be coordinated, and then stepped outside and blown his brains out with a pistol.  “We mauled them, but they defeated us.”

The words hung in the air, just long enough to make the room uncomfortable.

“We launched nearly two hundred thousand soldiers into combat,” Denny continued.  His voice lacked any trace of accusation, but that somehow made it worse.  “The first attacks went fairly well; we encountered alien forces, shot the hell out of them, and pushed on.  The forces that had been infiltrated into Washington came up under the cover of the air strike – we lost the pilot and Shadow that carried out the attack, but he succeeded before he died – launched their offensive; several alien buildings were stripped at high speed and their contents carried down into the tunnel system.”

He paused.  “At that point, everything went to hell,” he continued.  “The aliens pulled back, engaging our forces from orbit and launching counterattacks as they saw our forces falling back in places.  Some parts of the line broke, Mr President; the aliens simply crushed them hard enough to shatter them.  Other parts were cut off from the remainder of our forces and bypassed, left alone for later; some of those units cut their way out and escaped.  In short, as soon as the aliens had beaten off the Russian attack in space, we found ourselves under increasingly heavy assault.”

He continued, remorselessly.  “The alien point defence was sufficient to stop over seventy percent of ground-to-ground missiles that we launched, along with roughly sixty percent of the long-range shells we fired before the guns were destroyed from orbit,” he said.  “Only one of thirty nukes found its target and it wasn't enough to prevent the defeat; whatever it hit – and we don’t know just how effective it actually was – did not prevent the aliens from counterattacking.  Quite apart from the radical – and probably improvised – response at Washington, the aliens launched a series of infantry and armoured counterattacks that forced our units back.  The aliens actually lunged towards some of our base camps; fortunately, we had some of our own armoured support dug in and we gave the aliens a few bloody noses of their own…”

The President slapped the table hard enough to hurt.  “Never mind the nuts and bolts,” he snapped.  “What was the final result?”

Denny didn’t look away.  “We launched two hundred thousand soldiers into battle,” he said.  “Around ten thousand came back, many brutally wounded or seriously disabled.”

The President stared at him.  Modern war was not often that costly in terms of life; the vast losses that America – and the other nations – involved in the Second World War had soaked up and kept going had been a thing of the past.  New York had cost around seven million people, but that had been an isolated incident; the series of small wars and interventions that had finally led to the absorption of Latin and South America had cost the USA only a thousand lives at most, although many of the natives had died in the civil wars that the US had finally brought to an end.  The aliens might have killed almost two billion humans, mainly through the asteroids…but somehow the loss of so many soldiers struck home in a way that the asteroids had not.  Nearly two million Americans served in the various armed forces; how high had their death toll been?

Denny coughed.  “That’s not an exact figure,” he said.  “There are still units and isolated soldiers reporting back in, having slipped out of the alien-controlled regions under cover of night, or simply having punched their way out of the encirclement.  There are also the soldiers who were taken prisoner…except we have a report that some surrendering soldiers were gunned down.”

“No,” the President said, simply.

“It’s not clear what happened,” Denny admitted.  “The reports, however, suggested that the aliens simply shot them in cold blood.”

The President looked up at the Secretary of State.  “What about the other attacks?”

“The Russians killed one mothership and damaged a second,” Janet Richardson said.  “They lost eight out of nine spacecraft in the attack; the ninth was lucky and is currently boosting towards the asteroid belt as fast as it can move.  Odds are they hurt the aliens badly in space; ground-based observations are unreliable, but it seems that the mothership vented one hell of a lot of atmosphere and perhaps even bodies before it disintegrated completely, while the other one was still in trouble when the fighting was coming to an end.  That’s about the best news there is.

“The other four alien outposts were all attacked,” she continued.  “The assault on the one in Egypt failed spectacularly; there were apparently coordination problems between European and Caliphate forces and they multiplied to the point where the aliens had a chance to move between them and destroy both forces.  The desert offers little cover for military activities and the alien KEW strikes tore up both sides pretty badly.  The landing in lower France took more of a beating; the Europeans detonated at least two nukes in the area, but in the end they were beaten back by the aliens.  The Russians launched a much larger nuclear strike; I think we can probably call that one a tactical draw, but as the cable was apparently undamaged, the aliens came out ahead.  The landings in India ended up like ours, but the Indians lost fewer people because they had been unable to bring that many soldiers to bear on the aliens.”

She sighed.  “The net result, Mr President, is that a large portion of the world’s combat power has been destroyed and the space elevators are still largely intact.  If they were damaged – and it is a possibility in the Russian landing zone – the aliens have started to repair them.  There are very definite signs that the aliens are about to launch major ground offensives against the human forces remaining, the difference being that they will probably succeed and punch through to knock out at least the Caliphate and perhaps Europe from continuing the war.  Have you seen their latest message?”

The President nodded.  “They’re offering to supply Helium-3 at a good rate and some asteroid metals, even goods from the factories we left in the belt, to any nation that is prepared to accept their rule,” he said.  The message had been transmitted a day before the fighting had begun; back then, they had dared to hope that they could bring the aliens to the bargaining table.  “Can they actually do that?”

“It depends on just how willing the moon is to supply them,” Admiral Nelson Oshiro said.  He sighed; the President noted with a moment of annoyance that everyone seemed to be sighing around him these days.  Oshiro’s face had grown longer as the news from the moon had come in; the USSF had lost several bases on the moon that might have been useful if the war had gone differently.  “It is an interesting point; one of the moon’s main grievances against us was that the price of Helium-3 was permanently fixed…and although the alien price is a little higher, demand is going to be much lower because of the damage caused by the war.  Of course, they will probably make a killing using space elevators; space transport used to be expensive, but if they can set one up anywhere on Earth…”

The President could see the implications for himself.  “Janet, is anyone going to take them up on that offer?”

Janet hesitated, clearly reluctant to commit herself.  “It’s hard to say, Mr President,” she said, finally.  “The remains of Japan and Korea have a desperate need for energy; they might well agree to the alien bargain, just to buy some time.  Brazil got battered by tidal waves as well, but they have tried to remain independent of the Great Powers; it is possible that they might agree to the bargain.  Israel is in the path of the alien offensive; they might sound the aliens out to discover what they’re offering.  The Caliphate’s central government has been badly weakened; it’s possible that smaller states might make agreements with the aliens, or the Europeans, or the…”

She shook her head.  “I am fairly sure that there will be some takers,” she said.  “The only question is which of the Great Powers is going to be the next one to disintegrate, or sell out to the aliens for the best terms they can get.”

“There is one piece of good news,” Denny said.  The President looked up hopefully.  “We captured a pair of aliens and transported them to a confinement facility near here.  Their possessions went somewhere else; a fortunate decision as the research complex was hit by a KEW half an hour after the items got there.  So far, there’s been no sign that the aliens are even aware that we have prisoners; I would have expected either a recovery mission or an offer of a prisoner exchange.”

“But they knew that some equipment had been recovered and they were able to trace it,” Janet pointed out.  “Doesn’t that prove that they know?”

“Maybe,” Denny said.  “The only good news is that we can now use the prisoners to try to unlock some of the mysteries surrounding the aliens.”

***
Warag – who was not sure if he still had a right to the title of Soldier-Infantry – examined the alien binding carefully with his sonar.  He’d been terrified that the humans intended to try to set the bone, maybe even repair it, on their own, but they’d been smart enough to merely splinter it and carry Warag into a truck, which had then carried them somewhere far, far away from the occupied zone.  He’d been stripped naked by the humans, who’d taken every piece of equipment, but his translator.  Somehow, the humans had known that the translator was necessary…and that it couldn’t be used to track him down, or perhaps they had just calculated that his fellow Oghaldzon would hesitate before trying to kill him.  Warag had hoped that a patrol would stumble across the human vehicle and rescue him, but instead the vehicle had sped on…and he had blacked out.  When he had awoken, he had found himself in a room with bright lights…and a firmly locked door.

It had taken him only moments to fill the room with his sonar and realise that there was very definitely no way out.  His sonar echoed back completely, a sign that there was no way out of the walls, which were far too hard for him to kick down, even with his strong hindleg.  The humans hadn’t chained him up, or anything like that; he wondered grimly if they hadn’t bothered because they knew he was not a threat, or because they didn’t know anything about securing an adult Oghaldzon.  It wasn’t an easy thing to do.

He tried, carefully, to stand up; the broken foreleg hurt badly, but he could walk, as long as he remained very careful.  The pain had faded, or perhaps he’d just gotten used to it; there were only small jabs of pain as he moved about slowly.  His sonar told him that the bandages the humans had wrapped around his body were trying to hold the blood in; Oghaldzon evidently healed cuts and bruises slower than humans.  By now, he was sure, the damage would have healed, but he left the bandages in place anyway, just in case.  He heard a faint noise and sensed the door opening through his sonar; he reached out with it, only to feel the presence of another small room, just like his own…and a human, standing and facing him.  His sonar swept over the human; two frontal projections, no strange breeding organ hanging down between the legs…he was looking at a human female.

“Hallo,” the human said.  “Can you understand me?”

Warag thought, just for a moment, of remaining silent, but there was no point.  The humans knew that he had his translator.  “Yes,” he said, carefully.  Human recordings showed a wide range of possible treatment of captives…although he doubted that even a human would want to sexually abuse his body.  “I understand you.”

The human’s lips twisted into a smile.  “I am Doctor Laura Bryophyte,” she said.  “I have been assigned to study you and ensure that you return to full health as quickly as possible.  What is your name?”

“Warag,” Warag said.  He didn’t give the occupation and location parts of his title; he had a suspicion that before long he would become Warag-Prisoner-Humans, if he wasn’t there already.  Second and third names changed as rank and position changed.  “I think I am pleased to meet you.”

The human shrugged.  “Your people don’t know you’re here,” she said.  “Most of our people don’t know you’re here; they might want to come take a little revenge on you for wives and children lost on the day you landed.  How do your people treat prisoners of war?”

Warag had to think about it; it had been so long since there had been a war that included prisoners.  “Most prisoners are kept secure until the war ends,” he said.  Honesty might be his only defence.  “Those deemed to be infected with…mind poison are kept permanently until they die; they are treated well, but they are never allowed back into the general population.  Those who were…misguided were generally allowed back into the general population after the war ended and they realised the error of their ways.”

Laura’s face twisted again.  “And what will happen to the humans your people took prisoner here?”

“The same,” Warag said.  He repeated himself, finding it hard to talk for a moment; the injuries had been worse than he had supposed.  “They would either be treated well or released after the war.”

“Some of your people killed surrendering humans,” Laura said.  Warag wished he knew how a human showed that he or she was lying; there had to be some way to tell with sonar.  “Why would that happen?”

Warag was appalled.  “That would only happen if some isolated soldiers broke down under the pressure of the fighting,” he said, truthfully.  The Oghaldzon were never comfortable discussing ThrillKill, but he was at the mercy of the human female; she could make him talk just by reaching out and pulling at one of his wounds.  “The higher command would stop it before it spread into the other soldiers.”

Laura shrugged.  “We don’t know much about your kind,” she said.  “Perhaps you will help us to learn?”

It took Warag a moment to realise that it was a question.  “I will tell you everything I know about our people,” he said.  There weren’t many orders regarding prisoners in human hands, but they had included instructions to explain the purpose of the war and how much better life would be if the human race surrendered without further bloodshed on both sides.  “What do you want to know?”

Laura shrugged again.  “How do your weapons work?”

Warag waved one hand in an irritated gesture.  “I don’t know,” he said.  He had never studied engineering, or more than the basics behind laser weapons, mainly their applications in tactical combat.  It was the same for the next handful of technology-related questions; the only detail he really knew was that the translator had been based on human broadcasts emitting from earth, after the different languages had been sorted out and a proper vocabulary had been built up.  “I'm just a soldier.”

“I see,” Laura said.  She paused, just long enough for Warag to get nervous.  “You are injured, but we have to examine you to find out how your bodies work…are you male or female?”

“Male,” Warag said.  It wasn't a matter of great interest.  “Why do you want to know?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Laura said, at once.  “I have to take you into the examination room.  Will you be able to walk or do you want me to summon a team to carry you?”

“I want to walk,” Warag said.  It would give him an opportunity to see how much he could do with his damaged leg.  Besides, being carried by a human was difficult and more than a little painful.  “I’m ready when you are.”

The human made a strange noise.  Only later did he realise that it was human laughter.  “Follow me,” she said, as the door opened.  Warag followed her into a second room, and then a corridor, one that stretched further than his sonar could reach.  He sensed, almost at once, the presence of another Oghaldzon, tasting her mating scent in the air.  He didn’t recognise the smell, but that meant nothing; the fighting would have continued regardless of a female coming into season.  “Are you all right?”

Warag hesitated.  “You have a female here,” he said.  “Who is she?”

The human female seemed to hesitate.  “How do you know she’s here?”

“I can smell her,” Warag said.  “Who is she?”

“You’ll meet her later,” Laura said.  She led the way down the corridor.  A handful of other humans, some of them carrying human weapons, appeared behind her; Warag reminded himself to be as docile as possible.  He didn’t want to be shot at without a weapon in his hands that he could fire back at them with.  “It’s time to find out how your body works.”

Carefully, Warag trotted after her.

Chapter Forty-Three: History

Seeker for Truth, Earth Orbit

“I believe that we were talking about the Caliphate,” Oolane-Researcher-Seeker said, as they met again in the room Samra had come to think of as the conference room.  It had been adapted slightly for human comfort; a chair that had to have been brought up from Earth – it was just too human for the Oghaldzon to have made – had been placed in the room, which she shared occasionally with Reynolds.  It had made them both uncomfortable at first; these days – she wasn’t sure just how long they had been onboard the Seeker for Truth - it was almost normal.  “Why exactly did it develop in the way it did?”

Samra paused to consider her answer.  The Oghaldzon had bounced all kinds of questions at her, some of them ones that made little sense to her, others questions that were silly.  No, she had never met the Caliph, or any of his elected successors; no, she hadn’t met the American President either.  She couldn’t imagine how they thought that she might know either of them, or the leaders of the other Great Powers as well; the questions had not been repeated.  Reynolds had guessed that the Oghaldzon were starting to pull together a more accurate idea of how human society had developed over its expansion, but sometimes they were just…well, alien.  She had tried to explain the concept of Islam to Oolane; the Oghaldzon female had applied logic and reason to it and the conversation had gone downhill from there.  Leaps of faith just didn’t seem to be an Oghaldzon trait; there might have been much to admire in them, but in the end they had launched a brutal invasion of Earth…

It was impossible to hate Oolane; the alien reminder her of a cross between a student and a teacher, learning from her at the same time as Samra taught her about humanity.  The other Oghaldzon came in and asked questions relating to a specific subject – normally human weapons or defence priorities – and left again; Oolane had remained with them throughout their…stay on the alien craft.  It was impossible to hate her…but it was all too easy to hate her race.

“They wanted to change the world,” she said.  She had grasped, barely, that that was something the Oghaldzon were far less keen on than humans…and some humans could be very conservative.  Bad Ideas could spread through parts of their society like lightning under the right conditions; they tended to view new political concepts with caution, although they were far more enamoured of technology than most humans.  They had survived in a very dangerous environment when their race was young; it had been technology that had lifted them out of a potential extinction-level event and they had never forgotten it.  If humans hadn’t forgotten it, it might have been a human starship that had gone to wherever the Oghaldzon came from, rather than the other way around.  “They thought that the current leaders had blundered.”

She stumbled through an explanation as best as she could, covering the rise of Helium-3 as a replacement for both oil and fission plants, how the United States and the other western nations – and their nominal enemies the Chinese and Russians – had cooperated to mine the moon, and then use the resources to end their dependence on oil.  The mullahs in Iran – she had to stop to explain that concept as well – had cost Iran its chance at being powerful; instead, they had repressed the population and the population had pushed back.  When the collapse came, the reformers had been the targets of a campaign to exterminate them; it had pushed them into striking first and terminating the rule of the Mullahs, before spreading the concept of Reform Islam right across the Islamic World.  Caught up in chaos, abandoned by friends and enemies alike, the dominos had started to fall; Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey…and, as the Caliphate grew in strength and power, they had even started to absorb immigrants from Europe who were attempting to escape the growing pressure from Europe to integrate, get out, or die.

She paused at the end.  “Why do you want to know?”

“We want to understand how to change human society,” Oolane said.  “Your leaders attempted to destroy our forces on the surface of your world.  During the fighting, nuclear weapons were deployed on the surface.”

“Right on,” Reynolds said, leaning forward.  “How many died?”

“We believe that thousands of humans died in the fighting,” Oolane said, dispassionately…or perhaps she wasn't dispassionate and it was only the effects of the translator she used.  “Several thousand of our own kind died.  The battles were victories, but they came at a high cost.  It leads to an interesting conclusion; humans are not oddly shaped Oghaldzon, are they?”

Samra hesitated.  She would have thought that that was obvious.  “Your forces in space also launched an attack,” Oolane continued.  “That assault was targeted on two of our colony ships, containing a population of well over five hundred thousand civilians.  The resulting disaster killed many of them in the darkness of space.”

Samra looked at her for a long moment.  “There were millions of humans killed by the asteroids that struck the surface of the planet,” she said.  “Why did you not expect our kind to hit back?”

“We expected you to be reasonable,” Oolane snapped.  There was a hint underlying the translator voice, a hint of real emotion hidden under the cold dispassionate speech.  “Why did your people target civilians?”

Reynolds leaned forward.  “Why did your people target civilians?”

“We didn’t mean to kill them,” Oolane said, her voice returning to cold dispassion.  “Why did you not have the asteroids rigged to self-destruct?”

There was a pause.  “Because, unless I miss my guess, the contingency plans called for one of the planetary defence platforms to blast an asteroid to little pieces of dust if one of them ever tried to fall out of orbit,” Reynolds said.  Samra could hear the frustration in his voice and placed a hand on his; he shrugged it off angrily.  “You destroyed the planetary defence centres!”

Oolane said nothing.  “You killed over a billion humans and you’re complaining about the bare loss of half a million?”  Reynolds asked.  “You told us you didn’t come all this way to start a genocide.”

“Your race is too dangerous to be allowed to spread across the stars until you reform,” Oolane said coldly.  “You form little groups which try to dominate other groups; the idea of cooperation is almost alien to you.  We will teach you to become more civilised as a race.”

Samra spoke before Reynolds could respond.  “How do you intend to do that?”

“We will bring other humans here and teach them, as we teach our own children,” Oolane said.  “You will assist us.”

“Don’t you understand?”  Reynolds asked.  “It’s too late!  You can exterminate the planet below, but the humans who are already in space will head out into the stars, too many of them to stop, and then one day they will kill you all!”

“Then it is all the more important that we bring large human populations into our race’s unity,” Oolane said.  “They will assist us in civilising the human race.”

***
The human voice was one step too low for Oghaldzon comfort.  “Don’t you understand?  It’s too late!  You can exterminate the planet below, but the humans who are already in space will head out into the stars, too many of them to stop, and then one day they will kill you all!”

“You heard that statement,” Dataka-War Commander-Fleet said shortly, clicking around the conference room.  “Does this represent a real possibility or a mere statement of fiction?”

“It may represent a fluid state of personality within the human race,” Takalak-Researcher-Seeker said, after no one else had stepped forward to comment.  As Head of Researchers, Takalak’s voice was technically equal to every other speaker at the metaphorical table, but the researchers were generally a quiet contemplative breed.  Hasty action they left to others.  “We have seen enough evidence to deduce that human mating patterns have an effect on how their society formed; our researchers have observed interesting dynamics in certain camps where we kept our interventions limited.  Some humans who were in couples stayed together; some other humans, mainly unmated males, attempted to take the females for themselves.  The mated males resisted this, but they were often forced aside; had we not intervened, it would have had unfortunate effects for the females.”

He paused.  “Certain deductions can be made from the vast mass of data we have collected,” he continued.  “Human mating groups, entered willingly, form the basis of their families; an unwilling mating – what the humans refer to as a rape – does not convoy the same…blessing on future relations.  Most human groups consider rape to be a crime deserving punishment; we must consider it to be a form of ThrillKill.  It is not, of course, one we can commit ourselves.  Regardless, mating patterns are important; we have seen cases of attacks mounted against us by humans who have lost their mates to us.  We may have already seen an attack on a large scale, one intended to gain nothing for humanity, but cause pain for us.”

“The attack on the mothership,” Dataka said.  “You are suggesting that we will see further attacks like that?”

“That is the most likely outcome,” Takalak confirmed.  His sonar clicked a regretful pattern around the room.  “The objective is to hit us where it hurts, if you will pardon the expression; it gains nothing for the human involved and may cost his or her own life…but it hurts us.”

There was a long uncomfortable pause.  “You mean…something like the outbreaks of ThrillKill memes among a handful of isolated soldiers on the ground?”  Reata-Soldier-Command said.  “This might affect humans it might not be logical to expect it to affect?”

“It is a close enough comparison,” Takalak said grimly.  “The soldiers on the ground had lost their families and found themselves battered by human weapons designed to reach inside and scramble their brains, pushing them right to the edge of pure madness; we were lucky indeed that the only manifestation was the deaths of a few human prisoners.  A victim of ThrillKill – for one of us – is fairly easy to spot; a human adherent might be impossible to detect until it was too late.”

“The surviving human attacking ship is heading towards their belt settlements,” Dataka said slowly.  “Do you believe that there will be further attacks against the motherships?”

“It might be worse,” Takalak said.  “The humans have been building a starship.”

The Oghaldzon didn’t like silence.  It made them feel uneasy.  For an Oghaldzon to stop using his sonar, even for a few minutes, was a worrying sign; it indicated complete shock or complete incomprehension.  Dataka himself found it hard to grasp; they’d come in time to save the human race from itself – or, more practically, save the Oghaldzon from the human race – and now they were grappling with the idea, no matter how unlikely, that they might lose everything.

“They cannot be allowed to head to Dhoz,” someone clicked.  “They don’t even know where Shuneshu is, do they?”

“They would start looking, perhaps, around stars comparable to Sol,” Takalak said.  “However, they would have a vague idea of which direction we came from, and they would certainly have considered all of the possible target stars.  If they actually have some of us to study” – enough dead were unaccounted for to leave Dataka wondering if some of them had fallen into human hands, alive or dead – “they may be able to deduce what manner of star our homeworld orbits.  If they do that…”

He left the statement unfinished.  “But…that would be madness,” Gafalae-Speaker-Seeker objected.  “They couldn’t attack Dhoz and hope to escape with their lives.”

“They wouldn’t want to escape with their lives,” Takalak said.  “This madness is not uncommon in our own kind when MemeKill is involved, but the humans may see it differently; I have studied their wars through their own eyes and I have realised some grim details.  One of them is that their wars either end in stalemate with some reduction of status on the part of the loser, or a complete collapse of the loser, which has had its defeat pounded into it so much that its leaders realise that they have actually been beaten, not something that happens that often, even on Earth.  What we consider abnormal behaviour caused by MemeKill is actually common practice among the humans; they would have to be convinced that they had lost to even start working with us, and they would attempt to stall as much as they could.”

He paused.  “We may have misinterpreted the actions of the humans on the moon,” he concluded.  “They may work with us as long as we are strong, or they may decide to switch sides again, or they may try to keep apart from us.  They may have recognised our primacy outside their world, but if we try to alter them too much, they will fight back against us.”

“They would not win,” Reata-Soldier-Command said flatly.

“That is not the point,” Takalak said.  “The point is that they will fight if we push them too far.  Human wars are not ended by the victors absorbing the losers; whatever happens, the losers are either exterminated, occupied, or allowed continued existence as a subordinate state.  The humans do not have a concept of the losers gratefully accepting their chance to join the winning side and signing up.”

Dataka spoke as calmly as he could.  “Are you saying that the war is futile?”

“I am telling you that it may take Great Grand Cycles to complete the work,” Takalak said.  “We are committed now; we may not retreat, or we will face angry humans in a Great Grand Cycle or two at Dhoz.  We may not exterminate the humans below because their fellows in the asteroid belt will seek revenge, perhaps striking out for Dhoz and attacking our homeworld directly.  We may have to raise an entire human population on one of the motherships and integrate with them before we can use them to integrate the entire planet.”

Dataka grasped at the single straw.  “Do you still believe that we can win?”

“We have to push using the advantage we have been given,” Takalak said.  “The first one is to open the offer of conditional surrender to the other human settlements on the other worlds of the solar system, and to repeat it to the human nations down below on the planet’s surface.  We will not mention the attempt to evict us from the planet; we will treat it as if it was beneath our notice” – he ignored the anger of the military representatives – “and we will honour the offer if individual human nations choose to accept it.  We will also extend the offer to any human sub-state that wishes to break away from the central authority; this will not only pressure the human central authorities, but perhaps start a process of weakening human unity.

“Second, we will bring more humans to the ships, as we discussed, and start the process of integrating them into our systems,” he continued.  “Clearly, we cannot trust them as if they were…well, our kind who had been defeated in a war, but it will allow them to produce human children who will grow up in a world shaped by our civilisation.  The contraceptive implants the humans use can be removed quite easily using medical nanotechnology; the human females will become pregnant and start the process.  We may adopt human…war orphans” – that too was an alien concept to the Oghaldzon – “to speed the process along.

“This will take Grand Cycles,” he concluded.  “We have the time, now, to act to prevent mutual racial destruction or further chaos that might prevent us from accomplishing our objectives.  We must ensure that the humans know that we are here to stay; that alone will convince them to bow to our power and work with us.”

“There is a final point,” Gafalae-Speaker-Seeker said.  He leaned forward with all the power of his post.  “We must seek out and punish the remaining human criminals who launched the attack on Mothership 17.  That ship boosted for their asteroid settlements; those settlements must be destroyed.”

“That would be difficult at the moment,” Dataka said.  “The warships would have to be redeployed, which would weaken our coverage of the planet in case of further sneak attacks.”

“Then let it take as long as you must, but no longer,” Gafalae insisted.  He glared around the room.  “We must not let that deed stand, or we will face more attacks of a similar nature.  No one can answer me one question; what is out in the belt that the villains fled towards it?”

He had a point, Dataka admitted to himself; they had been lax about surveying the belt.  The Oghaldzon had used their belt as a source of materials; the human concept of it as a civilisation in its own right was…strange.  Human materials seemed to be either admiring or insulting about the belt, often in ways that puzzled the researchers; what was an ‘arse-bandit’ anyway and why was the belt filled with them?

“Very well,” he said.  It would take cycles before enough units could be redeployed to ensure that the motherships were no longer uncovered, but it was necessary to keep the Speaker for Truth onside.  If he decided to call for a conclave, it would be disastrous; the last thing they needed in the middle of a shooting war was a long discussion about the future.  An Oghaldzon enemy would honour the traditional truce during a conclave; the humans wouldn’t even know what was happening.  “We will redeploy and force the belt to recognise our authority as soon as possible.”

Chapter Forty-Four: Walking to Heaven

Near Washington DC, USA/Low Earth Orbit

If there was one thing everyone in the prison camp had been worried about, it was radioactivity following the nuclear blast, to the point where there had nearly been a riot.  The aliens had stated that there was only a very limited rise in the levels of radiation in the area, but not everyone had believed them; as hysteria ran through the camp, the panic had almost killed several people.  Only the thought of what the aliens might do to rioters had prevented a riot from actually taking place.

Markus Wilhelm had felt some of the shared panic.  Nukes had been the fear of humanity for so long that the news of New York had sent the world into a tailspin of pure panic, playing a role – as much as anything could be said to have played a role – in the collapse of large portions of the globe as the global economic system collapsed.  The taboo against using nukes had faltered in space – nukes provided the only way of ensuring the destruction of a target through a near-miss rather than a direct hit in space – but on the surface of the planet, only Wreckers used nukes.  Even President Culpepper had resisted the temptation to pick an Islamic city after New York and just blast it.  The aliens…

The aliens didn’t need nukes.  Wilhelm suspected that that was fortunate; they didn’t seem to share humanity’s racial terror of nuclear weapons.  They’d recovered neatly and continued their work, whatever that had been; the number of aliens in the camp seemed to be swelling rapidly as more and more came down the space elevator, along with some of their equipment and weapons, heading out God alone knew where.  The advances in space medicine had provided all kinds of treatments for radiation damage, and it was logical to assume that the aliens had similar treatments for their own people, but could they be trusted to know just what was needed for humanity?  The handful of doctors in the camp knew almost nothing about radiation; neither of them had been rated as space-trained or military-trained.  It was enough to make him sweat; the aliens had not only brought him to a place where they could threaten him with instant death, but they had also exposed him to an uncertain amount of radioactive poisoning.  It was…

“They’re asking for you, again,” Mitchell Sartin said.  The FEMA official looked tired and haggard; he had spent most of his energy on trying to convince everyone in the camp that panic was not only futile, but might draw a violent response from the aliens.  The aliens had punished looting and rape by death; who knew how they would punish rioting, or civil disobedience.  “What do they want this time?”

“I have no idea,” Wilhelm said.  The aliens – in particular Yehaka-Researcher-Earth, as she had identified herself to them – had talked to them almost every second day, with questions that centred around his relationship with Carola, some of them the kind of questions that would normally be asked by someone who was secretly jealous and intent on breaking up the relationship.  The aliens couldn’t be having thoughts like that – the very idea was ridiculous – but few of their questions seemed to make any kind of sense.  “Did they give any clues?”

They’d asked personal questions; they’d asked the type of questions only a close friend could ask, and then they’d tried to understand it all.  They hadn’t understood; they seemed perfectly willing to accept that Wilhelm and Carola could be friends, but they seemed to have nothing in common.  An insurance salesgirl and an economist who worked for a corporation that wanted to know the general trends of the future?  Why hadn’t they fallen in with their own kind – a statement that had puzzled both of them until they understood that it meant their co-workers – and…mated from that group?  Alien friendships were apparently centred around their work and interests; it was very different to human sexual patterns.

“None,” Sartin said.  He looked at Carola, who had been lying on the rug trying to sleep.  By now, everyone was used to running around naked; the men weren’t even showing that much interest.  “Are you coming?”

“We don’t have a choice, do we?”  Wilhelm said.  He held out a hand to Carola. “Come on, love; the sooner we get this over with, the better.”

The first surprise came when they were showed into one of the alien buildings.  Apart from Yehaka-Researcher-Earth, who gave them what they had come to recognise as an Oghaldzon sign of greeting – it consisted of waving together three hands in a mixed pattern – there were three other Oghaldzon in the room, all wearing soldier uniforms.  They had looked comical from time to time; they didn’t look comical now, as the aliens studied them with interest…and they heard, right at the edge of their hearing, the clicking sound of the alien language.

“It has been decided that you will be moved from the camp,” Yehaka said, shortly.  She was normally prepared to be friendly with them, albeit a friendliness that had very clear limits, but the presence of the soldiers seemed to be forcing her to be formal.  “You will come to no harm, but your cooperation is strongly encouraged.”

And that was a threat if Wilhelm had ever heard one.  “I understand,” he said, meeting Carola’s nervous eyes grimly.  Any change in routine was worrying for prisoners, he’d heard; it certainly worried him now.  “Where are we going?”

Yehaka didn’t answer his question.  “You will put these on,” she said, picking up a pair of silver bracelets and passing them to him, before passing a second pair to Carola.  Wilhelm examined them quickly; they might have looked silver, but the metal almost felt like a living thing in his hand.  They gave him a creepy feeling, as if he was touching a spider, but there was no choice; he put them on, one on each wrist.  They seemed to shrink until they were touching his skin; it wasn’t painful, but it was strange and terrible.  “Place your hands behind your back.”

Wilhelm complied…and the two bracelets seemed to leap towards one another.  He gasped in pain as the sudden tug pulled at his arm; the bracelet metal linked into its counterpart and melded them together, trapping his hands firmly behind his back.  A glance at Carola revealed that her hands had been similarly secured behind her back; he realised, as the pain faded, that something had definitely changed.  The aliens had never worried about securing them before.

He met her eyes and tried to give her a reassuring look.  It didn’t work.

“You will accompany us,” one of the soldiers said.  His – or maybe her; Wilhelm couldn’t tell – had a dispassionate voice, without even the hints of feeling that had slipped into the voice Yehaka used to talk to them.  “Do not attempt to deviate from the path.”

One of the soldiers led the way; the other two prodded the bound humans into walking after him, heading through the long alien corridors and back into the open air.  Wilhelm tried to think, trying to understand; something had changed, but what?  The aliens hadn’t taken chances; he had been arrested once before, during a political protest, and the handcuffs the police had used had been flimsy compared to the alien equipment.  It was more comfortable than human handcuffs, but he had the strangest feeling that no human technology would suffice to break them…and even trying could cost him both his arms.  He wished he could hold Carola’s hand; both of them were frightened, but it would have been easier if they could have comforted each other.

He wondered, as they walked along ground that had been melted and fused by fusion fire, what had happened to their old apartment.  The city had been almost completely destroyed, first by the tidal waves, and then by the aliens; the skyscraper that had been their home for the past few years had been brought down by something, perhaps one of the missiles tossed into the area by the human forces, perhaps by an alien bulldozer-like vehicle.  He could see several moving about as the alien settlement expanded; they weren’t playing games on the ground.  The sheer scale of the activity was terrifying…

They think they can win, he thought, and shuddered.  The nuke had suggested that humanity was still fighting back, but what if that had been the last gasp of resistance.  A line of alien hover tanks floated past with eerie silence; what would happen if they advanced now against wherever the government was, assuming the government had gotten out of Washington.  Was the President even alive?  Wilhelm had voted for the other guy, but the President was the President; was he somewhere, trying to coordinate the war, or was he lying dead somewhere in the ruins of Washington?  It wasn’t the kind of question he dared ask the aliens.

