Christopher Nuttall - Invasion

He met Gary’s eyes briefly and saw the hell in the former ISS commander’s eyes. He’d lost his command and almost all of his crew… and, now, he was a prisoner. The aliens had him under their thumbs and there was no way out, not without weapons. Francis lifted an eyebrow, wondering if the far more experienced Gary had any idea what was going on, but the former commander merely shook his head. They were trapped.

A dull rumble ran through the alien craft. Francis felt the craft shift under silent acceleration and felt himself wafting towards the wall. The aliens ignored their struggles and allowed them to grip hold of handles set into the wall, while the craft shivered slightly as it moved on in its orbit. Francis hoped, despite knowing that it would mean their certain death, that they were under attack from the ground, but he knew that that was unlikely. The aliens were probably safe from anything that the human race could throw at them.

The rumbling grew louder. They were on the move.

Philippe Laroche was not a man given to panic. Unlike most of his contemporaries — and his fellows who’d been onboard the ISS — he was used to being in stressful situations in his roving brief as the President of France’s special representative. He’d been held hostage in terrorist training camps, threatened by armed militants in countries where France had ‘interests,’ and fired upon by one side or the other in various civil wars. He knew enough to be fairly certain that the aliens didn’t intend to kill them outright — they could have destroyed the ISS completely or merely left them to suffocate or freeze to death — and that meant that, sooner or later, they would be talking. It was a power game, like those played by human militants; they would do what they had to do to show that they were The Boss… and then they would talk. Being naked didn’t bother him, much; he’d been stripped naked before, by at least a dozen highly suspicious factions.

Besides, it’s not as if the aliens are interested in human bodies , he thought, and concentrated on acting harmless. Stanislav looked as if he was furious — he might even have jumped the aliens if they’d been kept in gravity — and the American representative looked to be on the edge. Sophia, the UN representative, was shaking madly, her eyes wide with panic and fear. Naked, she was pretty… and almost completely helpless. Philippe watched with a certain private amusement as she clutched the handles and waited for death. It would be a long time in coming.

The pressure pushing them against the wall suddenly eased. Like Francis, Philippe had considered the possibility that the craft was under attack, but it wasn’t something he could do anything about. Chances were if the craft was destroyed, they would die before they knew what had hit them, but in any case there was nothing they could do about it. The aliens would talk to them, in time, and when they did, he would be prepared to open a line of communication. Perhaps he could even convince them that Earth was harmless and attacking the planet was hardly productive.

He turned his attention, briefly, to the aliens. They were as featureless as ever, but the more he studied them, the more he could pick out slight differences in height and, he suspected, weight. If they were alien soldiers, they would be fit and healthy, but he couldn’t tell how strong they were, relative to a human soldier. Philippe had more experience with the military, particularly the French covert operations unit, than he cared to admit… and he found himself studying the aliens from a tactical point of view. It was a shame that he couldn’t see their weapons in action, but…

Another dull thump echoed through the ship. A moment later, the aliens started to pull the humans off the handles and escort them through a door that had just appeared in the featureless hull metal, down towards an unknown destination. Philippe forced a smile onto his face as an alien started to pull him along. If he were right, the alien ship had just docked with their larger mothership… and they were being taken to their leader. Philippe could talk to him then…

And see what advantage he could draw from the nightmare.

The massive display fuzzed once and blanked out.

The President stared in horror as the display flickered and then reset to its default position, showing the military might of the United States of America. One moment, the alien craft had been approaching the International Space Station, the next… the aliens had opened fire. Paul glanced at the President and wished that he hadn’t; the President looked like a man who’d just discovered that his loving wife had been cheating on him for years, shocked, helpless and terrified. The entire chamber was filling with voices as everyone started to talk at once, trying to make their opinions heard over the racket… as new alarms rang in the air.

“We just lost Andrews,” one of the technicians shouted. A new red icon, then another, then another, appeared on the display. Paul watched as dozens of icons blossomed into existence, climbing rapidly into the hundreds, each one covering the location of a major airfield, civilian or military. The aliens — and it had to be the aliens — weren’t discriminating; every air base or civilian airport in America was coming under attack. “Sir, the entire air base is off the net!”

“ Quiet ,” General Hastings bellowed. Silence fell, broken only by a chain of incoming reports. “Mr President, the country is under attack!”

The President looked up from his chair. He appeared to have aged overnight. “General… are you sure that it’s the aliens?”

Paul had no doubts. “If they were the Russians, or the Chinese, we would have had plenty of advance warning,” he said, as new red icons flashed up on the display. The Atlantic Fleet, he saw through a haze of disbelief, had just lost contact with the Ronald Reagan . A space-based weapon — a kinetic energy weapon — could have sunk the massive carrier within seconds. “Sir, the aliens fired on the space station…”

“The satellite network is failing, sir,” one of the technicians shouted, into the silence. “All satellites; civilian, military… ours, the Russians, everyone… they’re going down!”

The display altered as, one by one, the satellites started to wink out of existence. The entire network of radars and observatories was falling apart as powerful radars were targeted from orbit and destroyed, but enough remained to show the alien craft as they encircled the Earth, firing constantly down on the surface of the planet. Radars that could track billiard balls in orbit had no problem tracking the precisely targeted kinetic energy weapons — they couldn’t be anything else — as they slashed down and destroyed their targets. Bases, airports, ships… all were being targeted and destroyed.

”Mr President,” General Hastings reported. “We have to engage the enemy!”

“We have to get the President out of here,” Deborah snapped. Her face had tightened sharply. “They might go for Washington next!”

“It has to be a mistake,” Spencer babbled. “They… they can’t do this to us!”

“It’s happening,” General Hastings growled. “Mr President, do I have your permission to engage the enemy before we lose everything?”

The President seemed to stagger inwardly. “Yes,” he said, shaking his head hopelessly. Paul realised, with a sudden moment of fear, that the President was almost beyond his limits. He couldn’t deal with the steady destruction of America. “General, hit them. Hit them hard!”