Christopher Nuttall - Invasion

The small cube-shaped room had, Paul had decided the first time he used it, been designed by a sadist. It was uncomfortable, small enough to induce acute claustrophobia in anyone unlucky enough to stay there overnight and barely habitable. The metal desk, the small computer and the hard chair all spoke of efficiency over comfort, of a mindset that prized business more than happiness. The person responsible had probably been promoted.

He opened the file of alien documents, settled back with a cup of coffee — the only advantage the underground bunker had, as far as he could tell, was that it had excellent coffee — and started to skim through the documents, searching for the important points. The aliens… spoke excellent English, but sometimes their writing and sentence structure looked like Microsoft Word on a bad day. They might have understood English, but they were a long way from learning to compose properly… which still put them ahead of many school graduates. The spellings were a little weird as well — PHONE was spelt F-O-N-E — but it was straightforward to sound out the words and realise what they meant. The aliens had actually provided a surprising amount of data…

The problem was that little of it was of any use. Their history, according to them, had been dark and barren before the Truth had arisen and united their planet in a series of Unification Wars. They hadn’t suffered the collapse of a global empire, or even a serious heretical challenge, if the documents were to be trusted. They had already been reaching into space, in a manner humanity had only dreamed of, and they had started to expand across the stars. The documents were vague on exact timescales, but reading between the lines, Paul had the sense that they’d been expanding for a long time.

They’re burning off resources by sending the surplus population to other worlds , he realised, with a touch of awe. The religion seemed to control everything, having built a fairly stable social structure, but as the society got richer, it would face more internal challenges. Their solution had been to throw resources into building the generation starships that spanned out across the universe, slowly, very slowly, carrying the Truth to hundreds of nearby stars. It was awe-inspiring, humbling… and terrifying. Wherever the aliens came from — and the documents were silent on that point — had been sending out starships for hundreds of years. They could have settled vast reaches of space… while the human race had grubbed around in the dirt.

Hot tears of rage stung his eyes at all the missed opportunities. If the human race had just started serious space exploration, the aliens wouldn’t have stood a chance. Their only hope had been to discover a pre-space world and that had been, effectively, what they’d found. It would be aliens who studied and settled the Solar System, mining the asteroids and gas giants, while humans became their subjects, a slavery that would be sanctioned by a religion that had originated far from Earth. The human race would, indeed, adept to service them. They couldn’t even remember any other religion.

And they claim that there’s a billion of them on their mothership , he thought, angrily. The separated, larger, section of the alien starship had entered a Lagrange Point, waiting for the time when the settlers would be called down to Earth, well out of range of any possible attack. There had been a vague report from the Russians that they’d attacked the aliens in orbit, again, but that had been unconfirmed and the aliens had seemed unworried by the attack, if indeed it had taken place.

He stood up and walked through the corridors, back to the President’s suite. The President had looked better when his friend had returned from orbit, but he wouldn’t be happy to hear the news. When he was finally allowed into the room, he was surprised to see not only the President, but General Hastings and Deborah Ivey as well, briefing the President on Operation Lone Star. The name might have to be changed, he knew, before it was discussed outside the bunker; they could even borrow a trick from the British and pick something completely unrelated to the target. If the aliens figured out that Texas was the Lone Star State, they would know the target of the American attack… and take precautions.

“Colonel,” the President said, sounding almost relieved. He had the task of deciding if Lone Star should be launched or not… and, in the wake of the alien surrender demand, he might have had no choice, but to order the operation. “What have the aliens told us?”

“Quite a bit,” Paul said, and outlined what he’d read. “They seem to be determined to expand everywhere, following their own form of manifest destiny, until they have all of the stars in the galaxy.”

“But that would take them… centuries,” General Hastings protested. “Haven’t they run into someone bigger than them out there?”

“Apparently not,” Paul said. “The documents read like one of those after-action reports Saddam’s people published, ones where they could do no wrong and their enemies made every mistake in the book and were wiped out several times over, so I don’t know how reliable they are, but it all hangs together internally.”

“You mean they could be lying,” the President said. “They could be trying to convince us to surrender based on a bluff.”

“I don’t think that it’s a bluff,” Paul admitted. “Oh, based on what we’ve seen so far, I have to agree that if we can destroy their mothership, we’ve won, at least for a few centuries. Plenty of time to build up our own defences and get a massive force into space ourselves. The problem is that destroying the mothership is not going to be easy.”

“Of course it is,” Deborah said, in a rare moment of humour. “Just take the alien spacecraft at Area 51, fly it up to the mothership, plant a bomb and blow it to hell, then fly back in time for tea. Simple.”

General Hastings scowled at her. “There has never been an alien spacecraft at Area 51,” he said, irritated. The internet had been filled with speculation that there had been sixty years worth of warning of the invasion, during which nothing had been done to prepare for their coming. “Groom Lake was also hit, badly, from orbit and was seriously damaged. Recovery efforts are underway, but it is unlikely that anything there will be able to help us, apart from the lasers.”

The President leaned forward. “Lasers?”

“They’re a key part of Operation Lone Star,” Paul injected. It was something he hadn’t wanted to discuss. “If we can use them as a surprise, the aliens may find that countering our attack becomes much harder.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. They were faced with the task of ordering an attack that might fail… and, in doing so, leave large parts of the country exposed to alien attack. Thousands of American soldiers might die, for nothing. None of them were used to making such decisions and the prospect hypnotised them. Deborah, finally, broke the silence.

“If we lose,” she asked, “what happens to us?”

Paul shivered. “According to the documents, civilians will be brought into the faith, military soldiers will be offered a chance to fight for them, religious leaders will be, at best, jailed and leaders will be killed,” he explained. “They don’t intend to build a new and prosperous state, not like we did when we went into Iraq, but to crush us and completely re-work our society into their image. If they win, existence as we know it is over. At best, we will be their slaves for the rest of time, unless our descendents can organise a revolt. At worst…”

“At worst, they drop an asteroid or fry the planet and kill us all,” General Hastings growled. The frustration in his voice was easy to hear. “It kind of makes you wonder why they haven’t simply threatened us with complete devastation if we don’t surrender.”