He rubbed against Carola, trying to comfort her; they both needed that little touch.

The alien space elevator rose in front of them as they walked closer, a massive shape, built on the ground and reaching high up into space.  It looked far too thin to be real, like something out of a fever dream; he couldn’t imagine it being more than a view inches in diameter, even though cold logic suggested that it had to be much bigger.  It glittered a kind of trellis pattern towards him; was it a fence leading up to space, instead of a simple cable?

Carola understood first.  “You’re taking us up to space?”

“That is correct,” Yehaka said.  He had almost missed the fact that the female Oghaldzon had followed them and their escort.  “Your presence is required on one of the starships.”

“I don’t want to go into space,” Carola said, starting to inch backwards from the guards.  Wilhelm tried to reach for her and almost toppled over; walking was harder than it seemed with one’s hands tied.  “I don’t want to leave my family…”

“There will be time to talk to them later,” Yehaka said.  Wilhelm privately doubted it, not out of any sense that the aliens were malicious creatures, but because they would almost certainly not understand the requirement.  Alien biology was still a closed book to them, but they had picked up enough to know that it was very different from human biology.  “However, you must move.”

“Come on,” Wilhelm said, as encouragingly as he could.  He understood her concern, and yet…part of him was fascinated with the concept of taking a ride on the space elevator.  “We’ll be together, won’t we?”

The aliens marched them into another Aztec-like building, right under the cable itself; they passed through massive corridors and finally reached a large craft, sitting in the centre of the room.  It almost reminded him of an oddly-shaped aircraft…and then he understood; he was looking at a capsule for travelling up the space elevator.  The aliens marched them in and ordered them to sit against one of the sides; there was a moment of strange sensation from their bound hands, and then their hands were fixed to the side of the capsule.

Yehaka looked down at them.  “Do you wish to see out as the capsule rises?”

“Yes,” Wilhelm said, quickly.  Yehaka touched a control and a side of the capsule went transparent, revealing the dull metal of the room.  The guards spread out, watching them carefully; there was a moment’s pause as the door hissed closed, and then the capsule moved along a sliding tube, almost like an underground station, until it reached the base of the cable.  Up close, it was a wonderful sight; the cable was a line of silver, reaching down from heaven to touch the surface of the Earth.  Wilhelm almost forgave the Oghaldzon everything, just for what he was seeing; it was fantastic…

Carola had a more important question.  It was a question that Wilhelm had been trying to avoid thinking about.  “How does it stay on?”

“Magnetic field,” Yehaka said.  The alien had sat down, horse-like, and seemed unconcerned by the imminent event.  It was as if riding into space was a perfectly normal event for her, something that she did every day of the year…which she might  do, at that.  There were spacers who spent more time in space than they did on the ground, but the sheer costs of launching people into space had ensured that large populations had been encouraged to remain in space.  “There are only a few seconds…”

The capsule seemed to leap into the air.  It passed out of the building and up the cable at a speed much faster than anything Wilhelm had imagined; he barely had time to examine the ground as the capsule rose, revealing the ruins of the cities below, the extent of the devastation caused by the tidal waves, and the alien settlements on the surface of Earth.  Detail faded rapidly as the capsule kept rising; he stared, with all the enthusiasm of a teenager who had just seen his first bare breast, as the curve of the Earth came into view, the capsule seeming to slow as it rose higher and higher.  Other capsules, moving far too fast to be seen as more than a streak of light, flashed past, heading down towards the surface of Earth.  The sight was so impressive that he forgot to be scared.

Time seemed to pass quickly; his body insisted that they had been sitting in the uncomfortable position for hours, but he was sure, because of the speed of the journey, that it only took minutes at most.  He glanced up as something came into view, a massive spinning shape, not unlike Orbit One – which had been destroyed, or captured, he assumed – hanging above his head…and it was falling, they were going to be crushed under the weight of a space station…

His sudden attack of panic faded as logic and reason took control.  The space station had to be right at the end of the cable; the station already seemed to be slowing as it plunged towards them – an optical illusion, he knew; they were rising towards it – and a hatch was opening for the capsule.  Another capsule fell out of the space station, flashing down towards the surface of the Earth; he barely had time to notice it before it was gone.  The space station became a black maw…which became a grey room, surrounding them.  He realised, with a shock of surprise, that there had been no sense of acceleration at all.

“Welcome to the support structure,” Yehaka said.  One of their guards did something and Wilhelm found himself bobbling into the air, his stomach turning as he realised that there was no longer any gravity.  The aliens didn’t seem to care; one of the guards caught hold of him and pulled him through the air and out into the space station, another pulled Carola along as if they were just packages.  Other aliens, clumping by on magnetic boots, seemed to turn to look at them as they passed; they might never have seen a human before, let alone had a chance to get used to a human presence.  “You won’t be staying long.”

Wilhelm looked around frantically as the aliens pulled them though corridors that seemed depressingly mundane; the only trace of the strange was the presence of the aliens themselves.  They reached a second capsule and he wondered if they were going back to Earth, before the capsule launched itself into space, gliding towards another spacecraft – no, he corrected himself, a starship – as if it was the easiest thing in the universe.  The starship itself was awesome; it was massive, a spinning mixture of rings and a long tube reaching out towards the planet below.  It grew closer, and closer…and then they were docking at the port at one end of the tube.

Despite himself, he was starting to suffer from information overload; there was just too much to see.  Carola wasn't doing much better; as more aliens appeared to look at them, she pressed herself against him, looking more aware of her own nakedness than she had been after the first few days in the camp.  Their escort marched them past the new aliens, and then into yet another capsule, which spun through a series of tubes; their escort pulled them down against the floor of the capsule, moments before gravity suddenly returned and pushed down on them.  It was Earth-standard, as far as Wilhelm could tell, but it was a shock after being in zero-gravity for so long…and he had never been in space before, not even a holiday on the moon.  Now, he was on an alien starship…

“Welcome onboard the Habitat Thirty,” Yehaka said.  They walked through yet more corridors…and then out into the open air.  He almost panicked again, before realising that they were in a habitat ring; the region was strange, dim to human eyes, but full of life.  He could almost sense life moving in the foliage.  “It will be your home for the foreseeable future.”

“Our home?”  Wilhelm asked.  Yehaka seemed almost to nod, a human mannerism that looked very strange on her great domed head as she bowed it slightly.  “Why have you brought us here?”

“You will become the first humans to be integrated with Oghaldzon society,” Yehaka said.  “As I have taught you, you will teach me, and you will become part of the life on this ship.”  The guards removed the handcuffs and faded away, leaving the two humans alone with Yehaka, rubbing their hands and staring at her.  “Your children will become part of the united society.”

Carola stared at her.  “You are going to raise our children?”

“We – you and I - will raise your children and ours together,” Yehaka said.  “In a hundred of your years, there will be a united society of humans and Oghaldzon, living together in peace and harmony.  For the future of both races, you must assist us.”

Chapter Forty-Five: The Face of the Enemy

United States National Command Centre, USA

America was dying.

The President could see it all, though the reports coming in to the National Command Centre; he could see his country dying.  America had once been a small group of states, cast adrift on the global stage after the War of Independence; a year ago, it had reached from the very tip of Argentina to Alaska.  Now…now, the President wasn’t sure at all just how long America could survive, even without the presence of the aliens in orbit and the ever-present threat of more asteroids crashing down onto the planet below.  The entire system was slowly breaking apart.

The failure to destroy the alien encampment had only hastened the decline and fall of America.  The aliens hadn’t bombarded indiscriminately, but that almost made it worse; each of the KEW weapons they dropped from orbit fell precisely on a target that added to the growing chaos.  Bridges, dams, interstates, canals…the growing breakdown of transport only meant that the United States was becoming slowly cut up into dozens of separate sections, not all of them capable of survival.  They could feed the population, through the miracle of algae farms and the tasteless food that they produced, but there were so many refugees that the President almost despaired of putting the country back on its feet.  In some places, the megadeath figures were terrifying; Panama and the surrounding states that had once been part of Latin America had been almost exterminated by the tidal waves and the resulting chaos.  Diseases that no human had suffered from for years had made a reappearance…and medical services were pushed to the limit.

It just didn’t seem fair, the President thought coldly; they had been making real progress.  The Wrecker War was slowly being won, the former despotic or corrupt or both states of Latin and South America – with the exception of Brazil – had been brought into the United States and had boomed, once the constraining hands had been knocked away or bought off or simply lynched by their own people during the massive economic collapse that had followed the destruction of New York.  They’d taken space itself, they had started to use clean and safe methods of energy production, they had made very real progress on ensuring that there would never be a Great Power War…

And the aliens had smashed it all.  The President knew that the loss of the moon meant, whatever else happened, that there would be an energy crisis for at least a decade, unless the mines that had been designed to orbit Jupiter and Saturn managed to make up the shortfall…and that, of course, depended on the aliens allowing the supplies through to Earth.  It had become a question of which of the remaining Great Powers would surrender first; the Caliphate, Europe, the Commonwealth…ever Russia or America?  The alien offer might even be sincere; they would exercise a degree of limited control, in exchange for energy and support in recovering from the disasters and the following war.  The President wondered, in a depressed mood, if the aliens had hit upon the way to actually win without taking massive losses; which state would surrender first?

He gazed down at the strategic map, not really seeing it; his mind was elsewhere.  The aliens would be across the Suez soon; they would meet the Israelis and the remaining Caliphate forces there, Muslims and Jews fighting together against the common foe.  They would take Moscow soon; Paris had fallen in the week following the desperate battle to destroy the space elevators.  India was in complete chaos; his last talk with the Commonwealth’s current spokesman had warned that the Commonwealth was on the verge of breaking apart under the strains of the war.  Mutual support on such a scale had never been considered as being necessary…

The aliens were pushing supplies into the Occupied Zone in America.  It wouldn’t be long, according to the predictions, before they started to advance, either north or south…or even west.  The Generals weren’t confident; the losses in the Battle of the Elevator had been serious enough to make it hard to hold any kind of line against the aliens, let alone bring up reinforcements.  How long would it be before the aliens put a knife to America’s throat?  The results of a more…ruthless approach to orbital bombardment didn’t bear thinking about.

There was a chime at the door.  “Mr President,” Captain Schaefer said, “General Denny and Doctor Laura Bryophyte are here for their appointment.”

The President nodded to himself.  Captain Schaefer had more or less taken over the role of both bodyguard – almost useless within the National Command Centre – and secretary, replacing his old personal assistant.  Clayton Scannell had died somewhere in Washington.  The remainder of the Tomb Guards had insisted on returning to the front lines; the President had shaken their hands as they left, wishing them luck and good hunting.  One of them had distinguished himself at underground warfare against the aliens, although God alone knew how long that would hold out.  The more aliens who came down and became used to operating in such conditions, the harder it became to maintain partisan warfare against them.  

“Thank you,” he said.  He found nothing touching in Captain Schaefer’s behaviour; at least he didn’t try to mother him like some of the Secret Service agents had tried.  “Please show them both in.”

General William Denny looked…tired; he’d been trying to coordinate a defensive line that would have half a chance of stopping the aliens when they finally decided they’d massed enough firepower and came charging out of the Occupied Zone.  Doctor Laura Bryophyte looked fresher; the President took in her dark skin, youthful appearance, and realised that she, at least, could sleep at night.  She was pretty enough, but her eyes glittered with intelligence and a certain excitement; the President realised that she loved her job.  He envied her.

“Mr President,” Denny said.  His voice was just as tired as his face.  “Doctor Bryophyte has been conducting the preliminary research on the captured aliens and their society.”

The President vaguely remembered her now; she had been a specialist who had been tagged for deployment to a research team back when they thought that the aliens would almost certainly be friendly.  She had been lucky not to be on the Welcome Fleet, although she probably had been unhappy, if not furious, at the time.  No one on Earth knew much about alien life, with the exception of a handful of microscopic life forms found on Titan; Laura had been young enough not to have preconceived notions, old enough to know what the human race did know.

“Thank you, Doctor,” he said.  He’d been curious about the captured aliens since they had been taken into custody.  “Please, I would be delighted to hear what you have found out about the enemy.”

Laura pulled a secured datachip out of her pocket and slipped it into the processor on the President’s desk, slipping through the security screens and protocols with every evidence of impatience.  The President waited as patiently as he could; much of the information would probably be declassified eventually, but they would have to be careful about disseminating it.  If the aliens realised that they had a prisoner – and there would be no other way of finding out such information – their reaction might not be pleasant.

“The face of the enemy,” Laura said, as an image of an Oghaldzon appeared in front of them.  The President studied it with interest; it was the first time he had seen an alien naked, without the armour they wore, and he found himself looking to see if the aliens had genitals.  He couldn’t see anything obvious; the grey-black creature seemed to be totally sexless.  The first image vanished, to be replaced by a second Oghaldzon; this one had a crest rising up from the grey back.  “Mr President; these are the only two prisoners known to be in human hands.”

She paused.  “We subjected the aliens to all kinds of tests, ranging from simple x-rays to analysis of their sheddings, excrement and some limited samples taken directly from their bodies, including blood,” she said.  “As far as we can tell, their biochemistry is different enough from ours that there is no chance of either disease spreading to us, or inter-fertility.  The latter was not a surprise; a handful of attempts to crossbreed humans with animals, creatures much closer to us than the Oghaldzon, have all failed.  We are fortunate that their wounds were limited; if either of them had been seriously injured, we would have almost certainly killed them while trying to heal them.

“We have one male Oghaldzon; one female Oghaldzon,” she said.  “The only real difference between the sexes is the crest” – she pointed a finger at the image – “which we believe is used to suck sperm cells out of the air and fertilise the female’s eggs.  They are far less…diverse in internal structure than we are; if you will pardon the comment, my internal make up is very different from yours, particularly my reproductive systems.  The Oghaldzon…seem to have much less of their bodies devoted to reproduction; from what we have been able to ascertain, talking to them, they just don’t think about sex the way we do.  They don’t seem to think about it at all; the male expressed little interest in the female – sexually, I mean.  They are clearly friends and know each other, but there’s no sign of any sexual tension or intimacy on such a level; we believe, now, that they mate more like frogs.  The male releases his sperm into the air; the female, perhaps later, sucks it out of the air and uses it to fertilise herself.  This almost certainly has an effect on their development, but as yet we’re not prepared to speculate on how this may have affected their upbringing.”

“The female might get pregnant,” Denny observed.  “Have you attempted to see if she will get pregnant?”

“We don’t know enough to breed them,” Laura said.  “We did ask them and they exhibit almost no interest in their children; I had the distant impression that they don’t really care about children, certainly not at more than an abstract level.  We do hope that we will see the female becoming pregnant, but…”

She shrugged.  “Apart from their sexual organs, or lack thereof, their internal structure is a little confusing,” she said.  “They have no less than eleven stomachs – they eat some of our food, although they are not keen on some meats – and they seem to be pretty tough creatures.  Note that the eyes are actually somewhat vestigial; their sonar would probably have handled most of their seeing back on their homeworld, while the development of space technology probably ensured that their eyes got a new lease of life.  Their sonar is actually quite fascinating; the signals are phase-shifted in ways we are unable to duplicate, but will allow them to literally peer inside each other and see how they work.  The aliens we have captured know a great deal about their own biology; I suspect that their version of playing doctor is peeking inside one another and working out how their bodies work.  I have the impression that medical science is one branch that that are much more advanced than we are, although naturally Oghaldzon medicine would probably be fatal to humanity and vice versa.

“The six gripping hands are individually much weaker than any human hand,” she said.  “Their dexterity is actually less than a human might achieve with four fingers and a thumb, but by using two or more hands together, they meet and exceed human norms.  Their weapons are generally lighter than our own; I suspect that it is more or less impossible for them to use our weapons, and we might have difficulty using theirs.  Just how this will work out in the long run…their hand-eye – or sonar, in this case – coordination is naturally better than ours.”

The President listened as she continued.  Part of him was fascinated; part of him wanted to know if there was anything they could use as a weapon against them.  He wanted to ask her directly, but he held his tongue; as long as she was discoursing on a subject that fascinated her, she might well cover a topic he wanted to know more about.  He knew little about alien life forms, but perhaps she knew enough to help him find a way to defeat them.

“There are some possibilities,” she concluded.  “It might be possible to generate noise on their sonar wavelengths to blind them, although the phase-shifting would make it difficult for the system to find and permanently blind them.  They found the loud music maddening, by the way; some of the aliens were apparently on the verge of madness by the time they were killed, or in the case of our captives, captured.  They are both horrified at the thought of shooting prisoners out of hand; they believe that it happened because individual Oghaldzon were driven mad by the racket and higher authority was unable to intervene in time.”

“Not bloody likely,” Denny muttered.  “How do we know that they’re telling the truth?”

“We don’t,” Laura admitted.  She paused.  “We put them both through intelligence tests; they’re at roughly the same level as an above-average human, although I must warn you that the tests were designed for humans and might be misleading.  As the General’s request” – she nodded at Denny – “we concentrated on trying to learn about how their society functioned and exactly what tactical or strategic knowledge the aliens might possess, particularly something that might be useful before the aliens resume their advance.  We found very little.”

The President leaned forward.  “They’re not talking?”

“They don’t know that much about the overall plan,” Laura said grimly.  “We asked them why they had come and they said that the Oghaldzon had been intercepting human broadcasts for years, and they decided that they didn’t like the thought of sharing the galaxy with us – apparently, television was not the best ambassador we could have picked to the Oghaldzon.  To them, humans are dangerously unpredictable and irresponsible creatures, with no concept of absolute truth, honesty, or decency.  There’s no way to know just what they picked up from their listening watch, but they were certainly terrified when they realised that we were probing into space and put the fleet together to visit Earth and…civilise us.”

Denny barked a harsh laugh.  “They – the creatures who dropped a handful of asteroids on Earth – are going to civilise us?”

Laura nodded once.  “They – the captives – believe that the asteroids were an accident,” she said.  “The Oghaldzon apparently believed that we would have rigged the asteroids to blow themselves up if there was even a chance that they would fall down and hit the planet.  I must admit; there is some evidence that one of the asteroid was blown apart by an Oghaldzon warhead, which does add some proof to their claim.

“What we have not been able to find from them is any clues as to the location of their homeworld, or how some of their technology works,” she concluded.  “Their homeworld must be an odd place by their descriptions, but none of it seems to make any sense; I have the impression that they literally don’t know much about how the system goes together, or that they have been kept in ignorance by their leaders.  It’s quite possible, of course, that we are asking the wrong questions; we did ask them about spectral class and star colours, but those would mean something different to an Oghaldzon.  As for their technology…

“They prefer lasers because chemical weapons hurt their sonar at close range,” she said.  “They don’t know how they work; their knowledge is limited to stripping down the weapons and ensuring that the parts are all working properly, with no knowledge beyond that.  It makes sense, I guess; what they don’t know, they can’t tell, even under torture.  We haven’t hurt them, of course; the CIA interrogation specialist concluded that they would be unable to inflict pain without risking killing them.”

“And the other aliens might object to such treatment,” the President said.  The restrictions on torture might have been relaxed during the Wrecker War, but the Wreckers hadn’t hesitated to maim, rape, torture or kill American servicemen and women who fell into their hands.  “There is to be no rigorous interrogation of the aliens, understand?”

“Yes, Mr President,” Laura said.  She didn’t sound unhappy, the President noted; he found that rather a relief.  “They have been quite happy to answer questions, but there are some matters in which they are either ignorant or unwilling to discuss with us.”

“I would believe that,” Denny admitted.  “There are so many components that fit into a modern tank that we don’t expect the tank crew to know everything, just what they will need to perform basic repairs and keep the tank running as long as possible.”

The President nodded.  “I see,” he said.  “This leads to one final question; what do they want from us?”

Laura hesitated.  “At best, they want to civilise us, which would mean bringing us into their society, at first as a lowly group and then as equals,” she said.  “Their history seems to have quite a few such events built in; the losers in a way become part of the winning...tribe.  At worst, they would want to contain us permanently; they don’t like the idea of genocide, but if worst comes to the worst, they might decide that it’s a case of us or them, and in that case…”

She didn’t finish the sentence.

“The really bad news,” she concluded, “is that we now know how many of the Oghaldzon came to Earth.”  She paused, just long enough for the President’s blood to run cold.  “The captives claim that two billion Oghaldzon came to join the fleet.”

Chapter Forty-Six: Action Stations!

Freeport One, Asteroid Belt

“I’m sorry,” Kyle Short said.  “Did you say two billion?”

Lieutenant Cindy Short nodded once, her face, for once, set not in the challenging glower she set upon everyone she met, but a greyish colour of stunned surprise.  Jake Ellsworth looked at her and very carefully said nothing; he had a great deal of respect for Cindy’s technical and tactical skills, but much less for her personal skills.  She seemed to think that the correct way to handle Rockrats – or indeed anyone – was to bark orders; in some cases, she would be right, but not when they were trying desperately to build a force that could fight the aliens.  Trying to convince Rockrats to go in the same direction was like trying to herd cats, with the additional disadvantage that the Rockrats could – and did – answer back.

He decided to speak before the conversation became any more explosive.  “How did you find that out?”

Cindy’s face twisted sharply.  “We have a stealth platform established near Earth, close enough for a laser beam to be targeted on it – all completely undetectable, of course,” she said.  “We have access to what little information has been gathered on the forces down on the planet, as well as what our agents have been able to access on the moon.  The report didn’t go into many details, but they must have captured and interrogated a few aliens after the offensive.”

Ellsworth considered the implications of the vast numbers.  In the short term, nothing changed; the plan to defeat the aliens in space would proceed regardless of how many aliens there were, because unless they had somehow hidden additional ships, they would still have very definite figures on what they could deploy against the human forces.  In the long term, it might change everything; Rockrats wouldn’t hesitate to stamp on alien military forces, but two billion aliens almost certainly meant that some of them would be civilians.

“They’re going to be around after the war concludes,” he said.  He didn’t see the aliens succeeding in wiping the human race out of space, although they could probably give it the old college try; it would take thousands of years to visit and destroy every asteroid that might carry a human population within its rocky shield.  They didn’t have to do that much; if they forced the human race to keep hiding, they might win a victory on points.  “What the hell are we going to do with them?”

Short shrugged.  “It may be more important that they have brought a large infrastructure along with them,” he said.  “What happens if they have Rockrats of their own?  They might decide to come and set up mining stations of their own, out here.”

“If they do, we resist them,” Cindy said, firmly.  Ellsworth refrained from pointing out that she had the least authority of the three of them…and even their authority rested on their mandate from the Rockrats.  If Short’s position was to be openly challenged, he might lose his post, or at the very least be forced to engage in an open discussion of their plans…plans that might lead to the aliens acting against them.  “You have always resisted the attempts of others to set up mining stations in the belt.”

“That is not…precisely accurate,” Short said.  “We have absorbed hundreds of spacers from the different Great Powers who have decided that joining us is a better option than remaining slaves to The Man.  We have offered a better life for the highly-trained and experienced people who are then sent out here and exploited by corporations and governments.  We have very rarely resorted to naked force and only then against a handful of rogue Rockrats and Corporate Rats who have endangered other people.  There is no guarantee that we could absorb aliens as well.”

Ellsworth had been thinking about it.  “If they do, we will have to engage them,” he said.  It was ironic; the Rockrats had been on the verge of forming their own civilisation, something that worried him…and Ian.  The bartender had discussed the matter at some length; the source of the Rockrat culture lay in the fact that the Rockrats could not afford to develop a sophisticated culture, something that could cost lives and ships.  The few laws they had covered matters such as personal rights and salvage laws; they didn’t touch upon anything else.  If the culture grew bigger, they would need more laws, and more laws, and the simplicity would be gone.  Everyone knew where they stood with Kyle Short; lawyers, a product of a sophisticated culture, would ensure that no one knew where they stood.

He shook his head.  “There would be no choice about it,” he continued.  “Our only hope is to build up the fleet here, in secrecy, and if they start probing through this area of space, they will realise what we’re doing and then they’ll try to stamp on us.”

“They might succeed,” Cindy said.  “Your men are good, but they lack spit and polish.”

“You don’t need spit and polish to become a Rockrat,” Ellsworth said.  “You need courage, experience, knowledge and a certain amount of bloody-mindedness.  You don’t need to be…haughty, or racist, or unpleasant, but you need to be able to cooperate with some people on a minimal level.”

He smiled.  The belt might not have been the haven for arse-bandits that the gutter press claimed, but there was certainly a fair amount of interracial breeding…if that term could be used any longer, with very real aliens around.  His own heritage was a strange mixture; ever since refugee women had been invited to the belt to marry Rockrats, the belt had been the most equal-opportunity place in the solar system, not least because it was so hard to work out what someone wanted to discriminate against.  The only people who were discriminated against in the belt were the incompetents, those who survived their encounter with Mother Nature, red of tooth and claw.  No one would condemn him for rejecting known incompetents for the fleet; one of the rejected Rockrats had gone out in a small ship and gotten himself killed, somehow.

“I know that,” Cindy said.  “The question is simple; how long will it take to complete the fleet?”

“Roughly another month,” Ellsworth said.  He ran the projections daily, basing them on the information Cindy had provided from her mysterious base…which couldn’t be that far from Freeport One, not if they weren’t using fusion drives.  He had set up a private observation program of his own, looking in the general direction he suspected Area 51 to be based…although so far he had found nothing.  It was quite easy to hide things in the belt with a little effort.  “That should give us enough firepower to be fairly confident of a victory.”

“Good,” Short said.  He leaned forward.  “What about the crewmen?”

Ellsworth winced.  There was an undertone of deep meaning in his voice.  “They don’t know the source of the warships, not yet,” he said.  “They have guessed that they are being produced by the industrial plants that were launched out here by the Great Powers, but so far they don’t know anything about Area 51.  Once they do find out…”

“They won’t be happy,” Short said.  “I will take all of the blame on myself.”

He paused.  “Are you still here?”

“Come on,” Ellsworth said, to Cindy.  The blatant hint had been easy to understand; Short would be contemplating the end of his career, perhaps even the end of his existence as a Rockrat.  His people would forgive him a great deal, but they would never forgive him lying to them, whatever the reason.  “I owe you a drink.”

Ian waved to them as they entered the bar, passing them both a drink without being asked.  Cindy pursed her lips as she glazed around the bar; Ellsworth could almost read her thoughts.  The women who sold their bodies to live, the crewmen who spent most of their time on the asteroid alternating between the bar and the brothel, the DOWN WITH EARTH poster that someone had posted up on one wall…she didn’t approve.  A set of nude photographs of a Chinese girl had been placed on the notice board; the girl was literally selling herself to a Rockrat who was prepared to take care of her, and her children.  Cindy really didn’t approve…

“That poor girl,” she said, her voice, for once, compassionate.  “Does she really hope to find a sugar daddy out here?”

“There’s little room for the weak out here,” Ellsworth said softly.  There were times when he realised just how cold the belt could be; a hard environment had bred hard people.  “She would have come here as one of the Mail Order Brides, met a Rockrat she thought she could live with, had his children, cooked his meals…and then the bastard died on her.  She’s being honest, and there will always be room for a permanent girl in someone’s life…”

Cindy scowled at him.  “Never thought about it yourself?”

“I have considered it,” Ellsworth admitted.  “It’s not like it was fifty-odd years ago, back when the entire practice began; back then, the Rockrats had problems because there were no whores, just wives.  Some women put out for other men with their husband’s consent; others broke the martial agreement and found themselves dumped by their husbands.  We can’t really make life easier for people out here; we can feed her – we can feed the entire population – without problems, almost for free, but anything past that?  Not without committing more resources than anyone would feel comfortable with to taking care of the helpless.”

“Barbaric,” Cindy commented.  Ellsworth supposed she was right, at least to some degree, but it was life.  “What’s going to happen to her?”

“If she finds a man, she’ll marry him,” Ellsworth said.  “If not…”

“Fat chance,” Cindy interrupted.  She smiled a droll twisted smile.  “She’s got…four squalling children, three boys and a girl.  Who’s going to want her?”

Ellsworth laughed.  “This is the belt,” he reminded her.  “Social mores are different here.  Those children will spend time learning with their new father and working with him; they may even remain with his ship permanently as new Rockrats.  You’d be surprised just how many families there are out here, on their own ships and earning money for the entire family.”  He paused to study the picture, noting the firm breasts and neat, pretty face.  “The deal might be quite…advantageous.”

He paused, taking a moment to lecture her; he knew it would get on her nerves.  “It’s a question of economics and everyone on the belt knows in their bones how economics work on such a scale,” he said.  “On Earth, children like that are a drain on someone’s finances that can never be repaid, particularly, I might add, as they are a reminder that someone else fucked your wife.  Here, children are an asset to whoever has them, and they will certainly take up an apprenticeship with the new father, whoever he is.”

“Heartless,” Cindy said.  There was a note of very real disgust in her voice.  “Is there no room for love in the belt?”

Ellsworth shook his head.  “Not really, no,” he said.  He spoke without regret.  “What about you?  What happened to your family anyway?”

Cindy’s face twisted.  “There’s not much to the story,” she said, simply.  “They had a falling out around forty years ago and my branch of the family moved back to New Jamestown on the moon.  There really is nothing else.”

Ellsworth didn’t believe her, but knew better than to pry any further; privacy was respected on the belt.  Moving back to the moon, particularly back then, would have cost a great deal of money, more, perhaps, than a large Rockrat family could afford.  If something had happened that had caused them to go to such an expense, what could it have been?  If they hadn’t paid for it, then who had…and why?

He dismissed it with a shake of his head.  He would probably never find out.  

Cindy glanced down at her watch.  “There’s four hours to go until the next exercise,” she said.  She looked up at him, her face as inscrutable as a cat’s face.  “What do you want to do until then?”

Ellsworth leered at her, trying to hide his thoughts.  “Would you like to jump into bed with me?”

Cindy drew back her fist for a mock blow.  “Not unless you save my life,” she said.  Her voice became mocking and mischievous.  “And, until then, not fuck you.”

Ellsworth laughed at the pun.  “You’d fit in well here,” he said.  The first female Rockrats had been as tough as nails as well, not least because some of them had been crammed in with horny and sweaty males far from any symbol of law and order.  “You have just the right attitude.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Cindy said.  She finished her drink in one long unladylike swallow.  “I’m going to get some rest, Jake; I suggest that you do the same.”

She stood up and walked out of the bar, her swaying walk an incitement to riot.  “She’s putting it on for you,” Ian said, materialising behind him somehow.  The bartender’s face was carefully bland.  “That’s one interesting lady.”

“Yes,” Ellsworth agreed, feeling wistful for the first time in years.  He couldn’t remember feeling this way during his last romance, years ago.  “That she is indeed.”

***
The days became a week, and then two weeks, mostly spent drilling on the new ships and the simulators, which had been supplied directly from Area 51.  The handful of hackers among the Rockrats had reported that the systems were sealed with some of the most tricky and fiendish encryption they’d encountered; the source code alone seemed almost impenetrable.  Ellsworth hadn’t been surprised; there were so few programs that were really restricted to only a few users that they were almost certain to be protected with the most powerful security that the designer could invent.  The USSF wouldn’t want Rockrats powering around the belt with their latest designs…although that particular cat had already got out of the bag.  Enough Rockrats had studied the USSF ships, even under the impression that they had been designed by other Rockrats, to incorporate most of their design improvements in their own designs.

But that, Ellsworth reflected, was how the belt worked.  Ideas, particularly ideas that could save lives or maximise the potential of the belt’s limited manpower, were always stolen and duplicated.  It was just a reflection of how the belt had become more pragmatic than Earth, or even the moon; when it was possible to produce a million knock-off copies, perfect in every detail, of an item, it lost its value.  Singers, movie stars and producers had all discovered that their products were duplicated and placed for free on the datanet; the smart ones had adapted and concentrated on live performances and more dues for the actors or singers.  The stupid ones had gone the way of the dinosaurs.  It wouldn’t be that long before technology changed the shape of the belt, again, but until then, the Rockrats would survive and adapt.  Those who didn’t adapt tended to fall by the wayside.

He watched as a group of crewmen went through a simulation, working together as a team, despite Cindy’s objections.  Rockrats could work together and often did; the problem was in convincing them that they had to work together and that there was no room for democracy on a warship.  Most of the convincing had already been done when the Welcome Fleet had been blown out of space; the only task had been to train them to actually fight as a group, and then as a fleet, rather than as individual uses.  The largest Rockrat force, before the aliens had arrived, had been five ships; the USSF was talking about over three hundred warships in total.  It was chaotic; he could only hope that they would work out all the kinks before the aliens decided to come knocking.

The swarm of missiles was closing in rapidly on the simulated ship, simulated point defence working busily to try to knock all the missiles down before it was too late.  Cindy had told him that the missiles in the simulators were actually 30% faster and more dangerous than the missiles the Oghaldzon had actually deployed; if the pilots could live though that, or at least achieve a good kill ratio, they would have a better than even chance against the aliens.  Ellsworth hoped she was right; training was a persistent problem, not least because everyone wanted their simulated equipment to be perfect, not damaged…or for them to have no handicaps during training.  The Rockrats understood the value of training and experience, but sometimes they just took gambles, secure in the knowledge that only their lives rested upon their decisions.  A USSF officer had no such luxury.

His communicator buzzed.  “Jake, its Kyle,” Short’s voice said.  There was a grim note in his voice.  “Can you come to my office, at once?”

Now what have I done?  Ellsworth thought dryly.  He left the simulators and walked quickly through the corridors, wondering what he was being called for, even as he passed though the security door and entered the office of the Chairman.  Kyle Short didn’t look up at him as he passed; he was studying a display that had formed in front of him, a hologram displaying a series of tactical icons.  Cindy was sitting next to him; her expression was, if anything, full of dark anticipation.

