Conquistadors!

(Conquistadors I)

Christopher G. Nuttall

Cover By Tan Ho Sim
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Contents
Contents
Cover Blurb
Introduction, by Dale Cozort
Prologue, Timeline A (Protectorate Homeworld)
Chapter One: Castle Treathwick, Spanish Wildlands, Timeline A
Chapter Two: Flint, Texas, North America, Timeline F (OTL)
Chapter Three: Castle Treathwick, Spanish Wildlands, Timeline A
Chapter Four: Flint, Texas, North America, Timeline F (OTL)
Chapter Five: Flint, Texas, North America, Timeline F (OTL)
Chapter Six: Flint, Texas, North America, Timeline F (OTL)
Chapter Seven: Wolfe Airfield, Texas, North America, Timeline F (OTL)
Chapter Eight: Flint, Texas, North America, Timeline F (OTL)
Chapter Nine: Washington DC, North America, Timeline F (OTL)

Cover Blurb

The Protectorate – an interdimensional empire that has conquered five timelines so far – has set its sights on ours. Led by a man willing to risk everything for power and conquest, armed with technology a hundred years ahead of ours – technology promising salvation to its allies and doom to its enemies – and drawing on a far deeper military history, the Protectorate Expeditionary Force has arrived to invade and incorporate our world into the greatest empire the multiverse has ever known, or die trying.

And as the war for the future of our timeline begins, and spreads right across the world, we are forced into a fight we cannot win …

…. And yet dare not lose.

Introduction, by Dale Cozort

Over the last several years, Christopher Nuttall has become one of my favourite authors. He has a wild imagination which leads to unique world-building and characters. He also produces a mind-boggling array of novels, rivalling old pulp writers like Lester Dent in output for what seems to be an endless array of novels, all with a social consciousness that is never preachy or intrusive. He writes to entertain, not to deliver sermons, and his stories reflect that. He has one other rather unique trait: when he writes in a series, the books often get stronger as the series progresses.

Conquistadors is the beginning of a new series. I’m a little biased toward that series, partly because of its origins. Chris and I both belong to an alternate history writer’s group/zine-based forum called Point of Divergence. Several months ago, Chris issued a challenge: Find an alternate history idea that would go mainstream the way Harry Potter did for YA Fantasy. We have been brainstorming that concept for months without coming up with anything quite in that league, but still tossing around dozens of very good story ideas. One of those ideas: Have the modern world invaded from an alternate timeline with superior technology, putting us in the situation the Aztecs and Incas were in when the Spanish conquistadores arrived.

That idea resonated with Chris because he had previously written something sort of similar very early in his writing career, one involving an invasion by super-technology Nazis. He took this novel in a very different direction. The invaders are not stereotypical villains, nor are they the heroes of this novel. They are a conquering people, at times very ruthless, but with an internal logic to their actions. They arrive with a formidable army in a remote area of Texas, with no idea what they will be facing and immediately begin a knowledge race. What kind of society are they facing? What are its weaknesses? Can they conquer it? They need to understand our society before we understand the threat that they pose. When they think they understand us, conquest begins.

A near-future invasion from another timeline is surprisingly challenging. Among the challenges:  The potential for the book quickly becoming obsolete. An author could approach this by looking at what US forces are available, where they are based and so on. And if any of that changes, the book looks dated. Chris rarely mentions specific weapons systems and capabilities or bases while still managing credible battle scenes.

Any realistic discussion of an invasion of the US runs into another problem: The US military almost certainly has cards up their sleeve that will remain hidden in any emergency less than an invasion of the continental US. That’s part of the reason we have black budgets in the Pentagon, programs that may remain secret for decades before finally being revealed, or in some cases failing and being quietly abandoned, By definition, we can’t know for certain what those programs are, or what they can do. That leaves an author with both an opportunity and a danger. Black programs can emerge in the series if necessary, tailored within reason to the author’s needs. On the other hand, guessing too close to reality can cause issues.

Finally, the biggest, nastiest imponderable: How would the people of the US react to invasion? Would they forget any differences and unite against the invaders? Would they let the invaders pick them apart like the conquistadores did the people of the Aztec and Inca empires? That’s a political minefield because the real-life people being described are potential readers and offending them is a real possibility.

This wasn’t an easy book to write, though Chris did it at his usual blistering pace. I thoroughly enjoyed the results and I think you will too.

Prologue, Timeline A (Protectorate Homeworld)

“And so, the final preparations have been completed,” Captain-General James Montrose said. The holographic projection couldn’t hide the anticipation – and impatience – in his voice, his determination to get on with the operation before politics shifted and he was, perhaps, removed from his post. “The 6th Protectorate Expeditionary Division awaits your command.”

Protector Julianne Rigby, one of the Triumvirs of the Protectorate, studied him thoughtfully. Montrose was a man on the move, a man of burning ambition, a man who felt he had something to prove … a man whose hopes and dreams might someday carry him to the Inner Circle itself, where she sat – or send him crashing and burning into nothingness. He was tall and handsome, wearing a uniform tailored to make him look dashing and imposing … he’d had it put around, more than once, that his looks owed nothing to cosmetic surgery or gene-splice techniques. His dark hair was cut in a manner that recalled Alexander the Great, barely within regulations, something Julianne couldn’t help finding both amusing and worrying. Alexander had conquered most of the known world, true, but he hadn’t known how to keep it. His empire had barely lasted longer than he had.

Her lips twitched. A man like Montrose would be a threat, under other circumstances. He was charismatic, capable, and experienced, having cut his teeth fighting primals and teaching degenerates the error of their ways. The Protectorate prided itself on being a meritocracy, and an ambitious man could rise far even if he started with nothing, but there were limits. No one man could be allowed to put himself above the rest, even in name. They were lucky, she supposed, that they could send him to fight in other timelines. He would have a chance to earn his spurs and develop the skills he needed to rise even higher, and the Protectorate itself would benefit. And if he lost …

“We will be in touch,” Protector Horace Jarvis said. “Your orders will arrive shortly.”

He tapped a command. Montrose’s image vanished, leaving the three triumvirs alone.

“I don’t trust him,” Jarvis said, curtly. “He’s too ambitious.”

“There’s no such thing,” Protector John Hotham said, calmly. “We need a man like him on the other side.”

Julianne couldn’t disagree, even as Jarvis swung his head towards her. The Crosstime Transpositioner was the Protectorate’s greatest invention – with the Interdimensional Gates a close second – but it had its limits. The 6th Protectorate Expeditionary Division would be transported to another world, through one of the ‘soft places’ the scientists had charted over the last year, then … the division would be on its own until a second division could be rotated through the dimensions, or a pair of gates set up to allow instant travel between the two. Montrose would be on his own, without any supervision. There were agents on his staff, of course, with instructions to ensure he didn’t exceed his orders too broadly, but it was impossible to prepare for every contingency. A man like Montrose would have no trouble arranging matters so he didn’t violate the letter of the law, no matter what he did to the spirit. 

Her eyes hardened. The Protectorate had discovered and colonised four timelines so far: one apparently devoid of human life, one shattered by a disease that had seemingly come out of nowhere, and two dominated by empires that had reached a certain point and stagnated. They had never developed anything more advanced than wind and sail technology, with gunpowder remaining little more than a curiosity rather than a weapon of war, and they hadn’t posed any challenge when the first expeditionary forces had arrived. The occupants of the disease-ridden timeline had been glad to see the invaders, something that still amused the occupation authority. They were very loyal, far more than any degenerates or primals from the home timeline. They might even qualify for full citizenship in a century or two. 

“We are the only timeline that has developed technology,” Hotham said, echoing her thoughts. The researchers believed the Protectorate was unique. Their explorations of other timelines tended to back the theory up. “There are limits to how far Montrose can go.”

“If he builds an empire, it will be difficult to dislodge him,” Jarvis countered. “Legally …”

He let the word hang in the air. Julianne saw his point. The Protectorate offered vast rewards to the men who conquered new worlds, from lands and titles to real power that could be passed down to their descendants. Montrose would be in a very strong position if he claimed the entire world for himself and his senior officers; trying to dispose of him would be disastrous unless there was very clear proof of mismanagement or treason. Montrose had his supporters amongst the Outer Council, and they would unite against the Triumvirs if they thought their hero was being treated unfairly. And others, who had little love or concern for Montrose personally, would back him for fear of setting a ghastly precedent that could – would – come back to bite them.

“If he occupies yet another low-tech world, if he claims it all for himself, it is not a major problem,” Hotham said. “By the time his conquest is thoroughly developed, he will be dead.”

“Unless he encounters a high-tech world,” Jarvis said. “It could happen.”

Julianne wasn’t inclined to believe it. The chain of events that had led to the industrial revolution of the 1600s – the overthrow of King Charles, the rise of the Protectorate, the development of steam-powered technology – were so unlikely she might as well have rolled a die a hundred times and gotten the same number every time. It might be possible, but it was vanishingly unlikely. The mindset one needed to develop practical technology was rare, apparently. Timelines held in the thrall of empires, or superstition, were unlikely to make any real progress. Even in their original timeline, it had been hard for the Franco-Spanish and later the Russians to realise they had to innovate or die.

“Or he could run into something that could kill him,” Hotham said. His mockery was hidden, but not carefully enough. It was no accident. “He has his orders in that case.”

“And we know he’s loyal,” Julianne added.

She studied the display thoughtfully. The researchers had done their best, but there was no way to determine anything about the new timeline until someone jumped in and took a look. The basic theory suggested that they couldn’t access a timeline too close to their own, certainly not one identical in every detail save one, yet no one had been able to figure out how to find the point of divergence from outside. It was possible there was a timeline in which the Roman Empire had developed technology nearly a thousand years before the Protectorate, or even one in which the dinosaurs had grown into intelligent beings rather than being wiped out by an asteroid strike. Or something completely inexplicable …

“He has his orders,” Hotham repeated. It was true. If Montrose ran into something he couldn’t handle, he had strict instructions to blow up his base and everything else. The destruction of a Crosstime Transpositioner would - in theory - be detectable, warning the Protectorate that there was a threat on the far side of the interdimensional walls. “Now … do we clear him to proceed or not?”

Julianne kept her face blank as Jarvis glowered at Hotham. The two men were polar opposites - one willing to take risks, the other too conservative to gamble everything on one throw of the die – and the Outer Council had elected her, in part, to ensure that the two men could never be deadlocked and throw the entire government into paralysis. It was her job to propose a compromise, and yet nothing she could reasonably offer one man would satisfy the other.

“We assigned units to his command, did we not?”

“Of course,” Jarvis said cautiously. He knew she was playing dumb. He just didn’t know why. “He is the force’s commander, is he not?”

Julianne keyed her console, bringing up the 6th Protectorate Expeditionary Division’s Table of Organisation. “We originally intended to assign additional logistic support,” she said, tapping the listing. “If Montrose found another primal world, the only thing limiting his reach would be local logistics. By the time we re-established contact, he could have the entire world.”

She met his eyes. “If we withhold two of the planned logistics formations, it would limit his reach, would it not?”

“A fitting compromise,” Jarvis said. “Sir John?”

Hotham nodded, curtly. Julianne suspected he wasn’t entirely pleased with the agreement, but he was too old a hand to think there was any point in arguing now. Crippling Montrose would be dangerous, if he ran into a peer power, yet all the researchers agreed that was unlikely. He should have no difficulty securing a lodgement and waiting for reinforcements, if the natives proved troublesome. The PEF was loaded for bear – or dinosaur, her mind whispered – and had enough firepower, as well as supplies, to hold its ground against all anticipated threats. And if he did run into a peer power, he could at least talk to them …

“We can also expedite the second expeditionary force,” Jarvis added. “Once we have a solid lock on the other timeline, we can make sure Montrose is no longer alone.”

“Good thinking,” Julianne agreed. The sooner they added Timeline F to their conquests, the better. Their term as triumvirs would be over soon and they wanted – needed – something that would ensure their names went down in history. “Shall we proceed?”

She felt a twinge of doubt as the two men tapped their consoles. There really was no way to be sure what was waiting, on the other side of the interdimensional wall. The odds of meeting a real threat were unlikely – no one had tried to invade the Protectorate yet – but they couldn’t be dismissed entirely. There’d been no way to avoid giving Montrose considerable freedom to act as he saw fit, and yet … it might not be enough. If only there was a way to covertly recon other timelines …

We make do with what we have, she told herself firmly. And the odds are very much in our favour.

Chapter One: Castle Treathwick, Spanish Wildlands, Timeline A

Captain-General James Montrose kept his thoughts under tight control as he walked through Castle Treathwick, inspecting the giant fortress one final time before the jump. The sheer size of the fortress was staggering – it truly was a castle, if not a design the original Lord Treathwick would recognise – and yet he was uneasily aware it might not be enough to cope with whatever the PEF found on the far side. There was no way to know what was on the far side. They were loaded for bear, based on what they knew from previous crosstime transits, but there was always a chance – however slight – that they would run into something really dangerous, perhaps even disastrous. Or fatal to his ambitions. To him, they were one and the same.

He was a tall dark-haired man, skin tanned from service in the primal regions of a world that largely, if not completely, belonged to the Protectorate. He was young for his role, barely in his forties; he knew, without false modesty, that he wouldn’t have been selected for the post without both consummate ability and careful politicking. It had taken two years, from the moment the crosstime researchers had zeroed in on another soft place allowing interdimensional transit, to ensure he was appointed commander – and he had no intention of wasting it. The rewards would be vast, even if they encountered yet another world of primals who’d committed civilisation-wide suicide by stagnating. He’d be the first governor-general, able to parcel out lands and locals to his supporters; he’d be able to build a power base that might take him to the Inner Council itself. If he managed to take a seat before he turned sixty, he would set a new record. And it would silence, once and for all, the fools who whispered darkly about his bloodline. They would be forced to admit, at least to themselves, that he had done well.

The thought made him smile as he walked from section to section, speaking briefly with his regimental and aerospace commanders before sharing a few words with the men and women under his command. He wasn’t fool enough to believe they’d give him their all if they didn’t like and trust him personally, certainly when they were a long way from home. He’d had commanders who should have fallen afoul of the Protectorate’s distaste for nepotism a long time ago, commanders who issued orders from the rear instead of leading their troops into battle. They had never quite known what was happening, and if they hadn’t been able to call on aerospace and orbital assets the primals would have given their troops a very hard time indeed. They might be primitive beyond words – it was popularly believed primals couldn’t even speak, even though that was very far from true – but they weren’t stupid. A commander who underestimated them would get a black eye – and far too many of his men killed. James understood that, sometimes, men had to be sacrificed, but getting them killed for nothing was worse than pointless. Their friends and families would bear a grudge until the end of time.

He put the thought aside as he surveyed the row of Cromwell tanks, ready to burst out onto the new world and take it by the throat. They represented enough firepower to daunt anyone, even a peer power, although James was honest enough to admit that primals were rarely intimidated for long. They had little choice but to fight, unless they wanted to join the Protectorate or simply cut their own throats. Who knew how the locals would react? Some had joined up at once, welcoming the intruders; others had fought, even though resistance had been pointless as well as futile. The videos of men on horseback charging tanks had been quite amusing, in a way, as wasteful as it was. They’d been brave, brave enough to join the PEF, but they’d been effortlessly blown away. And the shock had been so intense the remainder of the primals had simply surrendered, rather than adapting their tactics to give the invaders a very hard time.

James nodded to himself as he turned away and started the long walk back to the command centre. The man who had led the expedition to Timeline C was now wealthy and powerful beyond the dreams of avarice, with a seat waiting for him on the Inner Council if he chose to take it. James suspected, reading between the lines, that the older man – no fool – preferred to work in the shadows, rather than openly take control. It was tradition that, after serving a term on the Inner Council, a man would step into retirement to allow younger men to take his place. James knew he couldn’t abide it, at least not while he was young and energetic, and he suspected his predecessor felt the same way too. Glory and fame were important, but power was all that really mattered.

He stepped into the command centre and looked around, eyes flickering from console to console. Castle Treathwick was practically a closed environment in its own right, as isolated from the rest of the world as one of the giant orbital battlestations overhead. They were buttoned down as tightly as possible, just in case. They’d already encountered one timeline infected with something deadly – thankfully, modern medicine laughed at primal diseases – and there was always the risk of discovering something worse, something that might threaten the fortress and its garrison. James thought some of the planners had been drinking illicit substances, when they drew up contingency plans for scenarios no sane mind would contemplate, but there was no point in arguing. In theory, anything was possible. And besides, his enemies would use his doubts against him.

“Sir,” Doctor Cecelia Archway said. She looked ten years younger than he did, with short blonde hair and a face that drew the eye, but he knew better than to underestimate her. Most scientists in the Protectorate were female, a tradition started by the famed Lady Treathwick herself, and no one would have dreamed of questioning it. “The Crosstime Transpositioner has completed the final set of checks. We can rotate into the other dimension in thirty minutes.”

