Christopher Nuttall: The Trojan Horse

He jumped out of the cab as the truck ground to a halt and waved to his men. They leapt out, forming a protective cordon around McGreevy’s vehicle. The bitch who thought she was President would be safe for a few moments longer. The Colonel glanced over at the aliens, who seemed disinterested in the humans. Perhaps they no longer cared about McGreevy.

A second later, the shit hit the fan.

Washington DC

USA, Day 73

“Fire,” Mathew ordered.

It had taken hours to slip the assault force close to Andrews. The aliens had been on the watch for insurgents and even the SEALs had felt their skills tested to the limit. A handful of collaborator uniforms and access papers had allowed others to get close to the base, but they’d been very limited in what they could carry with them. The aliens had refused their collaborators anything heavier than their M16s, which was helpful for the resistance, but less useful for attacking Andrews ABF. They’d had to break down the mortars and carry them in to the right position.

The seven mortars fired as one, launching shells towards the base. They came down on top of the guardpost, one of them landing right on top of an alien position. Thankfully, as Mathew had prayed, there was no massive explosion vaporising the alien bodies. The aliens clearly had no interest in seeing their troops destroyed by their own weapons. They’d punish the attack on their soldiers if they had time… Mathew pushed the thought aside and barked orders. The snipers opened fire, targeting every enemy — human or alien — they could see. Meanwhile, the Mortar teams fired a second salvo and then scrambled to shift position. The enemy might have been surprised, but they’d recover… and then they’d track the shells back to their point of origin and target it for destruction. If the US could — and did — take out enemy positions with counter-battery fire, why couldn’t the aliens?

He advanced forward, trusting his men to know what they were doing. The alien collaborators were clearly trying to get armoured vehicles out to drive away the insurgents. It wasn’t such a bad idea, except Mathew and his men had brought Javelin antitank weapons to the party. The moment they came out into the open, they’d die. Mathew regretted the deaths of the pod people — they had no choice, but to serve the aliens — but he would have no hesitation about terminating as many collaborators as possible. They all deserved to die.

And they had no idea that Mathew’s attack, as violent and unexpected as it was, was really nothing more than the diversion. All he had to do was keep them focused on him for as long as possible…

“Incoming helicopters,” one of his men bellowed. In the lightening sky, two helicopters could be seen, swooping down towards the insurgent positions. Mathew had called in fire from Apache helicopters before, back when he’d been in Afghanistan. Being on the receiving end was not fun. On the other hand, he did have better antiaircraft weapons than the Taliban had ever dreamed of having. “Sir…”

“Break out the Stingers,” Mathew ordered. “Take them both down.”

The helicopters had barely opened fire when the Stingers were launched. One helicopter didn’t recognise the threat until the missile had slammed into its underbelly and blown it into a colossal fireball. The second danced upwards, launching flares, but they’d left it far too late and the missile struck home. For a long moment, Mathew thought that the pilot would manage to put the bird on the ground safely, before he lost control and the helicopter crashed into the base. The fireball illuminated the surroundings as the craft exploded. No one made it out alive.

A light in the sky revealed itself to be one of the alien craft. It skimmed low over the ground, launching pulse after pulse of green light into the insurgent positions. Mathew was lucky; one of the blasts barely missed him by several meters. The explosion threw dust and grit through the air. One of the antiaircraft team launched a Stinger after the aircraft craft, but it spun on its tail and neatly picked off the missile with a burst of green light. Mathew would have been impressed if he hadn’t known that the craft’s presence meant that his attack had nearly come to a halt. The Colonel wouldn’t have the time he needed to take the alien craft…

“Now,” the Colonel ordered.

His assault force opened fire. The aliens and their collaborators hadn’t been expecting an attack from the rear. They fell below his fire, allowing his men to run towards the alien shuttle, two of them dragging a heavy crate behind them. The aliens in the shuttle had no time to react as the commandos burst in through the hatch, followed rapidly by the Colonel himself. He’d feared that the aliens would destroy their craft rather than risk it falling into enemy hands, but instead they raised their hands in surrender. The Colonel and his men searched them roughly, and then pushed them outside to the trucks. If they could take the prisoners out of the base, they might be worth their weight in gold.

The Colonel took a moment to look around the shuttle’s interior as his men manhandled the crate up to the hatch. It was cruder than he’d expected, something not unlike a military-designed landing craft. A handful of alien seats, a set of controls that looked simple, but needed an alien to operate… for a moment, he felt an odd kinship with the alien soldiers. Some truths transcended race, creed or religion. If they’d met in honest battle, he could even have respected the aliens. Who knew what would happen in the future if the humans won the war and expanded into space?

“Colonel!”

The crate opened, revealing the alien defector. He looked alive and well; the Colonel, who would have hated to be confined for so long, had worried that he would be tired or unwell. The Snakes didn’t seem to mind confined spaces, luckily. He waved the alien forward and the defector took the seat at the front of the craft. One light was blinking alarmingly on the control panel and he flicked a switch. The light stopped blinking and vanished.

“Can you fly this thing?” The Colonel demanded. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” the alien rasped. He was flicking other switches; the Colonel felt, rather than heard, a growing hum of power within the craft. “Get your men onboard. They’re demanding that we take off at once to get away from the battle.”

The ground shook as the alien craft high overhead made another pass. “Come on,” the Colonel bellowed. “Let’s go!”

Toby stumbled as he climbed out of the President’s personal armoured transport. Andrews AFB had become a nightmare. Air Force One was burning, while enemy soldiers were shooting at two different groups of insurgents and alien troops were running towards them to provide support. No… they were shooting at the collaborators and pod people! For a moment, Toby didn’t understand what he was seeing, and then it struck him. The aliens couldn’t tell the difference between their brainwashed slaves, their collaborators and the insurgents, so they were firing on all humans! He almost laughed, just before a bullet pinged off the vehicle just above him.

McGreevy’s head appeared in the hatch. “What is going on?” She demanded. Toby was mildly surprised that she hadn’t shut the hatch and cowered inside the vehicle. The driver and his assistant were already dead, even though they were well-protected. Toby wasn’t sure what had happened to them. “What’s happening?”

Toby almost laughed, despite the bullets and green flashes of light passing through the air. “The base is under attack,” he said. There was a roar from the direction of the alien shuttle, just before it leapt into the air. Toby knew that his father had intended to lead the mission in person. He’d see Earth from orbit, something Toby had once known that he would never see, and then he would board the alien warship. “I think you ought to run to the aliens.”