“We have a problem,” Short said.  He tapped the display and it expanded rapidly.  A line of icons were heading out from Earth.  He traced the line mentally; that couldn’t be right, surely?  “The enemy have decided to come knocking.  They’re heading directly towards Freeport One.”

Ellsworth felt his blood run cold.

Chapter Forty-Seven: Action Stations, Take Two

Seeker for Truth, Earth Orbit

“They’re domesticating us!”

Samra said nothing as Reynolds spoke, his body quivering with all the energy of a man who wanted – desperately – to pace backwards and forwards, but that was impossible in zero-gravity.  Her body ached, as it had after they had suddenly been reintroduced to gravity in the habitation starship, but she pushed the pain aside; there was a more important problem for her to deal with.  She didn’t understand why the aliens – the Oghaldzon – hadn’t simply disposed of Reynolds by now, but there was no point in taking chances.  They had to consider him dangerous; his miraculous survival in vacuum had to have warned them that there was something special about him.

And, just like a man, he wanted to find a way of hitting back at the Oghaldzon.

“You heard what they were saying on that space station,” Reynolds continued, for once heedless of possible microphones in their quarters.  The Oghaldzon had relented slightly, to the point where they had been given a larger apartment for their own, but they were still very definitely prisoners.  “They’ve started to bring people up from Earth!”

They’ve done more than that, Samra thought, but didn’t say.  She’d had a private conversation with Carola Eichwurzel, a girl-to-girl chat, and Carola had told her that she’d had period pains for the first time in ten years.  The thought made Samra wince; almost every girl on Earth used a contraceptive implant that had the additional benefit of reducing the menstrual cycle to almost nothing; now, there would be nothing to stop the girls from becoming pregnant.  She tried to remember the lessons she’d had to take, along with the other girls in her colony, on the implant, but could remember little; she cursed herself silently for spending too much time giggling at the pictures of male privates.  There would be a month’s grace, right?

They’d figured out, from Carola and her boyfriend, that they’d been on the Seeker for Truth around three months and the aliens had invaded Earth roughly two weeks after their capture, along with the dissection of the welcome fleet.  The pain refused to face; she liked Oolane, but her race had committed an atrocity against the entire human race, several atrocities.  The impact of the asteroids had chilled her; logically, if one of them had gone down in the Indian Ocean or even in parts of the Pacific, they would have created a tidal wave that would have wiped out the heartland of the Caliphate.  Samra had never been on haji, never visited Mecca; the thought of waves crashing over featureless sand and smashing everything in their path made her tremble with rage and helpless fury.  There was nothing they could do; how could they hope to do more than irritate the Oghaldzon enough to make them swat the pair of them like bugs?

“They want us to get used to them,” she said, trying to look on the bright side.  She had the grim feeling that the light at the end of the tunnel was an oncoming train.  They’d figured out just how the Oghaldzon mated; despite cold logic, both of them had taken to covering their mouths – and Samra her genitals – when alien sperm floated by in the air.  She’d seen some children – pre-sentient Oghaldzon – growing on Oolane’s back, before…they’d vanished one day, dropping off to make their own way in the spacecraft’s corridors and components.  The Oghaldzon didn’t seem to care about them, something Samra found very alien, but it terrified her.  What would they do to human children when they were born…without ever realising that they were doing anything even slightly objectionable?  “If we convince them that we can be trusted…”

“They attacked the Welcome Fleet,” Reynolds reminded her, as if she had needed the remainder.  “I can’t see them risking dealing with us from anything, but a position of strength now; the odds of some human trying to take a little revenge would be too high.  They keep asking us about how humans react to some situations, or how they would react; they’re trying to split the human race apart.”

Samra nodded grimly.  It wasn't as if the Oghaldzon were stupid, just alien; some human concepts made no sense to them.  They could have found a dozen little human factions, particularly in the more recidivist regions of Afghanistan, that would probably have signed up with them for a chance to practice barbarities on their fellow humans.  They weren’t interested; they wanted good governance and that was much harder, particularly if they wanted active collaboration as well.  If half of what Carola and her boyfriend had told them was true, there were parts of the world that were in a desperate state; they might agree to follow the Oghaldzon lead in exchange for fuel and support, maybe even some guarantees of future benefits.  It wouldn’t be easy – the entire pre-Caliphate history of the Middle East was littered with the remains of attempts to build a working system of good governance, or at least one that was loyal to a particular outside power – but the Oghaldzon were patient.  They had years to play with…

He turned on the shower and leaned closer to her.  It was odd, but the thought of being so close to a naked man had long since creased to trouble her; it was amazing what someone could get used to if they had no choice in the matter.  Reynolds had glanced at her from time to time, making her a little uncomfortable – she had had the impression, from Oolane, that the Oghaldzon males or females wouldn’t be…violated if someone touched them on their genitals without permission – but he hadn’t tried to force himself on her or even push her into making closer contact.  They had, technically, slept together, but they had never been intimate.

“Samra, we need to find something we can do,” he breathed in her ear, very quietly.  She hoped that the noise of the shower, the water streaming down at a rate of knots and being sucked out again at the bottom of the shower, would cover their words; they had had some problems learning to use the shower in the first few days.  The Oghaldzon liked to be as clean as humanity, but they didn’t seem to mind water drifting around in their spacecraft as if it owned the place; Samra would prefer not to be damp all the time.  “Can’t you think of anything?”

She leaned closer to his ear, feeling the muscles of his body under her hands.  “I don’t see that there’s anything we could do,” she said.  It came out huskier than she had intended; his proximity was causing her body to feel sensations she had ruthlessly suppressed for years.  “Do you have any way of getting out of this room?”

Reynolds nodded once.  “And then what?”  She said.  It was becoming harder to think as she breathed in his scent.  “What do we do then?”

“I don’t know,” Reynolds admitted.  She heard the fatalism in his voice and winced; it reminded her too much of some of the voices recorded years ago, just before the Wrecker War had intensified with the destruction of New York.  The young men, some of them not more than boys, had recorded chilling messages, messages that were an affront to Allah Himself, and then gone out and blown themselves up.  The unlucky ones had taken others, innocent lives, with them.  “We could find something vital and destroy it?”

Samra pulled him closer, desperately, no longer sure of her own feelings, of her own motives.  “There’s nothing on this ship that could destroy the entire fleet,” she said.  She was fairly certain that the Oghaldzon possessed no antimatter or anything comparable; nearly a hundred and fifty years since antimatter had been first studied by humanity, the human race had come no closer to producing more than minute amounts of it.  The Oghaldzon had shown no signs of having cracked the puzzle either.  “We’d be throwing away our lives, for nothing.”

Reynolds looked at her, right down her body; she didn’t pull away, or flinch.  “I just feel useless,” he admitted.  “We’re just marking time while the big decisions are made elsewhere…”

Samra pulled him to her completely and kissed him.  He kissed her back, hard, his body tensing with sudden desire, and then his hands were leaving trails of fire and light across her breasts and reaching further down towards her thighs, and then stroking her right in the middle of her secret place.  Her sudden rush of pure arousal surprised her; she found herself rolling over and falling back towards the sleeping mat as she felt his hardness pressing between her legs, and then slowly entering into her…

For the first time in her life, she gave herself up to a man.

She never regretted it.

***
“The vast majority of human couples have formed semi-permanent relationships,” Yehaka-Researcher-Earth said, as the images played in front of the three Researchers and the War Commander.  Dataka-War Commander-Fleet studied the writhing human bodies with dispassionate interest; the very concept of giving pleasure to a mate was something almost alien to the Oghaldzon.  A handful of perverts gained pleasure from playing with their sexual organs, but most Oghaldzon merely found such touching painful, although not uncomfortable in the sense that a young human would have found it.  “It suggests an endless search for stability, even to the point of…sexual relationships; this can be used to form the future of Human-Oghaldzon relations.”

“A useful thought, but one that remains long-term,” Dataka said.  He was as confident of eventual victory – or at least the stalemate of leaving much of the human race trapped on Earth – but the humans had proven to be a grimly capable opponent.  He dreaded to think what might have happened if the fleet had been delayed a further ten Grand Cycles; the humans might have destroyed them all before they arrived in Earth orbit.  As it was, it had been a close-run thing.  “In the short-term, what information have you managed to gather relating to the asteroid…civilisation?”

“It is a civilisation,” Takalak-Researcher-Seeker said.  “The numbers of humans on the asteroids seem way too small to maintain a civilisation, but every human source has agreed that the…Rockrats” – he stumbled over the slang term – “are a civilisation in their own right.  The history of human expansion into space shows that those who were born in space formed attachments, including sexual ones” – he nodded at the images playing in front of them, ignored by the Oghaldzon – “with other space-born humans, forming groups that owed no loyalty to the central powers.  We might term it as something like an idea-group splitting off from the main memeplexe, something that would be dangerous for us, particularly with such small groups.  The human larger memeplexes, however, do not seem to like the idea of tolerating smaller groups within the main memeplexe.”

Dataka clicked once in understanding.  The main Oghaldzon memeplexe was adaptable enough to accept a certain amount of inner debate, even to the point of smaller, autonomous groups forming and reaching the point where they almost presented a secondary nexus of authority, even though they were only subgroups of the main memeplexe.  The humans didn’t seem to tolerate the founding of such interest- and idea-based groups; the history of the human settlement of their moon consisted of such groups arising and being squashed by the main power.  The Oghaldzon would have accepted the formation of the subgroups; no Oghaldzon memeplexe could have handled the affairs of the subgroup from such a long distance.  The humans…

He shook his head.  “Are we to expect further attacks from the belt?”

“It is possible,” Takalak said.  “The surviving ship that attacked us and destroyed a mothership fled towards the belt.  The Rockrats are surprisingly individualistic, even for humans; they may intend to avenge the losses they must have suffered, economically, when we blockaded Earth.  Or maybe they just don’t like us.”

“There is another explanation,” Oolane suggested, somewhat hesitantly.  “The ship that launched the attack – the surviving ship, I should say – might not have intended to make contact with the main belt civilisation, such as it is, at all.  Not all of the human race would have planned to kill thousands of innocent civilians; they may not have known what they were aiming at, or perhaps they were heading towards a different base in the belt.  They may have a supply deport in the belt without any contact at all with the Rockrats.”

“We could not take that for granted,” Takalak snapped.  “The humans who attacked us certainly made us look like incompetents to the humans who are trying to decide which side they should be on.  There is also a great deal of industry in the belt…doing what?  If I know humans at all, they are building up their forces, either to face us or to ensure that we cannot interfere with their operations.”

“One would expect that some of them, at least, would be willing to come to terms with us,” Yehaka said.  Her crest fluttered through the air as she spoke, performing its function.  “We are controlling their access to sources of supplies from Earth and have a need for metals and some of their other resources to set up our own industries in position near Earth.  We could discuss a deal with them…”

“We have attempted to make deals with the Rockrats and the other humans out in the outer solar system,” Dataka reminded her.  “The dominant human memeplexe in the belt has apparently refused to talk to us, although a handful of stations belonging to various human…business interests have signalled that they might be willing to open discussions with us, provided that we helped them to regain contact with their bases on Earth or the moon.”

“They are not taking us seriously,” Takalak snapped.  He lifted his arms in a complex dance; frustration, mixed with a dispassion that surprised Dataka.  He had started to fear that Takalak was taking his work too seriously and becoming like a human.  “They would only be impressed by power…and we have displayed far too little of it.  We have to convince them that we are not to be trifled with.”

Oolane seemed to rear back slightly, rocking on her hindleg.  “How do you intend to convince them that we are not to be trifled with?”

“We establish a presence out there,” Takalak said.  “We have warships that are no longer needed in Earth orbit, now we have deployed additional orbital weapons platforms and sensor units to identify and destroy even the merest suspect item floating around in orbit.  We send a force into the heart of the Rockrat civilisation and emplace a garrison out there, if necessary using a demonstration of our power to destroy them to convince them that submission is a better alternative than death.”

Dataka kept his tone neutral, but his clicking sonar indicated his doubt.  “Our threat would be partly a bluff,” he said.  “Destroying every possible asteroid that could shelter a kernel of humans would take thousands of Grand Cycles.  They might just flee from us and head into the outer system.”

“Where they would be much less of a problem,” Takalak pointed out.  “If we can convince them to work for us, well and good.  If not, I would be much happier if we knew just what they were doing out there, perhaps even placing restrictions on what they can do out there.  For all we know, they’re building warships.”

“It is my place to be the voice of caution,” Dataka said.  His position as War Commander meant that he could not stake everything on a gamble.  “We would be leaving the motherships exposed if we sent the warships out to the belt.  We could not commit everything to the thrust.”  He considered.  There were a handful of ships that could be spared, rather than sending the entire fleet.  “Twenty of the smaller ships and one of the carriers would be the most we could send…”

Takalak reared forwards.  “War Commander,” he said, addressing Dataka by his title for the first time in Cycles, “we know that there can be no human warships out there in great enough numbers to break the blockade on Earth.  If they existed, they would have been deployed against us by now, perhaps even crushing us.  They have kept a handful of warships in orbit around Mars and Venus; even if they somehow managed to combine those ships, they could not break through the defences alone…”

“This is not a debate,” Dataka said, firmly.  The Oghaldzon who had served in the military had the right, and indeed the duty, to question his decisions; Takalak, who was a researcher, had no such right.  It had to be earned; the Oghaldzon would not place someone who was completely ignorant of how the military worked in command of the military.  Human sources suggested that that was exactly what the humans did, although Dataka suspected that that was a human joke; no race could survive for long with such a command arrangement.  “We will commit a force capable of carrying out the mission, or breaking contact and withdrawing if the humans prove to be more capable of resistance than we anticipate.”

He considered the matter for a long moment.  “I believe that I will offer command to Makra-Commander-Righteous Rage,” he said, remembering a young officer who had acquitted himself well during the conflict with the Welcome Fleet and then the engagement over Earth itself.  Do you have any objections?”

“An excellent choice,” Takalak said, choosing to ignore the dry tone in Dataka’s voice.  He could have protested before the Fleet Council, but that would have merely made him look stupid, even though the Council would have understood.  “I believe that he will ensure that the Rockrats will be brought to heel.”

Chapter Forty-Eight: The Battle of Freeport One, Take One

Near Freeport One, Asteroid Belt

Space was cold and silent.

It was a cliché, and an overused one, that in space no one could hear a scream.  The Rockrats knew the truth of that on a level that no other human group, with the possible exception of those who had colonised the Moon and the other bodies in the solar system, could understand.  And yet, in its own way, it wasn’t entirely accurate; with the right equipment, space became very noisy indeed.

The USS Lead Pipe floated, only a few tens of thousands of kilometres from Freeport One, its passive sensors listening carefully to the sound of space.  Seventeen other ships of the same design – the most advanced space warships humanity had ever produced – held position near it, in a formation that would have brought tears to the eyes of a drill instructor.  The Rockrats didn’t care about forming into a formation that would have looked good on the display; to them, appearance was nothing, compared to substance.

Jake Ellsworth, breveted as an American Commodore, sat in his acceleration couch and watched as the alien ships drew closer.  Freeport One had had a week to get used to the concept of twenty alien ships bearing down on them; a large percentage of the population had been evacuated to other asteroids, clearing the decks for the coming battle.  It had been an interesting development; Rockrats had worked together to support each other and idle mouths, the latter, at least, rarely supported beyond the production of cheap Algae-grown food.  It worried Kyle Short, who had privately confided to Ellsworth that the Rockrats Association would probably end up as a real government, with all the trappings that that implied.  Ellsworth didn’t think that it would be that bad, but change was afoot in the belt.  Who knew where it would end?

He shook his head and turned back to the display.  The alien ships – the Oghaldzon, he reminded himself; the belt had devoured all of the information forwarded to them from Earth – were currently invisible, but the display projected their most likely course and speed.  They hadn’t triggered their fusion drives since they had boosted out of Earth orbit and set course for Freeport One, moving fast enough to escape the influence of various celestial bodies; logically, they had to be somewhere within the sphere displayed by the display.  They would probably have altered course slightly, very slightly, using reaction gas drives, but they couldn’t have altered course that much without forcing themselves to undertake additional manoeuvres that would eat up their Helium-3…assuming that they used Helium-3.  The Oghaldzon had no supply deports in the belt; if they got real unlucky, they would run out of fuel at the wrong time and fly helplessly right out of the solar system.

“They’re going to have to bring their drives up at some point,” Cindy muttered, from the tactical console.  “If they don’t start braking now, they’re going to have to spend days decelerating just to get into engagement range of Freeport One, let alone the defence fleet.”

Ellsworth scowled.  The ships the Rockrats had adapted themselves for space warfare – and had proven themselves to be almost useless for that role – had been deployed near Freeport One, both to slow the enemy ships down a little and to confuse them.  He had wanted to keep every ship he had hidden in the vastness of space, but Cindy had pointed out – dryly – that if the aliens saw no resistance at all, they would become suspicious.  The tone of their messages had suggested that they expected trouble; no Rockrat would agree to stationing a garrison on Freeport One, at least not without having the metaphorical shit kicked out of him first.

It almost made him want to bring up his own active sensors.  A Rockrat knew that normally he or she could take a radar ping off a target if they needed to, whatever happened; a precise reading was almost a fixed requirement for any kind of space endeavour.  He didn’t dare trigger the Lead Pipe’s own sensors; it would have revealed their presence to the aliens, who would then have the chance to bring him to battle and destroy him on their own terms.  They’d drilled enough in the simulations to know what would happen if the enemy saw them too soon.

He cursed their ill luck under his breath.  There had been no time to summon more help from Area 51…even, part of his mind whispered, if the Americans had been willing to send the help.  Space was incomparably vast; there was no way in which help could arrive in time without revealing Area 51 and its location to the aliens, who would then have every incentive to mount a full-fledged attack into the belt.  He was more than a little surprised that they’d sent only a handful of ships, but he had to grudgingly admit that the two sides would be evenly matched.

The human race, now, knew a great deal about the Oghaldzon starships.  Half of them were massive motherships, containing, between them, around two billion Oghaldzon.  The other half of the force was composed of large warships; some of them had already broken up into smaller warships, others had remained intact and dangerous, still others had launched the landing craft into Earth’s atmosphere.  He could see the logic in their designs; the large carriers could transport the smaller warships into battle without having to put the Oghaldzon through the human experience of sharing a cramped sweaty spacecraft with nine other humans, close enough to feel homicidal urges very easily.  Cindy had told him that the USSF had considered such designs, although the only people whom such designs could have been realistically used against were the Rockrats.  A carrier would have provided the support that the smaller warships, like the Lead Pipe, would have lacked.

And the Oghaldzon, in their turn, knew a great deal about human technology.  It made him wonder; how much did they know or guess about the Lead Pipe and her sisters?  Did they know about the missiles, the guns, or the armour that should provide additional protection against Oghaldzon laser fire?  Did they know about the weaknesses of the design, about how a single hit in the wrong place would kill the ship, or did they merely intend to smoother the ships in nuclear fire?  A single nuke would ruin any spacecraft’s day.  Had they recovered any designs from the ruins of Washington?

His lips twitched.  There was no point in borrowing trouble.

“Missile separation,” Cindy snapped, her sharp voice cutting through the tension on the bridge – such as it was – like a knife.  “No, wait; I confirm the launch of one Oghaldzon drone.”

Ellsworth nodded grimly.  The aliens would not want to dive towards Freeport One without some idea of the defences; the alien drone was already beginning to emit active sensor pulses, some of them extremely complex and powerful, others indistinguishable from human technology.  He closed his eyes for a long moment as his own passive sensors began to pick up some responses from the alien sensors; the defence fleet, arrayed around Freeport One, was starting to become all too clear to their sensors.

“Contact Pat,” he said, referring to the commander of the defence fleet.  “I want that drone killed.”

“Confirm missile separation,” Cindy said, a minute later.  They’d used a tight-beam laser to signal the defence fleet.  The display lit up for a moment; there was no way that anyone could have missed the target of the alien drone, not when it was emitting so much in the way of signals.  The missile homed in on it and detonated, spraying a cloud of chaff into the drone’s path, which ran into it and exploded.  “Target destroyed.”

“Inform Pat that he can now bring up the fire control sensors on the surrounding platforms and engage the enemy at his discretion,” Ellsworth said, carefully.  The battle was already starting to take shape; move and countermove, each side jockeying for position.  The aliens were bringing up some of their own sensors now, probably sharing information through secure laser links themselves; his tracking display updated itself as some of the alien craft revealed their positions.  “Remember, we have to cover Freeport One itself.”

Cindy looked up and grinned, a touch of malice in her eye.  “Are you going to address the fleet?”

Ellsworth would have preferred to have avoided it, but there was really very little choice.  “Signal to all ships,” he said.  He’d tried to compose proper words, but in the end he had settled for a modification of a stirring speech from a television zone.  “Today we are here to defend our independence and the true way of life.  The corrupt and bloated culture of the Donkeys will not extend its fetid reach into our lands and if they do, we shall fight to the bloody end!  So there!”

He smiled as battle commenced in earnest.

***
Makra-Commander-Righteous Rage, positioned neatly on the saddle-like structure that served his species as an acceleration chair, examined the known Rockrat positions with a profound feeling of dissatisfaction.  They’d known just how many asteroids had been colonised – at least, they knew as much as the public down on Earth had known – but they hadn’t been prepared for the thousands of energy sources that they had detected right across the belt.  The Swarm, back home in their own star system, had been colonised…but with a much greater population and unity of purpose.  The humans seemed to have gone mad; dozens of asteroids belonged to one religious sect or another, others belonged to governments, or private citizens, or the Rockrats.  The Researchers, he’d been told, had developed headaches trying to understand it all; the humans just seemed to have decided on the location of their settlements at random.

Freeport One itself, at least, made a certain kind of sense.  It was a large asteroid, fully two hundred kilometres in length, rotating to provide gravity for the settlement that had hollowed out the asteroid.  A dozen smaller asteroids orbited nearby; half of them providing additional living space, the other half sheltering industries and shipyards for the Rockrats.  Orbiting them were hundreds of smaller platforms and stations, some of which would be designed for defence against other human enemies…and now his force.  Destroying it all would have been easy; Makra would have stood off at extreme missile range and launched wave after wave of nuclear-tipped missiles on ballistic trajectories, but that wasn’t in his orders.  He had to capture the asteroid and as much as possible of its industry – intact.  It wasn’t going to be easy.

He clicked in the direction of his sensor officer.  “Do you have a clear picture of their deployments?”

“Yes,” the sensor officer said, who was interlinked into the ship’s main computer through her implants.  Makra found the entire process fascinating; the chance to see with the sensors the ships used to look upon the universe was one not to be missed, even though not everyone could handle the experience.  He’d heard that even the humans had experimented with such technology.  “There are twenty-seven ships in a position to engage us; nearly a hundred more heading away from us on widely diverging courses.”

“An evacuation,” Makra decided.  It was something of a relief; if there was an accident, thousands fewer humans would die.  The human ships hadn’t bothered with finesse; they’d placed themselves in a position where he would either have to engage them or boost past them, abandoning the fight and returning to Earth with his arms hanging down.  It was a pretty impressive deployment, or it would have been if the humans had had fire control systems equal to his own; as it was, he had an advantage not only in firepower, but in accuracy as well.  He reminded himself to assume nothing; the odds were that at least some of the orbiting platforms, perhaps even the asteroids themselves, would be armed.  “Produce targeting sequences.”

“Targeting sequences loaded,” the tactical officer said.  “I have transmitted them to the other ships in the fleet.”

Makra clicked once in agreement.  Within a few hours, as humans measured time, they would come to rest relative to Freeport One; by then, they had to have cleared the human opposition and overawed the inhabitants of the asteroid.  Humans were better in hand to hand space combat than Oghaldzon; the smaller humans were simply more agile.  He was prepared to start selectively venting sections of Freeport One to make his point, but he hoped that such measures wouldn’t be required.

“Good,” he said.  “You may open fire.”

The display updated itself rapidly as the first missiles were fired, heading towards Freeport One’s defence force and burning out their drives as they entered terminal attack position.  Freeport One rapidly proved that its defenders were skilful enough to stand up to his force for a few hours; their point defence fire was much better than he had expected, picking off missile after missile, even as they fired back with older missiles, far less advanced than the ones they had faced during the first battle with human forces.  His ships picked them off as the range closed rapidly, his ships flashing towards the human position at speeds almost unimaginable…and barely anything compared to the size of space itself.

“Alter course slightly,” he ordered.  He’d been careful enough to leave them with a possible angle of escape without engaging the enemy at all, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that it wasn’t going to be needed.  His missiles were starting to press the humans hard, coming closer and closer as they entered terminal attack position, forcing the humans to divide their own forces to counter his thrusts.  His sensors were rapidly learning which of the human platforms was armed and which were not armed – or, at least, were not engaging his forces.  “Bring us into a direct course.”

The gravity started to build up as the fusion drive fired for ten seconds, altering their course as they closed in on Freeport One, racing to catch up with the asteroid and bringing their course precisely through the enemy positions.  The Rockrats had to be feeling desperate by now, Makra hoped; they had to know that they couldn’t escape unless they surrendered.  Even if they triggered their fusion drives and tried to flee, they wouldn’t be able to escape his missile envelope unless they got very lucky…and their sensors would be completely screwed up by the fusion flame.  He had revealed the location of his ships to any watching Rockrat, but now it was too late for them to make any use of the information.

Gravity vanished again as a series of faint shocks ran through the ship.  “We are now on our own terminal engagement run,” the helmsman said.  “We are initiating evasive action.”

Makra watched the display as fusion flames blinked out, one after the other.  There was probably no need to waste reaction gas, but it might save the Righteous Rage – a concept that humans seemed to share with the Oghaldzon – from a lucky hit by a mass driver or a rail gun.  The human sensors were sweeping the fleet regularly; they probably had perfect targeting information, if they could use it.  His display was struggling to keep up with the updates as missiles swept towards their position and his own missiles lashed back at the humans.  He saw three of the small human craft vanish in blasts of nuclear fire, saw one of the human industrial platforms disintegrate under a lucky hit, saw…

“The Token Not-Protest has been destroyed,” the tactical officer said.  Makra clicked a curse to himself; he had started with twenty warships and one large transport ship, now part of his point defence network had been knocked down by the human missiles.  It hadn’t required much damage, either; the early indications were that the simple high-speed collision had shattered the Token Not-Protest.  “Four more human craft have been targeted for destruction and…”

Makra said nothing as the slaughter went on.  They were winning, slowly, but surely.

***
Explosions blossomed in the darkness of space, tiny pinpricks that couldn’t even be seen except at very close range, and Rockrats started to die.  Jake Ellsworth wanted to scream aloud as the aliens pushed closer and closer to Freeport One, their drives flaring as they pushed themselves onto a terminal engagement route.  He had expected it; the Rockrats had shown a certain amount of weakness…and the aliens had moved to take advantage of it, but he hadn’t realised how horrifying it would be to wait in the Lead Pipe and watch as his fellows died.  The aliens would almost certainly kill more of his fellows, even if he engaged now…and if he engaged now, they might win the battle.

A message blinked up in his private display.  DON’T WORRY, JAKE, EVERYONE GOES THROUGH THEIR OWN PRIVATE HELL IN A BATTLE WHEN ALL YOU CAN DO IS WAIT, it read.  He glanced over at Cindy, who was looking up, ever-so-briefly, at him, and winked at her; she stuck out her tongue in a defiant gesture.  He relaxed slightly as the display updated again, computers running simulations of which side would win, which side would have a chance of escape if everything went pear-shaped, which side would…

The timer ticked down towards zero.  “Are we ready?”

“Yes,” Cindy said.  She was linked into the entire fleet of ships, her computers receiving constant updates from the other seventeen ships that had been placed into the combat area to wait for instructions.  “We are in position and ready to move on your command.”

Ellsworth smiled at her, finally prepared to admit that he cared about her.  “Signal to all ships, then,” he said, and lifted his hand in a dramatic gesture.  He brought it down hard in a single chopping motion.  “Engage!”

Chapter Forty-Nine: The Battle of Freeport One, Take Two

Near Freeport One, Asteroid Belt

“Incoming enemy fire!”

Makra almost flinched as new icons appeared on the display, enemy missiles closing in rapidly on the Oghaldzon fleet, coming in from behind their positions.  His first thought, that some human ship had managed to sneak close enough to launch the missiles at such close range as to make interception impossible, was wrong, but the damage was almost as great.  The human ships had appeared out of nowhere, which meant that they had been lurking with all drives and sensors firmly shut down, and they were moving to come up behind him.

“Reverse point defence,” he ordered, knowing that tactical officers throughout the entire fleet would be already carrying out the urgent procedure.  It wasn’t a matter of insubordination; it was a matter of life and death.  The missiles had to be intercepted before they burned out, or there would be only seconds to intercept them once they entered terminal assault mode.  “Sensors, carry out a full sweep of the launch points.”

The display updated itself rapidly, revealing eighteen indistinct human ships, all apparently much harder to detect than they should have been.  The fusion flames were easy to detect as they lunged after the Oghaldzon fleet, but their hulls seemed to be covered in stealth coating, which would make tracking them much harder for missile sensors, or even for the sensors on the transport.  It was a neat innovation, one that the Oghaldzon themselves had never considered; by the time they had expanded into space, there had been no major enemies left to fight.

The math was easy; Makra could have carried it out in his sleep.  He’d made a mistake and had been mouse-trapped, just like a feral Oghaldzon would have been trapped by one of the soldiers; he had committed himself to engaging the defence force surrounding Freeport One without realising that a second enemy force was about to engage the fleet from the rear.  If he continued on his original course, they would have to punch their way through the defences, while if he changed course, he would still be firmly inside the human engagement range…until it was too late.  If he decelerated, he would still have to engage the second human force, and do so with all the tactical disadvantages caused by the fusion drive.

He hesitated, unsure of himself; he had never faced a real trap before, but duty asserted itself.  “I want the drives to be triggered on a straight-line course,” he ordered.  “Take us right through the defences of the human asteroids.”

He allowed the plan to develop in his mind.  It would hurt; the odds were that his force would suffer badly before they broke through and had the chance to run to save what they could from destruction.  On the other hand, there was no other choice that would save some of his fleet from disaster…and they would have a chance to hurt the enemy while they passed through his defences.  He muttered orders to the different departments; the transport, in particular, was suddenly a very inviting target.  He was tempted to order it to surrender, but the humans might not even notice in time to spare the thousands of soldiers from a cold death in vacuum.

The display updated itself again; the first wave of incoming missiles was closing in at terrifying speed.  The Oghaldzon ships were preparing to handle the incoming wave as best as they could, but they had been caught unawares and now – he winced mentally – they were going to have to pay the price.

***
“They’re triggering their drives,” the sensor officer reported, in a nervous voice.  Ellsworth bit down the curse that rose to his lips; damn, but someone over there was fast!  The enemy commander had worked out that he had been caught bent over a table with his trousers and pants down, so he had moved to minimise the maximum gain of his opponent.  He had to know that taking Freeport One intact was impossible now, so he was both trying to escape…and moving into ideal engagement range for rapid destruction of the entire network of asteroids that made up Freeport One.

“Understood,” Ellsworth said.  He thought rapidly; if they knew for sure that the aliens weren’t intent on destruction – and they didn’t – he might have been willing to allow the aliens to escape in exchange for them leaving the asteroids and the surrounding platforms intact.  He didn’t dare; the aliens might want revenge for the motherships the Russians had killed – the Russian warship had been added to the force that was defending Freeport One and seemed to be attracting a lot of enemy fire – or they might just know perfectly well that if they took out the industrial facilities, the dream of building a fleet that could crush the aliens in Earth orbit would come to an end.  “Helm, take us after them!”

The display fuzzed slightly as the effects of the fusion drive started to confuse the sensors.  The USSF had figured out a way around the chaos caused by the fusion flame; they’d suggested the emplacement of remote drones that would stealthily observe and transmit their observations to the Lead Pipe.  The thought made him smile; the Rockrats had insisted on the right to name their own ships – hence the appearance of the Flamewar, the Quoting Wikipedia and others that no one dared write down – but the USSF had its own solutions to problems.  The mere fact of losing almost all of the fleet to the aliens had concentrated their minds wonderfully…and the fleet was reaping the benefits.  Whatever happened in the future, he was convinced that, one way or the other, the belt had gained something from the forced association, even if it was only more tolerance for the spit-and-polish crowd.

The aliens were flaring their drives almost randomly, but he could see – now – what they were doing.  Like the USSF, they had knitted their individual ships into one fighting whole; that whole was now trading information to enable the point defence units to engage the missiles, despite the distortion caused by the fusion drives.  The growing chaos as his ships fired wave after wave of missiles into the enemy formation was matched by the rear tubes of the alien ships turning slightly to fire on his ships; one lucky advantage of their position was that the aliens could only bring a few of their weapons to bear on his ships without sending the missiles through convoluted courses that were just as likely to send them spiralling off helplessly into the interstellar void than actually coming close enough for his ships to be endangered.

“They’re bringing up all of their sensors now,” Cindy reported grimly.  2I think they’re trying to gain targeting coordinates for more coordinated fire targeted on our ships.”

Ellsworth nodded, grateful for the analysis.  It had become a slugging match, the more so because the two fleets and the defences were heading towards each other at speeds that would have astonished anyone on Earth, but were tiny when compared to the vastness of space.  It would be still ten minutes before the aliens tried to pass through the defences, but by then they had to have worn away enough of the defence fleet and the fixed defences to have a chance of passing within such close range without being destroyed with ease.  The aliens were expanding their own firing patterns; who knew what they would target next…?