“Good,” James said. It would have been ironic, indeed, if the checks had failed. A technical failure would be bad enough – it would give his enemies more time to plot to have him removed – but a failure to parse out the soft place and plan the transit would be disastrous. Castle Treathwick was a major investment, fully the equal of an orbital battlestation or a deep-space explorer, yet she couldn’t be moved as easily as either. “Any signs of trouble?”

“No, sir,” Cecelia assured him. “We should be able to rotate through the interdimensional barrier without problems. The receptors will just have to deal with the aftermath.”

James nodded, curtly. Castle Treathwick was surrounded by heavy walls and enough firepower to deal with any reasonable threat, from biohazards from Timeline E to primals with actual weaponry. They would see the castle vanish, when the Crosstime Transpositioner was triggered, and be replaced by … whatever was on the other side. The region had never been particularly heavily populated in Timeline A – the Spanish had largely left it to the natives – but that might not be true on the other side. The Inca Empire of Timeline C had established quite a few settlements in the region and would have gone further if they’d had the tech to make them permanent. Luckily for the invaders, they’d barely progressed past sticks and stones.

“They’ll be able to deal with it,” he assured her. The odds were good the receptor team would have to deal with nothing more dangerous than a patch of desert, perhaps – although it was statistically unlikely – with a handful of nomads thrown in. If worse came to worst, they could always call down orbital bombardment and sterilise the entire area. “We jump as planned.”

The doctor nodded, hurrying back to her duty station. James smiled as he took his seat and studied the main display. There weren’t many military assets – or townships – outside the fortress and the receptor force, something that worked in their favour. There would be no risk of an enemy force getting loose, let alone into the heartland, before it could be contained or simply smashed from orbit. The locals had largely been brushed aside, decades ago, and did their best to stay away from the townships. Some – descendants of Spanish and Mexican intermixing – had even joined the Protectorate, trying to build lives and careers for themselves in a world that didn’t give a damn about the colour of their skin. Others just wanted to be left alone …

General Stuart Essex joined him, looking grim. “Sir, they withheld the 2nd and 3rd Logistics Divisions.”

James took the datapad, cursing under his breath. The reason behind the decision was almost painfully transparent. His enemies wanted to make sure he couldn’t stake a claim to the entire world, on the far side, before they sent in reinforcements … and, on paper, there was nothing he could do to object. The public reasoning was simple, and unassailable. On one hand, the logistics units were needed elsewhere; on the other, James had strict orders to establish a foothold first and foremost, rather than haring off to take possession of everything. He had no need, on paper, for the kind of logistics support that could move an entire division from one side of the world to the other. And it was hard to argue otherwise when the demands of the endless war in Central Asia came first.

We should just carpet bomb the entire place, he thought darkly. The Protectorate saw the entire region as a training ground, giving its soldiers a taste of fighting in an environment where defeat would be nothing more than a minor nuisance, but personally he suspected it was as petty and pointless as landing an entire Army division on Mars. There’s no need to play war with the primals when we can put an end to them once and for all.

He studied the datapad for a moment longer, then looked up. “We’ll cope,” he said curtly. It wasn’t a major problem. There were ways around it, if they discovered an empty world, and if they didn’t … they might have more serious issues to worry about. “Have the logistics officers revise their plans to account for the missing transports.”

Stuart scowled. James kept his expression under control. He hadn’t wanted Stuart for his second-in-command, even though the man was – on paper – perfectly qualified. Stuart was well-connected, which meant he’d been promoted ahead of other officers … often without the experience he needed to make full use of his new rank. He was a good organiser and bureaucrat, and the PEF needed a senior officer who knew how to handle logistics, but he’d never been tested in combat. Worse, the other captains looked down on him for not being a combat officer. James had calculated it would make it harder for his subordinates to unseat him, if they thought they had cause, but it was a gamble. He would have preferred a more experienced man serving as his second.

Although a more experienced man would seem a worthwhile replacement if I slip up too badly, he reminded himself, coldly. Plus I needed support from his backers.

“We will have trouble keeping the regiments supplied if we run into trouble,” Stuart pointed out. James couldn’t help thinking he looked like a fussy bureaucrat, even though his family had ensured he and his siblings had the best genetic treatments money could buy. “Even with the remaining logistic transports, it will be difficult …”

“It depends on what we encounter,” James said. “We will adjust our plans accordingly.”

He smiled, rather dryly. If they encountered a timeline like Timeline B or E, there would be no threat. The local wildlife in Timeline E was remarkably aggressive – there’d been no humans to tame the beasts – but it wasn’t a threat to armed men. Local humans might be more dangerous, yet the PEF still had enough firepower to dominate the local region until reinforcements arrived. The only real risk was a peer power and that was vanishingly unlikely. No one had tried to invade the Protectorate yet. 

Stuart nodded. “Do you wish to check in with the remaining captains?”

“They know their duties,” James assured him. He’d never liked senior officers peering over his shoulder when he’d been a junior himself. The captains were prickly and independent, not the sort of officers who’d be happy with their superior checking on them. They’d worked long and hard to earn their posts and they had no intention of letting their efforts be wasted, not when they might be able to climb even higher. “We did enough drills to know the captains can handle their regiments.”

Stuart saluted, then hurried off. James watched him go, keeping his thoughts to himself. The drills had been carefully carried out, pitting the PEF against a series of enemies from primal insurgents to modern-day armoured forces, but there had always been a question mark over their true enemies. They thought they were ready for anything, yet … were they? They’d worked out how to coordinate in the middle of a battlefield, against enemies who matched their tech and had the umpires on their side, but … what would they face when they rotated into a whole new world? The drills, even the live-fire field exercises, hadn’t been real. The coming transit was.

We’re warned to expect the unexpected, he thought, as he studied the live feed from the various regiments, departments and orbiting sensors. But if we knew what we were expecting it would hardly be unexpected.

The timer blinked on, counting down the minutes to transit. James keyed his console, checking the links to the receptor force. They’d be cut, the moment they jumped; he’d be alone, in sole command of an isolated force, one that would remain out of touch with its superiors for weeks, perhaps even months. They would be completely alone, unable to summon reinforcements or requisition supplies. It was a terrifying thought, for all the fabbers and machine shops within the vast fortress. He’d been in the military for nearly twenty-five years and yet he’d never been out of touch with his superiors, not even when he’d been stationed briefly on the moon. He was solely responsible for the men and women under his command, in far more ways than one. Success would boost his career to the very highest levels; failure would send him crashing into obscurity, blighting the family name even if he never returned …

To win or lose it all, he thought. The family motto, stubbornly kept despite their ancestor being on the wrong side of a civil war … James had never been certain if the Protectorate quietly admired James Graham, First Marquis of Montrose, or if his family had been lucky just to survive long enough for reconciliation, when it became clear that Charles Stuart’s cause was hopelessly lost. James could not stop himself from reaching for the stars, even though defeat – or even ambiguous victory – would ruin him. He could not fear his fate when the prize was worth any risk. I could not be me if I didn’t gamble everything on victory.

A low tremor ran through the fortress. James tensed, eyes darting from console to console. The Crosstime Transpositioner was ready. The armoured infantry and tanks were ready. The aerospace forces – flyers and drones – were ready, the latter linked to command-and-control stations within the command chamber. The point defence, too … it was unlikely, to say the least, that they would emerge into a battlefield, but there was nothing to be gained by taking extra chances. They were already taking the biggest one of all. The medics, the intelligence staff, the logisticians … volunteers all, mercilessly drilled to ensure they could handle anything, and ready. He could feel the tension pulsing in the air, training holding it at bay. They were ready.

His terminal bleeped. “Sir, the Council has just sent us a good-luck message.”

“Thank them for us,” James said. He had enemies on the Council, but even his worst opponent would understand that the Protectorate came first. If the mission failed, the consequences would be incalculable. “And tell them we’re beginning the final countdown … now.”

His finger ran down the console, taking them past the point of no return … although, in truth, they’d committed themselves long ago. Another tremor ran through the base as the fusion generators powered up, channelling vast amounts of power into the Crosstime Transpositioner. The power levels required to transit, even once, were so high that it was a given the system would not survive the jump, no matter the outcome. James had a private suspicion that the Council hadn’t pushed to correct that problem because it ensured enemies on the far side couldn’t capture an intact Transpositioner. The databanks had been carefully purged of anything that might allow the natives to build their own. James understood the logic, even though it worked against him. If they did run into a peer power, the last thing they wanted to do was make the new threat more dangerous.

“Now hear this,” Stuart said. His voice boomed through the fortress. “Ten minutes to transit. I say again, ten minutes to transit.”

James lifted his eyes and studied the display. It was just past midnight … it would be the same on the other side, allowing them to arrive in the dead of night. It was possible no one would even notice their arrival, at least at first, or … who knew? The basic shape of the North American continent would be the same, he thought, but beyond that …? The politics could be very different. Or they might not exist at all.

He braced himself as the timer started to count down the final seconds. It wouldn’t be long now.

Chapter Two: Flint, Texas, North America, Timeline F (OTL)

The desert might be dangerous, particularly in the daytime, but Sheriff Callam Boone had always enjoyed driving through it at night. There was a grandeur about the environment – the scrubland, the rock formations, the moon and stars overhead – that was lacking in daytime, when there was no way to avoid all the problems of the region, from the economic collapse that had blighted the towns and cities to the endless emigration of people in search of a better life. Callam wondered, sometimes, if anyone up north realised how bad things had become, in what had once been a prosperous region; sometimes, he suspected they just didn’t care. It wasn’t easy being a law-enforcement officer at the best of times, but doing it in a district where everyone regarded the police as enemies was almost impossible. There was no shortage of stories about people taking the law into their own hands after they’d been let down by the authorities. It was often very hard to blame them.

He glanced back as the road rose slightly, looking back at Flint. It had been a prosperous town, once; there’d been two factories and a whole host of smaller businesses, unaware that their prosperity depended on factories owned by distant corporations who cared nothing for the town. They’d pulled out, sending the town into a depression that it had never managed to escape. It didn’t matter, in the end, if one blamed globalists and traitors in high office or the cold dictates of capitalism. The end result was the same: hopeless people, trapped in poverty and burning with anger driven by fear and desperation. It was no surprise to him that drugs, alcohol, and suicide were so prevalent. Why bother trying to work and live when it was completely hopeless?

The town had once been as brightly lit as any other, a shining beacon of civilisation in the darkness. Now, he could easily make out patches where the lights had failed; broken streetlights, shuttered buildings, darkness that hid a grim reality of people doing everything in their power to scrape out a living, knowing it was hopeless. The resentment was almost a palpable force, seeping into everything … even children who might have hopes and dreams of a better life elsewhere. They learnt better, soon enough. You needed to go to the cities for hopes and dreams and moving to the cities cost money. They didn’t have it. The only way out was the military, and even that was drying up. Too many young men had gone to war and come back crippled, only to be abandoned by their country. Callam knew he’d been lucky – he’d been in the Marine Corps, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan – and that there were others who hadn’t been anywhere near so fortunate. Being crippled by terrorists and insurgents was bad enough, but being tormented by the VA was far worse.

He gritted his teeth. He knew, all too well, why so many people fantasized about violence and rebellion. There was only so much someone could take before they started looking for a way out – or revenge. He knew better, but he was one of the lucky ones. If he’d come home crippled, or found himself unable to feed his family, or watched helplessly as his wife left him, taking both the kids and two-thirds of his salary … he’d had to arrest a man, only a week ago, for beating his wife to within an inch of her life after she’d cheated on him. The asshole had called him a traitor, and there had been part of Callam that had agreed. But adultery didn’t excuse nearly killing one’s wife …

His mood darkened as he spotted a handful of lights up ahead, just off the beaten track. The feds were there, as they’d been for the last few days. They’d brought a handful of unmarked trucks with Federal licence plates, some clearly designed to serve as mobile homes; they’d set up enough spotlights to ensure no one, not even a lone coyote, could sneak up on them without being spotted. There was something glaringly amateurish about their set-up, Callam noted; they’d positioned their vehicles in a manner that would have earned him a sharp reprimand from any halfway-decent commanding officer back in the Sandbox. He could have led his former fire team right into the heart of their formation easily, even if they saw him coming. But then, there was no real risk of being attacked. The talk of civil war was nothing more than talk, people shooting their mouths off because they were bitter and frustrated and helpless in the face of global storms they could neither understand nor fight. The response to such talk was more dangerous than the talk itself.

And their spotlights will probably keep the cartels away, he thought, as he parked just outside the perimeter. There was nothing stopping him from driving further, but involving yourself with the feds was always risky. He’d met too many FBI, ATF and DHS agents who looked down on the locals – local yokels, they implied – and pushed them around whenever they thought they could get away with it. They’re probably not in any real danger.

He climbed out of the car and looked around, not bothering to disguise his interest. The trucks were surrounded by devices that reminded him of his service in the gulf, from counter-battery radars and sensors to gadgets that looked as if they’d come out of a science-fiction movie. It was hard not to feel a twinge of resentment as the devices glimmered under the spotlights, a grim reminder there was money for advanced fighter jets and half-baked weapons concepts that rarely worked in the field, yet almost none for securing the border or reforming the police. They could have solved so many problems, Callam was sure, if they took the money for the latest jet program and invested it in police departments across the nation, but he knew better than to expect sense from the Federal government. Or anyone, really. The governor in Austin wasn’t much better than the lame-duck President in Washington, DC. They had no contact with the folks on the ground, so the folks in Washington most likely believed the lies and bullshit they were being fed by polls and reporters who had no contact either.

And what, he asked himself, are the feds doing here?

He tried not to roll his eyes as a hatch opened, allowing a middle-aged man to clamber to the ground and hurry towards him. If he’d had bad intentions, he could have done a hell of a lot of damage before they tried to stop him … he pushed that thought out of his head and studied the man, allowing himself a moment of relief as he noted the newcomer was neither wearing a Secret Service suit or tactical chic. The latter would have been a real problem. Someone turning up dressed as a stormtrooper could always be relied upon to make a bad problem worse, and then take no responsibility for it afterwards. Callam had solved problems by talking that the Feds had tried to solve by shooting …

“Hey,” the newcomer said. His accent suggested he was from Washington DC, or at least he’d spent most of his time there. The shorts and shirt he wore were better suited for the heat than a suit and tie … it was hard to be sure, but he didn’t give the impression of ever having been in the military. Callam had met drone pilots and keyboard warriors who’d had more military bearing. “What’s up?”

“It’s too late for anything being up,” Callam said, dryly. “I just wanted to check in and make sure you’re alright. Washington nags if we don’t.”

“And there I was thinking this was an independent command,” the newcomer said, equally dryly. He stuck out a hand. “Colin Cozort, Pentagon.”

Callam eyed him thoughtfully, then shook the man’s hand. The Pentagon? He was sure the man had never seen real service, not even basic training. A REMF? There was no shortage of men climbing the ranks by kissing every ass above them, and mouthing nonsense that had no place in a combat zone, but Colin Cozort didn’t seem quite that type. Callam suspected he was more of a nerd who’d been recruited into the government or intelligence services, rather than a dedicated military officer. He’d never been quite sure what to make of such types. Some had been very helpful. Others hadn’t been worth the money they’d been paid.

“Callam, Callam Boone,” he said. “Can I ask what you’re doing up here? Hunting UFOs?”

Cozort flinched, slightly. Very slightly. Callam wouldn’t have seen it if he hadn’t spent most of his career handling suspects. UFOs? God knew, there were all sorts of stories of weird sightings in the desert – flying lights, ghosts, supernatural creatures, mementos of a landscape soaked in blood – but most were little more than stories, or misidentifications. Or blatant lies told by drunkards and tourist agents. Or druggies. And yet, the Feds wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to hunt ghosts. The Federal government was incompetent, but it wasn’t that incompetent … was it?

“Just testing some equipment out in the countryside,” Cozort said, a little too late to be convincing. “There’s too much interference close to the city.”

Callam swallowed the urge to ask more questions. Washington DC was a big city, true, but if the Pentagon wanted wide open spaces to test its latest brainwaves they didn’t need to come all the way to Texas. Hell, if they wanted to avoid interference, why park themselves so close to Flint? The town wasn’t as wired as Silicon Valley, and even the latest satellite links were barely capable of meeting the town’s needs, but it wasn’t silent. There were cellphones, CB radios and plenty of other gadgets that produced electronic signals, all of which were presumably easy to detect. It made him wonder if some of the more extreme theories were correct, and the Feds really were trying to track down dissidents … although they hardly needed to bother. There were thousands of people in the region who hated the Feds more than anything else. Finding them wouldn’t be hard.

“I see,” he said, instead. “Are you planning to visit the town?”

“We have to complete our mission first,” Cozort said. Callam hid his amusement … a mission, was it? “I don’t know about afterwards.”

