Christopher Nuttall - The Trojan Horse

A shot pinged off the roof. Timmy realised he’d been spotted and threw himself to the ground instinctively, crawling back towards the drainpipe as if his life depended on it. It was a harder task to get down than he remembered, and he scraped his arms quite badly on the brickwork, but he was eventually down on the ground. Turning, he ran as hard as he could, cursing his own curiosity. If they gave chase, they’d catch him — and if they caught him, he knew it would be bad. There were shouts after him, but nothing…

…And then he felt something strike him between the shoulder blades. The ground came up to slam into him with staggering speed, just as a red-hot needle seemed to dig into his back. He hit the ground, feeling his nose break as he slammed down face-first, trying not to scream out in pain. He’d been shot; they’d seen him and shot him and killed him…

He was dimly aware of running feet, and then silence.

“Please remain calm,” the loudspeaker said. “Terrorists are attacking this building. Please remain…”

A thud echoed through the building and the loudspeaker fell silent. The Welcome Foundation had been targeted by the insurgents, Jason knew; it was hard to blame their thinking as the Welcome Foundation had been the spearhead for alien seduction and then conquest of Earth. The attack had started only twenty minutes ago and he’d spent them cowering in his office, knowing that any of the insurgents who saw him would gun him down without realising that Jason was working for the good guys.

He winced as something struck the building. An alarm started to sound, only to cut off several seconds later, leaving him completely isolated. A glance at his cell phone revealed that the phone networks had gone down, something that puzzled him until he realised that the insurgents were probably using cell phones to coordinate their actions. They’d have to be careful. The networks had loved the alien devices they’d been given, but they did have the disadvantage that every cell phone call was routed through one of the alien servers. They could listen in to everyone. Jason had his doubts about how well such a system could work in practice — there were literally billions of cell phone calls every day, requiring the aliens to scan them all — but given the right software the aliens could probably listen in to anything important.

There was another sound — the high-pitched whine made by some of the alien craft — and then a series of smaller explosions that seemed not to affect the building itself. Moments later, the gunfire died away as the insurgents retreated. Jason suspected that the Snakes themselves had taken a hand and the insurgents had fallen back, rather than risk facing the Snakes directly. Washington DC would suffer if any of the Snakes were killed. He thought, briefly, about the defector he’d helped, and then pushed the thought aside. It was a secret that could not be spoken aloud.

Forty minutes later, the all-clear was sounded and Jason had a chance to get out of his office and check up on the damage. The insurgents had inflicted considerable damage, he realised, although they hadn’t managed to bring the building down. They’d wasted a number of optimistic paintings and killed a number of guards before the Snakes had arrived, but unless he was much mistaken — and he was no military expert — the attack had been designed to annoy them rather than kill. The insurgents had pinned the guards down, yet they’d failed to move in for the kill.

“Jason,” a voice called. Jason looked up in surprise to see the formidable Mrs Kraus. She was an iron-headed harridan, a secretary who ruled her department with a rod of iron. Jason wasn’t surprised that she’d survived. Someone like her could never be killed by anyone, or at least it seemed that way. “The other Directors are dead. You’re in charge.”

Jason stared at her, finally understanding. “Me?”

“You,” Mrs Kraus said. “I suggest you stay in your office. You don’t want to die just yet. They’ll come back when they realised that they missed you.”

Jason didn’t disagree, not openly. But he strongly suspected that she was wrong. Sanderson had given him an opening. Now all he had to do was make use of it.

Washington DC

USA, Day 72

“Not bad,” General Thomas mused. “Not bad at all.”

The Colonel didn’t disagree. Every pinprick on the map represented a strike against the alien-backed puppet government, or its troops. Not every pinprick had been directly ordered by the resistance, but anyone looking at the map from the other side wouldn’t know that. They would have an impression of a vast resistance force, armed to the teeth and striking at the enemy wherever and whenever it could. And large parts of the country had already slipped out of federal control. The feds just weren’t safe anywhere unless they were surrounded by armed guards at all times.

His lips twitched. Once, back when all the survivalists had had to worry about was the federal government, the Colonel had studied a concept called Leaderless Resistance. It had suggested that individual insurgents — or small cells of insurgents — could, by operating independently of each other, keep the enemy off-balance and eventually bring it down. There would be no links between the resistance cells, ensuring that the destruction of one cell didn’t spell disaster for the other cells. It hadn’t worked out in practice for the Islamist scum who had tried to use it against America and Europe, but then they’d strongly overestimated their level of public support. Their war had been doomed long before the Galactics arrived to turn the world upside down.

But now… most of America was up in arms against the aliens. The resistance couldn’t hope to coordinate them all, but it didn’t have to, not when they were all attacking the right targets. Most of the resistance would have gotten the message by now; leave the Snakes themselves alone and concentrate on their collaborators. Willing or blackmailed — or brainwashed into becoming pod people — they would be targeted everywhere. The aliens would be forced to either write off large numbers of collaborators or place their own forces on the ground to defend them from their outraged fellow countrymen. And the resistance had been careful to give the impression that alien military units would be left strictly alone.

The Colonel looked back down at the map and shivered. It didn’t matter if he wanted to admit it or not, but the aliens had a number of advantages, particularly the pod people. They tipped the balance in their favour, leaving him wondering why the aliens didn’t simply convert every human in the detention camps and put them on the streets. The pod people were expendable, weren’t they? Or maybe not; there were definite signs that the process wasn’t perfect, and pod people often acted inhuman. If they ever perfected the process, to the point where they could create pod people who were utterly indistinguishable from normal humans, the resistance was doomed. And the handful of collaborators who were passing information to the resistance would be turned into double agents, without any of their handlers having the slightest idea that something had gone wrong.

“We’ve hit most of the easy targets,” the General mused. Actually, they’d expended their supplies recklessly, striking at every collaborator outpost they could find. They’d taken out roadblocks, police stations and even struck at a handful of detention centres. It was a pity that they didn’t dare trust anyone who had been in alien hands, even for little more than a few hours, but the newly-freed prisoners would be able to raise havoc without any connection to the resistance. They certainly couldn’t go home again. “They’re going to lose control quite badly unless they start using their own units.”