“Missile separation,” Cindy snapped.  “Seven…nine…twelve missiles, targeted on the Flamewar and the Fuck Them All!”

They’re concentrating their fire, Ellsworth thought coldly.  “Order all ships to continue covering the targeted ships with point defence, concentrate on bringing down as many as possible of their transports,” he snapped.  The fiery waves of invisible light flickered out from laser point defence weapons as the new targeting priorities were unloaded into computers, which were controlling the fire.  “Rotate ships as necessary to bring weapons to bear on the enemy!”

***
Mark Galvaton ignored the pounding music in his ears as his two teenage children, both wearing the shipsuits he had insisted on them wearing despite their loud protests, rapidly prepared the fixed weapons position.  He hadn’t wanted to become involved in the fight at all and intended to insure that Kyle Short faced a vote of confidence as soon as possible, but there had been no choice.  His two girls and himself – his wife had been away on business before the aliens had started their advance towards Freeport One – had been tasked with controlling a handful of free-floating missile batteries that had been emplaced near their location, in their tiny ship.  Short – to give the bastard his credit – had offered to have the ship crewed by other Rockrats, but Galvaton had been determined.  The Heather was his ship and it would be crewed by his family.

He hadn’t wanted the girls to join him, and had even threatened to put them somewhere safe on Freeport One for the duration of the battle, but they had insisted and he’d reluctantly brought them along.  They’d watched the first phase of the battle in silence – the Heather and the platforms it controlled had not been required to engage the enemy – but how they had been given orders, orders he knew would require him to place his daughters in terrible danger.  The thought made him weak at the knees, but the girls were Rockrats, they’d grown up on the ship, and they knew the dangers.  They had chosen to accept the risk…

Somehow, it was no consolation.

“Stand by to fire,” he said.  In theory, the enemy couldn’t detect the Heather, but the aliens had been using hundreds of active sensors – his missiles were going to home in on some of their radiating sensors – and they might know her location, even though they hadn’t decided to launch a missile at her yet on general principles.  He had watched them growing closer and closer to Freeport One and knew what it meant; they would be in range to blow the asteroid apart, like they had shattered asteroids in Earth orbit.  “Do you have the firing sequences locked in?”

Sally looked up.  “Yes, Dad,” she said, her voice for once serious.  Her pixie-like face and blonde hair turned heads wherever she went; at fourteen, she was a very active teenager on the party circuit.  Galvaton suspected that she had had more boyfriends than he’d had hot dinners…and didn’t want to know any more details.  “I have the enemy craft targeted with the missiles.”

He glanced at Patty.  “Our movement sequence?”

Patty, dark-haired and somehow perfectly controlled, nodded once.  “We are ready to move as soon as Sally sends the signal,” she said.  “The course is already laid in.”

“Good,” Galvaton said.  He smiled at his daughters.  “Fire!”

The missile racks had been left drifting in space, almost indistinguishable from common or garden space wreckage, perhaps even salvaged junk that had been dumped onto a speculator rather than some Rockrat wasting time trying to determine who should be charged for the privilege of recovering it.  At Sally’s command, they launched without warning, triggering short-term fusion drives that launched the missiles from their position of relative rest, using gas jets to steer the missiles onto the precise course as the drives burnt out.  The aliens had been using their sensors too often; the missiles would home in on them, strike and destroy the sensors, forcing the aliens to activate more sensors to cover the remainder of their fleet…

Sally’s voice was delighted.  “Dad, they’re homing in on the large enemy ship,” she said, her voice showing no sign of grief or remorse at the aliens who were about to die like bugs.  Galvaton privately mourned; one day, he was sure, Sally would feel grief for what she had done, no matter how much the aliens had deserved to die. The Rockrats had no tolerance for whinging liberalism, but Sally was really too young to take part in such activities.  “Ten seconds to impact…”

Patty was already steering them away from the missile racks as they fired again, launching their second spread of missiles, and then their third.  Galvaton smiled as the missiles homed in on the massive alien craft, a design that had impressed him when he had seen the images taken from Earth; the craft was large enough to transport thousands of tons of ore, or thousands of people, without the gravity ring of a bridge ship.  The Rockrats had never understood the need for a gravity ring; it wasn’t as if medical science hadn’t advanced to the point where no human would have to take tissue damage from being semi-permanently in zero-gravity.  He could have bought such a ship if he had had the Credits; he had occasionally wondered what would happen if his family grew to the size required to handle such a ship.

“Impact,” Sally said.  Galvaton smiled as the data download revealed the flash of a nuclear explosion, leaving a torrent of energy and a tiny amount of wreckage as the only sign the transport had ever existed.  “Dad, we got the bastard…”

“I saw,” Galvaton snapped.  There was no time to spend in cheering and congratulating themselves.  “Get up the other targeting solutions and watch the point defence, or I’ll take my hand to your backside.”

The Heather jerked again.  “I have an incoming missile, two incoming missiles,” Sally said, her voice suddenly very young and very scared.  “They’re boosting towards us now and…”

“Get the point defence on them,” Galvaton snapped, unwilling to let her be scared.  One hand danced over a panel, clearing their modified mining laser to fire on any incoming target.  “Damn it, girl; we’re depending on you!”

Sally worked her console.  “I got one,” she said, as the lights dimmed slightly, power being shifted to the laser.  “The other…”

Galvaton had only a second to realise that the missile was going to detonate…and then it detonated, sending a wave of fire towards the heather at point-blank range.  The old craft’s hull couldn’t hope to stand up to the furious wave of heat and violence; it crumpled inwards and vaporised too quickly for anyone to react, if there had been anything they could have done.  Galvaton, Sally and Patty were dead before they knew what had hit them.

***
Makra noted the destruction of the missile platforms and their controlling spacecraft without interest; his priority was to try to batter his way through the defences before it was too late.  Space was strewn with wreckage, but his force had continued to press on, even through they had been reduced to nine ships in the knife-range fighting as they had come to grips with the defences.  He was almost relieved; one way or the other, they would have broken through in moments and then they could escape and dare the humans to follow them back to Earth.

“Alter course to evade that asteroid,” he ordered, as the fleet twisted slightly, although there could be no question of actually slowing down.  They didn’t have the time or the space to decelerate; they would be blown apart when the human missiles and energy weapons zeroed in on their slowing hulks.  Who would have thought of using a mass driver as a weapon?  The Oghaldzon hadn’t…but the humans had…and they had blown apart one of his warships before the offending installation had been destroyed by a nuclear warhead.  “Once we have a clear path, bring up all of the drives and take us forward.”

He closed his eyes for a second, feeling the tension clicking through the air; his crew’s morale had taken a major blow.  They had failed, he knew that now; they had tried to come and take Freeport One, only to be driven away by the humans.  What state of that tiny size could have built the warships?  Why would it have bothered?  It was completely alien to the Oghaldzon; had they really been that concerned that the humans back on Earth would have taken over the asteroids?  It was madness, but then…humans were mad.  They were just…alien.

The drive kicked in and he allowed himself a moment to relax.  The human missiles would have to punch through the drive flame before they could hit his ships; they would have a fair chance of simply being melted by the heat of the flame before they could detonate.  One way or another, they were safe…

“Incoming missiles,” the tactical officer snapped.  Makra stared at the display; missiles were coming in towards them, not from the rear, but from ahead of them, from what looked to be a blank area of space.  The active sensors were confused by the drive flare, but they probed anyway, finding…a set of nine more human ships, trying to sneak up on them.  They had fired from close range, too close…

“Contact the War Commander and inform him that we did our best,” Makra said, and closed his eyes one final time.  “It was a honour to serve with you all in a righteous cause.”

Moments later, the nuclear missiles blew the Righteous Rage and her crew into flaming superhot debris.

***
Jake Ellsworth stared at the newcomers.  “Who the hell are they?”

He rounded on Cindy.  “More of your friends?”

She shook her head.  “Wrong angle of approach,” she said.  “We didn’t plan anything like this; it would have made the KISS principle scream and die in horror.”

Ellsworth took a long breath.  “Open hailing signals,” he said.  Had another alien faction intervened on their behalf?  The ships seemed human enough, but there weren’t that many differences between human and Oghaldzon ships.  “Ask them who they are.”

The link-up established itself according to standard IAU protocols and a face appeared in the display.  “I am Commodore Qiu Xiaoshuai,” a Chinese face said.  The voice was very polite, and yet, there was a definite undertone of amusement.  “I believe that you needed some help?”

Ellsworth started to laugh.

Chapter Fifty: Secrets And Lies

Freeport One, Asteroid Belt

Commodore Qiu Xiaoshuai turned out to be surprisingly short for a spacer, although Jake Ellsworth had to admit that height wasn’t such a disability in zero-gravity.  Qiu was pure Han Chinese – which was strange out in the mixed-race environment of the belt – and had a neatly shaved head.  It sent a signal of some kind, although Ellsworth didn’t understand it; he was trying to understand just what had happened.  He had won a great victory…and he had no idea of just how he had done it.

“So,” Cindy said, after Kyle Short had passed around a set of glasses with a small helping of Liberation Brandy in them, “just where did you come from?”

Qiu gave her a mischievous look; there was little inscrutable about his face.  “Where did you come from?”  He asked.  “I’m sure that there’s no major American position in the belt?”

“We are not ungrateful for your appearance,” Short said, carefully.  “I would like, however, to know just what happened and what your intentions are.”

Qiu leaned back into his chair.  “It’s really quite simple,” he said.  Ellsworth’s heart sank; whenever someone said that, it meant that things were about to become needlessly complicated.  “The Party – in their infinitive wisdom – decided that it might be an interesting idea to have a small and secret squadron based out in the belt in case some of the personnel in the belt decided that loyalty to China was not on the cards.”

“In other words, in case they decided to come here and join us,” Ellsworth injected.

Qiu favoured him with a smile.  “Precisely,” he said.  “I couldn’t have put it better myself.  The squadron had been quietly based out near the mining area that belongs to us under IAU rules” – something of a sore spot with the Rockrats – “and crewmen were rotated every six months to keep them in fighting trim…and, of course, to make sure that they had more chance to socialise with their own kind.  We assembled the ships out here so no one would know that they were here, just as a precaution, you understand.”

Ellsworth smiled wryly.  The Chinese Government had probably been wondering about the benefits of a possible land grab – well, asteroid grab.  Before the aliens had arrived, they might even have gotten away with it; the other Great Powers would be delighted to see the Rockrats taken down a peg or two.  The thirty-odd warships that had come to the aid of Freeport One would be a formidable force if deployed against the Rockrats; the aliens had proven that in the battle, if nothing else.  If they hadn’t had the Area 51 warships along, the aliens would have kicked their arse.

“Anyway,” Qiu said, coughing meaningfully.  Ellsworth met his eyes and felt cold inside; one seriously scary dude, he thought.  “The aliens arrived and the higher command decided that it might be a good idea to keep the fleet under wraps, just to ensure that the secret was not revealed when the aliens turned out to be friendly.  As it was, the aliens turned out not to be friendly and…we realised that they killed most of China…”

His voice, for the first time, seemed to break.  “Do you know what happened down there?”

Ellsworth looked at Cindy, who shrugged.  “We know that one of the asteroids went down roughly ninety kilometres inland,” she said.  “Past that, we know very little; the aliens haven’t landed in China as far as we know, although our information is rather limited.  We only have some microburst updates from American forces on the ground and spy probes near the Earth-Moon system.”

Qiu nodded once, and then was back in command, the hardy old spacer.  “We waited, trying to decide what to do, as our stores started to run out,” Qiu continued.  Ellsworth frowned, puzzled; there was no reason why the Chinese couldn’t have equipped their asteroids to remain self-sustaining more or less indefinitely.  Perhaps it was a political decision; an asteroid that was capable of sustaining itself might just decide that it wanted to be more than a fuel dump and mining station out in the belt.  Hong had come from such a place, if he recalled correctly; Qiu and his fleet might just have been intended to prevent a repeat of that incident.  “A return to China was clearly out of the question.”

You could have come to us, Ellsworth thought coldly, knowing that Qiu would probably have considered and rejected the possibility.  And yet, he had clearly decided to bite the bullet afterwards; his intervention had turned a victory into a total victory…and the annihilation of the enemy forces.  The cost had been high; nearly five hundred Rockrats had died, including nearly forty minors who would never normally have been allowed to see combat.

“We decided, finally, that the only hope was to come here and offer our services in exchange for supplies,” Qiu concluded.  Ellsworth nodded; whatever else one could say about him, the Chinese spacer was clearly a realist.  “We saw the aliens coming towards you and decided that some level of stealth was in order…and then we altered course just enough to coast into a position where we could nail any surviving aliens.”

He grinned, openly.  “And you know the rest.”

“I think I speak for the entire Rockrats Association when I offer you and your people a complete vote of thanks,” Short said, after a short considering pause.  He leaned forward, carefully.  “What do you want to do now?”

Qiu’s face went completely inscrutable.  “We would like to drive the aliens away from China and attempt to pull the nation together again,” he said.  “As to what we actually want…”

“Excuse me a minute,” Cindy said, and slipped out.

“We would be very grateful for supplies,” Qiu continued, ignoring Cindy’s rudeness.  “If you would like, we have around two thousand miners and workers who would be happy to add their manpower to yours, on a temporary basis, of course.”

“Of course,” Short murmured, a smile flickering around his lips.  Ellsworth shared it; the odds were that the Chinese workers and miners would want to stay at Freeport One, rather than returning to a ruined China, or even the iron control of the Party Cadre out in the belt.  They would be all intelligent men; they had to at least suspect that China was beyond help, or know the fallacies in the Chinese Government’s policies.  “And your soldiers?”

“We believe that we might be of some help defending the Freeport,” Qiu said.  There was a mischievous note in his voice, although he seemed just a little shaken; he had to have considered, at least, using his ships to threaten Freeport One into giving up the Chinese workers once they had found a new home.  The presence of the ships from Area 51 had disconcerted him.  “Do you have a much better use for us?”

“We may have,” Short said.  “How much of a support network do you have out here?”

“Very little,” Qiu admitted.  “We have stockpiles of fuel and some weapons in various asteroids that were mined a few decades ago, but we have only limited repair facilities, most of which are limited to slotting in new components from the stores.  Why do you ask?”

“Curiosity,” Short said.  “There are a lot of curious Rockrats out there.”

He wasn't telling the half of it, Ellsworth thought; the entire asteroid seemed to have gone mad with joy and relief.  There had been a major party in the habitation zones, the brothel had declared itself open for free for a few days; he’d even run across couples having sex in the halls.  Rockrats rarely just lay back and partied; the energy of the celebration was a reminder of just how nervous every Rockrat had been when the alien fleet had been detected.  There would be a formal ceremony for those who had fallen in battle later, but they both knew that it wasn't over yet; there was still the trifling matter of defeating the alien fleet orbiting Earth…

And that wasn’t really a trifling matter at all.

“I have a question of my own,” Qiu said.  “Where did your warships come from?”

“Long story,” Short said.  “I wonder…”

Cindy came back into the room before Short could say anything.  “I was just talking to my commanding officer,” she said, shortly.  “He wanted me to pass on an offer to you.”

Qiu blinked.  “An offer?”

“I have also been ordered to be honest with you,” Cindy said.  “We have established a small shipyard out in the belt, one that was intended to be a complete secret unless it was needed, as it is now.  That base has been churning out warships, such as the ones you saw in the battle, but we had to make an alliance with the Rockrats to man those ships.”

“I’m not surprised,” Qiu said.  He understood the basic principles as well as anyone else.  “You would have bottlenecks in manpower, if nothing else.”

“Yes, sir,” Cindy agreed, bowing her head.  “We have one hundred and fifty warships in all, which we intended to launch against Earth in a month, by which time we would have many more ships.  Now, however, the aliens know that you’re here and they will have some information on how our new ships perform, which means that the timetable will have to be moved up sharply.  We would like to launch the attack within two weeks at the most.”

Ellsworth drew in a breath.  He had known that the timetable would have to be modified, but the crews hadn’t had enough training…even if they had trained far more crews than anyone had thought they would need.  The Rockrats had been trained, but they would require experience on their ships; they’d also have to be told the truth about where the ships actually came from.  They would not be happy…

Cindy continued, unaware of his personal thoughts.  “My commander would like your ships to join the offensive,” she continued.  “It may be your only chance to liberate China from the grasp of the six-hands of the aliens.”

Qiu looked at her for a long moment.  “You…Americans established a shipyard in the belt,” he said.  “Technically, that’s a treaty violation.”

“So is establishing a secret squadron to keep your own people in line,” Cindy said, countering him.  “Look, Commodore; without that fleet, your nation and every other nation would be completely at the mercy of the aliens.  The world is breaking apart under their pressure; a few more months and perhaps every nation will have surrendered to them…except we won’t have months.  They know we’re out here now, Commodore; they will come for us with the remainder of their force, and they will crush us.  Our only hope is to take the offensive now.”

Qiu kept his face carefully blank.  “What guarantees do I have that your force will not use mine as…cannon fodder?”

A diplomat might have been less blunt; Cindy wasn't a diplomat.  “None,” she said, flatly.  “Commodore, we can spend weeks arguing about the terms and conditions, but it will take too long and the aliens will be at our throats.  I will tell you, now, that your participation in the fleet action might be the only chance you will have to shape the future of China after the aliens are defeated…or you might end up discovering that America ends up as ruler of the world.”

Qiu tilted his head.  “The Chinese people will not accept your…dictatorship,” he said.  “Are you sure you can afford to refuse to discuss guarantees?”

“If half the rumours we have picked up are accurate, the Chinese people would be quite happy to accept anyone who could feed them,” Cindy said grimly.  “Once the aliens advance into the chaos, they’ll probably be welcomed as saints and saviours.”

There was a long pregnant pause.  “I can’t offer you anything,” Cindy concluded.  “All I can say, now, is that it’s time to make a choice.”

Qiu held her gaze long enough to worry Ellsworth.  “Very well,” he said, finally.  “We will be honoured to become part of the international…”

“Interplanetary,” Short injected sharply.

“Interplanetary fleet,” Qiu said, without missing a beat.  “Please ask your commanding officer to get in touch with me and we will sort out the details.”

***
“You had me sweating for a minute,” Ellsworth said, as they sat together in a quiet corner of the asteroid.  The private rooms were normally used for deals between Rockrats, speculators and mining reps; he had often thought that it was a very good thing indeed that the Rockrat culture was very intolerant of lawyers.  Perhaps they were useful on Earth, but out in the belt they just took up useful oxygen.  “I thought for a moment he was going to tell you to go to hell.”

Cindy shrugged, watching as the stars flickered past outside.  There was too much wreckage floating past from the battle, small chunks of debris that would be a major danger to spaceflight until the Rockrats had located all of it and shoved it in one of the advancing mining stations, which would sift the wreckage for anything useful and reuse it.  A chunk of a spacecraft drifted past; her eyes seemed to follow it absently.

“I knew he had little choice and he knew it too,” Cindy said.  “What might have happened if China had no seat at the peace conference?”

Ellsworth shrugged.  “They’re a Great Power – were a Great Power,” he said.  “There are few people in the belt who would mourn China losing its power, or, for that matter, America itself.  They might have been shocked at the devastation the aliens inflicted on the world, but it won’t be long before everyone starts remembering the embargo and other issues that remain unsettled between Earth and the belt.”

“Politics,” Cindy said.  She looked up at him for a moment, her blonde hair glistening in the light, before looking back out at the stars.  “Even with aliens out there breathing down our necks, there are still people playing politics.  Commodore Qiu will take what he can get from the situation; he knows that his thirty ships no longer compose a force that can affect the balance of power on their own.  As for the future…I don’t think it will be the same.”

Ellsworth stepped closer to her, wondering at his own daring.  “The future is always changing,” he said.  The Rockrats knew better than to try to shape the future; the time and tide of economic storms saw to that.  “Where do you want to be in the future?”

“Ambassador to the Rockrats, perhaps,” Cindy said.  “I don’t think that the USSF would be interested in promoting me; I’ve put too many noses out of joint, sometimes literally, to earn a promotion.  The balance of power has been shattered now, Jake; the moon has asserted its own independence and the aliens are always going to be out there, and…”

She broke off.  “No one knows what will happen in the future.”

Ellsworth thought he understood.  “The Rockrats have no interest in becoming a Great Power,” he said, seriously.  He wondered if that was what was bothering the young servicewoman…and friend…and perhaps more than a friend.  “We don’t have the capability to form a powerful government.”

“You will have, soon,” Cindy said.  There was a very serious tone in her voice; he wondered, briefly, just how she would look sucking neatly on a pencil.  “I wonder if you’ll be able to resist the temptation when it comes kicking down your door.”

She stood up and faced him.  “You know what could happen,” she said.  “There’s Mars, and Titan, and Venus…and if we gain control over the space elevators, the gateway to space will finally be knocked open for all time.  The balance of power will start to shift, completely…”

Ellsworth took a step forward, and another, and then she reached out for him.  He had no time to react before she pulled him towards her and kissed him, hard.  He returned the kiss with as much passion as he could muster, feeling his body responding to her touch, to the pressure of her hands as they ran over his rear.  His own arms enfolded her, stroking the curves that revealed themselves in her shipsuit, before wandering towards the tabs that held the suit together.  Her rear was as perfect to the touch as it had been to the eye; his probing hands became more desperate as her body started to respond to his touch.

“I don’t know what will happen in the future,” Cindy whispered, her lips close to his ears, her voice somehow husky enough to get his blood flowing rapidly.  He didn’t want to think about anything, but her, and the body he had lived with ever since he had realised that he was falling in love with her.  He wanted her with him, now and forever; she was perfect for him.  “This could be a mistake, but its one I want to make, and the future can worry about itself, later.”

Her hands were on his belt buckle; there was a moment, and then the shipsuit fell away, just as his hands finally found the release tab for her shipsuit, allowing it to fall off her body, revealing a fit young body that was somehow both mannish…and as sexy as hell.  There was little finesse in their joining; she pulled him forward and impaled herself on him, her eyes looking away from him as she moved rapidly on him, forcing him to move with her, pushing deeper and deeper inside her.  It rose up out of him, beyond his ability to control; he felt her gasps at a very basic level as he came deep inside her, making deep mewling noises…

She pushed him down onto the floor, demanding worship, demanding him, demanding his unconditional love for one night only…because tomorrow they might die.

Chapter Fifty-One: One Last Chance, Take One

Seeker for Truth, Earth Orbit

There had been no way to exclude the non-military personnel from the meeting, much to Dataka-War Commander-Fleet’s private regret; almost every subgroup within the group that made up the fleet had a legitimate right to take part in the Fleet Council.  Not all of them were normally interested – anyone who didn’t vote didn’t deserve to vote – but the scale of the defeat in the asteroid belt had shocked them.  Dataka knew that much of the panic was unjustified, but it was hard to explain that when everyone was arguing away like mad.

Oghaldzon meetings had never been dignified affairs.  Certainly, it was unknown for two parties on opposite sides of the dispute to actually come to blows with their opponents, but the standard rules of the meetings seemed almost to be swept aside.  It was a wonderful opportunity for any social scientist…and a nightmare for those who had to shape order out of chaos.  The panic was having an effect, spreading rapidly through the fleet; how could the non-military personnel grasp the fact that the main body of the fleet was in no immediate danger?  So the humans had deployed around – no one knew for sure – forty warships, some of which were of a new and dangerous design?  They couldn’t use them to defeat the Oghaldzon; even if they set out at once, it would take them two weeks to even reach Earth, let alone engage his force.

The clicking sound of sonar and conversation was becoming unbearable, even for an Oghaldzon; a human, who wouldn’t have been able to hear half of the discussion, let alone understand it, would still have felt the pressure of the conversation.  Questions were shouted, answers were proffered, everyone was talking at once…they could all separate the different conversations out in their heads, but the sheer chaos of the discussion was defeating them.  Three-quarters of the fleet was civilian; how could they determine what might happen – realistically – in the future?

Finally, he could take it no more.  He sent a mental command into one of the processors and it generated a suppression sound, beaming out a wave of noise that would overwhelm conversation, leaving all of the participants unable to hear each other.  If it were used too long, it would cause a headache, but Dataka knew that there would be no permanent damage; there were places back on their homeworld where neither conversation nor sonar was even possible.

“This behaviour is unlike us,” he said, as the sound faded away.  The massed ranks of the Fleet Council glared at him with every undertone of mass rebellion.  He wasn’t sure that he blamed them, but he had earned his position as War Commander…and he knew what he was doing.  He wasn’t a human who had been appointed because he was a drinking buddy of the current ruler, or because he knew how to play the political game.  “We have not suffered a major defeat.”

There was a long pause.  “Yes, we have lost twenty-one ships, including the transport,” he said.  It was worse than it seemed, but hardly disastrous.  “Yes, the humans in the belt – the Rockrats – continue to thumb their noses” – a human expression he had come to like – “at us.  Yes, this is dangerous, but it is far from fatal.”

He looked around the room, doing his best to project a calming meme at all of them.  “If the worst case has indeed occurred, and the humans do decide to advance on Earth, we would still possess sufficient firepower to hold the planet against their forces,” he continued.  “By now, our advances have brought much of the human land around our landing sites under our control; are we going to simply lift up our hindlegs and run?”

“We can’t stay in this system,” someone shouted, from the rear, clicking their sonar just enough to ensure that their identity remained unknown.  “They somehow ambushed us in deep space!”

“They tried to get clever and, unfortunately, succeeded, once,” Dataka said, reassuringly.  It had to have been a coincidence; no one in their right mind would plan space warfare in such a strange way.  Oghaldzon tactical doctrine – and there was no sign that the humans disagreed – called for keeping operations as simple as possible…and that wasn’t possible if one wanted to carry out three or four prong thrusts.  The humans in the belt would have been wiser to concentrate their fire; they had known for weeks the rough course his force would have taken.  “They are not likely to succeed in such a way again.”

He pulled up a near-orbit display.  “This is Earth orbit,” he said.  “We have passive and active sensors stretching out for nearly a light-lesser-cycle around the planet, with every last piece of debris and human artefacts studied and either recycled or pushed into Earth’s atmosphere to burn up.  We know everything that exists within that sphere…and we control it, absolutely.  We have established industrial stations at the balance points between the Earth and the Moon; now that we are trading with the humans on the moon, we have time to start producing additional components, even warships, of our own.  Simple logic tells us that there is no way the humans in the belt can out-produce us.”

He clicked a smile into the air.  “They cannot dislodge us from this position,” he said.  “We can build up ourselves and launch a second attack, a force more intent on destroying the Rockrat population, rather than trying to convince them to submit, while we keep our own population safe.  A sneak attack will not get within range to do any damage to the motherships, while the warships will continue to patrol space in order to prevent any more overt attack.”

“The question of human mentality has exercised our curiosity for the last few cycles,” Takalak-Researcher-Seeker said, before Dataka could continue.  “We are forced to conclude that the humans will seek either to destroy us, or attempt to flee into deeper space until they find safety from us.  If they cannot do the former, they will certainly try the latter; we must continue to control Earth and use it as the base for expanding our authority over the remainder of the solar system.”

“I disagree,” Reata-Soldier-Command said.  She tilted her crest slightly as she spoke.  “The human population on the ground has been fighting us all the way; we advance into a new area to discover that it is littered with hidden traps and unpleasant surprises.  We dominate where we can see, but we are constantly surprised by their sudden changes in tactics, or sneak assaults conducted against our flanks.  While some human groups have come to us, they are groups that couldn’t endure the fighting any longer, or had historical reasons to oppose their local governments.  Some of their support is questionable, at the least; our units in the human region of Africa have reported meeting humans who have offered to carry out the most vile attacks in our name.”

The Wreckers, Dataka remembered.  The briefings had confused him, but anyone who could destroy an entire city of innocents for ideological purposes was clearly a danger to everyone.  Humans with ThrillKill…

“We must leave this system,” Chars-Operative-Seeker snapped.  His clicking rose loud enough to suppress the others.  “This is a nightmarish place for us.”

“We cannot,” Dataka said.  “If we leave now, we will be leaving a human population behind us which will seek to take revenge at some later date.”

“Then perhaps we should be looking for a way of coming to terms with the humans,” Chars proclaimed.  “Can we win this war?  If we cannot, then we have to find a way of ending it before the cost becomes too high to bear.  There are two billion of us on the ships” – not counting the twenty thousand who have died on Earth and those who died on the dead mothership, Dataka thought coldly – “and they need some clear reason to hope that we can win.”

“We have a purpose,” Gafalae-Speaker-Seeker declared.  The Speaker was a formidable personality at the best of times.  “We have learned that small reverses do not lead inevitably to the defeat of the whole, unless we chose to allow them to do so.  We still have our ships, we still have our position over Earth, and three of the main human governments are talking to us!  Others are considering their positions!  We may even have some contact from dissident Rockrats; if half of what the Researchers have found about their culture is accurate, they can hardly be described as homogenous.”

He paused.  “We are winning,” he continued, slightly less loudly.  His personality seemed to fill the room.  “It may take Earth-years to achieve complete control, let alone start the long process of re-educating humans to fit in with civilised society, but it can be done!”

“Maybe,” Yehaka-Researcher-Earth said.  She spent her time between the humans on one of the motherships and the camps on Earth, selecting humans who could be considered breeding pairs for the future.  She had also found a few hundred human orphans – far too many of them were around, something that had confused the researchers before they had been able to deduce what an orphan actually was – and brought them to the motherships as well.  “We may not have complete success for Grand Cycles.”

Dataka clicked a question at her.  “Why not?”

“Humans form social bonds very easily, particularly when under pressure,” Yehaka said.  “The groups which have formed up in the camps down on the planet are directed, at least partly, against their oppressors; us.  The social groups on the mothership have a slightly more tolerant view, but it remains an odd one, and one that could be directed against us.  The fact remains that we have torn them away from where they thought they belonged and placed them in an alien environment, one that they find profoundly disturbing in some ways.  The natural lighting of our world, of our ships, is eerie to human eyes.”

“They have no sonar,” Gafalae said.  He glared at her.  A Speaker was intended to serve as the voice of conviction and truth; Yehaka was challenging his views just by speaking out.  “Do you believe that we will fail?”

“Humans are not Oghaldzon,” Yehaka said.  “I do not believe that we will fail.  I warn you that we may never succeed completely.”

She paused.  “We have discussed, endlessly, the possible effects of human biology on their societies,” she said.  “We know that their…sexuality forms strong social bonds between human mates.  They cannot interbreed with us on any level; they will always form their own subgroups based around mating, if nothing else.  In the long term, I believe that we will have humans working beside us as equals, but there may be a major change in how the joint society functions.  Humans, as just one example, want to pass on what they have done to their children.”

Dataka frowned.  It wasn’t impossible for an Oghaldzon to work out which particular male had emitted the sperm and which female had caught it to make him, but it was considered something in bad taste, if not downright eccentric.  It generally meant nothing; the parents would have their own social groups, while the children would be brought up – once they developed intelligence – by the Teachers, and then they would find their own niche in Oghaldzon society.  There was no concept of…willing everything he owned to his children; he didn’t even know which of the primal children running around in the ship were his children.  How could he?

He looked at her.  “Why?”

“Because it represents a form of immortality to them,” Yehaka said.  It was quite possible that she’d caught his sperm and had his children; there was just no way to know.  “They do not share our concept of ideas living on as the sole means of immortality.”

Gafalae stamped one of his forelegs against the ground.  “We can integrate them to the best of our ability,” he said.  “If nothing else, we can press them into joining with us as far as they can.”

“Regardless,” Chars said, “what happens if the human force comes from the belt to engage us?”

Dataka allowed himself to emit confidence.  “Unless they have more ships than we knew about, hundreds more ships, we will be able to defeat them in a set-piece battle before they even get near the motherships again,” he said.  “It is to be hoped that they will try something like that, because we could destroy their ships and then counterattack against the belt before they can build up again.  Every human life is important out there; they need their manpower desperately.  If we can defeat them in open battle…”

He allowed his words to trail off.

***
The odd thing was that Markus Wilhelm was starting to get used to living on the alien ship.  The gravity felt weird, compared to Earth’s gravity, and it had the natural tilting landscape of a space habitat or colony, but it wasn’t that unpleasant a place to live.  Once they had convinced the Oghaldzon, through Yehaka, that yes, humans did like a little more light in their surroundings, it had actually become quite pleasant.  Under other circumstances, he could have almost enjoyed it…

He glanced down at Carola as she played with one of the children and winced; whatever the aliens had done, it had been clever.  They’d not only awoken her maternal instinct by bringing children up from the surface, but they had somehow destroyed her contraceptive implant, restoring her ability to bear children.  He had wondered if it had been a wild coincidence – implants had been known to fail before – but the other women living in the habitat ring had suffered from their own menstrual pains.  The aliens had awoken their fertility…and he could think of only one reason why they would do anything like that.  They wanted Carola to have a child.

It had been hard enough to explain the concept of marriage – an ‘exclusive mating arrangement,’ as Yehaka had put it, to the aliens.  They hadn’t understood the concept of bastard children at all, but then, on a certain level, all of the aliens were bastards.  They had seen Yehaka bud children and drop them off, creating starfish-like creatures that swarmed around the habitat like movie spiders; eventually, he’d been told, the remaining creatures would find a place to hide, create a cocoon around themselves, and awaken as newly-intelligent Oghaldzon.  He couldn’t understand how they tolerated it in their own biology; how did they endure knowing that they had all once been brainless beasts.  He had done some pretty stupid things when it came to chasing girls, but he had never been brainless…or at least he had always had the ability to think, even if he hadn’t used it.