“I’d be remiss in my duty if I didn’t invite you,” Callam said. It was true. The bars, diners and brothel – the brothel he wasn’t supposed to know existed – needed more custom. They were barely hanging on as it was, their owners all too aware that even a slight drop in income would be the end of them. “You’d be more than welcome.”

“If we have time, we will,” Cozort said. “But right now, we have work to do.”

Callam took the hint and nodded. “Take care of yourselves, out here,” he said. The spotlights were so bright there was nothing beyond the perimeter, but darkness. Flint’s lights were lost in the glare. “And give us a call if you need anything.”

Cozort nodded. “Don’t worry, we will.”

***

Colin Cozort hadn’t been sure what to expect, when the sensor network had picked up the patrol car heading towards the camp. He’d been cautioned that the locals were hostile to the federal government, for all sorts of reasons, and could be relied upon to make life difficult for anyone who waved a federal warrant card in front of them. Some of their reasons were good, others terrible, but … the end result was the same. He allowed himself a sigh of relief as he watched the sheriff head back to his car. He’d half-expected a beer-swilling redneck wearing a MAGA hat and a shirt a few sizes too small, carrying enough guns and ammo to fight a small war. Boone had been middle-aged, fit and healthy, and clearly smart enough to talk like a civilised man …

Just because someone lives in flyover country doesn’t make them stupid, he told himself sharply, as he turned and made his way back to the first truck. And he got alarmingly close to the truth with a single jokey guess.

He scowled inwardly, then scrambled up and into the truck. It was large enough to pass for an interstate hauler, although the interior would have surprised and horrified any trucker who saw it. The other trucks carried the sensor gear and sleeping quarters for the team; this one was the nerve centre of the entire operation. The interior was lined with consoles, linked through cables to the passive sensor network they’d deployed outside; the team could monitor the results in real time, as well as forwarding them to their superiors in Washington. Colin wasn’t entirely sure what he’d done to deserve the posting, but … his lips twitched. He wasn’t that naive. There were many unwritten rules in Washington and one of them, he was all too aware, was that the person who made a fuss about a problem was the one assigned to fix it. Colin supposed he was lucky. He’d been given more resources than most staffers.

The operator – Alice Greenleaf – looked up at him. “Did he give you any trouble?”

“Just curious, I think,” Colin said. “And wanting to make sure we were OK out here.”

Alice sniffed. “And probably sticking his nose into our business,” she said, a hint of a sneer in her voice. “A lot of people out here think your business is everyone’s business.”

Colin shrugged – Alice had grown up in Utah, according to her file – and turned his attention to the display. The airwaves were quiet, save for a tiny scattering of electronic noise from the town. They’d noted and logged much more chatter during the daytime, but compared to Washington Flint practically had no electronic signature at all. It would have been depressing, if they’d been charged with spying on the locals. But they had bigger fish to fry.

The United States was the most heavily-protected nation on the planet, surrounded by an electronic fence designed to pick up, track and identify anything that might pose a threat, from incoming ballistic missiles and foreign spy balloons to unregistered radio transmissions and radiation surges that might – might – be a warning of terrorists smuggling dirty bombs or even outright nukes into the country. There were sensors everywhere – the border, airports, immigrant housing – keyed to collect every last scrap of data, from encrypted messages to shifts in air temperature that might indicate the presence of stealth aircraft. The sheer volume of data was staggering, and analysing it was a nightmare, but Washington dared not miss anything. If something happened, and the after-action report suggested they’d missed a glaring warning sign, heads would roll. No politician could afford to allow himself to understand the limitations of any intelligence operation, when the public wanted someone to blame. He might get blamed instead …

Over the last few weeks, sensors had noted and logged a handful of high-energy bursts with no discernible origin, somewhere within the region. The Pentagon had been puzzled, at first, and then alarmed. The energy bursts had come and gone so rapidly half the sensors hadn’t spotted them, and quiet inquiries to determine if they were picking up something classified – it wouldn’t be the first time an enterprising ATC officer had spotted a top-secret stealth aircraft – had gone unanswered. There was nothing in the town, as far as anyone could tell, that could have produced the energy bursts, nor did they seem to have any purpose. Colin and his team had been sent south to collect more data, up close and personal. So far, they’d detected nothing beyond faint energy pulses that couldn’t be localised.

Maybe it is UFOs, Colin thought, with a flicker of dark humour. The Exotic Tech Division didn’t have any alien spacecraft in Hangar 18, no matter what barking mad conspiracy theorists insisted, but they’d noted a handful of Russian and Chinese stealth aircraft that were as good as anything the US had ever flown … not, he supposed, that either power would announce their presence so openly. We certainly can’t track the bloody pulses before they’re gone again.

His lips twisted. No one had been able to come up with any real explanation. Some researchers speculated the energy bursts were entirely natural, just another form of electrostatic discharge; others suspected someone, for whatever reason, was deliberately generating them. Colin wasn’t sure what to believe. It wouldn’t be the first time one government arm had actually stumbled over another arm’s work – cutting-edge research was highly compartmentalised as well as classified – but Flint was an odd place to carry out any sort of research. The local region had been decaying for decades, ever since the factories were shuttered. Anyone with any sense would have moved away long ago. The idea it was a high-tech militia was just absurd …

Although it could be the Chinese testing our borders, he reminded himself. Again.

Alice yawned. “What time do we get off shift again?”

“Five,” Colin said. They had a strict rota, at least on paper, but five days in the field had worn it down. “You can get some coffee, if you like …”

The console bleeped. Colin tensed, feeling ice crawl down his spine as he stared at the readings. Another energy pulse, flickering randomly … so randomly it was impossible to determine its source. The sensor feed grew rapidly, tracking the energy pulse as it grew stronger and stronger, darting around at impossible speeds. Colin had the feeling it was moving faster than the speed of light, although he had no way to prove it. It was … remarkable. And terrifying.

“It’s getting stronger,” Alice snapped. “A lot stronger.”

“Or closer,” Colin said. The energy pulse was ... growing bigger. The more sensitive passive sensor arrays were already in trouble, on the verge of being blinded. They were designed to track tiny flickers, not energy bursts so powerful they were on the verge of becoming mini-EMPs. “Wake the others …”

“Too late.” Alice’s voice wavered. “Something’s happening!”

An instant later, the ground shook.

Chapter Three: Castle Treathwick, Spanish Wildlands, Timeline A

“Don’t forget to be ready to deploy,” Captain (Infantry) Gareth Ruddigore ordered, his voice echoing through the regimental datanet. “Check your armour now and report any faults to your superior.”

Footman Martín Cortés tried not to show his irritation as he ran through the last set of checks, making sure his light armour was good to go. He’d checked and rechecked over the last few hours from the moment they’d been marched into the castle and shown to their deployment bays. The armour was tough, and rendered the wearer virtually invulnerable to anything the primals might shoot at him, but a technical fault could make it worse than useless. Martín had tried to manoeuvre the armour without power before – it was part of basic training – and even enhanced strength hadn’t been enough to make the suit do more than crawl. Better to discover a fault now, before they were launched into the unknown, than to have the suit fail in a combat zone. It could easily get him killed.

He paid no attention to the laughing and joking amongst the remainder of the platoon – and the regiment – as they braced themselves for deployment. He’d always been a stranger amongst them, a recruit from a client state that – no matter what the Protectorate claimed – had never been fully accepted. It had been bad enough when he’d been a raw recruit and his instructors had thought he couldn’t be trusted to wash himself, let alone handle a gun or anything more complex than a horse and cart, but worse – in a way – since he’d transferred to the PEF. It was supposed to be the quickest path to making something of himself – PEFs were always given precedence, for anything from housing to education – yet he was all too aware there were limits to how far he could go. In theory, a client who moved to the incorporated states and became more of a native than the natives could go far; in practice, it was rarely that easy. The incorporated looked down on the clients, considering them little better than primals. Martín’s children might – might – be equals. He knew he would never be.

“You know,” Footman Joyce said, “we could be facing your counterparts.”

Martín scowled. Joyce was a good man in combat, but a complete asshole everywhere else. He never let Martín forget his origins, or anything else … personally, Martín suspected Joyce had a major inferiority complex, despite having worked his way through brutal training to earn his rank, and handled it by trying to make everyone else feel small. Martín didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if he was in any danger of being sent home if he messed up. Martín was all too aware that he could be expelled ... perhaps. It was hard to see where he’d be sent if he was trapped in another timeline …

“It’s possible,” Martín said. There was no point in showing his anger. It would just be held against him. “Unlikely, but possible.”

He kept his face under tight control. His ancestors were a strange mix of Spanish and Aztecs, mixed-race children who’d been second-class citizens until the Franco-Spanish Empire had lost the First Global War and the remnants of Spanish Mexico had been broken into a handful of client states. The successive civil wars had won a degree of racial equality, but little else. The states were dependent on the Protectorate, even now, and they knew it. Martín had joined up because the only other option was to surrender and accept his place. It wasn’t in him to give up.

And my ancestors were never born in the other timelines, he thought. They might not have existed in this timeline either.

He shrugged and ran through another set of checks. The crosstime jump was supposed to be painless, and their gear was supposed to be shielded, but there was nothing to be gained by taking it for granted. His instructors had drummed it into the recruits, time and time again, that making assumptions about anything was a good way to get killed, even if the unit was facing primals. Martín knew, better than most, that primals weren’t stupid. But then, perhaps they were getting stupider. The more intelligent and capable primals often joined the Protectorate, leaving their intellectually challenged cousins behind …

Martín bit his lip. It was unfair to think that, even though it was official dogma. He knew primals and clients, such as himself, were very far from stupid. But the Protectorate’s hegemony was a fact of life, and no client state – not even the most advanced – could hope to challenge it. Martín had grown up reading trashy novels of great heroes battling the Protectors and winning, but reality was very different. The Protectorate controlled the high orbitals. A client state that got uppity would be crushed in short order. It had happened before and, no doubt, it would happen again.

The datanet bleeped. “Now hear this,” General Stuart said. “Ten minutes to transit. I say again, ten minutes to transit.”

“You might have a palace on the far side,” Joyce said. “And we’ll blow it away.”

Martín ignored him. Ten minutes … he’d done everything he could, before marching into the fortress. He’d written his will, he’d made sure to leave his savings and pension to his mother and younger sisters … perhaps the money, good currency, would be enough to ensure they married well, if they didn’t want to emigrate. It was odd to consider that they might – he’d grown up in a culture where women didn’t have many rights, in stark contrast to the Protectorate itself – but at least they’d have the chance. A decent dowry and some savings of their own would help them, if they chose to marry instead. The Protectorate didn’t believe a wife’s income and savings automatically belonged to her husband. It would be ironic, he supposed, if his sisters gained their freedom because of a state he hated …

No, he didn’t hate. There was no point in hate. The Protectorate was a fact of life and that was all there was to it.

“We’ll be deployed within moments of the jump,” Captain Ruddigore reminded them. “Sound off.”

Martín waited his turn, then sounded off. The regiment didn’t seem to have any technical faults, thankfully. The suits could be repaired, but anyone who missed the first deployment would be mercilessly ragged by his peers. It would be worse for him, Martín reflected. His comrades would insist the failure had been his fault, perhaps because he’d done something unprintable with the failed component, rather than simple bad luck. There were times, in truth, when he considered shooting Joyce in the back. It would have been a great deal easier to relax into his role if Joyce hadn’t been there …

“Now here this,” General Stuart said. “Five minutes to transit. I say again, five minutes to transit.”

“You’d think they’d just get on with it,” Footman Pringle said. He sounded nervous … he’d probably be ragged for that afterwards, although he could hardly be the only one having second thoughts. “Why bother with the countdown?”

“Keep that thought to yourself,” Sergeant Harris advised. “They only get one shot at the jump.”

Martín felt nervous too, and carefully hid it. He’d never had problems in aircraft, or spacecraft, and he’d quite enjoyed making low-orbital insertions, but the mere concept of crosstime transits bothered him. The researchers swore blind they’d found another soft place, a point where the first crosstime transit could be made safely, yet … what if they were wrong? Or what if they rotated right into a trap? It was impossible, he’d been assured, for the base to find itself sharing space with something else, but … if that happened, the explosion would crack the planet in half. Or something. If the researchers were wrong about that …

It isn’t the first time they rotated a base into another timeline, he reminded himself. They know what they’re doing.

He sighed, inwardly. The Protectorate had invaded four timelines so far and the pace of conquest was picking up, with the researchers spotting several other soft places that might grant access to even more alternate timelines. It was paradoxical, he reflected, that he might make something of himself, if he served his masters well … and yet, he knew in doing so he was spreading their power from timeline to timeline. He wasn’t sure how he should feel about it. Timeline B had been very glad to see the invaders, and even welcomed them, but everyone else …?

It’s too late to have doubts now, he told himself. You knew what you were doing when you signed up.

Martín shook his head. Military service was the fastest way out of the client state – and if he made a place for himself, he could apply to have his mother and sisters fast-tracked for immigration. Anything else … the Protectorate didn’t need much else from their clients. He had wondered, at times, why they didn’t simply incorporate the entire world, but they didn’t need to bother. The clients had nothing worth the effort of taking, save for intelligent young people, and they generally came on their own. And if his success depended on serving as an enforcer … it was what he’d do. What choice did he have?

“One minute to transit,” General Stuart said. “I say again …”

Martín tuned him out and closed his eyes. It wouldn’t be long now.

***

“All systems are at optimal levels, Captain-General,” Doctor Cecelia Archway reported, through the intercom. “Crosstime energy pulses are growing now … resonance is within acceptable levels … no hint of counter-field action …”

Captain-General James Montrose kept his face under tight control, refusing to show even the slightest hint of fear or trepidation as the countdown ticked away the last few seconds. They’d drilled for the transit time and time again, but none of those drills had been real. His eyes darted from officer to officer, noting just how many looked worried as the transit neared. They’d been tested repeatedly, yet … his lips quirked. He’d stepped through the interdimensional gates linking the Protectorate to its earlier conquests, an oddly nerve-wracking moment even though it felt like nothing, but this … the first reports, from the first invasions, had glossed over the transit itself. James wondered, suddenly, if that was deliberate. Was there something in the transit that was carefully not written down …

Or was it so anticlimactic that there was no point in describing it?

He looked down at his personal console, bracing himself. Everyone was ready … as ready as they’d ever be. He could feel the tension rising throughout the fortress … he made sure to check the weapons’ safeties, making sure the gunners couldn’t fire without his authorisation. If they encountered a peer power, opening fire first would be utterly disastrous. James knew how the Protectorate would react to an invasion force arriving in its home timeline and he was pretty certain every other timeline would react in the same way. The utopians might insist that technology would inevitably birth a post-scarcity society which wouldn’t have to scrabble over raw materials and human resources, but James was too cynical to believe anything of the sort. History was littered with dreams that ran aground on reality. The verdict of history was clear. The strong did as they pleased, and the weak suffered as they must. If the Protectorate became weak, they’d be crushed by the strong …

“Thirty seconds,” General Stuart said.

James gritted his teeth. They were committed. They’d been committed from the moment they’d activated the Crosstime Transpositioner. The researchers had cautioned him, time and time again, that the device simply could not be powered down. His lips twisted as the base shuddered slightly, the ground shifting beneath his feet. There wasn’t a single conscript on the base, not one. Everyone had been given a chance, often more than one, to back out … and some had, choosing not to stake everything on a leap into the unknown. Sweat prickled down his back, a grim reminder he’d staked his life on the jump. They might encounter another primal world, or one without humans, or … some of the more insane theories were … well, insane, but interdimensional travel had been unthinkable when he’d been a child, the stuff of science-fantasy and outright fantasy. Now …

Time seemed to slow down, hours passing between each second, as the last ten seconds ticked away. He wondered, suddenly, what would happen if the device failed now, melting down ahead of schedule. The researchers insisted they’d built multiple redundancies into the system – accounting for the sheer expense – but it was hard to be sure their precautions would work. There were limits to how much could be simulated, even using the most advanced computers and minibrains … would they be blown to atoms, tossed into a very different world, or end up trapped between the two timelines? His heart pounded frantically, despite his best efforts. They might be about to commit suicide.

