Christopher Nuttall - Invasion

“There,” he snapped, as the first shape appeared. It was an ominous shape, even though part of him admired the design, and the flexibility it gave the alien leaders. The Americans had knocked down bridges across Texas, but the aliens had just crossed the rivers like hovercraft, which he supposed they were. They were very suitable for intimidating civilians, but against American tanks… they were about to get a surprise. “Load antitank, prepare to fire!”

“Loaded, sir,” the gunner said. The laser targeting system had the enemy tank perfectly targeted. The alien driver was bringing has vehicle around with terrifying speed, far faster than his tank could move, but it wouldn’t save them. “Ready to fire…”

“Fire,” McCoy barked. The tank shook as it fired the shell towards the alien vehicle. A moment later, they were rewarded by a billowing fireball consuming the alien craft and it’s crew. A second alien tank appeared, and then a third, turning to face the Americans. The other tanks in the force were firing now, as well, with the aliens caught out of place. The aliens lost seven tanks before the remainder could start to return fire…

But when they did, it was effective. McCoy had taken part in the invasion of Iraq and he’d come face to face with a group of Iraqi tanks that should have made mincemeat of his entire force, but instead their shells had bounced off the Abrams, while they themselves were ripped apart by the American vehicles. The aliens, on the other hand, were quite capable of destroying the American tanks and when they hit, they destroyed. Losses, now, were going to be about even.

God bless the infantry , he thought, as they engaged the alien tanks with Javelins. The aliens had to know that they’d been caught out of place and that retreat would be the best option, but the tankers had been warned not to allow a single vehicle to survive, if they had a choice. The higher-ups believed that the aliens had no way of getting a resupply from their homeworld, wherever the hell it was, and any destroyed vehicle, they lost permanently. One by one, the alien craft were destroyed and he drove forward, onto what had once been a training camp for scouts or something. A hail of high-explosive shells finished off the remains of the alien positions, leaving the entire camp in flaming ruins…

“Call in,” he ordered. They couldn’t use their radios, but now they’d managed to get a new network of field telephones set up, they could communicate with HQ. “Tell them that…”

Something moved across the sky. He had barely a second to realise what it was before the KEW came down a bare meter from Heavy Messing . There was nothing left of the tank, or of its crew.

“They’re getting slaughtered out there,” the aide said, in growing dismay. The first parts of the assault had worked so well, but now… now, the aliens were counter-attacking and they’d moved up more orbital bombardment platforms. The passive sensors, tuned to detect alien radar sweeps, were warning that they were deploying more space-based radars… and, in slow inevitable motion, the armoured forces were being destroyed. “Sir…”

General Ridgley closed his eyes. “Call them off,” he ordered, and knew that the aliens wouldn’t let it go. They’d known more about their operations than he’d realised; they’d picked off, almost casually, several bases they weren’t supposed to know about, including the dummy ones. They hadn’t used dummy weapons either. “Call them all off and terminate the offensive.”

It hadn’t been a complete loss, he knew, as the further reports came in. They had hurt the aliens, sometimes badly, and they had managed to get a few thousand civilians out of the firing line, but overall… they had lost. The aliens had managed to make the red zone completely impregnable, as long as they retained their command of space, and yet… getting at the aliens in space seemed impossible. Perhaps the captured ship would provide some clues, or maybe… maybe, they had lost. Maybe it was the end.

“Get the post-battle reports in as soon as you can,” he ordered, finally. “Once everyone is debriefed, we can decide what to do next.”

The President looked a broken man. “Operation Lone Star failed,” General Hastings admitted. “I take full responsibility and…”

“Enough of that,” the President said, bitterly. The guilt in his voice made the listeners shiver. “I ordered the attack, after all. What happened?”

“They kicked our asses,” General Hastings said. “We had some successes, but once they brought up more parasite ships, they pounded everything of ours that they could see. I don’t think that there’s an active tank left in Texas or the surrounding states. The insurgents hurt them worst, but without our support, the aliens gave them a beating as well.”

The President didn’t want to ask, but there was no choice. “How many dead?”

General Hastings hesitated. “Around two to three hundred thousand,” he admitted, reluctantly. The President blanched. America hadn’t taken so many losses in a single battle since… well, ever. “We massed every fighting man we could who wasn’t needed elsewhere, with all of the armour and supporting units that we could muster, and deployed them against the aliens. The assault failed. The figure might be too high, Mr President; the guards at the border have been discovering hundreds of stragglers trying to make their way out of the red zone.”

“Thank you,” the President said. He looked over at Paul. “We caught some prisoners, right?”

Paul winced inwardly. The President sounded as if he were coming apart. “Yes, Mr President,” he said. “We took eight prisoners alive. We had a ninth prisoner, but he died on us while the medics were trying to save his life. We’re still not sure why. Two of them speak English and are talking to us, the remaining six don’t speak English…”

“Unless they’re playing possum,” Deborah growled. Paul had to admit that she had a point. They knew so little about the aliens, let alone the difference between real illness and faking it. The doctors would certainly refuse to try drugging the aliens with human truth drugs. “What sort of information are we getting from them at the moment?”

Paul frowned. “They’re still a little in shock,” he said. “The two females — those are the ones who speak English — are rather stunned by being captured. One of them seems to be a researcher into humanity; the other… we’re not sure what her role is, yet. The males appear to have been their escort.”

“Find out what they know,” the President ordered. Paul suspected that the aliens would know very little that was tactically useful, but the President was right; they had to find out what the aliens had in mind. “If only what will happen now.”

“They’ll attack northwards,” General Hastings said. “There’s fuck-all left to oppose them now, apart from the militias and the survivalists. It’s going to take weeks to rebuild the shattered force from the survivors. They knew we’re weak, so they might come after us…”

“Then we have to go nuclear, now,” Deborah said, firmly. “What other choice, young man, do we have?”

Paul had no answer.

“Find one,” the President ordered. “Do whatever you have to do.”

He left the room, a broken man.

Ambassador Philippe Laroche tried to remain calm as the F-15 raced over the Atlantic Ocean towards Europe — and France. The American fighter might be the first aircraft since the invasion had begun to actually fly over the sea; the aliens had picked off every aircraft that had been in flight since the war began and then tried to keep the remainder of the human aircraft firmly grounded. No one dared to fly, he’d been told, apart from very short trips, although there were plenty of American daredevils willing to risk sudden death from above in making flights across America. The death rate was apparently high; a handful of people who’d tried to fly into the alien-controlled red zone had disappeared without trace.