They hadn’t understood the concept of orphaned children either.  They left their children in the care of teachers, once they grew up into normal Oghaldzon; they had wondered, at first, if human children were feral.  That had caused him some amusement; there was a case to be made that human children were always feral.  The idea of someone abandoning their children made sense to them, but the idea of leaving them in homes or even just leaving them to die horrified them – once they had realised that human children were born able to think and grow.  They’d brought up several hundred children…and Carola, and the other women, had fallen in love with them.  If he understood Yehaka correctly, the latest crop of young Oghaldzon would be bursting out of their cocoons soon, and then the real effort would begin.  Their children would end up being taught with the Oghaldzon children, something he dimly remembered from his own history…ah, yes; the European Government had forced integration on the immigrant population by forcing them to learn with native Europeans and closing their own schools.  Would the Oghaldzon try that for all of humanity?

He wandered down toward Carola, who was holding a small girl in her arms; the girl, with dark skin and darker eyes, couldn’t speak any English at all.  It was a mystery where the aliens had found her; Wilhelm guessed that it had been somewhere in Africa.  It was ironic; her life might even be better on the mothership than back in Africa, where she might end up as a slave, or a prostitute, or a Wrecker suicide bomber.  Given time, she would learn to speak English, along with gaining some understanding of the Oghaldzon tongue.  The device he wore behind his ear proved that; it provided a limited translation of the clicking noises the Oghaldzon made…and allowed him to hear it all.  He would never be able to speak it, but maybe, just maybe, the girl and her descendents would be able to speak directly to the aliens.

He placed a hand on Carola’s shoulder.  “Have you thought of a name for her?”

“Summer, perhaps,” Carola said.  She had been determined to take care of all the children; the growing human population on the mothership would rapidly become as mixed-race as the Rockrats themselves.  It no longer carried any stigma in America, but there were still places in the world where mixed-race children were rare.  “It would be a good name for her, don’t you think?”

“In the future…is this all the future holds?”  Wilhelm asked her.  The note of despair in his voice shocked him; he no longer recognised the young man who had been certain, oh so certain, that the aliens were friendly.  “Is this where it all ends?”

“I have no idea,” Carola said, passing Summer over to him.  Wilhelm held her in his arms, grateful that the aliens had consented to provide at least some clothing for their human captives; he wouldn’t have felt comfortable with the child otherwise.  “But really, is there anything we can do about it?”

Chapter Fifty-Two: One Last Chance, Take Two

United States National Command Centre, USA

“They’re coming over us, they’re coming over us, they’re…”

The transmission cut off in a burst of static.  “That was the defence line near Atlanta,” General William Denny said grimly, as the display reverted to its normal screensaver display.  The President was privately relieved; the aliens had been advancing deeper into the country, tearing America apart through sheer force and determination.  The glowing red area of the Occupied Zone was growing larger almost every day; the aliens expanded, challenged the defences, and then either punched through or bombarded them from space.  “They’re falling back in disarray.”

The President felt cold despair.  The aliens had taken a vast bite out of America, a bite that had absorbed chunks of population and industries, those that hadn’t been moved up into space where they had been destroyed by the aliens.  From New York – destroyed a second time by tidal waves – to Atlanta, from the seacoast to Kentucky, the aliens were slowly, but firmly securing their control over the region.  Resistance had been brutal and in some places savage, but the aliens had too great an advantage to slow them down for long.

“There are some bright spots,” Denny said.  “They don’t have anything like complete coverage yet; we have Special Forces and civilian resistance units spreading through their territory and generally making the day unsafe for them.   We have small teams sabotaging everything that they might find useful, slipping in, landing a blow against their forces, and then falling back before they can react.  We’re hurting them, but…”

The President said nothing.  He’d read the reports; the aliens had finally captured vast numbers of Americans, some of whom had later tried to offer resistance and had been shot down by the aliens.  The electronic infrastructure in the Occupied Zone had largely remained intact – he silently blessed the inventors and designers of the datanet for their decision to concentrate upon ensuring survivability – and intelligence agents, bloggers, and common citizens had all filed reports of alien behaviour.  They were acting almost like the army that had gone into Pakistan; they had surrounded towns and cities, forced the population to register with them, and had commenced the task of feeding them with algae-grown food.  In time, he suspected, resistance would fade; the behaviour of humans under occupation was never easy to predict.  Some would try to fight and get smashed, some would try to escape the alien areas of control and some would just try to get on with their lives, as long as they were left alone.  The aliens weren’t trying to exterminate the human population; the President suspected that most of the people in the Occupied Zone would try to keep their heads down and get on with their lives.

“It’s not enough,” he said.  “Janet, have we heard anything from the other states?”

Janet shook her head.  “The Europeans are taking a beating; apparently, there was a pro-alien rising in North Africa, spear-headed by the Wreckers, and they lost badly in the chaos following their twin defeats,” she said.  “North Africa has more or less fallen to the enemy; there’s a good chance that the remainder of their forces have been reduced to small underground units and resistance forces, such as they are.  The Caliphate is on the verge of disintegration; they and the Israelis are trying to hold a line, but the aliens have enough firepower to knock out any such force for years.  Russia and Japan are saying nothing, but the Japanese might just break ranks and sue for peace; we have suspicions that several states are actually communicating with the aliens, looking for terms.”

“Bastards,” Denny said.  “Don’t they realise that the only hope of victory is to bleed them?”

“We’re the ones getting bled,” Janet said.  “What happens when the aliens come towards this place?”

The President had wondered about that.  The location of the National Command Centre was a secret…which probably meant that the other Great Powers would at least have a rough idea of its location.  The aliens hadn’t bombarded it from space, like they had picked off a handful of other command centres across the world, which suggested that they didn’t know…unless they were keeping him alive for some reason.  They hadn’t hesitated to try to decapitate the other powers, so logically they didn’t know, unless they were screwing with his mind.  Had they captured information from Paris, or Moscow?  Both of the cities would have served as a repository for information that their governments had collected; had they had a chance to destroy the information, or was an alien intelligence team digging through it, piece by piece?  There was no way to know.

“We evacuate,” Denny said.  “We have had some minor successes in defeating the aliens; the problem is that we need to pull off a major victory and we can’t do that, short of massing forces to carry out the attack…and if we do that, the aliens kick out butts from orbit.”

“Two billion of them,” the President mused.  “How many of them can we kill?”

Janet looked at him.  “They can’t all be soldiers,” she said.  “The real question is just how many of them have to die before the aliens get the idea of talking to us on even terms?”

“We’re not on even terms,” Denny said.  He sighed and rubbed his cheek; the dark stubble stood out against his pale face and tired eyes.  “That’s the overall problem, Mr President…”

He stood up and looked down at the map.  “We never considered a land invasion seriously, not since the Mexican Civil War and the Intervention that ended up with us holding all of Latin and South America,” he said.  “Even during the First Cold War, we never seriously believed that the Russians could land a force that could actually…threaten the integrity of the United States, while the Japanese back in World War Two could not even take Pearl Harbour, let alone the remainder of the United States.  We always saw ourselves as having a permanently safe rear area – short of nukes being used, blowing up the world, and resulting in a draw.”

He snorted.  “The idea of the other Great Powers invading was equally silly,” he continued.  “Unless someone made a major breakthrough and produced something that invalidated the entire defence network, it was impossible that any Great Power would succeed in taking uncontested control of LEO and using it against us.  We were secure…until now, when the aliens, who existed outside strategic planning sessions, came and knocked us out of space.  That gives them advantages; not only the advantage of orbital weapons, but the ability to see things in real time and react to them, bugger up our communications and countless other things that hurt us.  The blockade alone, Mr President, drains our power, which hurts our morale, which…

“The bottom line is simple,” he concluded.  “We can hurt them and we will continue to hurt them, such as using the tactical nuclear grenade like we did near Richmond against one of their tank columns.  Their scanners are damn good; several other attempts to repeat that trick ended in disaster for the SEALS involved.  What we cannot do is defeat them, not completely.”

The President winced.  “Are you suggesting that we surrender?”

“I am suggesting that it may not be possible to produce a victory on equal terms,” Denny said.  The President gave him credit for not flinching.  “We may have to consider discovering what terms the aliens will offer us.”

Janet blinked.  “But we have won insurgencies before,” she said.  “Can’t we use that experience to help here?”

Denny laughed harshly.  “We were playing the aliens, then,” he reminded her.  “We won in Iraq after nine years of fighting…and victory, in that case, was far from perfect.  Pakistan was a second nightmare, but in that case we had a great deal of experience to help us and we had just lost New York, which made actually taking the gloves off much easier.  Our staying power was considered to be weak by our enemies – hell, by some of our allies – and we had to hold on until we could win.  It was the draft that made that possible…but here, we simply lack the ability to wear the aliens down.  We never lost a major battle in Iraq or Pakistan; it was the small battles that wore us down, and by the time we won, the country was devastated.”

He shrugged.  “Do the people of America have the…determination to fight an underground war for years?”

The President never knew what he would have answered, because at that moment, his desktop communicator chimed.  “Mr President,” Admiral Nelson Oshiro said, “we just received a very important message forwarded to us from the moon.  I need to see you, at once.”

“Come to my office,” the President said shortly.  The moon as a whole had apparently decided to step out of the war, but there were still some American agents on the surface of the moon, and others who hadn’t yet had a chance to get back in touch.  “I’ll see you there.”

He lifted an eyebrow at Denny, who shrugged.

Admiral Nelson Oshiro looked excited as Captain Schaefer showed him in, or at least as excited as he ever got; he had cultivated a poker face that had left him poker champion of the Pentagon for three years running.  The President had played him once and had been impressed; Oshiro had earned his title the hard way.

“Mr President,” he said.  “We received a compressed data burst from Area 51.”

“It was forwarded through the moon?”  Denny asked.  “What was Admiral Waikoloa thinking?”

“I think there was little choice,” Oshiro said.  “It had to be relayed through a series of laser relay posts and one of the posts was on the moon, where we still have access, probably because the lunar government is either hedging its bets or doesn’t know that the outpost is there.  The important news, however, is that there was an encounter with a small alien force near Freeport One…and they won!  They beat the aliens in a ship-to-ship duel!”

The President smiled for the first time in what felt like years.  “How bad was it?”

“The Rockrats lost several ships, but the aliens lost their entire force,” Oshiro said.  The President felt his smile growing wider.  “That’s twenty of their smaller warships and one of their transports, blown into dust by the battle and the chaos.  No survivors; the aliens lost – and this is the interesting piece – the aliens were finally exterminated by a Chinese force from a secret asteroid base.”

The President laughed.  “Does everyone have a secret asteroid base these days?”

“We think so,” Oshiro said seriously.  “We built Area 51 because we wanted a trump card if we actually stumbled into a Great Power War; they built their base – it’s not a shipyard, unfortunately – because they wanted to prevent more rebellions on their asteroids.  The good news is that there are thirty additional warships prepared to join Admiral Waikoloa’s fleet; the bad news is that there won’t be any more from that source.  In all, the current fleet from Area 51 numbers around two hundred and ten ships, although several of them are converted civilian ships.  He’s put a call out to the various Mars Squadrons – ours, the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the British, the Europeans – inviting them to join his force, but even if they all make it in time, there will only be two hundred and thirty ships at most.”

He paused.  “Regardless, Admiral Waikoloa has signalled his intention to move against the main alien fleet at once,” he continued.  “In two weeks, there will be a battle in Earth orbit to determine the future of the human race.”

It was, the President felt, the sort of statement that should have been underscored by a rumble of thunder, but there was nothing, apart from the background hum of the command centre and the faint echoes of marching feet somewhere within the complex.

There was only one question of importance.  “Can we win?”

“The tacticians on Area 51 have been analysing the battles since the first encounter with the Welcome Fleet,” Oshiro said.  “They believe that there can be a victory, if everything goes well.”

“The problem with battle plans is that they tend to last until they run into the enemy – that dirty dog – and his battle plan,” Denny observed.  “Can victory be guaranteed?”

“No,” Oshiro said flatly.  “Now, however, we know just how much the aliens have brought with them.  They now know that there is something hiding in the belt.  Given time, they will be able to mount a second attack and…stamp on Area 51, once they find it; while they’re searching, they can destroy the Rockrats by shattering their asteroids.  What we have to do, now, is find a way to help put the pressure on the aliens…because if they don’t surrender, we are going to have to slaughter two billion intelligent creatures as the price for saving our world and our lives.”

The President nodded.  “Please, see to it,” he said.  “If there is anything we can do when the battle commences, I want to be able to do it.”

***
“Don’t worry,” a woman’s voice said.  “You’ll be fine; just open your eyes slowly and you’ll be fine.”

Captain Christopher Fardell felt red pain jangling along his nerves.  His eyes hurt, as if some devilish monster had lit red coals at the base of his eyelids, or had replaced his eyeballs with glowing coals.  The pain was sickeningly horrible; he wanted to cry out in pain, seeing only darkness ahead of him.  The woman’s voice was calling to him from a far distance; he could barely reply…

“I can’t see,” he said.  It came out a strangled moan.  “What happened to me?”

“Just open your eyes,” the woman said.  Fardell somehow managed to open his eyes, seeing a torrent of blinding light before it dimmed down to very faint levels.  A woman, short, Chinese, pretty, with long dark hair, was bending over him.  At the moment, she was the most wonderful girl he had ever seen.  “See, that was easy?”

Fardell felt his body shift.  “Down, boy,” the woman said.  Fardell blushed with embarrassment.  He was naked, he had to be naked, which meant…

“They’ve taken me prisoner,” he said.  “What sort of collaborator are you?”

The girl laughed.  “This is a secret government facility some distance from the front lines,” she said.  “You’ve been out of it for nearly three weeks, ever since you were injured and the remains of your unit brought you here.  We kept you under to allow us some time to repair the damage caused by the alien weapons and the feedback cycle in your suit.”

She paused.  “I’m Jenny, by the way,” she said.  “Doctor Jenny Stratford.  I know you’re happy to see me, but wouldn’t you like some pants?”

Fardell blushed again.  “I’m sorry,” he said, as he tried to stand up.  A wave of dizziness swept over him for a moment, and then faded as he finally made it to his feet.  “How did you get a name like that?”

“My father fled China for some reason and took the name of the man who had helped him escape,” Jenny said.  “Now, how are you feeling?”

“I have felt better,” Fardell said, slowly.  His body ached; the patchwork of pale skin and strange marks on his body suggested that there had been some intensive surgery performed on his body.  “What happened to me?”

“You were wounded during the Washington balls-up,” Jenny said, confirming his fears that the Americans had lost the battle.  “Your suit was penetrated in several places and some of the systems malfunctioned; ironically, it would have been a lot better if the suit had failed completely.  Your neural network took a major feedback osculation from the suit’s interface with your body; the safety systems prevented it from doing you permanent harm, but the feedback damaged your body and mind.”

Fardell stared at her.  “But I feel fine,” he protested.  He glanced down at his body, which she studied with professional detachment.  “What did you do to me?”

“We repaired most of the damage,” Jenny said, studying him thoughtfully.  “Your body should make a complete recovery, but we warn you that you require bed rest and a considerable program of exercise and tests before we can certify you to return to duty.  There may be damage that we have not discovered, Captain; if we put you in a stressful situation, there may be…consequences.”

Fardell laughed.  “Doctor…ah, Jenny, I have been in stressful situations since I was sixteen,” he said.  He’d been in the army that long, both as an infantryman and then as a battlesuit soldier.  “What do you think I’m going to do?  Panic?”

“Quite possibly,” Jenny said.  Her dispassionate voice killed his libido with more efficiency than a cold shower.  “You were never seriously wounded in combat before.  You were hurt twice in training exercises, but exercises allow you to be pulled off the field before the actual game ends, just to ensure that a valuable soldier doesn’t die during the exercise.  Actual combat is different; your agony lasted for hours and was profoundly linked to the most delicate regions of your body and mind.  You stay here until we are certain that you are fit to return to duty.”

Fardell recognised a hopeless situation when he saw one.  “Yes, Doctor,” he said.  He lay back and tried to smile.  “Is there any good news?”

“You’re alive,” Jenny said.  Her face tightened for a long moment.  When she spoke, her voice was grim and bitter…and touched by grief.  “My fiancée was with the National Guard and marched off to fight the aliens…and never came back.  Count your blessings, Captain; at least you’re alive.”

Chapter Fifty-Three: Marching to Armageddon

USS Enterprise, Deep Space

The ship had had to be an Enterprise.

It was a honoured name in the American fleet, from one of the first ships to fight under the American flag, to the carrier that had proven indestructible in the war against Japan, to the nuclear-powered carrier that had avoided destruction from orbit in the skirmish over Taiwan, to the stealth ship that had carried out dozens of successful operations against the Wreckers.  The USN hadn’t wanted to allow the USSF to use the name, but the protests of thousands of Star Trek fans still loyally hoping for a series that lived up to the originals, had ensured that an Enterprise went to Mars, an Enterprise became one of the first constant-boost ships, and an Enterprise became the second warship to operate in space.  It had also been destroyed in space; the aliens had shattered it in the Battle of Earth.

Admiral Paul Waikoloa leaned back and studied the tactical display as the fleet started to finally shake down as it departed from Freeport One, assembling itself into something reassembling a tactical formation.  The Enterprise had been designed as a command ship; it was larger and better protected than the other ships in the fleet, but at the same time, her unique nature meant that she would certainly tip the aliens off to the intent behind her design.  They’d done what they could to spread out the command responsibility to other officers, but he was nervous; a single run of bad luck could leave the fleet leaderless at just the wrong time.  The aliens had to know they were coming; if they had taken any basic precautions, such as spreading out spy probes through the belt, they might know exactly what ships made up the fleet.  They might even know the location of Area 51; one slip at the wrong time and ultra-sensitive sensors might lead the aliens right there.  Waikoloa had never considered himself a religious man, but he prayed silently that they hadn’t made any mistakes; if they failed, Area 51 would be needed to support Message Bearer as humanity’s first and only interstellar craft headed out towards the stars.

And he was nervous.  He had command experience, true, but no one had ever been in a battle of such scale, or with so much hanging on the outcome.  There would have been a time, he remembered, where the loss of one ship would have been a major disaster; how many ships had been killed in the war with the Oghaldzon?  The USSF had lost nearly seventy ships, all in all; the other Great Powers would have lost around two hundred between them.  Area 51 had been working on newer weapons and tactics, but how many surprises had the Oghaldzon kept in reserve?  They had done all the attacking so far; what had they kept in reserve for the defence?  How many of their own people would they consider an acceptable loss rate?  Would they surrender or would they force him to launch an attack that would slaughter two billion of them?

And how would the moon react?

He tried to push the worry aside, but failed; there were just too many complications involved in the coming battle.  He had taken the risk of sending a direct note to the new Lunar Government, warning them not to interfere, but he knew that some factions on the moon would trust the aliens more than the USSF.  Privately, he might admit that some of their concerns were justified, but they could not be allowed to interfere.  Too much was at stake; would they agree to trust him, or would they throw their weigh behind the aliens?  The battle plan allowed for a certain amount of ambiguity; they would be out of range of any of the weapons on the moon, but in the long run, the moon’s attitude could determine just what happened in the future.

He looked up from his acceleration chair as an image flickered to life on the display.  “Callie,” he said.  “Have we received the update packages from the ground?”

“Yes, Admiral,” Captain Callie Brown said.  “The President has sent you a message wishing you every success…and has agreed to ratify the treaty with the Rockrat Association that you proposed.  Congress met, discussed it, and agreed to sign the treaty.”

“Good,” Waikoloa said, relieved.  The Rockrats hadn’t been happy to discover that the new spacecraft had come straight from the USSF, rather than their own industries, and Kyle Short had been threatened with losing his post.  He had retained it, following a treaty that had offered the Rockrats considerable benefits from America and the American installations – including the use of the industrial stations that had been launched out to the belt – in exchange for their support.  Some cynics had pointed out that America was in no condition to make good on its promises, but after the attack on Freeport One, the Rockrats as a community had accepted that the aliens had to be stamped on.  That worried him, too; Rockrats weren’t big on concepts such as accepting surrenders.  “Have you forwarded it to Kyle?”

Callie nodded.  “He was rather relieved, I think,” she said.  Waikoloa grinned.  “He asked you when you intended to depart?”

“In an hour,” Waikoloa said.  He lifted an eyebrow; Callie was his flag captain and had known that as well as he had.  She could have told Short without having to ask her commanding officer; the information would have done the aliens no good if they overheard the signal…or, impossible as it seemed, someone in the belt sent the aliens a warning.  “Did he say anything about the lunar situation?”

“Very little,” Callie said.  “He said that they were willing to discuss, in principle, lunar independence, but only after the moon took a side and stuck to it.  On a different note, he noted that the IAU seems to have vanished without trace, so the Rockrat demand that it be abolished won’t be needed, but if the other Great Powers want to resurrect it, the US will oppose them and refuse to sign any agreements to give it back some of its old powers.”

Waikoloa nodded.  “That’s something that will please the Rockrats,” he said.  He studied the display again; Doctor Kelly Jorgensen had outdone herself.  Enterprise and her sisters carried enough firepower, some of it in a new and original form – as least, there had been no sign that the aliens had deployed such weapons, although Kelly had been careful to note that that didn’t mean that the aliens simply had them and hadn’t use them – which he hoped would give his fleet an advantage.  “They might end up creating a new organisation to ensure fair play, but at least they will feel that they have gained something.”

He shrugged.  “How is the fleet shaping up, in your opinion?”

Callie’s skin flushed slightly.  “The Chinese have fitted in better than I thought; it helps that we all use the same protocols and even component designs,” she said.  “Commodore Qiu has gracefully accepted his position as third-in-command of the fleet; he has also informed me that he intends to file a formal complaint about the existence of Area 51 as soon as he returns to China.”

“Humourless son of a bitch,” Waikoloa commented, without heat.  It wasn’t a jab at America; the Chinese officer was manoeuvring for position and possible future influence.  He could almost feel sorry for Qiu; his nation couldn’t be anything like intact, not so close to the impact of one of the larger rocks.  He had run simulations; depending on the assumptions he fed in, anything from a tenth to three-quarters of the Chinese population had died under the rock, or in the breakdown of society following the asteroid’s destruction of the glue that held China together.  Even if Qiu’s force survived the coming battle intact, they were going to have an impossible task to complete; it was quite possible that they would discover that the people on the ground no longer wanted the rule of the Party.  “Has he fitted into our own command structure?”

“Everything seems quite perfect,” Callie confirmed.  “The Russians and the others from Mars have done the same; they are eager to join the battle and are looking forward to destroying the alien blockade of Earth.  The Combined Fleet will be the most powerful force that we have ever placed into space.”

Waikoloa clicked on the display, switching back to the overall view.  Two hundred and fifty ships, most of them warships, the others converted civilian craft that had been fitted with weapons, no two craft the same.  There were hundreds of personnel spreading over the fleet, trying to ensure that the data network and the tactical coordination system held together perfectly, pulling the fleet into one coordinated entity.  Others were desperately analysing the information spy probes had pulled out from Earth; some of them picking up the latest information on the positions of the alien ships, others picking apart at the records to discover which of the ships were armed with what weapons.  It would be humanity’s finest hour…

If an imaginative person had looked at it, he would have called it the Grand Fleet, or perhaps another name fit to convoy an idea of majesty, power, and capability.  The IAU would have come up with some nicely bland and inoffensive name, the Multinational Fleet, or the Interplanetary Fleet, that would have neither pleased nor offended.  Waikoloa himself was awed; there was little time to choose a real name for the fleet, but personally he would have tended towards Last Hope Fleet, or maybe Redemption Fleet.  Historians in the belt had been reminding everyone who had the time to listen that if humanity had even probed into space ten years earlier than the first determined attempts to place a base on the moon, the aliens would have had their arse soundly kicked when they tried to get into Earth orbit.  The Combined Fleet seemed so…weak a name for the force that, one way or the other, would determine the future of the human race.

He smiled.  If future schoolchildren would be bored reading about the Combined Fleet, they would not be bored when they studied some of the names, particularly the ones chosen by the Rockrats themselves.  FlameWar.  Jihad on their Arse.  Ying Tong Iddle I Po.  Pointing Finger.  Fuck the Man.  Overcompensating Bastard.  We Come In Peace; Shoot To Kill.  Any schoolchild would have laughed; Blame Thande – no one knew who Thande was anyway – RADICAL_NEUTURAL, Landshark Slywanker, Motherfucker, Billy Butcher’s Boys…the list of names went on and on, many of them unprintable.  One particular crew had wanted to name their ship the Arse-Bandit, but had been shouted at by everyone else until they had settled for something just a little less stereotypical.  Captain Kit Rebury had been very upset.

“I think that we have a chance to win,” he said, finally.  He thought – hoped – that it was more than that, but the spy probes had made a few things clear, such as the orbital stations the aliens were deploying to start constructing additional ships.  Once they started churning out ships, it would become a battle of production, one that he feared they would lose.  They had a window of opportunity; a window that would soon close…and it would never reopen in his lifetime.  “Have you sent the activation signal to the other ships in the fleet?”

“Yes, Admiral,” Callie said.  Her voice radiated confidence and determination; Waikoloa could only hope that it was not misplaced.  She knew her work, they all did, but the aliens were still partly an unknown factor.  Who knew what surprises they might have up their sleeves.  “The fleet is as ready as we are ever going to get.”

Waikoloa placed his doubts into one corner of his mind and smiled.  “Inform the fleet,” he said.  “We leave in precisely one hour…and may God help those who help themselves.”

Lunar City, Lunar Surface

“We have something of a decision to make,” Karl Bova said, as he glanced around the room.  His eyes met Tony Jones’ eyes for a moment and the astronomer turned ambassador tried to smile back.  His time with the small alien encampment on the lunar surface had turned him into a supporter of the aliens, one who liked what they might do for human society; they certainly respected pure science in a way that no human government had ever done.  “We received a note from Kyle Short, barely an hour ago.”

Jones nodded with the others, remembering the name of the current Administrator of the Rockrat Association, the man who was effectively President of the Belt, now that the Great Powers had been knocked back to the surface of the Earth, and perhaps the most powerful man in the solar system, although only for a given value of ‘power.’  Everyone had known that the Rockrats couldn’t form into a Great Power…until they had somehow produced a fleet from nowhere that had annihilated an alien force in the belt.

“The Chairman has…informed us that a interplanetary fleet composed of ships from all the Great Powers, and the Rockrats themselves, will be coming towards Earth with the intention of destroying the blockade and ending the alien threat to humanity,” Bova continued.  “The Chairman has asked us…which side we are going to be on when it comes to the fight.”

There was a long pause.  “Despite the best efforts of several of the Great Powers, we do not actually have much of an offensive capability outside lunar orbit,” Adam Faulkner said.  He was now a General and the Secretary of Defence; Bova’s new government hadn’t hesitated in promoting as many of its people as possible into positions of power, just to ensure that they held the reins while the moon went through the second stage of its independence struggle.  “We can destroy the three Oghaldzon starships in orbit around the moon without much in the way of problems; they are well within range of the mass drivers and they would have very little time to react – less, of course, if we used lasers to hurt them while we launched the mass drivers at them.  Once we did that…”

He paused.  “The Oghaldzon could strike back,” he said.  “If they defeat the Rockrat fleet, or if the timing is bad, they could counterattack and target our military and civilian installations.  You may remember that it was generally concluded back during the bad old days of Great Power rivalry that a war fought on the moon would be hideously devastating; our precautions are designed to handle air leaks and worse, not nuclear weapons melting lunar rock and collapsing chambers buried deep under the rock.  I would prefer to avoid a conflict with them…”

Bova looked at him.  “What do you suggest?”

Faulkner shrugged.  “I was brought up to believe that the military should have no input into a political decision,” he said.  Bova snorted rudely.  “I merely point out that trying to double-cross the aliens will place us in a dangerous military position…one, I might add, which will only be made worse if we take the side of the Oghaldzon…and the Rockrats win the battle.”

“The Rockrats are not the only force involved,” Harriet Wenham said.  The newly-minted Secretary of State glanced around the room.  “The force includes Russians, Chinese, and Americans…all nations that have some reason to be…irritated with us.  Could we stand off the combined fleet if they decided to take action against us?”

“We could make them pay a hideous price for taking the moon and we could wreck all the mass drivers, mining equipment, and other supplies,” Faulkner said.  He looked back at her evenly.  “The overall problem would be in standing them off from the moon, far enough to prevent them from striking at us…and our capability to do that is limited.  We have the weapons mounted on the various stations orbiting the moon, but none of them were really designed for military operations…and it won’t take long for any halfway competent force to break through them.  At that point, they will be able to strike at us, basically, until we are all dead.”

Bova steepled his fingers.  “That does, of course, give us some room to negotiate,” he said.  “Where do our loyalties lie, my friends?”

Jones spoke quickly.  “We owe the aliens,” he said shortly.  “The Oghaldzon played a role in giving us a chance to assert ourselves and assume control of the moon, finally ending the exploitation of the lunar population by the Great Powers.  We owe them, at least, our neutrality.”

“Do we?”  Bova asked.  “The same aliens decided that that would be an interesting idea to allow several asteroids to de-orbit and impact on the surface of the planet.  They may claim it was an accident, and we might even believe them, but in the end…it shows in just what regard they hold human life.  We know what they want; they want total domination on their terms, forever.”

Jones eyed him with a flicker of disgust.  “So, you are prepared to use them and then discard them,” he said.  “What about gratitude?”

“What about it?”  Bova asked.  “The point does remain; do we commit ourselves to one side or the other?  Certainly…we have no treaty obligation to the aliens to actually come to their aid, and they have only limited obligations to come to our aid.  Why should we just declare our neutrality and remain out of the fighting?”

Faulkner smiled.  “Because one of the two fleets is going to win, and that fleet is going to demand an accounting from us,” he said.  “If we choose the wrong one, it could be…unfortunate.”

Bova scowled.  “It’s a pity they can’t both lose,” he said.  Jones scowled at the tone in his voice, a kind of droll amusement, mixed with bitterness and regret.  “It would be so much more convenient.”

Chapter Fifty-Four: Armageddon, Take One

Earthspace, Near Earth Orbit

“The enemy fleet is approaching active radar range,” the coordinator reported.  “The fleet is forming into a defensive formation and is requesting orders.”

Dataka-War Commander-Fleet nodded as the icons started to take on shape and form.  He had been astonished by the presence of the enemy force, the more so because the force was clearly smaller than he would have expected…at least seventy ships.  Tracking suggested that there were more ships present, but though carefully timing their fusion burns, the humans had successfully obscured how many ships were actually heading to Earth.  Tracking put the numbers between one hundred and three hundred, but there was no way to be certain; anything could hide in the icy darkness of outer space.

One thing was certain; this was the human race’s last significant effort.  If Dataka won the battle, he would be able to destroy or capture the shipyards in the belt, rendering the remaining Rockrats irrelevant.  They could skulk around the belt as much as they liked; they couldn’t hope to make any further impact on his forces.  If he lost the battle…

“Researcher,” he said, “what is their purpose in coming here, now?”

“They want to win,” Takalak-Researcher-Seeker said.  “That force represents their final effort to win the war outright.  If they had more ships, they would have sent them; if they thought they had time to build more, they would have waited until they have an overwhelming force.  This is their last chance to escape our…redefinition of their society.”

Dataka nodded.  He had expected no less.  “And what can we expect from them?”

“Desperation,” Takalak said.  “They will do whatever it takes to force us to surrender…or exterminate our presence in orbit.”

The flat words made Dataka click in anxiety.  Humans were…irrational; they would fight to the death to defend worthless patches of land, or they would abandon their own to the most horrifying fates, or sometimes they would assault their mates and children for no obvious reason.  An Oghaldzon force in a hopeless situation would surrender; the humans would sometimes fight to the death, sometimes surrender, and sometimes launch an attack under cover of a surrender.  It made his forces nervous; they had orders to accept surrenders when they were forthcoming, but if a surrender was used to cover an attack, it drove them mad.  It was just…alien.

He clicked again, in irritation and recognition of a mistake.  He had gambled and sent a dozen ships to patrol the outer edge of Earth’s sphere of control, just in case the humans were trying to sneak a second assault force through the perimeter under cover of their first assault force.  Those ships couldn’t be recalled to take part in the first battle; they would have to be recalled to defend the motherships, adding their weight of fire to the motherships’ formidable point defences and their consorts.  He had feared that the humans had developed some new kind of stealth system, but if that had been the case, the fight would have already been lost.  No human ships intruded into the area he controlled and monitored through hundreds of active sensors.

“Coordinator, order the fleet to launch probes towards the enemy fleet,” he ordered.  “Researcher, I would like you to summon the Human Researcher and her pet human female to the bridge.  Their information might be of value.”

Takalak knew better than to argue under such conditions.  “It shall be done, War Commander,” he said, lowering his body slightly in submission.  The civilian always gave way to the military in times of conflict.  “I shall call them up at once.”

Dataka clicked in approval and turned back to the main display, accessing the feed through his implants as the spy probes sped away from the spacecraft that had launched them, heading towards the human fleet.  They wouldn’t escape detection; unlike missiles, they would have to use their active sensors to track down their targets, but they would provide a great deal of information before the humans killed them.  If nothing else, they should give him a much more accurate figure on just how many human ships had been launched from the belt.

“We are receiving some information,” the Coordinator informed him.  Dataka remembered her; Fanaya-Sensor-Seeker, who had played a vital role in detecting and destroying the sneak human attack on the motherships during the ground war.  “There are around two hundred, perhaps more, human craft involved in the attack.”

Dataka remembered one of the last data transmissions from the fleet that had attacked Freeport One; Makra-Commander-Righteous Rage had warned of human craft using stealth coating, a particularly nasty trick that the Oghaldzon themselves had never thought of.  In traditional meme-sharing manner, the idea had been copied and planned for incorporating into the next generation of Oghaldzon warships, but events had rendered that unimportant.  He would fight and win – or lose – with what he had on hand.