The ground heaved, violently. The display went blank … no, not blank, they’d just lost every datalink outside of the fortress. James felt almost naked, just for a second, as he looked at the display. He was alone, completely alone … the air felt thick and hot and oppressive, his stomach clenching helplessly as he struggled to breathe. The darkness pressed down on him, shadows crawling at the corner of his eye … he felt as if he were being held down by some unknown foe. He hadn’t felt so helpless since an older boy had held his face under the water, just long enough to convince himself he was going to die, and he’d beaten that boy to within an inch of his life afterwards. Now …

Images flashed through his head, reflections of things that had not happened and never would. He saw himself being hit in combat after removing his helmet in a combat zone, and dying on the battlefield before he could be rushed to a field hospital. He saw himself falling in love with a young woman from a client state and choosing to spend his life with her, rather than concentrate on climbing the ladder; he felt a pang of grief, a grief he hadn’t known he could feel, as he saw the faces of his children … children who didn’t exist and never would … not for him. He saw himself fail his first command assignment and be told he’d never rise any higher; he saw himself in front of a court-martial board, explaining some unpardonable sin, only to be marched through the gate to spend the rest of his life on a work gang in an alternate timeline …

The visions grew wilder. He saw a red, white and black flag, tinged with blood; he saw a red flag marked with a sickle, hanging over an entire world. He saw airships and aircraft, spacecraft and starships; he saw dinosaur-like creatures carrying modern weapons, facing off against troops from the Second Global War. He saw mushroom clouds rising, growing bigger until they swept over the entire world; he saw planets devoid of life and planets so heavily populated that they were drowning under the sheer weight of people. He saw a woman standing on her own, blue light crackling around her hand; he saw a caveman holding a club and looking at it as if it were the key to everything …

The world slammed back into place, so quickly he knew the visions must’ve taken less than a second. James swallowed hard to keep from throwing up, carefully not looking behind him to see who might be emptying their stomach onto the floor. Right now, it wasn’t a problem. The jump had been completed and that meant … they had arrived. It was time to find out where they were, and if they could proceed with the mission.

“Jump completed,” Cecelia reported. “All systems …”

The display lit up with bright red lights. The threat receivers went nuts. James thought, for a horrified moment, that they’d jumped right into the middle of a war. Or that the locals had had some way to detect their incursion before it was too late, allowing them to move their troops to bombard the invaders as soon as they arrived. His hand darted to the safeties, ready to unlock the guns if the base really was under attack …

“Captain,” Captain (Intelligence) Abigail Hatter said. Her voice was cool, professional. “We appear to have discovered a high-tech civilisation.”

James nodded, curtly. He’d already figured that out. The display was resolving rapidly – thankfully, the base wasn’t taking rounds of incoming fire – but many of the early sensor readings were proving accurate. They’d appeared in the middle of a town … he didn’t know if it was good fortune or bad. Any hope of keeping their arrival a secret had flickered and died well before he’d even realised it was gone.

“Get me a tech assessment,” he snapped. “Now!”

There was a long pause. A peer power … they’d have to open talks. A primal power … they could take whatever they wanted. Anything in between … he could feel the seconds ticking away, time itself conspiring against him. If the locals knew they’d arrived, it was only a matter of time before they attacked. It was what he would do, if invaders arrived in the middle of his territory …

“Their tech does not appear to be consistent, based on what little we can see right now,” Abigail reported. “But their upper level appears to be around 1900s.”

James allowed himself a moment of relief. “Orbital battlestations?”

“None within sensor range,” Abigail said. “If they exist, they’re on the far side of the planet.”

Which is unlikely, James thought. The Protectorate had a web of battlestations. These people, whoever they were, had none. They’ve barely started their space age.

He took a breath, then keyed his console. “All units, deploy. I say again, deploy.”

Chapter Four: Flint, Texas, North America, Timeline F (OTL)

For a horrible moment, Sheriff Callam Boone thought Flint had been nuked.

He stomped on the brakes, bringing the car to a halt, as blinding white light turned night into day. The ground heaved a moment later, the radio letting out a protesting squawk before going silent. Callam opened the door and threw himself onto the road, his brain yammering endlessly about shockwaves and EMPs and half-remembered WMD drills that had seemed far-fetched, no matter how dangerous the world had become. The blast would travel slower than the burst of light and the EMP, he recalled vaguely, but it wouldn’t be any less dangerous. He needed cover and fast and there was no cover to be had … he crawled away from the car, his head spinning so madly the idea of digging a foxhole with his bare hands seemed sheer brilliance. The light was still burning brightly …

He stayed low but forced himself to look up. The eastern quarter of the town was covered by a flickering white light, a half-dome of raw power that looked utterly unearthly. He’d seen a silly movie or two in which a town was sealed off under a dome and he’d thought them nonsensical, but this … the flickering eerie light was just unreal. No nuke could do that, he thought … had he been struck blind by the nuke, his eyes damaged so badly that the light was all they would ever see, for the rest of time? Or … it dawned on him, as the light pulsed back and forth, that there hadn’t been a shockwave. The ground had heaved once and that was it. It wasn’t a nuke. Somehow, the thought wasn’t much of a relief.

Callam’s hand reached for his cell phone, but one glance was enough to tell him it was as useless as his radio. The EMP had damaged the device beyond repair. His handheld radio wasn’t in any better state, although that had been a piece of junk that should have been replaced long ago. He vaguely recalled reading that some primitive radios were too primitive to be damaged by EMP, but he didn’t have one of them on hand. There might be one in the town – there were quite a few tinkers trying to make their gear last longer – yet he wasn’t sure if he should go down there. What was that light?

The light snapped out, as if someone had thrown a switch. Darkness descended, so rapidly Callam feared he was blind. His flashlight was back in the car – if it was still working – and … he breathed a sigh of relief as he spotted the stars overhead. He wasn’t blind … perhaps he was just going crazy. Flint was dark, but … half the city was gone, replaced by a giant brooding structure that made a tank shed look small. Callam had spent a chunk of his life in aircraft hangars and army warehouses, waiting for the order to board an aircraft or to deploy, and yet the structure in front of him was much – much – larger. It had crushed the town beneath it or … he wondered, suddenly, if he’d drunk something he shouldn’t. If someone had spiked his water or …

Ice ran through his veins. It was real. It was … something new, towering over the town. Callam prided himself on being a brave man – he’d been in combat, he’d talked down men waving guns – and yet the sight before him was enough to almost unman him. He felt as if he were staring at the giant flying saucers from Independence Day, something so vast and unreal that just looking at it made him feel tiny. His hand dropped to his pistol, clutching the weapon as if it would save him … but save him from what? He didn’t have the slightest idea what to do. No emergency planning had covered this … he didn’t even know what this was. An alien incursion …? His earlier jokes about UFOs haunted him. Had he been right all along?

He forced himself to stumble back to the car. The radio was definitely useless, as were most of his emergency tools, but the car itself was tough and he’d long ago isolated the computer circuits from the main system. The manufacturers thought everyone wanted a smart car, yet no one wanted a vehicle that could be turned off remotely, certainly not the police. Or crippled by an EMP, as unlikely as that had seemed a few moments ago. He certainly didn’t want a vehicle that would need weeks in the shop before it could be repaired, not when he could handle most repairs himself. The engine grumbled loudly when he turned the key but came to life. The headlights, not entirely to his surprise, did not.

Drive carefully, he told himself. He’d often cautioned kids about making sure their headlights worked, before they drove out after dark. They’d never taken it well, even though there were few streetlights outside the town. You could be arrested for driving without lights.

It wasn’t funny. Right now, that was the least of his problems.

The car moved oddly as he drove towards the town, as if there were some damage he could neither find nor fix. He kept his eyes peeled, all too aware the townspeople would be up and awake now, utterly unaware of what was actually going on. The giant brooding structure loomed larger and larger, dominating the town … he couldn’t help thinking, from a distance, that it looked like a craggy mountain. It was too dark to make out any details, but …

Lights flickered, ahead of him. There were figures moving through the town, darting from side to side … for a moment, he thought they were townspeople before a flash of light illuminated them clearly. Aliens … Cybermen? He’d had a friend who’d watched Doctor Who religiously, back when they were relaxing between patrols, and the newcomers looked very much like the cybernetic enemies … he wondered, just for a moment, if he were seeing things before he saw one of the silver figures raise a gun – it had to be a gun – and shoot a spark at a running man. He fell to the ground, convulsing; the figure turned, pointing the gun at the car … Callam drove right at him, drawing on all of his experience, and then swung around, zigzagging like crazy to avoid getting hit. Aliens or cyborgs or whatever, there was nothing he could do to save the town. Flint was already lost, with no hope of resistance. He hated running, driving away as if the devil himself was after him, but there was no choice. Someone had to tell the world what had happened here.

They caught us by surprise, he told himself. There were a lot of weapons in the town, mostly off the books, but they were useless if the townspeople didn’t have time to get organised and fight back. There’d been talk about forming citizen response groups and other militias, given how little anyone from outside cared about protecting the town, yet … they wouldn’t be much help if the world had just been invaded by aliens. Next time, we’ll teach them to mess with us.

The enemy, whatever they were, didn’t bother to give chase. Callam kept going anyway, heading to the Federal encampment. They’d known something, the bastards, and they hadn’t bothered to share it with him … he cursed the darkness under his breath as he slowed and risked a glance behind him. A pair of buildings were burning brightly, flames driving away the darkness for a few short seconds … were those tanks on the street? There were no tanks anywhere nearby, not as far as he knew … he glanced up, suddenly expecting to see a flying saucer overhead, but saw nothing. And yet … he shivered. The USAF had drones that were so small, and flew so high, they couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. Did the newcomers have drones too? Or … or …

Keep driving, he told himself. And deal with the rest later.

***

Colin Cozort had never considered himself a man of action. The deployment had never really been intended to do anything more than gather data, with no one expecting any real trouble. He was an analyst and a supervisor, not a soldier or spook. He knew how to use the gun at his belt – he’d been told to spend some time honing his skills on the Pentagon’s firing range – but he’d never fired at a live target. Excitement and adventure had never been part of his life, yet …

He stared at the readings in complete disbelief. Half the sensors had already burned out, overwhelmed by the sheer torrent of energy emanating from Flint. The remainder were unable to determine what was going on, let alone relay it to their superiors. The satellite link had gone down, a heartbeat after the hyper-sensitive sensors, and refused to come back up, no matter how many times they rebooted the system. There were backups – the data was automatically stored in secure hard drives – but Colin wasn’t convinced they were working. The interference was just too strong. Hardened sensors designed for a nuclear battlefield were going down, one by one …

Alice stared at him. “What the fuck is happening?”

Colin shook his head, motioned for her to stay at her post, and hurried outside. It was daytime … he blinked, shaking his head in confusion. It was just after 0100 … the night sky shouldn’t be glowing so brightly he thought it was morning. And yet, it was … he stumbled forward, looking for a good vantage point, and stared into the darkness. The grimy old town was lit up by an impossible dome of light, a sight so incredible that he refused to believe what he was seeing. It looked like something out of a bad movie, not reality. The glow grew brighter, then snapped out of existence. The town was gone …

No. Something was there. Something big.

“Sir,” Perry Leveque snapped. He looked dazed and exhausted. He’d only had a few hours of sleep, since his shift had ended, and he’d been the one complaining the most about their accommodations. “We’ve lost the radios, and the control chips. I think we were hit with an EMP!”

“Or something,” Colin said. He stared into the darkness. What was it? “Can you get the trucks up and running?”

“Probably not, not unless we can bypass the chips,” Perry said. “If we got EMPed …”

His voice trailed off. Colin cursed under his breath. If he’d wanted a combat command, he would have joined the Army. It was hard to be sure they had been hit with an EMP – the damage was weird, some devices that should have been damaged remaining fairly intact and vice versa – but their mission had suddenly become something very different. They’d lost their communications, which meant … he reached for his smartphone, the very latest in government-issue, and tried to make a call. It didn’t work. The phone was nothing more than a useless brick.

He forced himself to think. “Pull all but one of the backup hard drives out of the trucks and get them into rucksacks,” he ordered. Flint itself was far too dangerous, with that thing looming over the town, but they could follow the road to the next town. The hard drives might have been compromised – they had no way to check – yet the analysts were experts at recovering data from seemingly-useless drives. “Then grab the emergency kits and tell the others to get ready for a walk.”

“Got it.” Leveque eyed him thoughtfully. “What about the sensors?”

Colin hesitated. The sensors were incredibly expensive, and their mere existence was a security risk. There were standing orders to make damned sure the sensors never fell into enemy hands, and self-destruct systems to ensure the enemy captured nothing but dust. And yet, if he blew them up for nothing … there was no way to pay for them. If his superiors felt he’d overreacted, they’d probably throw him in jail and to hell with a trial.

He looked back at the thing. It was real.

“Prep the self-destructs, then trigger them,” he ordered, grimly. “We’ll come back to recover the debris later.”

Leveque frowned, as if he were on the verge of objecting, then shrugged and hurried away. Colin felt a pang of envy – he’d be blamed; Leveque would be praised for following orders – and then hurried back to the truck. The inflow of data was slowing rapidly, the last of the energy pulses vanishing into the ether … he knew, now, that the joke about UFOs had been right on the money. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t Russian or Chinese. The insane cult classics about a mad Nazi scientist setting up a UFO base in Antarctica were more plausible than the Russians or Chinese sending something like that into America. They were risking a war … a flash of panic shot through him. If the orbital surveillance network had noticed the EMP – and he couldn’t imagine the watchers missing it – they might think the town had been nuked. Flint, Texas, was hardly a major target – the closest military base or government centre was quite some distance away – but there’d be no other explanation. Not at first, at least. And by the time they realised the thing was there, it might be too late.

“I keyed the auto-wipe software,” Alice said, as she joined them. “There’ll be nothing left to recover.”

“Let us hope,” Colin said. He’d never been wholly confident the system worked. Nothing short of completely destroying a hard drive could guarantee the data was beyond recovery. “Whatever that is …”

“We have company,” Leveque said, nodding towards the road. “One car …”

“You grab the bags,” Colin said. They had the authority, in theory, to requisition any local resources they needed. In practice, he wasn’t so sure. The locals might need whatever the team wanted, or simply refuse to hand it over. “Tell the others to wait near the sensors.”

“Yes, sir.”

Leveque hurried off. Colin breathed a sigh of relief as the car came into view and parked beside the useless truck, the sheriff they’d met earlier stumbling out of his vehicle. He looked as if he’d had a nasty shock, his eyes flickering from side to side as if he expected to be attacked at any moment. Colin would have offered him a drink, if they’d had any alcohol. They’d been cautioned not to bring any …

“The town has been attacked,” the Sheriff said. The words came out between gasps, as if the man had run for miles. “Aliens and cyborgs and …”

Colin stared. A few hours ago, he’d have asked the older man if he’d been drinking. It was the sort of story he’d expect to hear from a homeless drug addict, muttering and raving as he tried to beg enough money for his next fix. He wouldn’t have believed the man at all, if he hadn’t seen the thing. Or studied the energy flux … what was it? An interstellar jump drive? There were theories – there were always theories – but no hardware. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

“You knew!” The Sheriff lumbered forwards, clenching and unclenching his fists. “What did you know?”

“We picked up energy fluxes,” Colin said. He wasn’t sure how to handle the man. Colin was younger, but that didn’t make him tougher. He’d never been in a real fight. “We didn’t know what they were …”

“The town’s been invaded,” the Sheriff snapped. “We need to go!”

“Our trucks don’t work,” Colin said. The team knew how to drive … could they drive a patrol car? It wasn’t that different from a civilian car, was it? “Can you fit all of us into your car?”

“If you don’t mind being squeezed, or the smell,” the Sheriff said. He sounded as if he were calming down, thankfully. “What is that thing?”

“Aliens are as good a theory as any,” Colin said. Nothing else seemed to make even a lick of sense. He’d read a story once about a film producer who’d faked alien landings to drum up interest in his movie, but he doubted anyone would try it in real life. Besides, there’d been nothing fake about the energy flux or the EMP. “Give us a moment, and then we’ll go.”

“Hurry,” the Sheriff said. His voice was low, urgent. “We need to move.”

Colin glanced at him. “What do you mean?”

“That’s an invasion force back there,” the Sheriff said. “I used to be in the Marine Corps. We trained for amphibious landings. Every last one of us dreams of a modern Incheon. We … we are taught to push the beachhead as far out as possible, to make it impossible for the defenders to shove us back into the sea. These people … I don’t know how they got here, or whatever they really are, but they must know they’re hellishly vulnerable. They have to take as much ground as they can before we rally, or they’ll be fucked.”

“Shit.” Colin thought back to The War of the Worlds and nodded. The Martians had been incredibly powerful, but their cylinders had also been vulnerable. If the aliens had been attacked before they’d managed to get out and deploy their tripods, the war would have been a clear human victory. “They’ll be coming after us.”

“Yeah.” The Sheriff shook his head. “They didn’t chase me – too busy securing the town – but that’ll change. I saw tanks, which means they could push the line out quite some distance before daybreak. We have to warn the military before they make themselves at home. If we can attack them now …”

Colin couldn’t disagree. What else could they do?

Chapter Five: Flint, Texas, North America, Timeline F (OTL)

“Move, move, move!”

Footman Martín Cortés unwrapped himself from the webbing – the transit memories already fading – and marched forward, joining the remainder of the armoured infantry as the hatches opened, allowing them into the new timeline. Briefing notes flashed up in front of him; they'd arrived in a town, the locals were surprisingly advanced, their orders were to secure the arrival zone while doing as little damage and kill as few as possible. That was unusual – the Protectorate was not normally concerned about civilians who happened to find themselves in a war zone – but Martín supposed it made a degree of sense. The locals might be advanced enough to give the PEF a real fight, and there was no point in angering them more than strictly necessary. He suspected that was a lost cause, but clearly his superiors felt otherwise. 

The hatch loomed in front of him. Martín braced himself – his suit was already reporting an excess of hydrocarbons in the air – and stepped into the new world. It was very early morning, local time, but his suit’s visor had no trouble picking out the town around him – and the castle behind him, dominating the town. He suspected half the local town had been rotated into the Protectorate timeline, where they’d be interrogated by the reception force before being offered a flat choice between service or death. The poor bastards might never see their homeworld again, unless they made themselves useful. It wouldn’t be easy – and much would depend on just how advanced their world really was …

His eyes swept over the town. It was strange to his eyes, buildings scattered around seemingly at random, along with cars that looked remarkably primitive to his eyes. There were no lights, as far as he could tell, something that puzzled him until he realised the town’s electronics hadn’t been protected. His HUD updated rapidly as the drones fanned out, their sensors probing the town and downloading maps into the suit’s processor. The enemy town was … he couldn’t decide if it was modern enough to pass for an incorporated town or too primitive to be anything but degenerate. A large poster on one wall showed a young girl with exaggerated breasts and thighs, wearing nothing beyond underwear that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Martín couldn’t help feeling a twinge of shock. What sort of society left that lying around? Children could see it!

Alerts flashed up in front of him as a pair of men ran into the streets, carrying weapons … Martín sucked in his breath as the infantry stunned them both, the shock bolts sending the locals tumbling to the ground. Their weapons looked primitive to his eye – projectile weapons, he thought – but they were clearly centuries ahead of anything the Protectorate had encountered in other timelines. He glanced at the stunned men, wondering if they were soldiers, then stepped over them and hurried on. They’d be out for hours, and weak as kittens when they recovered. The follow-up units would have no trouble transporting them to a POW camp, where they could be held until the intelligence staff finished sifting their brains.

His feelings about the town didn’t change as they moved on. There were piles of litter everywhere, presenting an obvious health and safety risk. One building – clearly a tavern – was still open, the drunkards quaffing alcohol as if they were spacers on leave. They stared at the invaders in shock, offering no resistance as they were stunned too. Martín couldn’t help feeling a twinge of disgust as they crumpled. There was no shortage of degenerates back home, and client states that would never know true independence, but even they had a certain amount of self-respect. His mood darkened as he spotted a pair of bums sleeping in an alleyway, one clutching a bottle as though it was his wife. Back home, they would have been dispatched to a camp long ago and put to work, if they couldn’t be bothered to motivate themselves. It wouldn’t be a death sentence. Martín knew people who had turned their lives around during a short stint in the camps.

More alerts flashed up in front of him as they advanced through the remainder of the town. There was no rhyme or reason to the layout, as far as anyone could tell, and there didn’t seem to be any town hall or local authority … Martín was fairly sure it was on the other side of the interdimensional wall, if only because the locals couldn’t all be degenerates. The cars were primitive, compared to the vehicles back home, but they were much more advanced than horses and carts or sailing ships. The drones had noted a number of aircraft, keeping their distance from the town. Anyone who could build those was clearly very far from degenerate.

Unless they regressed somehow, Martín thought. It wasn’t impossible. The client states of Central America had regressed, after they'd lost the war. What are we dealing with here?

The town didn’t seem to have a solid border, not even a boundary wall. It simply petered out and faded into the desert beyond. A large sign read WELCOME TO FLINT, POPULATION … the numbers were so faded he couldn’t make them out. They spoke English, he noted, although there was no way to tell – yet – how far their version had diverged from his. It might be easier to decipher a completely new language, rather than one that was close enough to theirs to be deceiving. The Protectorate did its best to ensure there was no linguistic drift, but their best efforts hadn’t been enough to prevent a handful of loan words from entering the dictionary. Here … for all they knew, the Protectorate might not exist …

“Hold position,” the captain ordered. “No one enters or leaves.”

Martín nodded and checked in with the rest of the team. The locals might be armed, but resistance had been minimal … and futile. That would change, he was sure, as the locals realised they were under attack … there was no way, unless they’d grossly overestimated the local technology, to keep word from spreading. His superiors might be a little overconfident, given how easily they’d overrun the town, but they knew better than to assume the rest of the campaign would go the same way. The locals had been taken completely by surprise. They’d lost before they’d even realised they were under attack. The next engagement would be far harder.

Another icon blinked up in front of him. A local car was driving down the road, straight towards the town – and the infantry. He took up position and waited, his mind churning. What was it going to be? Someone who had no idea what was lying in wait, or an enemy scout trying to determine their strength before a counterattack was mustered and launched? The drones were fanning out further now, hunting for enemy troops and finding none, but that was meaningless. The locals had aircraft. They presumably knew how to hide from drones, too.

A pair of headlights came into view. Martín tensed. It was time.

***

Fucking waste of my fucking time, Sally Luanne thought, as she drove down the road. Fucking monumental assholes …

She cursed again and again, the car lurching slightly as it hit a pothole. She’d gone to law school and done well … and for what? There were so many newly graduated lawyers that the big firms could pick and choose their recruits, and none had chosen her. Sally had been trying to get a job for the last year, all too aware her student loans needed to be repaid before she could even begin to build a life for herself, and it had proven futile. She was too inexperienced, or too young, or simply too far away. The really big law firms were in Washington or New York and moving there was so far beyond her budget she might as well have dreamed of migrating to the moon. There was only one law firm in Flint and the bastard who ran it steadfastly refused to die, let alone take on a prospective partner. Sally had been desperate enough to try to seduce him – she had little else to offer – but he hadn’t been interested. It was being a woman, she knew it. Or something. Her ambitions had been squashed before they’d even gotten off the ground.

The car wobbled again. Sally blinked, wishing she’d thought to bring more coffee. She’d been driving most of the day, after heading all the way to the nearest city for an interview that had been nothing more than a meaningless formality – she hadn’t needed anyone to tell her the fix was in; that had been clear the moment she arrived – and heading back, if only because she was too broke to rent a room at a roadside motel. Not that she would, she reflected tiredly. The nearby motels were either insanely expensive, by local standards, or sleazy enough to be dangerous for a young woman. It wasn’t fair, but what was? She’d been born in Flint, a town that had been prosperous until the factories closed, and it was starting to look as though she was going to die there. Half the girls she’d known as a child were already single mothers, or lost to drugs and despair … she feared, sometimes, that she would go the same way. Or worse. She was starting to think she’d wasted her time at law school.

She frowned as the road curved and headed down towards the town. It was surprisingly dark … probably another power cut. The infrastructure had been failing for years and no one cared enough to try to fix it, certainly not the governor in his air-conditioned mansion in Austin. He might as well have been on the other side of the world, for all the care he paid to the poor and desperate. Her headlights briefly illuminated a VOTE TRUMP sign no one had bothered to take down, even though the election had been years ago. Trump had been and Trump had gone and nothing had improved, not really. Sally wasn’t surprised. The man had promised too much to have any real hope of success, even if he’d had the best will in the world …

And something was ahead of her. A roadblock?

Sally hit the brakes, the car skidding to a halt. That was all she needed. The local sheriff wasn’t that bad – he’d been quite understanding of minor and local issues – but the state police had a bad reputation, particularly when it came to harassing drivers. She had no idea why they’d set up shop on the edge of town, particularly so early in the morning, yet … she gritted her teeth, wondering if they’d make a fuss about the busted rear light. She didn’t have the money to fix it, or …

Her eyes opened wide as she saw the figures standing beside the roadblock. They wore silver suits that covered them from head to toe, carrying weapons that looked to have come right out of a science-fiction movie. Sally stared, wondering what the hell she’d just driven into … a trap? There were all sorts of horror stories about bandits pushing buggies into the path of oncoming drivers, forcing them to slow down so they could be robbed or murdered, but this … whoever they were, they clearly weren’t the State Police. A flash of panic shot through her – she knew a girl who had driven out one day and never returned; her body, discovered weeks later, had been so badly mutilated they’d buried her in a closed coffin – and she gunned the engine, trying to get back before it was too late. One of the figures raised a hand and shot … something … into the hood. The engine ground to a halt, the stench of smoke assailing her nostrils. She was suddenly sure the car was about to explode, that she’d be burnt to death if she stayed where she was. She threw open the door and climbed out, unsure what she should be doing. What were these people?

“Keep your hands in the air,” a voice said. It was weirdly atonal, as if it were produced by a primitive computer. “Walk forward.”

Sally’s earlier thoughts returned to haunt her. The figures were … alien? Sally’s father was a gun nut, and she knew how to handle a gun, but she’d never seen anything like the weapons the figures were holding. She bit her lip hard, trying to concentrate. The proportions were human, she thought, but … but what?  Did that mean anything? Or …

A figure ran a device – she guessed it was a scanner – over her body, then confiscated her keys, smartphone and pepper spray. She kicked herself for not having thought to grab her phone earlier to record the encounter, although … she still didn’t know what was going on. The figures seemed to look at her, then motioned for her to follow. Sally wasn’t sure if she should lower her hands or not, so she settled for resting them on her head. If they took offense … she hoped they’d tell her. She stared at the figure, wondering if he was wearing a biohazard suit of some kind. Had something nasty gotten loose in the town? There were rumours about diseases resurfacing, after humanity had beaten them, but she didn’t recall hearing anything definite. But if that was the case, why were they taking her into the town? It made no sense.

She felt an odd little pit in her stomach as they walked through the streets. A pair of bodies were lying on the ground, unmoving. She recognised one as the town bum, a man forever begging for money to support his habit; the other was a stranger, probably one of the wanderers who moved from town to town in hope of a better life. Many homes were dark, but she thought she saw eyes in the darkness, scared townspeople staring at the force that had invaded their streets. A low tingle ran through the air as a vehicle moved up the street, towards them, and … Sally swallowed, hard. The vehicle – it was clearly a tank, bristling with weapons – was hovering above the ground, rather than resting on tracks. Her last desperate hope that there was a rational human explanation vanished as the tank glided past her and vanished into the darkness. Two more followed, their gun barrels traversing as they searched for targets. Somehow, she had no doubt they were perfectly capable of slaughtering anything they encountered.

Her mind stopped dead, just for a second, as she saw the dark shape where … where half the town had been, only yesterday. It was impossible … where the hell had it even come from? And what had happened to the rest of the town? Sally had grown to hate Flint over the years – she wanted out, and she didn’t care what price she had to pay – but she didn’t want everyone dead. She wanted … her captor led her to what had once been the sports field and pushed her through a gap in the fence. It had been turned into a makeshift prison camp … Sally almost giggled, remembering a conspiracy theorist who’d insisted the government funding for the field was actually a secret plan to build a network of prisons for patriots, gun owners and everyone else who refused to believe government lies. She’d thought him a crazy old loon, but now …

She sagged, and barely managed to sit down before her legs gave out. The camp was surrounded by bright lights, driving away the shadows and ensuring there was nowhere to hide. A handful of other people were sitting or lying on the ground, the latter set carefully in the recovery position. Sally had no idea what had happened to them, but she doubted it had been pleasant. One was twitching so violently she feared he’d been given an electric shock. It didn’t look as if anyone was trying to help. She didn’t blame them. The victim was a man everyone knew would come to a bad end one day.

Her heart sank as she looked around. The looming building – whatever it was – was half-shrouded in darkness, but she could see a steady stream of floating tanks and smaller vehicles heading into the unknown. She started to count their numbers, then gave up at thirty. It looked as if they’d brought enough firepower to conquer the whole country. Armoured men marched beside the tanks, some carrying weapons and devices; others were clearly on the alert for trouble. A handful appeared to be keeping an eye on the prisoners, although it was hard to be sure. Their suits hid their faces … if they had faces. She frowned as she spotted a small party keeping their distance from the rest, then sucked in her breath as they removed their helmets. She’d half-expected aliens, after everything she’d seen, but they were human. And surprisingly diverse.

And if they’re human … Sally composed herself with an effort. Aliens were … well, alien … but humans were predictable. If they really were aliens … she ignored the part of her mind that suggested they might be alien minds in human bodies … there was an opportunity here, perhaps more than one. The fact they hadn’t killed her and everyone else suggested they were bent on conquest, rather than slaughter. What can I do with this?

Her ambitions sharpened. She had no idea who they were, or what they wanted, but she could make herself useful to them. They would need native guides, she was sure; they’d need someone who could explain the lay of the land. Who knew what would happen then? Who knew how far it could take her? And if it meant committing treason against her country …

What had her country ever done for her?

Chapter Six: Flint, Texas, North America, Timeline F (OTL)

Dawn broke, the sun shedding bright light over the occupied town.

Captain-General James Montrose stood in the command centre and stared down at the holographic image of the alternate town. Flint – as good a name as any, he supposed – was thoroughly weird, a strange mix of advanced technology and primitive devices that wouldn’t have been out of place in Timeline B. The locals lived in squalor – their drains were appalling, their streets littered with garbage – and yet they had technology that should have served as the key to a better life. They had cars and weapons, far more than would ever have been permitted back home, and communications devices … they even had a datanet-like system, the internet. The advance guard had also discovered a pair of aircraft, resting in a tiny airfield. They were primitive compared to their own flyers, but light-years ahead of anything from any other timeline. It just made no sense.

Stuart joined him. “Resistance was minimal, sir,” he said. “They had no time to prepare.”

“Good,” James said, curtly. The intelligence staff would complete their preliminary assessment shortly. “Remind the troops to keep the locals indoors as much as possible and keep order in the streets.”

“Yes, sir,” Stuart said, stiffly.

James smiled tiredly, then frowned as the display expanded. The long-range sensors were picking up aircraft – so far, none had come near the lodgement but that would change – and orbiting satellites, staring down at them. Their arrival had clearly done a great deal of damage – the local technology hadn’t been shielded against the energy flux – but far too many orbital spies had been on the wrong side of the world and were now shifting into position to take a good look at the newcomers. It was weirdly disconcerting, not least because he didn’t know just what they’d encountered. Prudence said to take down the satellites as quickly as possible- they were easy targets – but it would be very far from diplomatic.

His intercom changed. “Sir,” Abigail Hatter said. “Please could you join me in my suite?”

“Take command,” James ordered Stuart. “Don’t expand the lodgement any further, but don’t let anyone in or out either.”

“Yes, sir.”

James turned and headed down to the intelligence department. Their position was precarious, even though the locals didn’t seem to have orbital weapons platforms or even a major space program. The sensors had spotted no Luna base, no ships making their way to the asteroids and back … nothing beyond hundreds of orbiting satellites, none of which were advanced enough to prove more than a minor nuisance. It felt profoundly wrong to be watched from orbit – normally, their enemies didn’t have any way to spy on them – but he could correct it in a moment, if they chose war. He was fortunate, he supposed, that there hadn’t been time for his captains to unite against him. They would, once they knew what they were facing.

“Sir,” Abigail looked tired and thoroughly disgusted. “Sir, these people are degenerates!”

James raised his eyebrows as he took his seat. “All of them?”

“Enough.” Abigail took a breath. “They have an internet that’s about as secure as … as a door that is not only left unlocked, but open as well. Half of it appears to be nothing more than pornography, vile enough to shock even one of our degenerates. Sex intermingled with violence, scenes involving adults and stepchildren … even scenes involving actual children. They’re not even trying to hide it! Their entire culture is steeped in degeneracy!”

“Really?” James wasn’t sure what to make of it. “They don’t keep their children out …?”

“Their computer tech is no match for ours,” Abigail said. The anger and disgust in her voice was all too clear. “We have no difficulty hacking their systems, but really … they’re not hiding anything from themselves. A child could get onto a computer and see things that … that can’t fail to warp their minds. Or worse. These aren’t French Postcards, sir. This is pornography so vile that …”

She shook her head. “Their culture is sick. Their TV shows and movies are practically pornographic by our standards, even ones aimed at children and teenagers. They’re not trying to impart the right lessons, but shock and excite. Their popular music is even worse. The top of their charts, right now, is a song called Fuck Cancel Culture, followed rapidly by Rape the Bitch Now. The first is surprisingly catchy; the latter is accompanied by a video that would be banned back home, with everyone involved sent to jail for life. They raise children in this garbage and they expect sane, reasonable adults?”

James held up a hand. “First things first,” he said. “Do we have a technological edge … and, if so, how big is it?”