“One drone was just killed,” Fanaya said.  Dataka remembered that sensor crews tended to think of their drones as part of them, if not intelligences in their own right, and said nothing.  “The others have continued to transmit…just killed.”

Dataka clicked in understanding.  It wouldn’t be long before the human ships came within active sensor range of his fleet.  Let them try to hide then!

***
Samra was curled up next to Reynolds, enjoying the pressure of his body against hers, when the lights blinked once, informing her that the door was about to be opened.  The Oghaldzon seemed to have little sense of privacy, something their sonar was almost certainly responsible for; Samra had met countless boys and men who would have loved to have an undetectable trick for looking through clothes.  The Oghaldzon just didn’t take it seriously.

The door hissed open, revealing Oolane-Researcher-Seeker standing there, her face twisted in an expression that Samra had come to realise was worry.  She wasn't sure how she knew that; there were no traces of thoughts or impressions that would have matched any human face.  As always, she could hear a faint noise surrounding the alien, but this time it seemed to be slighter, less prominent.  She would have given her back teeth – or whatever remained of her virginity – for a proper analysis kit; the Oghaldzon hadn’t said much about themselves.

“Samra,” Oolane said, speaking the word rather than using her translator.  The pronunciation was dreadful.  “Your presence is requested on the bridge.”

Samra guessed it was the kind of ‘request’ that was really an order.  “I’m coming,” she said, pulling herself free of the sleeping mat.  “What’s happening?”

Reynolds awoke in his cat-like manner.  “Samra?”

“This fleet is under attack,” Oolane informed them.  She ignored the look on Reynolds face; Samra flinched inwardly at his look of pure delight.  “Your presence is required on the bridge.  Please accompany me.”

“I’ll be back soon,” Samra said.  Reynolds pulled her back and kissed her, his eyes grim and distant.  “Don’t do anything stupid…”

He managed a mischievous grin.  “Hey, you know me,” he protested.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Samra said.  She kissed him again and allowed Oolane to lead her out of the room.  As the door closed behind them, they came face-to-face with three other Oghaldzon, all unfamiliar to her, and armed.  She hadn’t seen many of their weapons; they looked like toys, but strange alien toys.  There was no way she could use them.

Oolane was clicking at them, rapid-fire clicks coming from her mouth and echoing across the corridor, while they were clicking back, their clicks seemingly louder and certainly more aggressive.  The Oghaldzon liked to argue, Samra knew, but there seemed to be friendship in the argument; she tried to understand what was happening, but it was impossible; without the translator, she didn’t understand a word of the Oghaldzon tongue, what little of it she could hear.  Most of it existed beyond her range of hearing.

“I’m sorry,” Oolane said finally, turning to her, “but the Researcher insisted that you be secured to prevent you doing anything irrational while on the bridge.”

Samra blinked at her.  “What do you mean?”

The lead Oghaldzon reached out with one pair of hands, caught her and spun her around in zero-gravity.  Before she could protest – she had the feeling that they had done it before – they had caught her hands and secured them firmly behind her back, sonar senses clicking away and probing her body with an intimacy that not even Reynolds could match.  It didn’t feel uncomfortable; looking at an Oghaldzon, she guessed that it was harder to secure one than it was to secure a human, but it left her feeling vulnerable.

“You will come with us,” the leader said, and started off down the corridor.  The other two aliens pushed Samra alone without any regard for her dignity, although they wouldn’t understand it anyway; Oolane walked behind, looking downcast.  Again, Samra wasn’t sure how she had realised that; the alien emotions seemed to be growing on her through only limited contact with her fellow humans.  “The War Commander is waiting.”

She had known, on one level, just how large the Seeker for Truth actually was, but it still surprised her when they carried her though kilometres of corridors, even through common sense told her that they couldn’t be that far from the bridge.  The aliens were everywhere, rushing to take control of the battle; she wondered, with a certain amount of resignation, if Allah would still accept her soul if the unknown attacking force blew the Seeker for Truth apart.  She had given herself to a man who was not her husband…

A series of doors opened in front of them, each one seemingly large enough to deter a nuke from exploding, and finally revealed the command centre of the ship.  It was much larger than the bridge of the Neil Armstrong, but it was even more crowded; a dozen Oghaldzon were seated, horse-like, on couches surrounding consoles, others were linked directly into the computers, their minds bringing the fleet to combat stations.  It seemed like something out of a nightmare; the room was lit only by the light of the consoles, and the hologram floating in the centre of the room.

“That is the War Commander,” Oolane said, her translated voice revealing nothing of her emotions.  She indicated a large Oghaldzon, wearing nothing, but a strange interface around the domed head; the War Commander gave her no attention at all.  “I’m sorry about the restraints, but humans are irrational…”

Samra almost laughed, which would have proved the alien right.  What do you think I’m going to do?  She thought, wondering if she dared say it aloud.  Do you think I’m going to pull a knife out of my vagina and slice you all down before you can react?  I don’t have a knife; I have no weapons at all, just my mind.

She didn’t say it aloud.

“That is the main display,” Oolane informed her, waving one forearm towards the hologram.  “It is used to keep track of the battle and how it develops.”

It was grey and almost featureless; they had realised, a long time ago, that the Oghaldzon didn’t see colour in the same way that humans did.  The display showed a line of icons advancing towards another line of icons, as fanciful, in its own way, as the old Space Invader games.  It wasn’t a game, Samra had to remind herself; if the icons came much closer, they would start killing each other.  It was even possible that one missile would seek out the Seeker for Truth and destroy it – and her.

“So,” she said, as carefully as she could, “what do we do now?”

“We wait until the War Commander speaks to us,” Oolane said.  “The battle is about to be joined.”

***
Earth.

It hung in the display, a beautiful blue-green world, causing different emotions to sweep across the Combined Fleet.  For those who had been born on the planet, or had visited it, it was sacred, the birthplace of the human race and countless animals, some of whom had gone on to be humanity’s friends and protectors around the fireplace, others who had been exterminated by a careless humanity.  For those who had been born in the belt, it was more ambiguous; worshipped as the birthplace, perhaps, but also the source of rules and regulations that irritated and annoyed the belt, mainly because most of them had no relevance to the daily life of a Rockrat.

“It’s pretty,” Cindy said, turning her head back to her console.  Her body showed no sign of their lovemaking, Jake Ellsworth saw; she really would have been the perfect Rockrat.  Her voice was as firm and disciplined as ever, without even a trace of real sentiment; she had taken one look at Earth and then returned to studying her console.  “I have around one hundred and seventy smaller warships heading towards us, backed up by twenty larger carriers and…one hell of a lot of platforms.”

Ellsworth nodded once.  The Oghaldzon had worked like demons to fortify Earth ever since they had occupied LEO and the Russians had attacked them: they had to have intended to hang on to the planet, even without knowing about Area 51 and the Chinese ships.  Given enough time, they would have made the planet almost impregnable against any assault from the belt, allowing them to win a long drawn-out war.

“I take it they’re scanning us,” he said.  “Do you have a trace on their locations?”

“I think that we have most of their craft identified,” Cindy said.  “The analysts on the Enterprise are earning what we pay them; the alien scanners are also revealing most of their own locations to us.  The motherships are hanging back, but that was expected and fortunate; those ships have formidable point defence.  If they had been added into the main fleet…”

“They wouldn’t have risked so many lives,” Ellsworth said.  The Admiral had tried to work out how long it would take the Oghaldzon to empty their motherships, using their space elevators, but it depended on too many unknown factors.  Did they have enough of Earth secure to land most of their population?  Did they have the time?  Space elevators might make their logistics simpler, but even then there would still be logistical problems; would they take the risk of overloading the cables?  “How long until we enter their engagement range?”

“Roughly twenty minutes,” Cindy said.  “The Admiral is starting the ten-minute countdown.”

Ellsworth frowned.  Everything depended, here, upon the aliens respecting their own engagement range.  It was possible to send missiles out on a ballistic trajectory and then ignite them much closer to their targets; the aliens had done it during the first Battle of Earth.  They might try it again, except a fleet was a much harder target than a series of orbital bases and fortresses; the fleet would be able to take action, or, if worst came to worst, soak up the blows.  The aliens…would be in for a surprise, but only if the new technology worked as Area 51 had promised.  If it didn’t…

He pushed the thought away and stared at the display.  The aliens had divided their forces into three groups, the war fleet that was manoeuvring itself into position to intercept and engage the human fleet, the motherships, and a smaller group of warships that had activated their drives and were moving towards the motherships.  He smiled grimly; the odds were that the aliens had decided that the humans might try to sneak around and hit the motherships from the rear, so they had left a tripwire in the form of a few of their ships in place to cover their rear.  They had worked out, by now, that almost all of the ships from the belt were coming right at them, so they had recalled the ships…

He hoped.  Battle plans didn’t survive past Round One.

“Five minutes,” Cindy said, as calmly as ever.  Ellsworth envied her; he hadn’t felt so nervous since he had taken his first mining craft out into the belt, hunting for ore and ice.  The last battle hadn’t been so terrifying…had it?  “The Admiral has asked if you wish to address the Rockrat ships.”

Ellsworth smiled.  He was second-in-command of the fleet and commander of the Rockrat contingent, a compromise that had pleased no one in the belt, but had prevented an argument that would have taken weeks to resolve.  Personally, he thought that it had grown a little out of hand, but that was politics in the belt; the people had the final say, always.

“Open the link,” he said, smiling coldly.  The fleet was using lasers to keep in touch, each ship serving as the relay for others to ensure that the command net never went down, however many ships were lost in the exchange of fire.  He waited for Cindy’s nod before speaking.  He knew just what to say.  “My friends…

“We have gathered here to face the terrible threat that faces our people. Across yonder blank field of space lies the cursed fleet of the Oghaldzon, misguided fools and idiots who must be destroyed and their bodies hacked to pieces, their homes and businesses destroyed, their land salted and cursed, and a large fifty foot wall built around the area they call their territory so all that may know what happens when they assume they can commit genocide against the human race!”

Cindy blinked.  “Isn’t that a little strong?”

“No,” Ellsworth said.  He glared down at the display. The alien fleet was growing larger.  “I stole it from a movie.  Time to firing?”

“Twenty seconds,” Cindy said.  A harder tone entered her voice.  “The Admiral would like you to remember that we want them to surrender if possible.”

“If possible,” Ellsworth agreed.  The countdown ticked down to zero.  Firing commands, already pre-loaded into hundreds of computers and control systems, were finally triggered.  “No quarter!”

The fleet fired.

Chapter Fifty-Five: Armageddon, Take Two

Earthspace, Near Earth Orbit

The Oghaldzon had detected the missile launch at once, although they hadn’t expected to see any engagement for another ten minutes.  Radars had been scanning the human fleet ever since it had entered active radar range, locking down the precise location of all of the human ships…in exchange, unavoidably, for revealing the location of the Oghaldzon radars and most of their own ships as well.  Scanner techs on both fleets were working through the signals, their own, the enemies, the handful of pulses that had no definable origin, trying to locate as much of the enemy fleet as possible.  When the humans fired, targeting sensors locked in on the missiles and kept lock as the missiles swept closer.

The Oghaldzon were not unduly alarmed.  They knew the rules of space combat as well as the humans; in their own way, both fleets had fairly equal experience and knowledge of their enemy…or so they thought.  The humans had clearly decided to launch some missiles in on a ballistic course, a course they would assume as soon as their drives burned out, but it wouldn’t work.  In the dominating environment, with the Oghaldzon probing space with active sensors, the missiles couldn’t hide in the empty regions of space.  They would be detected and killed with lasers until they were all gone, before they could reactive their own drives and enter terminal attack mode.  By then, they would all be dead…

And then everything changed.

***
“War Commander, we have missile separation,” Fanaya said, before she realised just what she was saying.  The human missiles had been larger than their previously observed designs, but that wasn't that surprising; missiles tended to grow larger depending on just how far they were intended to fly under their own power.  “They’re launching missiles from the missiles!”

“A multiple warhead,” Dataka realised.  They had seen something like them before, during the assault on the beachheads, but most of them had been shot down by the ground-based point defence before they had been able to separate and launch their independent attacks.  The Oghaldzon could still see their targets, they could still kill them, but now there were smaller targets and faster ones.  The humans had produced tiny nuclear weapons before, as the forces on the ground could testify, but each of the smaller missiles carried a nuke, they could destroy an entire ship if they hit.  “Order the defences to take them down as fast as possible…”

He cursed as the human missiles revealed themselves.  Some of them were obviously intended to destroy his ships, others were committed to generating sensor ghosts or even attacking his orbital weapons platforms or homing in on radar sensors.  The display sparkled again as the humans launched a second wave of their new missile designs, and then a third, launching a wave of missiles against his forces.  He sent orders into the processors, but most of the human missiles were separating just before they entered laser range, launching their missiles just in time to avoid losing them all at once.  The tidal wave of destruction was closing in rapidly and point defence was almost overwhelmed.

Almost.  “Keep the links up and running,” he ordered.  A thought had occurred to him.  “Deactivate all the radars on the targeted ships or platforms; don’t give them anything to home in on, and…”

“We have three incoming,” Fanaya reported, her voiced showing no trace of panic.   Dataka was proud of her in his own way; she might never make Ship Commander, but she would certainly rise high as a sensor tech.  “They’d closing in on our ship.”

Dataka didn’t spare anything for the gasp of the human behind him.  “Engage the missiles at will,” he ordered the tactical officer.  “Knock them down and keep them down…”

“Nuclear detonation, seven nuclear detonations,” Fanaya snapped.  Dataka glanced at the display and realised that the humans had added a second trick; they’d known that the Oghaldzon lasers were more powerful than theirs, so they had rigged their missiles with armour and a detonator.  When the sensors had registered the missile melting and vaporising under the laser fire, they’d triggered the nuke, blowing the missile up and sending more electronic disruption into the ether.  It could all be handled, in time; the question was if they had the time.  “Sir...only a handful of them are detonating.”

“Concentrate our fire,” Dataka ordered coldly, mentally clicking approval of whatever human had thought up the trick.  There was one easy counter; take down the missiles before they could detonate, which required several lasers, which in turn made it harder to take them all down before they entered terminal engagement mode.  “How long until we enter our own engagement range?”

“Five mili-cycles,” Fanaya said.  “I have already loaded firing patterns into the computers.”

“Order them to fire as soon as we enter range,” Dataka ordered.  An icon flashed once on the display, emitting a mournful sound before it vanished forever, followed by three more spacecraft.  The human plan had hurt his fleet, hurt it…but it wasn't over yet.  “Now it’s our turn…”

***
The main display on the Enterprise had started to haze out, a result of the nuclear detonations, the confusingly shifting Oghaldzon ECM, and the shifting patterns of fire.  The new missiles had been a success, obviously, but no one was certain just how successful they had been, while the Oghaldzon were coming into their own engagement range, which was also the same engagement range for most of the Combined Fleet.  Kelly had done very good work, Waikoloa admitted without hesitation; the multiple-warhead missiles had clearly taken a bite out of the enemy.

“Can you confirm,” he asked.  “How many did we kill?”

“I’m not sure,” the sensor tech admitted.  “I think we got at least three, maybe four, but the resulting chaos is making it hard to be certain of just what we hit.  At least twenty warheads detonated too far from any hull to do any good, although we might have blinded some sensors if we were really lucky.”

Waikoloa scowled.  It would be mere seconds before they entered engagement range…when everything would become much simpler.  He would have loved to have remained just outside the alien range, bombarding them until they surrendered or were wiped out, but there were only a handful of the multiple-warhead missiles left.  Kelly hadn’t been able to slim them down; each ship could only carry a handful of them, including a handful of converted interplanetary transports.  A bridge ship could have carried many more, but the remaining bridge ships were orbiting Saturn or Jupiter or even further out, trying to avoid the Oghaldzon for as long as possible.

He glanced over at Callie.  “Have we located a command ship yet?”

“No,” she said, her eyes on her console.  “It’s logically one of the bigger ships, but we haven’t been able to identify it; they’re probably using lasers to communicate, just as we are.  The smaller ones are the real problem, sir; they’re locking targeting sensors on, just now.”

“Order all ships to open fire as soon as they enter range,” Waikoloa ordered.  It would be bare seconds now.  “We have to concentrate our fire and destroy as many of the smaller warships as possible before the range closes even further.”

He leaned back as the first missiles launched from the Enterprise, followed rapidly by fire from the other ships in the fleet, concentrated on twenty-one Oghaldzon targets.  The enemy had clearly linked their own point defence together, just as his own ships had; their fleet was forming up into a formation, like his, that looked as if it had been designed by the greenest cadet in the space academy.  He took no reassurance from it; they all had seen enough to know how dangerous the Oghaldzon were.  He had read countless novels where an alien force, both extremely advanced and dangerously incompetent, had invaded Earth; the Oghaldzon didn’t even have the decency to be stupid!  They might look at the world – at the galaxy – through a different set of eyes, but they were far from stupid.  That made them dangerous…

The display suddenly sparkled with red light as the Oghaldzon missiles started to boost towards his fleet.  The entire situation was starting to look like a line of ships and fleets; his force, advancing towards the first Oghaldzon fleet, the second Oghaldzon fleet behind it, the third formation…and the motherships.  He had to punch his way though the first fleet and the second fleet to threaten the motherships; at that point, the Oghaldzon could surrender…or be left to the tender mercies of the Rockrats.

They had it easier.  They just had to destroy his fleet.

“Here they come,” Callie said.  The Enterprise had been rolling, launching its missiles as its tubes were brought to bear; now, the lights dimmed slightly as point defence lasers and rail guns targeted the oncoming missiles.  He felt a moment of nervousness as the missiles were struck; had the aliens thought of rigging them to pre-detonate first?  No missiles exploded in radioactive fury and he breathed a sigh of relief; they had started to cut through the warheads without problems.  “One down, two down, three down…they’re all down.”

“For the moment,” Waikoloa said grimly.  The fleet was shaking out now as if continued to concentrate its fire; seven Oghaldzon spacecraft vanished in balls of fire.  It was turning into a pounding match, but one that could still go either way; the main body of the Oghaldzon fleet was trying to open the range a little, just enough to make the humans work harder for their hits.  They had offered him an opportunity…

“Callie, raise Task Force 5,” he said.  The display updated itself again; four craft, three Chinese, one Rockrat, had been blown into dust.  “They are ordered to begin Operation Clean Sweep.”

***
“That’s a go signal,” Basil Durham said, as the signal came in.  “Trigger the drives…”

The Lightning Roasted Lemur and the Ferret on Crack, both converted freighters, fell out of their position in the rear of the formation, heading towards LEO and the Oghaldzon platforms that had been left in orbit.  The Oghaldzon fleet’s movements had given them an opportunity and neither crew intended to miss it, not least because it was a chance to extract revenge for their dead comrades in the Battle of Freeport One.  The Oghaldzon ignored them; they had to know that the freighters had fallen into a blank zone, just outside engagement range, but effectively helpless as far as continuing the war was concerned.  It didn’t matter…

“I have targeting information,” his wife and executive officer said.  There were only four crewers on the Lightning Roasted Lemur; it was that sort of ship.  “The platforms  have been targeted for destruction.”

“Open the holds,” Durham ordered.  Neither ship had been refitted withy missile tubes; there was little point.  The ship shook slightly as air started to vent out of the ship.  The aliens had to be wondering just what they were doing.  “Launch the missiles into space.”

“They’re gone,” his wife said.  “One minute to activation.”

Durham was already triggering the drives, sending the Lightning Roasted Lemur heading up and away from the missiles, followed closely by the Ferret on Crack.  The aliens had to have worked out what they were doing by now, but it no longer mattered; they no longer had a chance to stop them before they deployed their missiles.  Behind them, the missiles activated their own drives and sped downwards towards Earth…and the orbital weapons platforms that were holding Earth hostage.  They had all been targeted; the only targets that had been spared were the anchors of the space elevators.

“I think they’re pissed,” his wife said, as the Oghaldzon weapons started to wipe missiles from the sky.  A single ship the size of the Lightning Roasted Lemur could carry hundreds of competitively small missiles; the aliens would have their work cut out for them when the missiles entered terminal attack mode…and, he saw now, other missiles were rising from the surface of the planet.  Durham was a Rockrat to the core, but he was impressed; the coordination had worked almost perfectly.  Some of the platforms survived the experience, others vanished in balls of fire, destroying the weapons and cutting down on the damage they could do to Earth.  As one platform vanished, others tried to take up the slack, but it wasn’t going to be enough…

“Yup,” Durham agreed, as the aliens locked targeting sensors on the Lightning Roasted Lemur.  He ignored them; if the aliens had had anything close enough to harm them, it would have done so by now.  “I really do think they’re pissed.”

***
Dataka watched the human missiles detonating in LEO with a profound feeling that the battle was running away from him.  The humans had somehow managed to coordinate a joint strike against the orbital weapons platforms, which meant in turn that the quiet discussions the Diplomats had been having with humans on Earth had been decoys, intended to make him think that the humans would come over to their side, or at least recognise their authority, had been deceptions, intended to lull him into a false sense of security.

The computers tallied up the results grimly.  Over a hundred platforms had been smashed, a minor loss under normal circumstances, but these were far from normal circumstances.  The fleet could normally replace them long enough to rebuild or construct new planetary defences, but now the fleet was engaged with the enemy…and it was taking a beating.  He had lost almost seventy ships in the time period of the battle…and the humans had lost around sixty.  The loss rate was grim; a single mistake by a point defence computer could cost one side the victory.  Even now, it was impossible to determine any real winner; part of Dataka’s mind just wanted to ask the human commander for terms, the remainder kept reminding him that the humans couldn’t be let out of their solar system.  It would spell doom for the Oghaldzon.  

This mad battle might spell doom for the Oghaldzon, part of his mind whispered, with black humour.  No one, human or Oghaldzon, had predicted such a battle, or even a slaughter.  His first formation, composed mainly of warships, was slowly being ground out of existence, while his second formation was still having to defend itself against the occasional shower of missiles.  If nothing else, the human assault proved that they knew just how important it was to wipe out the warships; any thought of going after the bigger ships just because they were big had been pushed aside.  One by one, they were grinding down the warships…and once they had completed that, they would turn their attention to the bigger ships.

Victory might go to the side that has one or two ships left, he thought coldly.

“War Commander, War Commander,” Fanaya burst out, almost as excited as a human.  Dataka almost clicked a reproof to her, but there was no real point; besides, she might have found something useful.  “I have identified the human command ship!”

Dataka leaned forward as the information appeared in front of him.  Most of the human craft followed one of two basic designs, which really had a great deal in common with both each other and Oghaldzon designs.  The laws of physics would admit nothing else.  A handful, including the craft that had launched the missiles at Earth’s surrounding orbital weapons platforms, were clearly not designed with fighting in mind; the two that had launched the attack were now trying to make their escape, rather than rejoin the fleet.  It was a decision that was so…Oghaldzon that he wondered for a moment if renegade Oghaldzon were controlling the ship.  And one craft…

“It’s twice the size of the other craft and they are moving to cover it as a priority,” Fanaya said, her voice excited and relieved, perhaps under the impression that her discovery would win them the battle.  Dataka knew better; it might disrupt the human command network, but that would be all it did.  Still, it was a combined human force and if it lost its leader, it might fall apart…

“Pass the order to all ships,” Dataka said, hoping that he was right.  “That ship is to be destroyed.”

***
The display ran through a quick update as laser signals from Earth – relayed from America to India, where they were beamed into space off a helpful piece of space junk – updated the fleet on the status of the planet.  Waikoloa felt relief as he realised that the Oghaldzon positions on the ground were also under attack, even if the attack didn’t have the sheer power of the counteroffensive that the Russians had instigated and lost.  The platforms had been seriously damaged; the forces on the ground had a chance to move without interdiction and they took it, launching furious attacks against alien outposts.  It looked as if the aliens were taking a beating…but then, so was the human fleet.  The battle could still go either way…

“Admiral, I am picking up additional alien targeting scans,” Callie said.  Waikoloa nodded; the aliens had a habit of scanning their targets first, just to make sure they had their coordinates accurate before launching the missiles.  “I think that at least ten of their ships are scanning us!”

Waikoloa blinked at her.  “Us?”

“They’re targeting us and launching missiles,” Callie said.  Her voice broke off.  “Admiral…”

It was a swarm of missiles out of nightmare, a hundred missiles, all launched at once target, the Enterprise.  The escorting ships wove a deadly web of point defence around the flagship, taking advantage of the enemy’s single-minded focus to concentrate on covering the flagship and launching a few blows back towards the alien craft, but there was no way they could kill all of the missiles.

“It was a honour to serve with you all,” Waikoloa said.  He hadn’t wanted to die with those words left unsaid.  “I think…”

A nuclear warhead detonated bare inches from the Enterprise’s hull.  The ship was vaporised in a split second…

Chapter Fifty-Six: Armageddon, Take Three

Earthspace, Near Earth Orbit

The Admiral’s command screen went blank with a sudden terrible finality.

Jake Ellsworth didn’t waste time wondering, inanely, if there were survivors.  The sheer force of a nuclear explosion so close to the hull of a starship would have turned it into free-floating dust in space; any survivors would have somehow managed to live through that, and then the sudden loss of oxygen.  The Rockrats knew on a deep and primal level just how dangerous and unpleasant space could be; Ellsworth knew that the Admiral was dead, along with his command staff.  The aliens had finally deduced that the Enterprise was the command ship and targeted it…

“Commodore Qiu is on the link,” Cindy said.  “He wants to know if you will be taking over command, or is he to do it?”

Ellsworth almost laughed.  “Contact the fleet, tell them that I am assuming command,” he said.  The Rockrats would go along with him; the Americans knew that their Admiral had trusted him enough to make him second in command…and he had won the Battle of Freeport One, even if the Chinese had completed the destruction of the alien fleet.  “I want to continue the assault on the first body of the alien fleet.”

He glared at the display.  The aliens were adjusting their own course again, their second force accelerating to catch up with the motherships and their escorts, while the first force, unable to escape a battle at nearly point-blank range, turned to try to kill as many of his ships as he could.  He wondered, briefly, why the aliens hadn’t simply ordered the motherships to flee, but the question created its own answer.  The motherships were massive; whatever advanced drives the aliens had, they could not have outraced his fleet unless he chose to let them go…

Damn you bastards to hell, he thought coldly, feeling his hands crushing themselves into fists.  I’m going to kill you and beat you about the head until you surrender, or I’ll kill the fucking lot of you.

“The fleet is acknowledging,” Cindy informed him.  She had glanced at him then; he caught, just for a moment, an expression of worry in her eyes.  That was unlike her; what was she thinking, just at that moment.  Had she expected Commodore Qiu Xiaoshuai to decide that Ellsworth wasn't a suitable commanding officer and challenge him in the middle of the fight?  “They’re forming up again on the Lead Pipe…”

“No,” Ellsworth said.  He was as certain as he was that his name was Jake that that was how the aliens had deduced that the Enterprise was the command ship; it was not only different from the other ships, but the warships were concentrating on protecting it.  Any fire-pattern analysis would have suggested that to an alert alien intelligence officer – one of their Researchers, perhaps.  “I want us to continue being treated as a regular warship in the second group.”

He gazed down at the display.  It was weird, in a way; he was travelling at speeds that would have awed the first astronauts who had sailed to the moon and back, but everything was happening…so slowly.  The aliens were moving away from him and he was eternally chasing them, but he was catching up…if he could punch his way through the warships of the first force.  He knew now why Waikoloa had been so careful; a single mistake could cost him the battle…and humanity the war.

The exchange of fire was only getting sharper as the two fleets drew closer to one another.  Mass drives and rail guns hurled their loads into space, trying to target enemy ships, often missing, but sometimes scoring hits that came out of nowhere.  Lasers burned in the darkness of space, invisible except for their effects, hacking missiles out of space and sometimes detonating them ahead of time, tiny stars blinking briefly in the darkness of space.  He wondered what the aliens were thinking; did they know that their leaders had chosen to sacrifice them, or had they volunteered for the mission?  It was becoming more and more clear that the first alien force would not survive the battle; the only question was how many of his ships would they kill?

“Missiles locked on target,” Cindy said.  There was a feral gleam in her eye; he hadn’t seen anything like it, not even when she had jumped him one evening during the training session and practically raped him.  He smiled briefly at the memory; they’d both left their marks on each other during that time.  “I have the aliens staked out for the kill.”

“Fire,” he ordered.

The fleet was concentrating its own fire now, although not to the extent that the aliens had concentrated their fire to destroy the Enterprise.  There were only thirty alien craft left in the first force; he gambled and muttered additional commands, ordering his force to spread its fire a little further apart, gambling on the pounding the alien defences were taking at his hands.  The alien defences were falling apart now; slowly, oh so slowly, he saw the alien craft start to fall back on their own resources, and then on surprises like metallic chaff and radar jammers that confused both sides.  He found himself smiling and surprised himself with a moment pure humour; the aliens had to know that they were on the ropes, so why didn’t they just kill themselves and get it over with?

“I have incoming fire from the second group,” Cindy said, as calmly as ever.  “I think they’re trying to cover the remains of the first group…”

“Ten ships,” Ellsworth sneered, unable to hide his contempt.  The aliens should have bugged out long before, or surrendered…not that he would have accepted a surrender unless it was a complete surrender.  “Raise Commodore Qiu; tell him to engage the aliens with the remaining long-range missiles…and I’ve just had an idea.”

He studied the display for a long moment.  He had, like all Rockrats, an instinctive sense of orbital motion, particularly when it related to spacecraft, and he had had an idea.  “I want you to raise the Lightning Roasted Lemur and the Ferret on Crack,” he ordered.  The two freighters were almost defenceless, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t still be useful, not the way they were heading out around the planet.  “I want them to loop around, as if they are feinting towards the motherships and taking them up the arse.”

Cindy frowned.  “They don’t have any weapons left, but a handful of modified mining lasers,” she said.  “They’re not going to be allowed close enough to use them against the motherships before they get blown apart.”

“They don’t have to attack them,” Ellsworth said.  “I just want them to worry the aliens a little…”

The final ships of the first alien force were wiped out, one by one.  They took ships with them; the Qingdao, the Yulin, the Guangzhou, the Mother’s Milk, the Marching Position, the Constellation, the Britannia, the Yamamoto…but in the end, they all died.  Ellsworth allowed himself a moment of pure relief; the battle had been costly, with one hundred and seven ships of the Combined Fleet blown to dust, but the aliens had been hurt too.  It could still go either way, but now, with the Combined Fleet closing in on the second force and the motherships, the aliens had to know that whatever happened, the number of Oghaldzon in the solar system was about to take a vast drop.

“I need reports,” he snapped, knowing that the Rockrats would hate that.  The idea of reporting to anyone was alien to their nature, a reminder of the bad old days of confrontation and the endless scrabbles with the IAU.  “What is the fleet’s current status?”

Silence fell as the fleet accelerated slightly, matching course and speed with the second alien force, which was doing its own formation-shifting.  The Oghaldzon weren’t playing it dumb, he noticed, with a droll feeling of amusement.  They were being very careful, building a formation that would both protect the motherships and give some protection to their own remaining warships as well.  He wondered, briefly, if he should transmit a surrender demand, but he suspected that it would simply be ignored.  The aliens had to know, one way or the other, that it was the last battle.

“The ships are mainly intact,” Cindy said, dryly.  “Some of them are pretty short on ammunition, though; I think we’ll have to watch that carefully.  It won’t do us any good to catch up with the bastards and then discover that we can’t actually hurt them.”

“Of course,” Ellsworth agreed.  He muttered some additional orders; the fleet would pause at the very edge of range to make some repairs, knowing that the alien warships couldn’t outrun them without leaving the motherships at his mercy.  He was a little surprised that they hadn’t seen mass bombardment of the population centres of Earth, but the aliens probably intended to use humans as slaves and wouldn’t want to kill more than they had to…or, perhaps, they intended to complete that after they had destroyed the fleet.  “We will proceed into a more direct engagement range as soon as we can.”

***
“They will come after us as soon as possible,” Takalak-Researcher-Seeker proclaimed, ignoring the single human female who was still held by the guards, her hands secured by clamps intended for an Oghaldzon.  His voice was showing definite signs of strain.  “They will attempt to crush us completely.”

Dataka clicked an irritated inquiry to him.  “Then why are they holding position?”  He asked.  He had worried that the humans would have come right after him, just to make sure that his fleet had little time to reform and prepare to fight the final battle, but instead they were holding position right at the edge of his range.  “They could be coming after us now.”

“They’re carrying out repairs and perhaps reloading their ships,” Takalak said.  He clicked a scornful note into the air.  “They cannot be allowed to come nearer the motherships.”

Dataka looked sharply at him, turning his head and peering at him through his eyes.  “And how exactly do you suggest we prevent them?”  He asked.  “We cannot outrun them.  We cannot split the fleet to engage them because they will defeat that force in detail and then come after the remainder.  We have to wait for them to come to us and defeat them then, or offer our surrender at once.”

He watched as Takalak blanched, his sonar reflecting a cascade of doom and nightmare into the air.  The Researcher had absorbed humanity, to the point where he had almost abandoned the central tenant of being a researcher – first, remain impartial and neutral, at all times.  Takalak was no longer neutral; he understood enough of the dark side of humanity to be determined to win, whatever the cost.  

He looked at the human.  Even pushed against one of the bulkheads, her hands secured and sealed to the bulkhead like a common prisoner – and looking particularly alien, unlike an Oghaldzon prisoner – she seemed defiant and worried at the same time.  Her interior was changing slightly; he wondered just what it meant, or if it had been triggered when the Researchers had used nanites to destroy the contraceptive implant that had been placed in her body for some mysterious purpose.