Abigail calmed herself with an effort. “Their development is somewhat schizoid by our standards,” she said. “Their computer tech is at roughly 1900 levels; their rocketry and space program barely at 1850, although they do seem to be finally trying to get themselves into space to stay. Their weapons appear to be, at most, 1900 levels too … I have to caution you, though, that our preliminary assessment may be misleading. Their stealth aircraft are primitive compared to ours, but more advanced than anything we had at … well, roughly the same level of technological development. They may have other surprises.”

“I see,” James said. “Nukes? Lasers? Plasma weapons?”

“They have nukes,” Abigail said. “Their lasers appear to be quite low-power by our standards, and plasma weapons appear to be purely theoretical.”

James shook his head in disbelief. “How … what happened?”

Abigail took a breath. “It’s hard to say for sure,” she said. “Their online databases often contradict themselves. I’ve got the minibrains trying to put together a consensus, at least in general terms, but it may take some time before we have a proper outline of their historical development. What we do know … there’s no Protectorate here. And never truly was.”

“Pardon?”

“Apparently, in this timeline, the Protectorate stagnated after the death of Charles Stuart and his son was apparently invited back, after Richard Cromwell proved incapable of maintaining his father’s state. Quite how he succeeded his father I haven’t been able to figure out, not yet, but … the steam revolution never took place. Britain became a monarchy again, colonised America, lost America, built an even bigger empire and lost it again …”

She keyed her terminal, displaying a map. “This is the current political situation,” she added. “To call this world disunited is to understate the case.”

James sucked in his breath. The Protectorate had always held that advanced technology always led to planetary unification, with the bigger nation-states absorbing the others until there were only a handful left. Here … there looked to be nearly two hundred independent nations, from giant entities such as the United States of America and Russia to states so tiny their neighbours could have overwhelmed them with ease. Why hadn’t they? The map in front of him looked like an insane version of Conquest, a game he’d played as a child, not something that could be real. He was tempted to ask her to check her results, just in case they’d made a terrible mistake. The scene in front of him made even his indomitable ego quail.

“So it would seem,” he said. “How does it even work?”

“We’re still assessing the background details,” Abigail said. “Their internet has a great deal of information, but a lot of their own historical studies are driven by ideology rather than a dispassionate attempt to understand what really happened. I think – and I could be wrong – that most of their empires were deeply racist and refused to assimilate the locals in any way, treating them as nothing more than inferiors. They didn’t like it, and eventually they tore down the empires.”

“That’s insane,” James said. How did anyone hope to keep an empire without convincing the conquered people that their lives were better under their new rulers? The Protectorate had it down to a fine art, skimming off the best of the best and assimilating them. “How do they even cope?”

“Poorly.” Abigail met his eyes. “This nation, the United States, has spent the last fifteen years in the economic and political doldrums. It has lost a pair of wars, battled a virus and is currently brutally divided against itself. It has immense power, compared to the rest of the world, but it seems very poor at utilising it. The nearest competitors, Russia and China, have problems of their own. Others … it’s hard to say. Too much of what we’re reading is ideologically slanted. The two sides hate each other so badly it is impossible for them to study their opponents calmly and reasonably.”

“Keep working on it,” James said. “Do they pose any immediate threat to us?”

“It depends.” Abigail studied her display. “Their best option is to try to nuke us. Ballistic missiles will be easy to detect and shoot down, cruise missiles may prove more of a danger … they could also try to smuggle the nukes into the town and detonate them there. If they choose not to risk an immediate confrontation, it will take them several days to mass troops to challenge us. Probably. I have to remind you that the data may not be reliable.”

“It rarely is,” James said. “Transfer all the political data to my console.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And focus on assessing the enemy government,” James added. “I want to know who and what we’re dealing with.”

“Yes, sir.” Abigail hesitated, noticeably. “There are two other points you need to know.”

James met her eyes. “Go on.”

“First, they will know we’ve arrived,” Abigail said. “The energy flux didn’t take out all their electronics. Rumours are going wild on their internet. I suspect several people made it out of the town before we sealed it off, or were close enough to see what was happening without being close enough for us to capture. It is just a matter of time before their central government gets the word, if they haven’t already.”

“Understood,” James said, swallowing his irritation. He’d already worked that out. “And the other?”

“They have the concept of alternate timelines and dimensions,” Abigail said, flatly. “They’ve got the theory, and a surprisingly high number of fictional stories based on crosstime travel. No practical tech yet, as far as we can tell, but they’re not going to have problems wrapping their heads around our arrival. They may also realise we’re cut off from home.”

“I see,” James said, evenly. “Keep me informed.”

He turned and headed back to the command chamber, his mind racing. There’d been no threat to the invaders in the previous crosstime conquests, certainly nothing that might destroy their base before reinforcements could arrive. Knights in armour and legionaries with bows, swords and spears could beat their weapons against the castle from First Contact till Doomsday, if they wished, and the castle wouldn’t suffer for it. Here … the castle was heavily armoured, designed to stand up to a nuke, but that had never really been tested. If the locals were prepared to rain nuclear missiles on them, or send troops to carry backpack nukes into the town, they might just win. There would be no reinforcements arriving in time to make a difference …

… And yet, the prize was worth almost any risk.

A technologically sophisticated world was a world of limitless opportunities for the man who brought it to heel. The locals wouldn’t think technology was magic, a gift from the gods; they wouldn’t have to be retrained out of their primitive superstitions and into modern mindsets before they could be put to work. He had no idea why the town was so primitive, or why the country’s rulers allowed their population to live in such conditions, but their loss was his gain. And a world so heavily divided amongst itself, on racial and national lines, was a world that could be manipulated. Their disunity would let him play the nations against each other, weakening them so he could take control. And by the time reinforcements arrived …

He scowled, inwardly, as he took his chair. There was more than one reason to hurry. The other half of the town had been rotated into the Spanish Wildlands, the population already rounded up and subjected to interrogation. The Inner Council would know soon, if they didn’t already, just what James had found. If they didn’t speed up their efforts to send a second invasion force, he’d eat his rank badges.

These people are just advanced enough to be useful, but not enough to be dangerous, he told himself firmly. And we can use them.

He leaned back in his chair and watched the live feed from the drones. A handful of locals were on the streets now, staring numbly at the patrolling footmen. They were strange to his eyes – some morbidly obese, some dangerously thin; he shuddered in disgust as he saw a young woman wearing an outfit that left almost nothing to the imagination – and yet, they represented potential. A great deal of potential, for him and for his allies … and even for the locals themselves. James would save them from themselves and use them to build a client base that would take him to the very highest levels and beyond.

His terminal bleeped. “Sir, one of the locals would like to speak with you.”

James smiled. It had begun.

***

“Take me to your leader,” Sally said.

She kept all trace of hilarity from her voice as she studied the newcomers carefully. She’d spent enough time in a multicultural environment to know people from different countries – even different states – tended to think differently, no matter what the academics insisted, and what one culture considered outrageous could easily be considered perfectly fine by another, and she had no idea how these people thought. She would have preferred to spend some time studying them, but the risk of someone else making the first move was far too high. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of desperate men and women in the town, and few would hesitate to try to curry favour with the newcomers. She had to go first, or risk being left out.

The newcomer studied her thoughtfully for a long second. Sally looked back evenly, hoping to hell it was the right thing to do. There were cultures that thought making eye contact a challenge, not a sign of sincerity, and others that expected women to refrain from talking to men, certainly not without an invitation. Sally hadn’t seen any women amongst the newcomers, although their armour made it hard to be sure. There was plenty of room, she thought, to hide a pair of breasts.

“Come,” the newcomer said, finally.

Sally allowed herself a moment of relief as she followed the man through the gate and up to the towering fortress, an alien structure that simply hadn’t been there a few hours ago. The man’s voice was oddly-accented, the tone reminding her of a British exchange student she’d met, but not close enough for her to be sure they were British. Australian? She vaguely recalled that Australia had been colonised by the British, yet … did they have a similar accent?  She pushed the thought out of her mind as she followed her guide through a network of corridors, feeling a twinge of relief as she spotted a handful of women. They wore uniforms … she hoped that was a good sign. Her escort slowed as they neared a pair of doors, which opened to reveal a small office. It was reassuringly mundane. A desk, a pair of chairs, a device she guessed was a computer terminal … and a single man, rising to his feet.

“Good morning,” he said. His accent was very much like her guide’s, but stronger. Sally couldn’t help feeling charmed. “You wished to speak with me?”

Sally studied him for a long moment. It was hard to place his age; she would have said he was in his late thirties, but there was something oddly timeless about his appearance that suggested he might be older. His short dark hair was cropped close to his scalp, reminding her of Luke Evans … she wondered, suddenly, if that might be a bad omen. She’d only seen Evans in one movie and he’d played the villain, although the idea of the actor being as bad as the character he played was just stupid. There was something oddly determined about him, a sense he would let nothing get in his way … she felt an odd little tingle, which she ruthlessly suppressed. The man was attractive, true, but she had to secure her place first. She'd gambled … and she didn’t know, not yet, if she’d won or lost.

“I am Sally, Sally Luanne,” Sally said. She kept her tone and words formal, suspecting it was how the newcomers preferred it. “May I ask to whom I am speaking?”

“I am Captain-General James Montrose, Commander of the 6th Expeditionary Division and Governor-General of this world,” the man said. There was no hint of bragging in his tone. He might not be the governor-general yet, in anything but name, yet she couldn’t help thinking he was well on the way. “I am here to bring this world into the Protectorate.”

Sally blinked in surprise at hearing it stated so bluntly. She’d guessed the newcomers were invaders – their actions were very far from friendly – but still … she schooled her face into a mask, all too aware she was committed. There was no way out now.

“I understand,” she said. “I am here to offer you my services.”

Montrose smiled. Sally felt another tingle.

“You are welcome,” he said. If he held her in contempt, he didn’t show it. “We have many questions for you.”

Chapter Seven: Wolfe Airfield, Texas, North America, Timeline F (OTL)

“The skies are clear,” Alice said.

Colin shook himself out of a rough doze. They’d driven for nearly an hour, the sheriff driving as if the devil himself was after them, then had a long argument about precisely where they should go. Sheriff Boone had wanted to head straight to the nearest town, or military base, but Colin had argued they needed to get the word out as quickly as possible and that meant heading for a hardened Federal airfield, the same place they’d used to land their trucks before driving to Flint. The airfield wasn’t precisely a secret – there was no way to hide it – but few realised the operation was a front for the FBI. If luck was with them, the EMP wouldn’t have reached so far …

He glanced up, then shrugged. Dawn had broken, but that was meaningless. If their enemy had modern drones, or something akin to them, they’d have no trouble tracking the patrol car from high overhead and blowing it away with a missile. Or something. The radio refused to work – the EMP had killed it – and they had no way to know what was happening behind them, or even in front of them. The invaders – the sheriff’s story left no room for doubt they were invaders – might be marching towards Austin, or Washington, even as they drove to the airfield. God alone knew how fast they could move.

Ice tingled down his spine as they turned off the main road and headed up to the airfield. The compound looked abandoned, as if the owners couldn’t be bothered to maintain it, although anyone who looked closely would note the runway was in good condition and the hangars larger than any half-abandoned airfield could reasonably need. FEMA had flown relief supplies through the airfield, the last time the agency had needed to deploy in a hurry; Colin suspected that that, if nothing else, should have tipped the locals off that there was more to the airfield than met the eye. But then, there hadn’t been many other choices. He sucked in his breath as the car slowed, the guard stepping out of his hut to meet them. There were other, less obvious, security precautions too.

“He knows something,” Boone observed. “Look at him.”

Colin couldn’t disagree. The guard looked sloppy, another aspect of the web of deception around the airfield, but … right now, he also looked jumpy. He held his rifle as if he expected to be attacked at any moment, which might be very close to the truth. Colin had no idea how fast the invaders could move, or how much they knew about their landing zone, but the airfield might be on their list of targets. They’d already overwhelmed at least one town. Why not a civilian airfield?

“Sir,” the guard said. He really was jumpy, his eyes flickering from face to face. “I’m going to have to see some ID.”

Colin dug into his pocket and produced his Pentagon ID. “We need to report in,” he said, as the guard studied it carefully. “Is the communications network online?”

“Yes, but contact is intermittent,” the guard said. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Alien invaders,” Boone said. “They’ve already wiped out a small town.”

“Can you show my people to the barracks?” Colin asked before the guard could think twice about letting them in. Boone was exhausted, surviving on coffee and energy drinks. Colin had come very close to suggesting he take a nap and let one of the others drive. “I’ll go straight to the communications centre.”

The guard nodded – it looked as if he hadn’t believed Boone, which was lucky – and opened the gate. Boone drove inside, looking around with interest as he parked outside the control tower. The walls looked faded under the hot sun, Colin knew, but the interior was surprisingly modern. He felt himself stagger as he stumbled out of the car and headed inside, leaving the others with the guard as he made his way to the communications centre. It was a fancy word for a room with a handful of laptops, linked to the laser satellite network and the government landlines, but it would suffice. Radios could be jammed. The hardened landline should be a great deal harder to take out.

Should, Colin thought. The network was designed to stand up to an all-out nuclear attack, but the planners had always worried the Russians or Chinese knew enough to target their weapons to take it down. We don’t know for sure.

He tapped his code into the console and waited, muttering a prayer to a god he’d never truly believed in. The EMP couldn’t have spread that far, he was sure, but it would have been very noticeable. It could – would – have taken out a bunch of satellites, including a number of foreign assets. God alone knew how the Russians or Chinese would react, if they’d lost a bunch of very expensive satellites over Texas. They might jump to all sorts of conclusions, from a terrorist nuke to a secret weapons test to a deliberate attempt to blind their satellites before launching a major attack. Colin had taken part in a drill, once, in which they’d played out the government’s options if someone took out a number of satellites without warning … the results hadn’t been encouraging. He didn’t want to think about the darker possibilities, but …

“Colin,” a voice said. “What the fuck happened?”

Colin swallowed, hard. Admiral Leone was his direct superior, the current head of the Exotic Tech Division. A tough no-nonsense officer … Colin suddenly found himself speechless, unsure how best to report. The EMP was real – of course it was – but everything else? His superior might not believe his report, or assume he was making it at gunpoint, or … 

“Colin?”

“Admiral, the country has been invaded,” Colin said. He knew his words made no sense, not to someone in Washington, DC. Who would invade the middle of Texas? There were contingency plans for Russian or Chinese landings along the coast – Seattle was a particular favourite, for some reason – but most of them were little more plausible than Independence Day. Red Dawn was a great movie, yet … “An enemy invasion force has landed in Flint.”

There was a long pause. Colin wondered if the admiral was too stunned to speak. The report was insane … and yet, the EMP had been very real. Perhaps the admiral was calling for a psychologist, or hastily dialling the guards to check the airfield was secure, or … he told himself there’d been time for other satellites to get into position to peer down at Flint. They’d see the alien thing or get shot down ... either way, they’d prove his case.

“Explain,” the admiral ordered, finally.

Colin forced himself to go through the whole story, from the first energy pulse to their desperate flight. The admiral listened silently, not even to ask a single question. Colin couldn’t tell if the man believed him or not, but it hardly mattered. They’d see the truth soon enough. And then …

“I want you back here,” the admiral said. “Do you have a jet at the airfield?”

“There should be,” Colin said. The heavy transport they’d used to move their trucks had been retasked elsewhere, after delivering the team, but there was meant to be a small aircraft and pilot on standby at all times. “We should be able to get to Washington …”

“Be very careful,” the admiral said. “Civilian air traffic has been grounded, for the moment, and you might be noticed. Tell the pilot to stay low until you are well clear of the danger zone.”

“Yes, sir,” Colin said, choosing not to point out no one had any idea of just how big the danger zone was. An alien invader with energy weapons could presumably pick off anything within sensor range ... and that might be pretty damn far. “And Sheriff Boone?”

The admiral paused. “The military is rushing to put together some kind of response, probably run out of Fort Cavazos,” he said. “Everything is a little crazy right now – the National Guard has been called up, but it will be quite some time before they’re in place to do much of anything. Half the people involved think we’ve been nuked … it’ll be sorted out, given time, yet …”

He broke off. Colin guessed he’d been woken in a hurry and … if the officers really did think the country had been nuked, half the military and government would be moving around, playing a demented shell game to keep the enemy from guessing where they were. The President should be on Air Force One, Colin recalled, but it was possible the Secret Service had overruled it. The Presidential aircraft was supposed to be immune to EMP. Supposed being the operative word.

“Ask the sheriff to make a full report, then wait for orders,” the admiral said, finally. “I don’t know if you should bring him to Washington. He might be needed at Fort Cavazos.”

“I’ll see to it,” Colin said. “We’ll be on our way as soon as possible.”

He sat back in his chair as the connection broke, then keyed the laptop to access the news sites. The mainstream media were reporting that something had happened in Texas, but little solid data; the various alternate sites veered between surprisingly accurate recounting and batshit crazy ranting about little green men. Colin guessed the sheriff wasn’t the only one to have escaped when all hell broke loose. A handful of internet reports covered everything he’d seen or heard and more besides. The only consistent message was the order for all military and emergency personnel to report in, ASAP.

“Shit,” he muttered. “What the hell are they doing?”

The guard joined him, looking unnerved. “Sir … are we in any danger?”

“I wish I could tell you,” Colin said. The guard had signed up to patrol an airfield deep inside the USA, not go on deployment into a warzone. “Is the pilot here?”

“She reported back two hours ago,” the guard said. “I …”

Colin pretended not to hear. In theory, the airfield crew were meant to remain on the base at all times. In practice, keeping them from straying was damned near impossible. There was a town nearby, with shops and bars and probably a brothel … he had no idea how many of the stories he’d heard about Texas were true, but if he’d been stuck on an airfield with next to nothing to do, he’d be tempted to head to town every so often too.

“Tell her to fuel up the aircraft or whatever, then prepare to leave as quickly as possible,” Colin said, curtly. He hoped the pilot was up to the task. The higher they flew, the greater the risk. “We need to get the hard drives back to Washington – and fast.”

“Yes, sir.”

Colin sighed, then headed back to the barracks. They were tiny and cramped, with barely enough room to swing a cat, but they were so much better than the car it wasn’t funny. Sheriff Boone was already sleeping, snoring loudly. Colin elected to leave him to his sleep. The guards would make sure he got something to eat, before making his report and requesting further orders. It felt wrong to leave the sheriff behind, but there was no choice.

“Take care of him,” he told the guards, as he assembled the rest of the team. They’d sleep on the plane … it would be uncomfortable, but better than nothing. “And prepare to bug out if you come under attack.”

The guard looked unimpressed. Colin understood. The idea of the airfield being assaulted was just absurd. This was central Texas, not Baghdad or Afghanistan or Ukraine … it just didn’t happen. The only foreign power that could get close was Mexico and the Mexicans were unlikely to pick a fight with the USA, no matter how much historical resentment and hatred lingered into the modern day. But now …

“Good luck,” Colin said. It seemed so inadequate. “We’ll be back soon.”

***

Sheriff Callam Boone started awake, unsure of where he was. His mind flickered back to drills from basic training, including some when he’d been taken from his bunk and left to wake somewhere else, but this … his mind spun in circles as he looked around, momentarily confused. His memories of the previous night had taken on a bizarre, nightmarish quality, as if they weren’t real … he glanced around and swore, inwardly, as he realised he was lying on a bed in an unfamiliar barracks. The nightmare had been real and that meant …

He forced himself to stand, one hand dropping to check his pistol. The guards hadn’t insisted on confiscating it, thankfully; he hoped it had been a display of common sense, rather than incompetence. Callam knew men who’d died when terrorists attacked their post, unable to defend themselves because regulations barred them from carrying firearms in supposedly safe postings. He doubted this posting would remain safe for much longer. They’d driven for several hours, but he knew they hadn’t moved that far from Flint.

A wave of guilt threatened to overwhelm him as he stumbled into the next compartment. He’d run, leaving the townspeople to their fates. Cold logic told him he’d had no choice, that someone had to get the word out, but he couldn’t help feeling as though he’d left them behind. He had prided himself on going into danger, so he could get others out of danger, yet he’d fled … he shook his head sourly, the nightmarish memories flickering through his mind. There’d been no choice. By the time he got back to Flint, it had already fallen.

“Hey,” a guard said. He looked sloppy as fuck, although he held himself in a manner that suggested he knew what he was doing. “There’s coffee in the dispenser, then food in the fridge. Microwave on the table …”

Callam eyed him. “Is this a military barracks or a hotel?”

“Both,” the guard said. “But I’m afraid the food lives down to military standards.”

“Oh.” Callam poured himself a cup of coffee and drank it quickly, then inspected the fridge. Someone had purchased a surprising number of microwave dinners and left them to be eaten one by one. “What happened to the others?”

“Fucked off to Washington,” the guard said. “You have a report to make, once you’ve eaten.”

Callam allowed himself a moment of relief as he put a tray of curry into the microwave. He hadn’t wanted or expected to go to Washington, not when the crisis was in Texas. The guard clicked on the TV, displaying a live news report from Austin. A talking head was babbling endlessly, without saying much of anything. The state government was meeting in emergency session … reading between the lines, Callam guessed that no one knew anything about what had really happened.

“The White House has yet to make a statement,” the reporter continued. “President Hamlin has apparently been taken to an undisclosed location, but …”

“Turn it off,” Callam said. President Hamlin was an affable moron, the kind of person who could only become President after a great deal of horse-trading and the opposition being daft enough to run a candidate who was even worse. The idea of him leading his country into war was enough to give Callam the shivers. “Has there been any military update?”

“We’ve been told to hold position and wait,” the guard said. He turned the volume down a little, but didn’t turn it off. “The National Guard has been called up, and we may find ourselves providing support to the Air National Guard, but” – he shrugged expressively – “the situation is incredibly chaotic. If anyone in charge knows what’s going on, they’re not showing it.”

“It’s always chaotic at first,” Callam said. He’d been in enough tight spots during his military service to know the score. You couldn’t prepare for everything, perish the thought, but you could adapt and react when something happened. “It’ll be sorted out soon, I hope. This is an invasion.”

“So we have been told,” the guard said. He sounded as if he didn’t believe it. “Aliens?”

Callam couldn’t blame him for doubting the story. He’d heard any number of cock-and-bull stories himself, like every other law enforcement officer in the world, but alien invasions … the maddest thing he’d ever heard, until now, had been zombies and there’d been a perfectly reasonable, if unpleasant, explanation for that.

“I saw them,” he said. “They had tanks, as well as cyborgs. They’re real, and dangerous.”

“I shall take your word for it,” the guard said. “Eat, then make your report.”

Callam shrugged, then tucked into the curry. It tasted unpleasant, but he was hungry enough not to care. The guard poured him more coffee, then withdrew to give him some privacy. Callam was sure he hadn’t gone very far. Federal guards weren’t known for being chatty, but they wouldn’t let him wander the airfield freely. Not without supervision, at least. He was mildly surprised he hadn’t been told to remain in the barracks until they got further orders.

“Government spokespeople are quick to dismiss rumours of nuclear attack,” the reporter said, “but sources in the Pentagon insist NEST teams have been put on standby and …”

“Bitch,” Callam muttered. There’d be a panic by now, or he was guilty of stolen valour. People would be out on the streets, panic-buying and looting and rioting and everything else he’d come to expect from an increasingly uncivilised public. It wasn’t fair – the talking head spoke words others put in her mouth – but he wasn’t in the mood to be fair. “The country is being invaded, and you just made defending it harder.”

He sighed and stood. He had a report to make. And then, if he was lucky, he’d get the chance for some payback.

Chapter Eight: Flint, Texas, North America, Timeline F (OTL)

James refused to show his nerves as his captains assembled for the holoconference.

The last few hours had been productive, although the majority of the townspeople had either been unwilling to cooperate – unlike Sally Luanne – or were effectively useless. The strange mixture of wealth and poverty, advanced technology side by side with primitive systems, had baffled him, but it also opened up plenty of opportunities for advancement. Their orders hadn’t been written to cover such a situation, yet … he hid his determination to succeed behind an iron mask as the last of his captains checked in. He might be in command, but his powers weren’t unlimited. If a body of senior officers chose to oppose him, he’d have no choice but to back down.

He allowed his eyes to move from face to face as the security protocols accessed the connection, a precaution that was normally a waste of time – and often used for exactly that – but here might be deadly serious. Their enemies were not as advanced as themselves, yet they understood the concept of computers and encryption – unlike every other timeline they’d invaded – and it was quite possible they’d find a way to hack the network. Given time … James doubted they could do it quickly enough to matter, but the precaution would help concentrate a few minds. He hadn’t been able to choose all of his officers, and not all of them saw him as their key to advancement. It was quite possible two or three were already plotting to unseat him.

And if this doesn’t work, they’ll have their chance, James reminded himself. The stakes were high, both for him personally as well as for the PEF. To win or lose it all …

His mind raced. Stuart could be trusted, if only because he couldn’t legally replace his commander, but everyone else …? Some were cautious by nature, a grave liability in a regimental commander; some were ambitious enough to try to take his place, if they thought they could get away with it. It had never been clear just what the council thought made sufficient grounds to remove a commander – James had a private theory they wanted to keep it as vague as possible – but outright failure would certainly suffice. James couldn’t give orders, not here, and expect them to be obeyed. He needed to convince his captains – or at least a majority – to follow him.

“We have arrived in a land of unparalleled danger and opportunity,” he said. “This world is neither empty nor primitive. We can neither walk all over them, securing the territory without opposition, nor hunker down and wait for reinforcements. This world represents a vast opportunity, but it also represents a potential threat. We must adjust our tactics to match.”

He paused, letting his words hang in the air. The intelligence staff had uploaded their preliminary findings into the datanet. The captains would have scanned them already, unless they were grossly incompetent, and probably had drawn their own conclusions. The PEF had a major tech advantage, true, but it was hardly decisive.

“This world is starkly divided,” he continued. “These people may not be primals, in most places, but they are degenerates. The conditions we encountered as we secured our bridgehead are clear proof this world is divided between rich and poor, and the rich cannot be bothered to take care of the poor. Their disunity will work to our advantage, as will us showing them the way to a brighter future. We can take this world by displaying our superiority and working to exploit the fault-lines in their society. I say we must take this world. It represents both an opportunity and a threat.”

“Our orders are to open communications with peer powers,” Captain Jackson King pointed out, curtly. “These people are advanced enough to be dangerous, sir, and they outnumber us rather heavily.”

“An understatement,” Captain Ruddigore muttered.

James tried not to let his irritation show. “These people are more advanced than any other timeline we’ve encountered,” he agreed. There was no point in trying to deny the obvious. “However, they are at least a century behind us – they lack fusion power, antigravity generators, plasma cannons and fabbers – and they are disunited. We can offer all sorts of incentives to their nations to join us, to become our clients, and rally their troops to our side. The balance of power is firmly in our favour.”

He let his eyes move from face to face. “They are also degenerates, as I said,” he reminded them. “Open contact could be dangerous for us, as well as them.”

There was a long pause. The Protectorate had never been keen on importing foreign ideas – and foreigners who immigrated to the Protectorate were advised to integrate or else. There were occasional crazes for foreign food, but political ideas …? Lunacy. It was bad enough dealing with the handful of degenerates who’d been born in the Protectorate, without importing them from elsewhere. Not that it was that dangerous back home, he reminded himself. The Protectorate’s ideas were best. If they weren’t, the Protectorate would have been crushed centuries ago.

“Some of their concepts will have appeal, amongst the less-educated,” he continued. “Others will have an unhealthy appeal … their pornography, for example. Our citizens are wise enough to understand the dangers, I am sure, but our children are not. The spread of filth in their society may well account for their degeneracy, although there may be other factors. The analysts are still working on the problem.”

“That doesn’t mean we should proceed with an offensive,” King said. “We can wait for reinforcements and then quit this world, leaving it to die in its own filth.”

James gave him a sharp look. King was no coward. Did he truly think that hunkering down was the best option, or was he playing politics? There was no way to tell. If King’s arguments swayed even a handful of senior officers, he might elevate himself to the top …

“There are two reasons we cannot wait,” James said. “First, their technology is advanced enough to be dangerous. They certainly have nuclear weapons – and right now, we are a relatively small target. If they want to destroy us, they could rain nukes on the castle until our defences are ground down. They can do it.”

He paused, significantly. “The second reason is that these people are already aware of other timelines,” he said. “Their awareness was purely theoretical – and fictional – until we arrived. Yesterday, their debates about what would have happened if a certain battle went differently were nothing more than mild entertainment; today, they know alternate timelines exist and some, including ours, are hostile. If knowing something is possible is half the battle, how long will it take them to make the jump to practical technology?”

“The Protectorate was the only innovator,” Ruddigore said. “The French and Russians merely copied us.”

“There was no inherent reason the French couldn’t build their own steam ironclads,” Captain Mathewson countered. His family had had a long and honourable career in the wet-navy. It had been a surprise when their youngest son applied to the PEF. “And they did.”

He leaned forward. “And these people had their own industrial revolution. A century later than ours, to be sure, but they still went through it. They’ll have – or at least they had – an innovative mindset of their own. Now they know crosstime tech is practical, they’ll be working on it themselves. And who knows how long it will take for them to build a Crosstime Transpositioner of their own?”

James shrugged. The intelligence staff had cautioned him that the local tech tree was incredibly unbalanced. Some fields had advanced very rapidly – their computers were more advanced than anything the Protectorate had created, at a comparable level – while others, such as space travel, lagged behind. If James had been in charge of the United States, he’d have charged NASA’s entire management team with treason. Quite how the US had managed to squander such a promising field was beyond him – perhaps it had been treason – but he wasn’t going to complain. An orbital battlestation built with local tech might have been primitive, by his standards, yet it would still have been difficult to overcome. A modern battlestation would have been an insurmountable obstacle.

“It might be a year, or a decade, or even longer,” he said. “We just don’t know.”

He paused. “But if they capture this base, even the wreckage, they’ll be able to find their way to Timeline A.”

There was another pause. “We can take this world, and all it has to offer,” James said. “A population that understands technology, a population that doesn’t need to be extensively retrained … and a population that will be glad for our aid, a population that might be grateful.”

“And client states that will serve us,” Stuart added.

James nodded, curtly. The intelligence staff had barely started assessing the rest of the world – there was just too much data, and too many nations that had never existed in their timeline – but it was clear the Protectorate would have no trouble finding allies. They’d play fair with them too, at least at first, and then use them up when they were no longer needed. And then …

Mathewson’s eyes shifted. James suspected he was gauging opinions.

“There’s one question that needs to be answered,” he said, flatly. “Can we win?”

“Yes.” James had no doubt victory would be theirs, although it would be a harder campaign than they’d expected. “It can be done. It will be done.”

He went on before anyone could muster an objection. “We’ll stall for time,” he said, “and pretend we arrived by accident while we lay the groundwork for our first offensive. Their militaries are advanced enough to be dangerous, true, but their computer and communications networks are hopelessly vulnerable. They know we are here, yet they don’t understand the scale of the threat we pose. We take our time, then strike.”

“The deception will not last,” Ruddigore said. “We attacked their town.”

“It won’t matter,” James said. It was difficult to tell if Sally’s assessment of the local rulers was accurate. The internet provided so many different points of view that the intelligence staff had rated it completely misleading, arguing that half the public thought the President was the greatest and the other half thought he was the worst. They seemed to switch sides depending on just who was in power … something was fine if it was done by their guy, but unthinkably awful if the other did it. “We have enough firepower to secure the bridgehead even if they engage us at once.”

He keyed his console, sending the captains the first operational plan. It was workable, he thought, although there were risks. America wasn’t quite as big as Russia – the first major offensive during the Second Global War had bogged down in the Russian mud – but it was dangerously big, even for them. The idea of occupying vast tracts of land was just absurd, at least until reinforcements arrived. And the locals were quite heavily armed … any sane government, he thought, would have disarmed the civilians long ago. It would pose an unexpected challenge.

“They have numbers, but those numbers will be worthless if they cannot bring them to bear against us,” he said. “We’ll cut them up, isolate them from each other, and leave them to die on the vine, showing our power to prospective clients. Those who side with us will be welcome. Those who do otherwise will be dealt with, in time.”

He paused. “We are committed. We were committed from the moment we arrived in this world. We cannot afford to sit here and wait for reinforcements, nor can we attempt to open communications with such degenerates. We must proceed to secure this world, and all it has to offer, for the Protectorate. There is no other choice.”

And for us, he added, silently. The captains stood to gain immensely, if they took the world together. None would overlook the advantages to their careers, if they won. If. No, James told himself, they were not going to lose. The enemy might be dangerously advanced, and there were worse threats in this timeline than a soldier accidentally shooting himself in the foot, but they weren’t gods. Or equals. If we win, we stand to gain more than just a world.

The pause grew, and lengthened. No one spoke. James suspected that meant his opponents figured they wouldn’t win, if the matter came to a formal vote. The ballot was supposed to be secret, but … there were ways around that, particularly if the commander won by a sizable majority. His opponents might speak out, to get their opposition on the record, yet … why bother? James would lead them to victory, in which case they’d look like idiots, or a defeat so devastating their opinions wouldn’t matter. They’d certainly never have the chance to protest his decisions to the Council. The locals would kill them well before reinforcements arrived.

“We proceed,” James said, firmly. “Take your stations and wait.”

He closed the conference, watching with a thin smile as the holoimages blinked out. The risk of open opposition had been low, but not low enough for his peace of mind. He dared not become complacent and yet, his enemies had just lost their best chance to displace him. The war was about to begin, and the PEF would be committed … as if it wasn’t already. James privately suspected the deception wouldn’t last that long, that the enemy would only pretend to believe him long enough to get troops in place to crush the invaders. It was what he would do.