“Your people,” he said, using the translator and trusting the Researchers to have worked out all the kinks by now.  “What will they try to do to the fleet?”

He wondered what the thin sheen on the human’s face meant, or her voice, thin and flat compared to the voice of an Oghaldzon.  “They will try to destroy the fleet,” she said.  He wondered just how much of the battle she had understood; the human designs for their own spacecraft interiors were different, just because their biology was different.  She didn’t see the way he did, with or without sonar.  “They want to defend Earth and you’re threatening it.”

“We came with the intention of helping your people,” Takalak injected.  “Your people were too unwilling to change to embrace us.”

“The path to hell is paved with good intentions,” the human said.  It was an expression that made no sense to Dataka; his implant provided the explanation that some humans believed that bad people – defined as people who didn’t agree with them – went to eternal torment in a place called Hell.  Religion was rare among the Oghaldzon; most of the time, faith didn’t make up for the certainty of the Truth.  “You fired first!  What sort of mercy did you expect?”

“Knowing humans, would you have let yourself be captured by them?”  Takalak demanded.  “How do we defeat the human fleet?”

The human laughed; Dataka heard some of his command crew joining the laugh in their own fashion.  “War Commander,” Fanaya injected, “we have two human craft turning to engage us from behind.”

The display altered; two human craft were trying to curve around the planet on a wide orbit, riding twin plumes of fusion fire.  Dataka studied their course as the probe relayed the image and saw nemesis approaching; if the two craft were armed with missiles, they would be able to destroy several of the motherships before they were destroyed…unless he acted quickly.  The main human fleet was trying to push forward again, ending the brief unspoken truce while both sides repaired damage, and that meant he didn’t dare call ships back from the second force.

“Order the lunar squadron to pull out of orbit,” he ordered sharply.  The humans on the moon would have to look after themselves for a few hours, perhaps longer; they weren’t in any real danger for the moment.  He would have ignored a feint towards the moon in any case; it just wasn’t a priority.  “I want them to engage and deflect those human craft…”

And hope they’re not on a suicide mission, he added, in the privacy of his own thoughts.  That would be…bad.

***
Master Sergeant Lee Madison, known as Weapon M to his friends, would have laughed if he had quite dared.  He had spent nearly a month in the holding camp the lunar rebels had constructed on the surface of the moon, a location, they had taken some pains to point out, that was completely vulnerable to outside fire, as well as requiring spacesuits, compressed air, and a lot of luck to escape.  The five thousand people – American, Russian, Chinese and a handful of others – who had refused to swear allegiance to the new lunar government had been put in the camp and left there, until – they had been told – they could be shipped back to Earth.  They hadn’t been mistreated, but the camp was boring; there was almost nothing to do, but play games and discuss the Human-Oghaldzon War…and the war that they were certain would be launched against the lunar rebels, once the first war was over.

It seemed closer to over now…and Madison had been astonished to be approached to help end it…in the form of helping a group of rebels to operate the mass driver that had been modified into a weapon and placed near New Jamestown.  The aliens had maintained five of their smaller warships near the moon; apparently, he gathered, the lunar rebels were taking out insurance against a human victory in the war.  If the human fleet won, they wanted to be on the winning side, a task that would be tricky to pull off at just the right time.  If they jumped too soon, angry aliens would come boiling up from Earth Orbit, determined to extract a little revenge; if they jumped too late, the human fleet might decide to extract revenge for the earlier betrayal.  He had worried that he was being tricked into assisting the aliens, but he had studied the target through the mass driver’s telescope; there was no way that that was a human ship.  It was too large, for a start, and the drive unit was just…weird.

“I have a targeting code,” Sally Garland said.  Madison liked her – it was difficult not to like a girl who bounced around with a big smile, real competence, and sheer perkiness – but at the same time, he had to remember that she was pretty much one of his jailors.  She might also die with him; USSF doctrine called for immediate suppression of anywhere launching missiles or mass-driven rock at them, and there was no sign that the aliens disagreed.  “They have cleared us to fire ASAP.”

“Good,” Madison said.  Someone with a very untypical sense of humour had designed the firing console; its sole control was a big red button.  He turned the key under the panel, hearing a faint click as it locked into position.  He held his hand over the button and smiled.  “To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; for hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee…”

“Get on with it,” Sally snapped.

Madison hit the button.  The mass driver hummed and launched its load up towards the alien craft, hanging only a few kilometres above the surface of the moon.  He watched through the telescope as the load raced closer, the alien craft having almost no time to react as the load of rock struck it amidships, blowing it to pieces and scattering debris towards the moon.  He glanced briefly at the interlinked system; the other four spacecraft orbiting the moon had all been disposed off as well, shattering them like bugs.

The Oghaldzon had been driven away from the moon.

***
“They turned on us,” Dataka protested, unable to fully grasp the scale of the disaster.  “They just…”

It seemed impossible to comprehend, but it had happened.  “They changed sides,” Takalak said.  “War Commander, we must win this battle and seal the Earth off from the universe…or destroy the human race.”

The Human-Researcher, Oolane, spoke quickly.  “You would destroy an entire race?”

Takalak turned on her.  “It’s them or us,” he snapped.  “Who do you want to inherit the universe?”

“War Commander,” Fanaya said, sharply.  “You have to see this…”

The image had already appeared on the display.  Dataka saw…and stared, unable to believe his eyes at the impossible sight in front of him.  It was just…impossible, but it had happened, somehow.  He wanted to whimper, he wanted to end it all, somehow, but…it was just impossible.

“I don’t believe it,” he said.  “How can he be doing that?”

Chapter Fifty-Seven: Armageddon, Take Four

Earthspace, Near Earth Orbit

They told jokes about the Space Marines, or at least the Ground Marines did; Specialist Gavin Reynolds had heard most of them during his training.  The Ground Marines claimed that their job was to destroy things overnight, while the Space Marines tended to use diplomacy as much as actually getting out there and getting to grips with the enemy.  Accusations of Lack of Morale Fibre from groundpounders were met with charges of dumb grunts who couldn’t go anywhere, but in a straight line, which in turn tended to lead to bar fights and punishment duty for any Marine unlucky enough to be caught by MPs.  It made sense, of course; on the ground, Wreckers couldn’t really screw up the Marines that much, while places like the lunar surface were a deadly trap for the unwary…or even Marines who had allowed themselves to fall into the trap of believing that their weapons and equipment made them unbeatable.  The Space Marines would prefer to negotiate to a certain point; what was the use of putting down a rebellion on the moon when took much fighting would destroy the remainder of the infrastructure and kill everyone?

The Space Commandos were something different.  Reynolds had started life as a Marine – he had been on the general training course at Camp Pendleton before being streamlined into the Space Marines – and had been offered the chance to try out for the Space Commandos.  He had been delighted; very few in the Corps were invited to try out for the implants and the augmentation…and even fewer survived the experience.  Reynolds was SC#201; as far as he knew, there were only ‘somewhere around’ a hundred Space Commandos currently in service, or that had been true before he had been pulled onboard the alien craft and trapped.  Who knew what had happened to the others?

Samra had been, at least in part, delighted at the chance to know more about the aliens; Reynolds had been far less delighted.  He had chafed under the alien restrictions, knowing that he was on the command ship, knowing that he could break out of the cell at any time, and knowing that if he tried, it would achieve nothing.  He would have given anything to be able to detonate the small fusion cell emplaced somewhere within his body, but even if he managed to trigger it, he suspected that the blast wouldn’t be enough to destroy the alien ship.  Even if it was, the aliens had come to the solar system with a hundred ships…and he had no idea how many others were still active.

He forced himself to lie back as the aliens escorted Samra away and then returned to considering his plan.  The attack on the fleet had to be serious; they hadn’t panicked like that when the first attacks had commenced, or even when the Russians had struck at their motherships.  He liked Samra – one of his implants obligingly responded to his half-serious cue and displayed one of the images it had stored of her naked body – and even, in his way, loved her, but he knew not to take it too seriously.  They had been forced together into one room; it could either have ended with them becoming lovers, or deadly enemies who hated each other.  He had already scribbled a short note in Arabic for her; all he had to do now was put his plan into action.  He was tense, nervous…but his courage had never been in question; all that mattered now was success…or failure.

The door was locked magnetically; one of his implants had recorded the exact level of the magnetic charge holding it together and prepared a counter for it.  He took a long breath – the aliens had sonar, which suggested that already knew all about his augmentation – and triggered the pulse, hearing a click as the door unlocked and hissed open.  He would have preferred to interface directly with the computers in the spacecraft – and on a human ship, or in a bad novel, he would have been able to do just that – but that was impossible; the handful of snippets he had picked up from the alien datanet had been completely incomprehensible.  Hacking the alien network might be possible, one day, but until then, he would have to rely on his wits and his implants.

A clicking sound assailed him as he pulled himself through the opening hatch, coming face to rear with a very surprised Oghaldzon, who was spinning around to bring a toy-like weapon to bear.  Reynolds didn’t hesitate; he fired a pulse from his hand directly into the Oghaldzon’s head, watching as the alien cart-wheeled backwards and slammed into the bulkhead as his brain jangled and collapsed.  He didn’t understand how the weapon worked – it was an assassin’s weapon, not something a Marine would normally use - but it was sufficient to kill a human being at close range by disrupting the brain.  He had prayed that it would have a similar effect on the lone Oghaldzon.

He glanced down at the alien’s weapon, hefted it, and then realised that it was useless unless he grew two additional arms at some point.  He broke the weapon and swam rapidly along the corridors, following the route he had memorised ever since they had been brought onboard the Seeker for Truth.  A soft voice at the back of his head suggested trying to find Samra, but it would take far too long and he knew very little about the interior of the alien starship.  By now, they had to know that he had killed one of their people; if they were anything like the USSF, they would have implants inserted in their people to alarm others if they died or somehow went Dutchman.  He pulled himself along faster and faster, crashing into the new group of Oghaldzon almost before he saw them.  The aliens were just as surprised; two of the three lost their grips on the corridor’s ‘floor’ by the force of the impact, while the third swung up his weapon to aim it at Reynolds.  It would have been dangerous in a gravity environment; in zero-gravity, it was easy for Reynolds to bring his hand down with all the force of his augmented arms, smashing the dome-like head.

The fight was short, sharp, and completely uneven.  Oghaldzon2 tried to catch on to him with four arms, each weaker than a human arm, but together formidably strong, while Oghaldzon3 kicked him with one of his forelegs, somehow attaching himself to the roof like a Rockrat child.  Reynolds struck Oghaldzon3 with a second pulse, cursing the requirement to use too much of his secret weapon, while pulling his arms back and breaking three of Oghaldzon2’s arms.  The alien emitted a horrible keening sound and fell back, drifting down the corridor.

Rear-echelon mother fucker, Reynolds thought, without heat.  The aliens would have all of their experienced soldiers down on the planet below.  A red beam of laser light flickered between his legs – that would have disappointed Samra if it had been an inch higher, he thought irrelevantly – as a fourth Oghaldzon appeared behind him, either luckier, smarter, or with just more experience than his predecessors.  Reynolds fired a pulse back and didn’t stop to see if it had worked; the airlock was just ahead of him.  The strange compartment was just the same as it had been when they had been brought aboard; he threw himself into it and sent a magnetic pulse into the system.  As he had expected, the hatch slid closed, trapping him; everything depended now on the aliens deciding to leave him in the airlock long enough for him to complete the next stage of his plan.

“Got it,” he muttered, as he checked the outer edge of the airlock.  Like human airlocks, it wasn't built as strong as the hull, just in case it had to be blown open.  SOP on human spacecraft was always to dock at the airlock unless the damage was great enough to make the effect wasted; it was clear that the Oghaldzon agreed.  He was tempted to search for a copy of the flight storage module, but that would be pressing his luck; the Oghaldzon wouldn’t leave that anywhere near a human.  “Now…”

The Oghaldzon had left him in the airlock, probably concluding that he had trapped himself or that he was about to commit suicide; either way, he doubted that they would be too keen on coming after him for a while.  In their place, he would have pumped out the air and let him suffocate, but they seemed content to keep their pet human alive, just for the moment.  The airlock release was right there; perhaps they expected him to use it…

He pulled it.  It was surprisingly easy, built for a single Oghaldzon hand, not for a human, even one without augmentation.  He closed his natural eye as the airlock vented, the magnetic field generated in the soles of his feet keeping him firmly in place, as he walked out of the airlock and onto the surface of the Seeker for Truth.  The cold reached out for him, but his implants kept it at bay; he had time enough to do some real damage.  The first step was simple; he lifted his arm and transmitted a signal, telling the attackers, whoever they were, that the Seeker for Truth was the command ship.

A bright light blossomed in the distance, a nuclear detonation, perhaps the grave of a spacecraft.  He ignored it and kept walking.  It was only a few kilometres to reach the engines…and by then, the Oghaldzon would have gotten over their shock and sent out their own Space Commandos to kill him.  He was quite looking forward to the struggle.

***
“We’re picking up a signal,” Cindy snapped.  “There’s…a human spy, somehow, on one of the alien craft…and he’s identified the flagship for us!”

“I don’t believe it,” Ellsworth said.  The battle wasn't going well; the second line of alien warships were more than holding their own and he was having to grind his way through them, ship by ship.  If losses continued at the current rate, he wouldn’t have enough missiles left to take on the motherships and wipe the Oghaldzon out of space.  “Can you confirm it?”

“The code is a current one,” Cindy said.  “It’s a very high-spec code; if we didn’t have some other elements of the Black Community out here, I don’t think we would have recognised it.  That proves nothing, of course; I could forward it to Earth to see if they know anything?”

“Do so,” Ellsworth said, leaning forward.  The moon changing sides had surprised the Oghaldzon, he guessed; four of their ships had been rushed out of the second force to intercept the Lightning Roasted Lemur and the Ferret on Crack, both of which had then taken the sensible course of altering course again and heading out from Earth, back towards Freeport One.  He didn’t begrudge them that; they had served their purpose and carried out the deception mission with considerable skill.  “Show me the suspected flagship?”

The display altered.  Ellsworth studied it with a critical eye; there was nothing too suspicious about the location of the alien flagship.  It was one of the largest craft, using its point defence and missiles to join the attack, but definitely hanging back from the main defence force.  He scowled; it was a plausible candidate for the alien flagship, damn it!  Targeting it would extract a little revenge for the loss of Admiral Waikoloa and the Enterprise, but what if it was a deception?  There was no reason why the Oghaldzon couldn’t be as sneaky as humans, was there?

“I have a response from America,” Cindy said, her voice sharp.  “They’re claiming that the code is from a person known to be onboard the alien craft, a Space Commando that they sent to the Welcome Fleet.  And – get this – they’re claiming that he can survive for an hour in space without a suit!”

“Lucky bastard,” Ellsworth said.  “If I’d known that was possible, I would have suggested that we add it to the price for helping to crew the fleet.”

He looked down at the display, rapidly tapping up orders for the fleet.  “I want a third of our remaining ships to concentrate on targeting the alien flagship,” he said.  “The remainder are to cover that attack by targeting the closest alien warships and their point defence systems.”

His teeth clenched.  Whatever else happened, the aliens would not forget this day.

***
Samra almost cried out as she saw the incredible picture, a chilling reminder of how she had escaped the destruction of the Neil Armstrong and the remainder of the Welcome Fleet.  Reynolds – her Reynolds, the man who had become her lover – was striding over the hull of the Seeker for Truth, naked, without a care in the world.  The bridge was deathly silent; Samra guessed that whatever had been done to make Reynolds the man he was had been something that had never occupied to the Oghaldzon.

The alien leader looked at her.  “How is he doing that?”

“I have no idea,” Samra said, honestly.  Her arms hurt from being firmly pinned behind her and she was grimly aware that she was likely to break bones if the Seeker for Truth had to make some sudden manoeuvres, but she still managed to look as proud as she could.  Her mother had been able to manage a look that had silenced the tongues of telemarketers; she drew on all that experience to present herself to the alien.  He probably hadn’t even noticed.  “He survived an exposure to vacuum before…”

The image was changing.  “They have dispatched a repair drone to kill him,” Oolane said, softly.  Samra would have sold her soul, at that moment, to understand what the aliens were clicking away to each other.  Ibis – just like a devil – didn’t appear to tempt her with such an offer.  “What is he doing out there?”

“I don’t know,” Samra said.  She would have tried to hug the alien if she could.  “Can’t you stop them from killing him?”

“He is a dangerous fanatic,” Takalak snapped.  Samra was starting to really dislike him; the alien had a bad case of humanity.  The image changed again; Reynolds was lifting his hand towards the camera, sending the image flickering before it returned to normal.  “He is also armed with a limited focused electromagnetic pulse generator.  He is too dangerous…”

“No,” Samra screamed, too late.  The display showed Reynolds’ glowing red…and then disintegrating into pieces as the laser beam tore through him.  “What have you done?”

She tried to kick Takalak, but the alien was well out of her reach; she wanted to break the bonds and hurt him, avenging her lover.  She tried to control herself, all-to-aware of tears drifting off her face and floating across the room; she hoped, with a vengeful fury that both surprised and terrified her, that one of them would drift into a console and cause a feedback reaction that would destroy the ship.  Cold logic suggested that that wouldn’t happen; if the aliens were prepared to have sperm cells drifting around, a few tears wouldn’t harm the equipment.

An alien clicked an urgent message as the display altered again, washing with strange shades of grey.  The alien leader turned to her, his face unreadable; she wondered, dimly, what was happening as he clicked to Oolane, who looked to be in agreement, and Takalak, who was arguing…

“Your people have locked onto this ship,” the alien leader said.  His dispassionate voice bellied his words.  “They are very likely to destroy it.”

“Good,” Samra said, surprising herself with her vehemence.  “You deserve it.”

“We meant to help you,” Takalak protested.  He lunged forwards, forearms reaching for her neck; unable to move, or even fight, she felt his hands closing around her, greyness and silence covering her mind…and then he was being dragged away by his own guards, clicking furiously.  She wondered what he was saying; his translator either wasn’t working or had been torn away in the brief struggle.

“They’ll kill two billion of us,” the alien leader snapped.  She sensed, now, urgency in his voice.  “Is anything worth that?”

“Then surrender,” Samra shorted at him.  Her throat hurt; she wanted to rub it, she just wanted to curl up and die, but there was no time.  “Call the fleet; tell them you surrender, just fucking end it all before it gets ended for you.  Surrender before its too late and they can’t accept a surrender!”

Oolane looked at her.  “Would they honour a surrender?”

Samra tried to think; it was so hard!  “You still have things to bargain with,” she said, though hacking coughs.  They didn’t even realise that she was in pain!  “The elevators, your knowledge, even your drive…use them, before it’s too late.”

The alien leader spoke in English.  “Crease all offensive fire,” he ordered.  “Defensive weapons to continue firing.  Contact the human craft…and inform them that we would like to offer our surrender.”

***
The missiles were already screaming away when the signal came in.  “Jake, they’re offering to surrender,” Cindy said, urgently.  Ellsworth could hear the concern in her voice.  “Jake?”

Ellsworth stared at the display.  I could do it, he thought.  We’re winning the battle.  We could crush the remains of their war fleet and fall on the motherships and destroy them, end forever the threat to the belt.  They’re smart, they could trick us; we might end up losing everything because we let them off the hook this time.  I could…

His private communicator blinked up a message.  IT WOULD BE GENOCIDE, Cindy had printed.  IF YOU WANT THE ROCKRAT CIVILISATION TO MEAN ANYTHING, YOU CAN’T SLAUGHTER TWO BILLION INNOCENTS!

He met her eyes and typed a message back.  THEY KILLED TWO BILLION OF US, he typed back.  CAN WE TRUST THEM?

DO WE HAVE A CHOICE?  Cindy asked.  THEY HAVE A WORLD OUT THERE; THEY HAVE EARTH UNDER THREAT.  ACCEPT IT.

Ellsworth looked at her.  “I’ve made my decision,” he said.  She was right; it would be genocide, and he would never be able to hide from it.  His own people would shun him; they would have understood destroying the enemy force without a surrender, but afterwards?  “Deactivate the missiles.  Inform the enemy commander that his offer is accepted.”

Chapter Fifty-Eight: Terms of Surrender

Apollo 11 Landing Site, Lunar Surface

The transport hover bus, a vehicle that could only work on the surface of the moon, settled down carefully outside the dome, pausing just long enough for the tube to be extended to the bus before the first Space Commando climbed out of the vehicle to check the connections.  Two more followed him, ensuring safety, before Captain Schaefer escorted the President out of the vehicle and into the containment dome.

The President glanced around with genuine interest.  There were only a handful of constructions on the lunar surface that were almost completely above ground; the various Apollo domes and the other spacecraft that had landed on the moon before it became commonplace, a prison for the handful of lunar criminals, and a hotel that had become a surprisingly popular destination before the Oghaldzon War had broken out.  The choice of Apollo 11’s landing site had surprised many – and the Secret Service had had a collective heart attack – but the President had insisted.  It was a reminder to the different human factions of what they shared…and a reminder to the Oghaldzon of how lucky they had been.  As many had pointed out, in the days following the start of the war, if humanity had moved into space seriously fifty years earlier, the Oghaldzon wouldn’t have stood a chance.  As it was…

He paused long enough to drink in the sight of the landing module – no one, not even the President of America – got to go near it following a handful of tourists trying to take away souvenirs, and then followed his guide through the small collection of buildings into a small conference room.  The room had been used, from time to time, for Great Power discussions well away from the solar system’s media; it suited everyone to use it to end the Oghaldzon War.  The President nodded to himself as he glanced around the table; almost everyone who was anyone in the new solar system had come to take part in the discussions.

It had been a tricky week, first in ensuring that there was a small presence on each of the Oghaldzon ships – just in case some of them intended to ‘renegotiate’ the terms of surrender – and then to gain international, if not interplanetary, consent for the basic terms of surrender.  Everyone had wanted a say; not all of them had put forward practical suggestions, or even had any real right to a seat at the table.  There had been ships from all of the Great Powers in the fleet, but everyone knew that it had been America and the Rockrats who had been the real winners.  The Chinese had simply been in too much chaos to establish themselves; the President privately suspected that Commodore Qiu and his people would end up accepting one of the offers of residency from one of the other nations, or the Rockrats, and fading into their society.  China might recover, one day, but there was very little left to spare to help them.  The United States barely had enough to help itself.

He cleared his throat.  Nearly three billion humans had died in the war.

It was time to end it.

“I am the President of the United States of America,” he said, for the benefit of the watching Oghaldzon.  Their main human captive, Samra Hussein, watched him through dark eyes; the President had heard that Gavin Reynolds and her had become lovers before the Space Commando had been killed during the final battle.  “I speak now with the authority of the United Nations Special Security Council, in shared agreement with the Rockrat Association and the new Lunar Government.  I have been empowered to speak on their behalf and inform you of the terms of surrender.”

The Oghaldzon said nothing.  The President had been told that Dataka-War Commander-Fleet was the closest thing the Oghaldzon fleet had had to a President…and that he had been the man – well, Oghaldzon – who had taken the decision to offer a surrender.  The President found himself oddly respecting the first Oghaldzon he had met, face to face; their appearance was less discontenting if one had studied images beforehand.

“As a first statement, we have decided to accept that you believed that you were doing the right thing,” he said.  Some of the discussions had been acrimonious; some of the Great Powers had wanted to exterminate the Oghaldzon fleet, just to ensure that there was no longer an alien faction involved when the human race started to rebuild.  The President had managed to suppress that; the Oghaldzon had surrendered, they didn’t need to be exterminated.  “Regardless, you caused a horrific amount of death and destruction on the surface of Earth and killed upwards of three billion humans – we may never know how many – in the course of your war on us.  You must understand that the terms we will set, in exchange for sparing the lives of your people, will be harsh.”

He paused.  There was no response.

“First, all spacecraft, starships and other vehicles belonging to your fleet will be confiscated, along with the files and other information they contain,” he said.  The Oghaldzon seemed to move slightly, but there was no other response.  “They will be used to help rebuild Earth, expand the colonies on Mars and Venus, and provide a stopgap measure if a second fleet is discovered coming from your homeworld.

“Second, the territory you have occupied on the ground will be returned to its lawful government,” he continued.  “Your forces will continue to keep order until our forces are in position to take over patrolling, whereupon they will be placed in camps until we reach a final decision on what is to become of them.  The humans resident in the area are to be permitted to make contact with unoccupied areas; the humans held in your prison camps are to be released, once our forces reach the camps.

“Third, we will employ your specialists to aid us in integrating the new technology, including the space elevators and the fusion drives into our society, along with whatever you can do to assist us in rebuilding the damage, terraforming Mars and Venus, and further development of the solar system.  This work will be unpaid for ten years, following which your people will have the choice between working with us for wages or migrating to the Oghaldzon community.

“Fourth, the humans who you took as prisoners or involuntary settlers onboard your motherships are to be offered the choice between remaining with the Oghaldzon community, as ambassadors and researchers, or returning to Earth.  The minor children whose parents cannot be traced will be returned to Earth and adopted by families on the surface of the planet, unless they are adopted by those who choose to remain with you.  Regardless of their decision, you will compensate them for the experience and trauma that they have, however accidentally, suffered at your hands.

“Fifth, we will permit what members of your community are not involved in the reconstruction plan to settle in your own community on Mars,” the President continued.  There had been a reaction then; he suspected that the Oghaldzon wouldn’t consider Mars a very attractive world.  Tough.  It had been hard enough to get everyone to agree on allowing them to settle there.  “Your community will have limited autonomy, but it will be permitted no access to space-based weapons; in the future, we envisage it becoming part of the solar system’s economy.  We believe that individual Oghaldzon will choose to attempt to gain citizenship in one of the different powers around the solar system; we will place no barriers in their path, although acceptance is not guaranteed.”

He winced.  That had been even harder to convince the UNSSC to go along with it, although he suspected that both the Moon and the Rockrats would be trying to recruit Oghaldzon to boost their own technologies in the rapidly reshaped solar system.  There was one final point to make, then…

“If you agree to these terms without further demur, we are prepared to make two commitments in return,” he concluded.  “First, we will guarantee you the right to send back a message to your homeworld” – which would give the human race a chance to learn where it was, if it wasn't to be found in the files on the captured ships – “and, perhaps later, the chance for some of you to return there in your ships.  Second, the Great Powers will guarantee not to send any starships of our own there for fifty years, or in the event of a peace treaty being worked out through radio, or in the event of a second war fleet being dispatched to Earth.  I must ask, now, for your answer.”

He sat back and waited.  It was an interesting offer, with a sting in the tail, although he did wonder if the Oghaldzon would even notice.  How could the human race avoid sending a starship to their homeworld…unless they told the human race just where their homeworld was?  Second, darker, the Great Powers couldn’t stop the Rockrats or someone like Conrad Hamilton from launching their own starships; they might keep the letter of the agreement, but what about the spirit?

The Oghaldzon were clicking to one another; the President wished for a translator, or perhaps some way to record what they were saying for further analysis.  They had agreed to avoid recorders for the conference room long ago; the Great Powers intended to keep the substance of their discussions secret to prevent a public outcry.  Wars had never happened because of discussions in the conference room, others had been kept low-key and terminated because of quiet horse-trading behind the scenes; the room was heavy with history.  Perhaps it, too, would one day become a part of the exhibit.

The Oghaldzon – Dataka – looked at him.  “What guarantee do we have that you will keep your word?”

“None,” the President said, shortly.  “If we had wanted to kill you all, we could have done it by now.  The choice is yours; peace, or death.”

Dataka looked at him; the President thought he detected bitterness on his face.  “We came to help you,” he said.

“That has never worked out well on Earth,” the President said.  “Perhaps this way we will learn to like one another so that our two races won’t go to war again.”  He paused.  “Do you know about any other races?”

“None, but your race,” Dataka said.  “We believe that you know of no others.”

The President shrugged.  “There have always been rumours of alien contact on Earth,” he said.  “Every President looks at the files when they take office and get very disappointed when they find out that there is no real proof of anything.  But that’s beside the point; you’re the only other race we know.  Do you really want it to end with one of us exterminating the other?”

“No,” Dataka said.  He clicked briefly to the other Oghaldzon.  “We will sign your agreement and trust in your word.  The future will judge for itself.”

***
An hour later, the President faced someone he had never wanted to meet in person, Karl Bova.  He’d read the furious reports submitted by Colonel Forsyth and Governor Andrew Hastings – the latter including enough exclamation marks to make the President wonder if something had gone wrong with the former Governor’s mind – and hadn’t been looking forward to the meeting, but there were some matters that could only be handled by the President himself – or a very senior Ambassador.

“You must realise that your position is, in the long-term, untenable,” he said, as soon as they were alone together. Karl Bova had done well, but the Great Powers would insist on extracting their price for his betrayal, even if it had all worked out well in the end.  “You may hold the moon, but we can blockade you and keep you from interfering elsewhere, until we can assemble an army to occupy the moon and quash your…little government.”

“And be permanently cut off from Helium-3, unless you manage to get the mines at the gas giants working again and expanded, and be permanently cut off from the supplies of lunar rock,” Bova countered.  The President smiled; both of them had shown their teeth and some of their bargaining chips.  “The Rockrats won’t help you blockade us; they hold half of your fleet, while the aliens are unlikely to break their surrender…”

“And they have plenty of good reasons to be just a…little pissed at you,” the President reminded him.  “We are prepared to compromise; we may recognise that you have managed to declare independence, and no constituency exists for a return to the old system, but there are…issues.  You have laid claim to thousands of installations on the moon, some of them belonging to corporations, some of them to governments…all of which cost money.”

“The corporations will be welcome to return, provided they treat their people better and pay their taxes,” Bova said.  “As for the government-owned installations…with all due respect, fuck them.  They were used to exploit us.”

“Let’s can the bullshit, shall we?”  The President asked.  He just didn’t like Bova very much; the man had never learned how to compromise.  “The Great Powers are prepared to recognise your independence and the loss of the installations to your control” – he didn’t mention that at least five secret American installations had been missed by the new government; they could be shut down later in secrecy – “in exchange for your assistance in rebuilding.  We need access to Helium-3 and, as you pointed out, we will need lunar rock to start rebuilding some of the space facilities that were destroyed in the war.  If you agree to supply this for a suitable period, we will agree to forget old grievances and recognise your independence.”

Bova looked at him.  “For how long do you think we will supply you with free fuel and material?”

The President pretended to consider it.  “Twenty years?”

“Fuck you,” Bova said.  “One year – and consider yourself lucky.”

“Ten years,” the President said.

“Five years, and we get to recruit new settlers on Earth using the elevators,” Bova said.  “That would appease some of the more radical factions in the new government.”

“Done,” the President said.  He concealed a smile; he had been prepared to settle for two years.  The Lunar Republic – or whatever they ended up calling it – taking refugees from Earth was an unexpected bonus.  “Welcome to the family of nations, Mr President.”

Bova gave him a resentful look.  “This is blackmail,” he said.  “You are just exploiting us again.”

“This is politics,” the President said.  “No one – but no one – gets to take action without some kind of consequences.  You have your independence.  In five years, you can start selling Helium-3 as high as the market will bear.  In a month, you will be invited to send a delegate to the first meeting of the New United Nations”- he paused – “or should that be the New New United Nations?  I think you’ve been pretty lucky, all things considered…and now you know why civil wars are always such nasty affairs.”

“It’s all about the money,” Bova said.

“Exactly,” the President said.  “Everything is about money, in the end, in the world of politics.  Just try not to end up like the Saudis.”

***
There was one final person the President wanted to meet before he returned to Earth, one final person he wanted to see face-to-face; Samra Hussein herself.  The former Director of the Selene Observatory looked tired and drawn when the President stepped into her room, her face scarred slightly with the effects of a brief exposure to vacuum.  It would heal, eventually, but for the moment she was marked.  She had become famous – and deserved it – but not everyone knew what to make of her.  Had she saved the day by convincing the aliens to make peace, or had she committed treason against humanity by broadcasting for the aliens?  The UNSSC had made its own decision on the subject, but there were far too many people out there who had lost someone to the Oghaldzon who would be delighted to take it out on her.

“Miss Hussein,” he said, as he took the seat she indicated.  She looked as if she needed a long sleep; he hoped that Bova’s people were taking care of her.  “I’m sorry about your loss…”

She looked up at him.  “What was he, really?”

The President looked at her for a long moment, and then briefly detailed the Space Commandos and their nature.  “I see,” she said, finally.  Her voice sounded almost broken.  “Did he really love me?”

“I don’t know,” the President said.  Unexpectedly, he found himself groping for words.  “I would like to think so, but…”

Samra touched her chest.  “It hardly matters,” she said.  “They killed him as if he was nothing.  Was it all worthwhile, in the end?  The doom I bought on them all?”

“It wasn’t your fault,” the President said.  He felt a trace of almost-paternal feelings for the young woman who blamed herself for the Oghaldzon War.  “They would have come anyway…and if you hadn’t found them, someone else would have done so, perhaps too late for any manner of defence to be mounted.  It wasn't your fault.”

“Maybe,” Samra said.  Her voice had started to drift.  “What do you want?”

“The United Nations would like to offer you the post of Ambassador to the Oghaldzon,” the President said, silently cursing the decision.  He had agreed to it, along with the others, but he knew now that it had been a mistake.  “If you choose to refuse the offer, no one will hold it against you.”

There was a long pause.  “I’m wearing a dress,” Samra said.  She sounded almost delirious.  “That feels strange, you know; we wore nothing for months.”  Her eyes cleared, suddenly.  “I’ll have to think about it and let you know as soon as I can,” she said.  “Can you do me a favour?”

The President listened, and then nodded once.  “It will be done,” he promised.  He passed her a white card.  “That’s my private Call-Code,” he said.  “When you make up your mind, or if you just want to talk, call me.”

She took the card and smiled once, briefly.

The President smiled back, and then left the room, walking away from the broken girl.

Chapter Fifty-Nine: Loose Ends

Samra had once heard a story.  In the days when the Holy Cities had been controlled by the Unbelievers, the Unbelievers had attempted to destroy the dome of the Prophet’s Mosque, an experiment that had ended after several workers fell off the works and crashed to their deaths.  The story had grown, as such stories did, in the telling, becoming stories of lighting striking down the Unbelieving Scholars who had pumped poison into Islam, to copies of the Qu’ran bursting into flames in their hands.  She would have liked to believe that Allah punished those who attacked his religion on such a level, but she had long ago come to believe that Allah let his people fight their own battles, giving them what help their deserved.  Certainly, lightning had never struck the Seeker for Truth, although as she’d spent nearly four months on the ship, she supposed she should be grateful.

Mecca had been damaged, badly, by the tidal waves.  Like almost everywhere else that had a major seacoast, the Caliphate had been blasted with tidal waves and appalling weather, slaughtering thousands of people in their wake.  Some of the holy sites had remained intact, others had been damaged, but it was a fundamental tenant of Reform Islam that Islam existed inside the heart, not in buildings, no matter their historical significance, or even their importance to the religion.  Muslims still went to Mecca once in their lives – at least – those who could – but the real importance of Mecca had lain in the free debate and discussions, ever since the shackles had been destroyed during the establishment of the Caliphate.  Many of those scholars had been killed in the waves, others had been lucky enough to survive, only to fall prey to the disease and deprivation that had spread in their wake.  There had been some help from the remainder of the Caliphate, but the Oghaldzon War had spread chaos everywhere; fifty-odd years of work rebuilding the greatness of the Middle East had been swept away in moments.  The scars would be long in healing.

She picked up a piece of rock and placed it carefully in one of the trucks.  She had come to Mecca, along with hundreds of others who believed that they had heard the call, or had come intending to heal, like herself.  No Caliphate official had decreed that they had to work with their bare hands, no Fatwa had been proclaimed on the subject, it had just…happened.  She touched her stomach again; she couldn’t stay forever, as much as she would like to remain in the Holy City.  It wouldn’t be long before her child was born.

It was Reynolds’ child, of course; there had been no one else.  An unmarried woman carrying a child didn’t hold the stigma it had once held in the Middle East, but it was unusual.  There were other pregnant women in the small settlement, who had lost their husbands in the Oghaldzon War, but she was unusual.  She hadn’t told them who she was, or what she had done during the war; they assumed that she had been shocked and traumatised, perhaps by being near a warfront, and left her secrets to herself.  A simple headscarf and a different air kept more curious eyes from recognising her; a handful of men who were looking for wives of their own saw her eyes and flinched back.  Perhaps they were scared of what they saw there, or perhaps they found it unattractive, but it didn’t matter.  All that mattered was that she was left alone to find her peace…and to bring up her child herself.

She wondered, sometimes, what would have happened if she had accepted the President’s offer of becoming the Ambassador to the Oghaldzon.  It hadn’t taken her long to decide that it was a bad idea; she still saw scenes from the Oghaldzon War in her nightmares, remembrances of the time she had spent in their captivity, remembering what they had done to her…they had helped make her pregnant, by destroying her implant.  The child was all she had left of her lover, she would be grateful for that, but she never wanted to face another Oghaldzon as long as she lived.  The Observatory didn’t need her, the President didn’t need her…all she needed was to find peace.

It would take years to rebuild Mecca, and she would be back as soon as she could, with her child in tow.  If Allah willed it, she would find her peace in the task, and if not, if He had some further purpose for her, perhaps by then she would have found the strength to handle it.  She touched her belly again and felt the baby kick slightly; perhaps peace would come, one day, if Allah willed it…

And until then, she would work in the camp, no longer a part of the affairs of the great and powerful, and all the better for it.

***
The church had survived, somehow, although even the reverend hadn’t known how it has escaped the tidal waves, or the alien reconstruction of parts of Virginia Beach to construct one of their cities.  His outfit still itched – most of the people who had spent time in captivity during the Oghaldzon War had discovered that they didn’t always like returning to clothes - but Markus Wilhelm forgot all of that when Mr Eichwurzel escorted his daughter slowly down the aisle, dressed in a white dress that might not have fitted the occasion, but at least it was traditional.  If her father suspected that Carola was actually pregnant, he gave no sign of it; the small wedding was everything that he had desired for his daughter.

“Dearly beloved,” the reverend said.  “We are gathered here today…”

Afterwards, he glanced over towards the most unusual guest, one of the Oghaldzon in person.  Wilhelm hadn’t entirely wanted to invite anyone to the wedding, not even their parents, but Carola had insisted on inviting a few people…and her guest list had included Yehaka-Researcher-Earth, their captor and current assistant.  The alien had asked to be included in the small list of guests, even though wedding bells and marriage meant little to the Oghaldzon; the very thought made him smile.  When one could get pregnant just through walking into a room, it made the idea of an ‘exclusive mating arrangement’ seem almost asinine.  The lawsuits and divorces alone…

“You are determined, then, to go to Mars?”  Mr Eichwurzel asked, after giving the alien a long sidelong glance.  Her presence had attracted comment – and a pair of tough-looking Marines to guard her from human racists, or merely people looking for a little revenge.  The Oghaldzon might have been helping the human race to rebuild, but for some reason that didn’t deter some of the people who had lost everything.  “I can’t talk you out of it?”

“There’s nothing left for us here,” Wilhelm said, seriously.  “Both of us lost our jobs in the war, swept away by tidal waves, and it will be a long time before anyone wants people like us again.  If we can help humanity to understand the Oghaldzon a little better, and vice versa, it might just prevent a second war.”

“I hope you’re right,” Mr Eichwurzel said.  He glanced over at his daughter.  “And I see you’ve adopted some children.”

Wilhelm nodded.  The children who had been taken from America or Europe had been matched against the recorded DNA templates held on file and in most cases returned to their parents.  The Russians had been unwilling to accept any of the refugee children, the Caliphate had never kept a database of its citizens, and far too many of the children had lost their parents to the war.  The handful of humans who had decided to go to Mars had adopted most of them; it would be interesting to see just what the joint culture became in a few years.

“We will take care of all of them,” he assured his father-in-law.  “As for the rest, time will tell, I guess.”

Carola sauntered back over to join them.  “You had better not be talking business on this day,” she said, firmly.  “Today is a day of celebration.  So get your butts over to the table and start stuffing yourself, ok?”

“Yes, love,” Wilhelm said, putting on a mischievous voice.  “I’ll stuff you later.”

“And you’re going to need energy to do that, aren’t you?”  Carola said dryly.  She kissed him as hard as she could and pulled him over to the buffet.  “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we’re going to Mars.”

***
The message had taken nearly a week – as humans measured time – to compose; now that the Oghaldzon had surrendered, technically, they were meant to fit into human society as much as they could.  Oghaldzon norms didn’t apply to humans; Dataka-Exile Leader-Mars had been surprised when the humans had offered them a settlement on Mars, rather than just absorbing them all into human society, although two billion Oghaldzon might have made that difficult.  It had been the secondary plan, he knew; close contact with that many Oghaldzon would have had an effect on humanity, perhaps one that would have brought them to civilisation.  Had they understood it, when they had pushed many of his people to Mars, that they would be neglecting their potential effect on the remainder of the human system…or had they planned it that way?

There was no way to know, and no way to affect the outcome anyway…and, perhaps, the human willingness to accept his surrender spoke well of the race, after all.  In the end, they had flinched from committing mass slaughter – or genocide, depending on how one looked at it – and they had even been willing to promise not to try to visit the Oghaldzon homeworld.  Perhaps the next meeting between human and Oghaldzon, perhaps around yet another star, would be more peaceful…or perhaps it would be violent.  There was no way to know.

The message had been difficult to compose.  The humans had missed one trick; his fleet had dropped a relay station as they entered the human system and had used it to forward reports back to Dhoz and – just incidentally – obscure the location of the homeworld as much as possible.  In a few years, Dhoz would know everything that had happened, from first contact with the Welcome Fleet to the war itself, the final surrender, and as much as possible of what happened in the years after that.  He had to tell them, however, what had happened…and what might happen in the future.

He clicked in welcome as Oolane-Researcher-Mars entered.  Her human friend had apparently refused to come to Mars, either to serve as Ambassador or even just to help, but it didn’t matter.  There would be enough humans on Mars for them to be influenced by the Oghaldzon, and vice versa.  In the future, perhaps familiarity would breed acceptance and make life easier for those involved in the next contact between human and Oghaldzon.

“My part of the message is complete,” she said, her clicking voice low and grim.  She might have enjoyed the chance to be a Researcher, but it would be harder to carry out pure research now.  Her growing friendship with Ambassador Tony Jones had been a small replacement, but in the end, time alone would tell.  “Have you completed yours?”

Dataka nodded.  Some Oghaldzon, including the former Warag-Soldier-Infantry and Kodak-Soldier-Infantry, had been invited to assist with the reconstruction projects on Earth rather than head to Mars with most of the other remaining soldiers.  He suspected that they were both helping the human race to understand the Oghaldzon better; only the fact that the human race hadn’t destroyed his people when they’d had the chance reassured him that their time with the humans wasn't being used for unpleasant purposes.  It was still worrying…

The two Oghaldzon stood together, in the darkness, for a very long time.

***

The outcome of the vote had never been in doubt, but Jake Ellsworth had rather hoped that it would have been; he wasn’t sure that he wanted to accept the responsibility.

“It is the will of eighty-three percent of the registered voters” – which meant every Rockrat who paid his or her dues and could be bothered to vote – “that Jake Ellsworth be appointed the first commander of the Belt Navy,” Kyle Short said, his voice failing to hide a slight undertone of unease at the concept.  The Rockrats hadn’t needed a navy…until the aliens had come along and showed them how dangerous the universe could be.  “Congratulations, Admiral Ellsworth.”

Cindy kissed him on the cheek mischievously.  She had accepted his proposal in classic Rockrat fashion, even though she had been appointed the temporary Ambassador to the Belt from the United Nations.  Ellsworth’s admission that she had played a major role in his decision not to press the offensive and finish off the aliens had won her a place in the belt’s heart; simulators had already started to claim that the battle could have gone both ways.

“It’s not going to be fun,” Short said, as Ian brought them all drinks and the party really got started.  “It’s going to be a nightmare if it’s not handled carefully.”

Ellsworth looked into the future and saw nothing, but darkness and shadow.
***
“It is my great pleasure to present Major Christopher Fardell with the Medal of Honour for his service in the war,” the President said, shaking the hands of the wounded veteran.  Normally, ever since the military had started to play a much more important role in American life, with the second draft and the Wreckers trying to bring the war home to the American public, such ceremonies would have included a long speech by the President – or his representative – to explain to the nation just what the winner had done to deserve the medal.  The Oghaldzon War had created hundreds of medal-winners across the world; the President could only make a brief statement, wish Major Fardell the best in life, and turn to the next person on the list.  He didn’t like it, but there was little other choice; much of Washington had been destroyed by the war, and only a few buildings were fit for use.

The White House, he reflected as he returned inside the building, escorted by a close-protection team from the US Marines – who were less pushy than the Secret Service – had been one of the few buildings to survive almost intact.  Some parts of the building had been damaged by the aliens, but it had been a fairly simple job to restore as much of it as possible; he had felt that it was important for public morale to see the government returning to business as usual.  The country was a mess, but they were slowly starting to rebuild; humanity had ended up learning a valuable lesson from the war.  Russian soldiers were assisting the Europeans in Eastern Europe, Indian soldiers were assisting the Caliphate, and Japanese and Korean teams were helping China to recover.  It was even possible that humanity would start to unite; the old Great Power structure had been shattered beyond easy recovery.

A cough brought him back to himself.  “Mr President?”

“William,” the President said.  General William Denny smiled at him; the aliens had destroyed the Pentagon, which had forced the majority of the military staff to remain at the National Command Centre.  “What can I do for you?”

Denny took a seat and came to the point.  “Don’t you think we let them off lightly?”

The President shrugged.  “Two billion of them – to precise, two billion minus however many we killed in the war – would have been a problem to integrate on Earth and I didn’t want them floating around over our heads,” he said.  “It might have given them a few ideas about changing the terms of the surrender.”

Denny paused.  “They screwed us,” he burst out.  The President lifted an eyebrow dryly.  “They’re going to Mars while we have to work to rebuild Earth and the USSF and let the moon go and…”

The President grinned.  “We screwed them,” he said.  “We just needed the moon’s support for one year; I won’t care too much if Bova decides to tell us to get lost in a year, because by then, we will have the mines orbiting Jupiter online, and several more asteroids in orbit, providing the material we need.  Fighting to recover the moon would have taken years with no guarantee of success…and, as Bova pointed out, we would destroy the infrastructure during the war.”

He shrugged.  “And as for the Oghaldzon?”  He grinned.  “We screwed them.  Think about it; we got the plans for their drive, it’s actually quite easy to produce, and it could be fitted to any asteroid and convert it into a starship.  Message Bearer is going to set out towards Tau Ceti any day now; it won’t be long before dissident groups start launching their own asteroid ships…and then, we – the Government – will start quietly encouraging their use…

“Think about it; they brought two billion of their people because they need large groups,” he said.  “We don’t need anything like that many, not with modern technology – and, of course, so much of our modern technology is going to be shared with the Belt and the Rockrats and everyone else.  Give us a hundred years and every worthwhile star within fifty light years – except the Shuneshu System, or Wolf 359 as we call it – will be colonised by humanity.”

He laughed.  “It still surprises me, you know, although it should have been obvious from their biological make-up; their homeworld had to be a very strange place and their star a very odd one, nothing like the sun.  We knew the direction they had come from, but we never realised which star had given them birth.  Still, Wolf 359…makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

Denny said nothing.

“In fifty years, the Oghaldzon will start to discover that we are heading out and taking all of the real estate,” the President said.  “We’ll honour our word, we won’t go near the Shuneshu System unless they launch a second attack on us, but they won’t be able to compete with us.”  He closed his eyes and looked into the future.  “I think we came out ahead in the end, don’t you?”

The End

Appendix: A Short History of the World of Thunder and Lightning

Few would have imagined, in the waning days of the 20th Century, that the affairs of the 21st Century would be shaped by the actions of a handful of desperate and ruthless terrorists, striking directly at the heart of the world’s most powerful country.  In a single day of infamy, the terrorists shook the world out of its complacency and reminded humanity that history – despite some self-congratulatory nonsense about the end of history – was marching on.  The ten years that followed 9/11 saw the world turned upside down; the war in Afghanistan, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, terrorist strikes…and the dispersal of international terrorism.  As western governments became more inclined to take action without regard for the prior norms of international and internal behaviour, terrorism mutated, passing through stages of cell networks to genuinely decentralised transnational networks, linked together by shared knowledge and a shared hatred of democratic society.  The Wreckers, as they came to be called, existed only to destroy; they would spread chaos without restriction throughout the 21st Century.

The early days of the war exposed one major weakness of the western powers, a dependence on oil, something that was being used to support the war against them.  In a very real sense, the West had paid for the rope that was being used to hang it, even to the point of selling its enemies the rope, in the form of weapons and even training that ended up being pointed back at them.  The desperate need for an alternative drove research as nothing else; in 2015, NASA landed the first lunar mining base, mining for Helium-3.  The element, used in fusion reactors, was cheap – once the difficulties of landing on the moon had been overcome – clean, and, best of all, there were no natives to use it against global interests.  By 2016, there were three other bases on the moon; by 2018, there was a growing lunar population of miners and support staff.

It was just in time.  In 2017, New York was destroyed by a nuclear weapon, which was later traced back to Pakistani nukes that had been believed to be safely under the control of the local government.  Several other attacks using radiological material took place at the same time, in Europe; Paris was particularly lucky as the dirty bomb exploded well ahead of time, detonating in a confirmed place and killing the terrorists who had hoped to use it against the city’s population.  As the US went into Pakistan – with the support of almost the entire global community – the world’s economy faltered.  Only the source of Helium-3, from the moon, kept the world’s most important economies functioning.

The European Union had been leaning towards the right for a long time, a process that had been generally ignored because the MEPs had tended to be socialist or from other far-left factions.  The European Parliament was swept aside as the individual nations dismissed all the MEPs, signed quick agreements to form a new federal alliance to prosecute the war, and pushed human rights legislation aside.  As European naval forces secured the Mediterranean – with orders to sink any ship that headed into European waters without warning – even vaguely suspect Muslims were rounded up and shoved into internment camps, followed by rioters – those who survived the deployment of the armed forces to crush rioters with extreme force.  They would later be deported back to North Africa; the remainder were given the choice between assimilating or leaving the European Union.  The EU’s actions would eventually lead to war between the European Union and the North African States; they would end up having their societies forcibly reshaped by European military forces.  The new EU discarded the effects of fifty years of socialism overnight; the EU actually started to work as the red tape was swept away.  It took nearly twenty years, but in the end the EU became a real government, with the exception of Britain.

The crash in the price of oil had a second major effect.  The political movement known as Reform Islam – which was a much a religious group as a political organisation – had been gaining strength in Iran, mainly spreading through the young, who were sick and tired of the Mullahs and the endless threats of war.  The American position in Pakistan and the fact that oil was suddenly starting to drop in price (Helium-3 and other advances reduced demand for oil by 70%) showed the reformers that the Mullahs had squandered Allah’s gift to the Muslims.  The revolution, when it came, was surprisingly bloodless; the only resistance was put up by the Revolutionary Guard, who were quickly crushed by the army.  Reform Islam spread rapidly, heading into Iraq and Saudi Arabia, reaching the borders of Israel by 2030.  The new government, by then calling itself the Caliphate (despite being a loosely organised federal state with democratic elections and an elected caliph) signed the final peace treaty with Israel, ending seventy years of hostility.  The Caliphate would, however, be regarded with suspicion by the other Great Powers until the Oghaldzon War broke out.

The Caliphate ended up being the forerunner of the final effect of the economic crash, the semi-unification of most of the world.  The United States intervened in civil wars that had broken out in Latin and South America, eventually annexing all, but Brazil as new states of the USA.  Britain formed a federal association with the other major countries of the former British Empire, China absorbed many of the surrounding states, Japan formed a Co-Prosperity Sphere with Korea and Taiwan and Russia absorbed much of Central Asia.  The final Great Power War – more of a major skirmish – was fought in 2034; China attempted to move in on Taiwan and the US moved to block it.  The resulting conflict, in which both sides used orbital weapons for the first time, caused the deaths of several hundred thousand servicemen on both sides, proving that warfare had changed once again.  It was generally accepted past that point that conflict between the Great Powers would be far too disastrous to be permitted to occur again and the reformed United Nations was charged with working out compromises in secret.

The expansion into space came with its own bumps and bruises.  The United States suffered the first Lunar Rebellion in 2024, when the miners had revolted against terrible living conditions and were rapidly crushed by the first major deployment of American military power outside Earth orbit.  (This was told in Bad Moon Rising.)  The moon was just too important to the new global economy to be allowed any say in its own future; almost all of the Great Powers would have their own revolutions, inadvertently fostering a core of lunar transnationalism, a core of belief in a lunar dream that transcended loyalty to any single Great Power.  The children born on the moon, increasingly, tended to see themselves as lunar-born first and Americans, Russians, Chinese, etc, second.  The seeds for future conflict had been sown…

Other expansions continued, leading to the first successful capture of an asteroid in 2030; the material provided by mining the asteroid allowed the construction of large ships that would make the flight to Mars.  By 2050, there were several large settlements on both Mars and Venus, with dozens of asteroids being colonised out in the belt.  The conditions in the belt gave rise to the independent Rockrat movement – the Embargo of 2051 proved that the Earth needed the Rockrats more than the Rockrats needed Earth – ensured that the Rockrats enjoyed a high degree of liberty; the shipment of several thousand refugee women from Earth (this was told in A Woman’s Place is Out in Space) ensured that the belt would enjoy the rapid rise of its population.  In 2100, Rockrats would generally be of mixed-race, although they were never able to shake a largely undeserved reputation for homosexuality.

The Wrecker War continued on Earth, with the Great Powers cooperating to exterminate the Wreckers, some of whom hid within the African Exclusion Zone (AIDS, terrorism, war and other diseases had torn Africa wide open), others of whom hid within a population where civil liberties were becoming increasingly less important.  The War was slowly being won as of 2100; the new states of both the USA and the European Union had been integrated into their economies and the standard of living had been vastly improved.  

It remains arguable, as of 2100, which of the Great Powers is the Great Power.  The USA, Russia, China, British Commonwealth, European Union, Caliphate and Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere (it must be noted that both the Commonwealth and the Co-Prosperity Sphere are only called British or Japanese by outsiders; Koreans in particular get very irritated when they are referred to as Japanese) all have a network of orbital weapons platforms, active warships in space and colonies in space.  The Brazilians and the Israelis both have smaller space programs – the Israelis managed to lay claim to Titan and settled it extensively – but neither of them can stand up to any of the Great Powers.  It is also generally believed that if either the Rockrats or the Moon managed to unite, economically, they would be powerful players on the solar system’s stage.

The future looks bright and full of promise.  The first starship – Message Bearer – is on the verge of being launched to Tau Ceti, privately funded by a consortium of individuals.  The population off-Earth continues to rise, with every sign that humanity will one day conquer the entire solar system and spread to the stars.  The only serious danger is a Great Power War, but as such a war would be completely devastating, it is generally believed that it will never happen.

Appendix: The Oghaldzon

[Author’s Note; the original concept of the Oghaldzon was developed by Tony Jones - http://www.clockworksky.net/aliens_oghaldzon.html - and is presented here in a somewhat condensed and modified style.]

The Oghaldzon – the name is the closest that humans can pronounce to what they called themselves – originated in the Shuneshu (Wolf 359) system, a comparatively short distance from Earth.  Dhoz, the home world of the Oghaldzon, is the largest moon of Orsargal, a large gas giant planet some two thirds larger than Jupiter which lies somewhat outside the habitable zone of Shuneshu.  Orsargal provides enough extra heat from itself to make Dhoz habitable, but also generated powerful radiation fields about itself [as Jupiter does].  The result was an environment where life – and eventually intelligence – could develop, but that intelligence developed in a very different form.  (An average Oghaldzon was roughly as intelligent as a human.)  There was no possibility, ever, of an Oghaldzon being mistaken for a human being.

Physically, an average Oghaldzon viewed from the side would vaguely resemble a three-legged grey or black deer, perhaps dressed in some sort of coverall. However, instead of a head and neck it has a featureless dome not unlike half of a rugby ball, which protrudes from any clothing worn, and three long thin arms down each side, two in front of and one behind the front leg. The hands of these limbs protrude from the ends of the sleeves of any clothing worn. From the front or from above and below they appear much more obviously alien as from those angles it is much harder to miss their three legs and alien body plan.  Naked, the only real difference between male and female is the mating crest on the female, which serves an important role in their reproduction.

Oghaldzon arms are thinner and weaker than human arms, but they automatically use two or all three arms together as a unit if a task requires it. Because of this, taking all of their arms together they are roughly equivalent to human strength. Oghaldzon hands are basically a more flexible continuation of the limb, with more joints per unit length than the limbs as a whole and prehensile tentacles and flaps of skin on either side to give the ability to grasp and manipulate. The number, form and exact arrangement of these side digits vary from individual to individual.  Oghaldzon weapons, designed for their bodies, are almost impossible for humans to use and vice versa.

Their feet are, like their hands, extension of their limbs, though less flexible, and with the sideways extensions forming a footpad.  Humans tended, without exception, to think of them as hooves, although that is not an accurate definition.  Individual Oghaldzon favour their left or right sides much as humans do. However, there is no physiological advantage to one 'handedness' over the other so that roughly half of the species is of each handedness, with a very small percentage being ambidextrous.

The Oghaldzon mouth is under the 'melon' of their head, at the front of the body, while they breathe through a 'nostril' on the top surface of the body above this. In females the breath is taken in through their hadrosaur-like crest, via which sperm are filtered from the air.

Their hearing and sonar extends over a very wide range of frequencies, from below to far above the human range. Their language likewise uses a very wide range of frequencies. To human ears it sounds like complex barking and clicking punctuated by gaps, but to the Oghaldzon themselves there is, of course, much more to it than that. Because of their way they generate sound there is hardly any visible movement of external parts of their bodies when they speak. The Oghaldzon could theoretically learn to speak human languages, but unaided humans simply do not have the vocal and auditory equipment to speak Oghaldzon languages. The Oghaldzon do not have facial expressions, but they do have body language as extensive as that of humans.

They are warm-blooded, but not mammalian. Their bodies are covered with skin without any hair, fur, scales and so on, not unlike that of humans. This varies in colour, but as Oghaldzon do not see colour this is irrelevant to them. To humans they would appear in a variety of shades from dark grey to black. They shiver when they are cold for the same reasons as humans, and pant when they are hot; this is because the generally moist air of Dhoz is not very conducive to cooling by sweating. Their bodies are adapted to be most comfortable when exposed to the six-day hot-cold thermal cycle caused by the orbit of Dhoz around Orsargal, so as much as possible they maintain this cycle in their cities, space habitats, space vehicles and so on.

Being creatures from the tropics of Dhoz, they require protection (clothing) to survive on other parts of the planet. They are roughly as resistant to acceleration and pressure extremes as a human being, but rather more vulnerable to hard radiation.

In their primitive state the Ogahldzon suffer as varied a range of diseases as humanity. However, most of these have been conquered by advanced in their medical sciences. They are also helped by the fact that Oghaldzon prone to disease tend to be weeded out in the larval phase, so the species as a whole is somewhat more disease-resistant than humans.

The Oghaldzon possess natural sonar, emitting from their domes, which allows them some very real advantages.  Among other things, they can monitor their fellows when they talk – it is almost impossible for one Oghaldzon to lie deliberately to another – and they can look inside other Oghaldzon.  Consequently, their medical science became far more advanced than humanity’s at a very early stage in their development; their eyes are almost vestigial and some Oghaldzon believe that one day the species will evolve to the point where they will no longer have eyes.

Oghaldzon names are variable, changing depending on what their current role is; ‘Oolane-Researcher-Seeker’ for example, is ‘personal name – job title – location’.  A human might be ‘Christopher-Writer-Edinburgh,’ for example; the latter two components change regularly.  The Oghaldzon have no concept of changing their personal names; they will adopt one when they reach adulthood and keep it for their life.

Because of their lack of a diurnal or nocturnal cycle, Oghaldzon society is permanently functioning, with different individuals working, sleeping and so on at different times.

Like almost all life forms on Dhoz, the Oghaldzon reproduce through a method very different to humanity’s.  When an Oghaldzon enters mating season (on average, around once or twice every three months), the male will emit sperm into the air, where it will float until a female sucks it out of the air, through her crest, and use it to fertilise her eggs.  The children will then grow on her body like limpets until they fall off – reassembling starfish-like creatures at that point – which, acting on instinct alone, will run wild until their body begins the transformation into an adult – and intelligent – Oghaldzon.  This entire process takes place without much active involvement; the Oghaldzon female can continue her normal life right through the stages of ‘pregnancy’ and indeed, the children are not considered important until they become intelligent.  It is not unknown for entire broods to die out without a single one surviving to adulthood; the development of a controlled environment (such as a space habitat) created a massive rise in the Oghaldzon population, as more children were surviving to become adults.

This has an effect on their society.  They have no concept of rape, incest, crimes of passion, sexual harassment, voyeurism, or – for that matter – true love.  Oghaldzon ‘families’ tend to be built around interest groups and societies; individual Oghaldzon who share interests, or work in the same line of work, will form groups that share ideas.  The children, once they reach adulthood, are brought up by teachers, who introduce them to the basics of the dominant society.  The rare Oghaldzon who is never reached by a teacher and becomes feral is regretfully destroyed as a danger to society.

Oghaldzon society is generally composed and organised by the sharing of ideas – memes – and placing them into practice.  The proof of the idea, as they put it, lies in how well it works in practice; the Oghaldzon cannot practice the concept of lying to their own people about how ‘they’ve never had it so good.’  Because of the drive of the Oghaldzon to preserve and pass on their way of life and culture derived from their method of reproduction, the history of Oghaldzon civilisation is one of warring memeplexes [groups of ideas - memes - which propagate as cooperative groups], with the extermination or conversion of defeated memeplexes playing a frequent role. Each memeplex is the equivalent of a tribe or nation of humans, but rather than genetics, each one is linked by a common set of ideas in which all members have an investment, one as strong as the investment humans put into their children. In effect, the ideas of a group are their parents and their children.  

The larger a meme-group grows, the more mass appeal its memes have to have, otherwise it simply will not grow, or last.  Oghaldzon history is filled with examples of this, where meme-groups stagnate or fragment over time, leaving themselves open to more dynamic meme-groups. Inflexible meme-groups simply lost to those who could innovate. Of the flexible ones, competition over time let only the fittest survive; the harsh environment of Dhoz has done far more to weed out meme-groups with less ability to survive than has been the case in the relatively benign environment of Earth, where such ideas linger even in many mainstream societies.  [The Oghaldzon experimented with communism, socialism and limited fascism, but – unlike may humans – realised that the flaws inherent in such structures would inevitably wreck such societies.]

In time one memeplex evolved which was aggressive, disciplined and obedient, but also innovative and flexible, with initiative and memes for incorporating new ideas and technology into their memeplex. This gave them the advantage over all other meme-groups, and over time this pragmatic, empirical, flexible set of memes spread across Dhoz and came to dominate the meme-groups there, simply because it was the one that made groups with it best able to survive. However, different disparate groups adopting these ideas, combined with the frequent falls of civilisations resulting in regression and fragmenting of meme-groups, meant that the groups incorporating these memes never formed a single unified ideology, although they did all have similarities.  Eventually one memeplex refined these memes and developed into a group able to take over all of Dhoz. The memetic similarity of many of the memeplexes across most of Dhoz did mean that this dominant culture was eventually able to impose its ideas on Dhoz without having to engage in 'memocide' [the Oghaldzon equivalent of genocide].

The dominant Oghaldzon memeplex reassembles a social democracy, to use a term humans will understand, including both free enterprise and a certain degree of mutual support/social security.  Their culture is quite argumentative. But its discipline also means that discussion has its place; if there were a burning fire, or a military emergency, they would allow those best qualified to lead until the emergency was dealt with.  The dominant memeplex walks a fine line between losing innovation and stagnating, or fracturing into subgroups; the balance of power within factions tends to shift, occasionally allowing small groups to split off and declare independence.  This has been occurring much less often as the Oghaldzon gained more understanding; ideas which might appeal to the young were tried, tested, and either embraced by the overall whole or discarded.  The handful of ‘semi-independent’ subgroups tend not to last very long.

In the dominant memeplex of the Oghaldzon, members of the race with the most practical ideas lead; as such it is a form of meritocracy. The idea to do this is another winning meme that has developed over time. Ideas that are impractical - such as stories - have a place too, but not as part of the leadership of their meme-group (the few 'entertainer-cracies' that developed during Oghaldzon history did not survive long).

The government of the dominant memeplex consists of a number of interlinked councils that perform the roles of government. At the top of the government is a Council of Councils which links them all into a unified whole.  Even the largest and most stable memeplexes have smaller groups with radical views that do not fit in with the mainstream memeplex constantly splitting off from their 'edges'. Many of these are primitive memes, whose memeplexes, on Dhoz, live in what are essentially cultural reserves. However, some are radical groups whose wishes for advancement, by the avocation of things such as genetic engineering and cyborgisation, also lie outside the fringe of mainstream society, but in a very different direction to those of the 'primitives'.

Because of the investment that individual Oghaldzon have in their memeplex, crime rates among the Oghaldzon tend to be low. However, crime does happen from time to time. When it does occur it is considered to be because an individual has suffered contamination of their own memes, causing them to become misaligned with those of the memeplex as a whole – or, as a human might put it, ‘gone bad/fallen in with a bad crowd’.  These crimes tend to be classed as either ThrillKill or MemeKill; ThrillKill might be described as individual crime (robbery, murder, rape (impossible for the Oghaldzon), violation and so on) while MemeKill might be described as destroying ideas.  A society driven by MemeKill, not unlike Soviet Russia, will essentially prevent its citizens from forming their own societies, enslaving them and brainwashing them to believe that something that manifestly did not work actually worked.  Almost every war fought by the Oghaldzon after their world became more or less united was against a MemeKill Proponent, such as Hitler, and the unfortunates brainwashed by him.

The Oghaldzon, as of First Contact, were roughly fifty years ahead of the human race in most areas.  Their lasers and some sensors were far in advance of anything humans had produced (the Oghaldzon were never very keen on chemical weapons as the noise damaged their sonar), while they had taken the concept of the fusion drive several stages further, producing vastly increased power levels and allowing some operations within the atmosphere of Earth without causing environmental problems.  Their computers, also, were considerably superior, particularly in the research and translations section; the Oghaldzon had no problems learning English from human broadcasts.

The Oghaldzon – after discovering humanity right next door – were horrified.  Unable to comprehend the slanted nature of most human news reports – the Oghaldzon never developed the tradition of biased reporting and wouldn’t have had any truck with it if they had – they concluded that humanity was far too dangerous to be permitted to spread outside their own solar system.  Following an intensive debate, the Oghaldzon Government decided to launch a major military force to Sol to either heal or contain humanity permanently.  This brought them into conflict with the human race.