Stuart cleared his throat. “They’re going to be trouble, aren’t they?”

James hid his amusement. The captains held Stuart in contempt … unfairly, in a way, but it was impossible for him to miss it. Just because he’d never held a proper combat command … bastards. James had served long enough to know a competent logistics officer could make the difference between victory and inglorious defeat …

“They’ll do their jobs,” he said, instead. The real fighting would start soon … and then there’d be no more time for councils of war. Anyone who tried to unseat him then would be in deep trouble, no matter who’d backed their careers. “Are our logistics units in place?”

“The ones we have,” Stuart said. “Sir, with all due respect, we don’t have the transports for a full-scale offensive.”

James grimaced. The inner council might have wanted to put limits on his ambitions – but they’d also damaged his chances of winning a war against a near-peer power. An understandable mistake, yet one that would cost him … the transports were tough, true, but if he started losing them the war might be lost with them. In theory, the hovertanks could drive around the entire planet; in practice, it was rarely that easy. The PEF might find themselves dominating the area under their guns, and nowhere else.

“See what the locals have to offer,” James ordered. The unemployment rate was terrifyingly high, for reasons he didn’t fully understand, but … hopefully the lack of other options would make the locals desperate for employment. “And offer to pay good wages.”

Stuart looked doubtful. “What do we have to offer, even if we pay them in our currency?”

The trade goods aren’t as useful here, James reflected. The locals already had sharp knives and they’d laugh at bows and arrows. We’ll have to see what we can offer.

“Food and drink, if nothing else, and medical care,” he said. “A healthy population is a useful population.”

He smiled as they headed back to the command centre. The drones were orbiting further away now, putting together a more comprehensive assessment of local military power and capabilities. There was a major military base not too far away, he noted, just under three hundred miles from here … how long would it take the locals to reinforce the base and surround the castle? The PEF could have done it very quickly, even deploying from a garrison on the other side of the world. The locals? There was no way to be sure.

His lips twisted as he scanned the next set of reports. The locals had so many problems, half of which could have been solved by the application of common sense. The remainder were a little harder, yet they could be fixed … if they worked at it. Quite how the locals had managed to screw up their own world so badly was beyond him, but it would work in his favour …

“Send the signal,” he ordered. “And repeat until we get a response.”

He leaned back in his chair. It was quite possible the locals wouldn’t believe a word of it – he wouldn’t – but it would buy time and that was all he needed. The enemy system was wide open … the public databases easy to access, the government and military computer nets a little harder. He allowed himself a smile. They’d hardened their systems enough to draw attention, but not enough to keep his hackers out. They might have been better off leaving the systems unprotected. The intelligence staff were having problems telling local fiction from reality. If so much of the data hadn’t been utterly unrealistic, such as spacecraft designs, they’d be having fits.

We have all the time we need, he told himself. The troops were already deploying, securing a line around the town. Some locals had escaped, but none knew anything particularly important … or anything the local government couldn’t work out for itself. Thankfully, the enemy hadn’t launched an immediate nuclear strike. The prospect had worried him from the moment he’d realised the threat was more than just theoretical. And if they give us more time …

Chapter Nine: Washington DC, North America, Timeline F (OTL)

There were times, in all honesty, when Vice President Felix Hernandez wondered if the United States deserved to survive.

The political establishment was screwed up beyond all recognition. The broken promises of the Obama and Trump years, the manifold failures of both parties after those controversial presidents had been and gone, the endless and unstoppable rise of unaccountable Federal power – and subsequent apathy towards the government, the loss of faith in the media and tech companies and just about everything else … Felix knew, without false modesty, that he could have at least tried to turn the country around, but the party grandees had denied him his chance to run for office. He wouldn’t even have been taken on as a running mate if the party hadn’t been trying desperately to win the Hispanic vote, something they didn’t have the slightest idea how to do. It was too late in the day to pretend a non-white VP would make a difference. The Hispanics, like everyone else, wanted their politicians to actually help.

He sighed inwardly as he was shown into the situation room under the White House. The only thing that qualified President Hamlin for office was that he’d never managed to alienate anyone, a remarkable feat in the modern era – to be fair – but he had a complete lack of everything else he needed to be an effective leader, from a grasp of the problems facing modern America to a willingness to make enemies fixing those problems. He was a kindly old man, and there wasn’t a whiff of scandal around him, but it wasn’t enough. The country was coming apart at the seams and the President was doing nothing, rather than at least trying to glue the mess back together.

But then, trying would unite Washington against him, Felix thought, coldly. They’ll never willingly give up a scrap of power, even if doing so would save them from the rope.

He accepted a cup of coffee from a young intern, then waited for the rest of the cabinet to join them. The last few hours had been chaotic, even by Washington’s standards. He’d been rushed to Air Force Two, then rushed back to a bunker on the edge of the city, and then finally rushed to the White House. No one had seemed to know what was going on, where the President was, or what had happened to the nuclear codes. Felix would never admit it, at least outside the privacy of his own head, but he’d been terrified. His imagination had filled in the blanks, suggesting everything from a military coup to foreign invasion or even a mass uprising. The latter wouldn’t have surprised him. Felix made an effort to stay in touch with the public mind and he was all too aware that the vast majority loathed the federal government even as they depended upon it. If the Chinese nuked Washington, a sizable percentage of Americans would cheer.

President Hamlin called the table to order, then nodded to the Secretary of Homeland Security, Robin Carter. Felix straightened. The secretary wasn’t a bad choice, even though it had been one hell of a political battle to convince Congress to confirm him in his role. The man was no military or intelligence officer, but he was smart enough to understand his own limitations and stick within them. That was almost unique in Washington.

Carter took a breath, then spoke with the tone of a man who feared – who knew – he would not be believed. “At roughly 0100hrs, there was a major energy surge in Texas. This surge had much in common with a nuclear-generated electromagnetic pulse, and did immense damage to both local electronics and orbiting satellites, although preliminary assessments indicate it was not actually an EMP. It triggered the nuclear warning protocols, however, and various procedures to protect the command chain were put into operation. It was a very chaotic situation.”

You don’t say, Felix thought.

“The preliminary assumption was that terrorists had detonated a small nuclear weapon and alerts were issued based on that,” Carter continued. “The lack of secondary strikes seemed to confirm that theory, so orbiting satellites that had been unaffected were vectored into orbits that would take them over the blast zone, while emergency services were put on alert to deal with the aftermath. The first crack in this assumption came when a spy satellite took images of the blast … the supposed blast. What it saw was …”

He tapped his remote. The big screen came online, displaying a …

Felix blinked. “What the hell is that?”

“We’re not sure,” Carter said. “But it appears to be some kind of alien spacecraft or installation.”

“What?” Felix wondered, for a moment, if it was a demented prank. It wasn’t the first time someone had tried to fool him, or lure him into saying something unfortunate that would be held against him from now until the end of time … yet another reason, he supposed, that Washington was so fucked up. “Aliens?”

“The object appeared in Flint, Texas,” Carter continued. “It appears to have crushed at least half the town. And … it is huge, easily large enough to serve as a military base.”

Felix sucked in his breath. The alien structure – if it was alien – reminded him of a strange cross between an Aztec temple and Autobot City. There were no recognisable weapons, as far as he could see, but the blisters on the metal could easily be weapons … if it truly was alien, their weapons might look harmless to human eyes. If … he wanted to believe it really was a prank, or something devised to test their emergency procedures, yet … it was too realistic. The room seemed to grow colder as the truth dawned on them. Whatever it was, it was real.

“There was a team of Pentagon researchers nearby, some of whom escaped,” Carter said. “A handful of local civilians also made it out, hurrying to the nearest town. Their original stories were not believed – they reported tanks in the streets, and men in silver armour – but we’ve heard the same thing from too many people, as well as spotted tanks from orbit. We … the stories are true. An alien structure has landed in Texas.”

Felix leaned forwards. “How did it manage to arrive without being spotted?”

“We’re uncertain as yet,” Carter said. “The preliminary analysis is confusing. The energy surge appears to have originated within the town … our first assumption was that the surge was intended to hide their arrival, but they passed through our orbital fence without being noticed. Or … one analyst thinks they made an FTL jump into our atmosphere and that triggered the pulse. We simply don’t know.”

“But they did take a town,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, flatly. “That isn’t a friendly act.”

“We don’t know what we’re dealing with,” the Secretary of State countered. “What is it?”

Felix stared at the images for a long cold moment. “An invasion.”

President Hamlin looked surprised. “An invasion?”

“An invasion,” Felix replied. “Neil Armstrong didn’t take a main battle tank when he flew to the moon. You don’t bring tanks unless you’re expecting to fight at the far end.”

“Unless they’re not tanks,” the Secretary of State pointed out. “How many civilians would know an infantry fighting vehicle from a main battle tank?”

“A town like that would normally have a great many vets,” Felix said. He’d been born and raised in Texas himself, although in Austin rather than a small town. “They’d know the difference.”

“I thought they were also armed to the teeth,” the Secretary of State said. “Didn’t they resist the invaders? If it is an invasion.”

Felix didn’t bother to hide his annoyance. The Secretary of State had very little sympathy for Texans, or anyone else who was unlikely to vote for him when he made his bid for the presidency. It was a mistake, Felix knew, but pointing it out was pointless. The people who shaped party policy thought the Texans could be written off, along with nearly everyone else who didn’t agree with their view of the world. They were lucky their rivals were making the same mistake. But that wouldn’t last.

“The invasion started in the middle of the night, completely without warning,” Felix said, sharply. “There was no time to organise resistance.”

He looked at the President. “We need to nuke them. Now.”

President Hamlin blanched. He wasn't a decisive man by nature, and he was prone to dithering even when a decision – even a wrong decision – had to be made quickly, and this was easily the worst problem he’d ever faced. Felix cursed the party elders as he leaned forward, marshalling his arguments as best he could. The President of the United States was not a dictator, and even the strongest Presidents sought some degree of consensus, but there were times when action had to be taken immediately. Felix dreaded to think what would happen if the Russians, completely without warning, launched a full-scale counterforce nuclear strike. They might win.

“They arrived out of nowhere, passing through an electronic fence that was supposed to be capable of tracking anything,” Felix said. He’d seen the promises … and the budget. If he had a say, heads were going to roll afterwards. “They then attacked a town, deploying an armoured force. That is not a friendly act. We need to nuke them. Now.”

“We can’t deploy nuclear weapons on our own soil,” the Secretary of State said. “We don’t even know what we’re facing.”

“They acted in a hostile manner,” Felix said. “They are not friendly.”

He gritted his teeth as the principals argued back and forth, President Hamlin saying nothing. Some agreed and wanted to strike the invaders at once; others were more cautious, unwilling to launch a nuclear strike without a clear threat, or raising concerns about radiation or international treaties that were, Felix thought, terrifyingly misplaced. Striking an enemy force that had arrived in America and opened fire was hardly a treaty violation … if any nuclear treaty had any force these days. There was a long list of countries working desperately to produce their own nukes and delivery systems, now American guarantees had proven worthless. They didn’t give a shit about treaties when their own survival was at stake.

“We should be careful,” the president said. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here …”

The door opened. The President looked up. Felix followed his gaze, eyes narrowing as he spotted the junior officer. The poor kid looked terrified. He’d probably had orders to bring any new developments to the cabinet at once, yet he was interrupting some of the most powerful men in the world. His career could be killed with a single word from one of them … it wouldn’t be the first time.

President Hamlin held up a hand, stilling the debate. “Yes?”

“Mr. President, we picked up a message from the … ah, alien base,” the kid said, holding out a tablet. “They say they come in peace.”

Felix forced himself to wait as the President took the tablet, then looked up as someone had the presence of mind to put the message on the big screen. It was text only and … he blinked in surprise. Travellers from an alternate timeline, who’d arrived on Earth by accident … Felix had heard some absurd stories in his time, like every other politician, but this one took the cake. An accidental jump through the multiverse was one thing, invading a town was quite another. The message was so vague he half-suspected it had been purposely written to make it hard for anyone to decide what to do about the situation.

“They’re human,” the President said, relieved. “They’re …”

“They say they’re human,” Felix interrupted. “We have no solid proof of anything beyond a single text message. And besides, humans have done some pretty awful things to their fellow humans.”

He scowled inwardly. Human history was one long liturgy of horrors perpetrated by one group of humans on another. The strong bullied the weak, the weak became strong and bullied the next set of weaklings … the newcomers, the invaders, being human was meaningless. An alien race might not see any point in waging war on humanity. A human might be convinced it was very far from pointless.

“If they got here by accident,” the Secretary of State said, “we should at least try to help them.”

Felix snorted. “If a Chinese aircraft got off course and crash-landed in California, we would of course render them assistance,” he said. “But if that Chinese crew came out shooting … we would be entitled to assume they’re hostile and respond accordingly.”

The President cleared his throat. “What are our options?”

“These people are not friendly,” Felix said, sharply. He scanned the table, looking for support. “We strike them now, and hard.”

“They also represent an opportunity,” the National Security Advisor said. “If we gain access to their tech, we could advance in leaps and bounds.”

We were already on top of the tech tree, Felix thought coldly, although he had a nasty feeling that was no longer true. But then we went and fucked it all up …

Carter glanced at his tablet. “We put out a call for all military and emergency personnel to report to their duty stations,” he said. “Fortunately, we were in the middle of a training period at Fort Cavazos, giving us a higher-than-normal number of soldiers to call upon. We can move a rapid deployment force from Fort Cavazos and other bases to the region, then declare an exclusion zone around it, backed up by military force. If these people are on the level, we can talk to them while ensuring our own safety; if not, we’ll have enough firepower in the vicinity to deal with them.”

“Unless their tech is advanced enough to crush us,” Felix said. “The Iraqis outnumbered us hugely, when we invaded Iraq. We still bested them, with very few casualties.”

“There’s nothing to suggest they’re that far ahead of us,” Carter said. “We really have only a handful of choices. We attack them now, with all the force we can muster; we talk to them; we do nothing and hope they go away.”

He smiled. “Does anyone think doing nothing is a good idea?”

Felix didn’t smile. “Remind me of something,” he said. “What happened to the Native Americans when the Europeans arrived?”

He pressed on before anyone could say a word. “They could have united against the newcomers and crushed them,” he said, coldly. He’d never had any time for guilt over crimes committed by men long dead, but sometimes it came in handy. “Instead, they thought they could use the newcomers. But the newcomers were too strong and the Native Americans were crushed instead, driven back to reservations where they’re poor, hopeless, and constantly harassed by idiots from the Wan-Na-Be Tribe. The only reason they’re called Native Americans, rather than Indians or Redskins or something even worse, is because modern society is advanced enough to feel guilt and shame … not that it is ever enough to get them moving back to Europe!

“These people are not friendly. They may claim to be, but their actions suggest otherwise. And if we give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.”

There was a long, chilling pause. “You’re jumping to conclusions,” the Secretary of State said, finally. “You don’t know they’re hostile.”

“They invaded a town,” Felix countered. “What more proof do you need?”

He suspected, as the argument raged on, that he’d lost. The President was too much of a ditherer to take decisive action. The concept of throwing a ring of steel around the occupied town sounded promising, to him, even though it was hardly enough. The newcomers hadn’t said anything about the locals, or … Felix didn’t like the sound of that either. They might be treating the townspeople as human shields, which was bad enough, or interrogating them to learn about their new world. And the President would balk at the idea of nuking an American town, with American civilians …

“Get the troops into place,” the President said, finally. “And then we will see.”

“Yes,” Felix agreed. “We will.”

He studied the map for a long moment. The invaders – if they were invaders – were a long way from Washington DC. Somehow, he didn’t find that reassuring. If they could land in Texas, they could land anywhere … and what, he asked himself, had happened to the other half of the town? Crushed or … or what? The military officers kept speaking, outlining units already being prepped to fly into the region and secure the town … too much detail, Felix noted absently, for a President who knew nothing about the army and cared less. He wasn’t much better, he conceded, but at least he could be decisive. Right now, he had the uneasy sense they were sleepwalking towards the apocalypse. They didn’t know what they were facing … not yet. The idea of sending in any diplomats seemed absurd.

It might work out, he told himself, as the discussion switched to managing the media and foreign affairs. There’d been no way to hide the surge … the media was calling it an EMP, even though it wasn’t. The public would be terrified and the rest of the world deeply concerned, not least everyone who’d lost one or more satellites only a few short hours ago. They were lucky it hadn’t started a war. Everyone else is going to want in, if we do start talking to the newcomers … and who knows what will happen then?

A shiver ran down his spine. There was a joke, a very old and sharp one, about how things would have been different if the Native Americans had had an immigration policy …

Somehow, it didn’t seem so funny now.

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