Christopher Nuttall - Invasion

He’d barely listened to the pilot’s occasional chatter, lost in his own thoughts. The American assault on the aliens had failed — and badly. The loss of so many American soldiers and their equipment was going to have a serious effect on their ability to continue fighting. At worst, it might even prove fatal. The aliens would, everyone expected, start expanding the red zone soon… and there was very little to stand in their way, but partisan resistance. They’d done something that no one had done for a very long time and beaten an American army in the field.

And, by doing so, they had scared hell out of the rest of the world.

The flight from Washington to France had been carefully planned, but the F-15 was on its last legs when it finally started to descend over France, towards a little airfield in the west. The French Air Force, like almost every other air force in the world, had taken a beating and lost all of its tankers, leaving the American fighter completely dependent on its drop tanks for the flight. If the aliens had engaged them, despite the message informing them that one of the ambassadors was going to convey their message to his government, no one would ever have known what had happened to the aircraft. They would have been lost somewhere over the Atlantic. According to the pilot, the aliens had not only taken out the satellites, but most of the beacons as well, leaving him to compute their course by dead reckoning. Philippe could only hope that he was being teased; the thought of losing their course somewhere in the cold waters and vanishing wasn’t a pleasant one.

“There’s the airfield,” the pilot said, suddenly, breaking into his thoughts. “We’ll have you down on the ground in a moment.”

France looked dark from high above. Like Britain — they’d flown over the south coast of Britain — the cities, towns and villages looked dark, the power permanently out. The aliens might not have invaded, but with a few hundred carefully-targeted projectiles, they’d brought Europe to a standstill. From what he’d seen on the Internet, or what was left of it, railways, motorways and power stations had all been destroyed, crippling Europe. The shortage of power and fuel meant that the continent would have a very cold winter… assuming, of course, that they lived through the summer. They might not have invaded Europe, but they’d caused quite enough devastation, simply by closing down most of the transport network.

The F-15 touched down on the tarmac and screeched to a halt. A set of ground crewmen appeared at once and helped them move the aircraft into a small hanger, one that would have normally held a private business jet or two. Once inside, they began the task of preparing the aircraft for its return flight, while helping the pilot to a bunk and providing him with a good meal. Philippe almost envied him; while the pilot was eating, drinking, and sleeping, Philippe would be reporting to the President of France himself. It wasn’t a meeting he was looking forward to having.

“Mr Ambassador?”

Philippe nodded. “That’s me,” he said, too tired to say anything else. “I trust that transport is laid on?”

“Yes, sir,” the army Captain said. “If you’d like to follow me?”

Transport, as it turned out, was a black security car, armoured against all reasonable contingencies. It was soft and sinfully comfortable inside, so Philippe leaned back and started to doze while the car, and its military escort, drove off into the night. He awoke when the car entered Paris and looked around, unable to believe the change. French paratroopers were patrolling the city, their weapons and equipment in full view, and armoured vehicles were everywhere. It looked like he was driving though one of the more unstable countries in the world, not France; he wondered, despite himself, if someone had tried a coup or uprising or something. France had changed… and, he decided, not in a good way.

There weren’t as many destroyed buildings in the centre of the city, but it wasn’t a surprise when the car was rerouted to a secured building, rather than the more normal residence. Philippe was escorted out of the car, where his papers were checked by a tough-looking paratrooper who examined every line carefully, and helped into the building, where he was shown to a room. A change of clothes sat on the bed, so he showered, got dressed, and almost felt human again. That, given the nature of the war, was a profound irony. He skimmed quickly through the television channels, but, unsurprisingly, there was nothing on at all. The aliens had shut that down as well.

That probably did us a world of good , he thought, in a moment of humour. He had never been a big fan of watching everything on the television, regarding most of it as trash. There had once been a big campaign to have American trash removed from French television, but in his view they had merely replaced American trash with French trash. Politics was so much more interesting if you had the insider view, but the newsreaders and talking heads could suck the excitement and real news out of anything. When the escort arrived, again, he went with them quite willingly.

“Welcome back to Earth,” the French President said, as soon as he was shown into the small meeting room. They were alone, without even an aide or one of the President’s many mistresses. President LePic had had more than his fair share of scandal. “I trust that you had a pleasant journey?”

Philippe bit down the comment that came to mind and started to talk, carefully outlining everything that had happened from the moment the aliens had opened fire to the failure of Operation Lone Star. The President listened carefully, asking a handful of questions from time to time, while looking almost vague and uninterested. Philippe wasn’t fooled; LePic was known for looking unconcerned… until he revealed that he had been thinking hard all along. Governing France wasn’t an easy task and even knowing, as he did, where many of the bodies were buried, it wasn’t a task for a weak man.

“And so they’ve come for us all,” LePic said, finally. “Some of my advisors believe that they only wanted to attack the Americans and don’t intend to attack us.”

“No,” Philippe said, flatly. LePic was testing him, pushing forward a viewpoint that might have been shared by advisors, or perhaps his own. “They picked on the Americans, we think, because the Americans were the greatest — well, certainly the most powerful — nation on Earth. Having beaten the Americans, they will use the time they’ve won to come for us. We have to prepare for them landing here.”

LePic frowned. “You may not have kept up on the news from home,” he said, dryly. “The economy collapsed days after the aliens opened fire. Millions of Frenchmen are now on the streets, despite the… legal difficulties in firing so many at once. Millions more have decided to blame their problems on the Arabs, who in turn blame their problems on us. We’re this close” — he held up a finger and thump — “to outright civil war.”

Philippe winced. Summers in France were often marked by civil unrest. He hadn’t even realised how badly the French economy, indeed, that of the remainder of the European Union, would have been hit by the invasion. The United States had been hit hard as well, but it had been distracted by a landing and, in any case, it was much larger. The Americans might manage to hold on, barely, but he wasn’t sure that France could survive without major upheaval.

And that was an irony. LePic had been the most determined person in France to tackle the country’s problems. It hadn’t been easy to start breaking down some of the labour laws, but he’d been succeeding, barely. Now millions were out of work as companies folded, one by one, and without the high military presence, France would probably have seen more riots by now. The government was getting blamed, but truthfully… the aliens had caused the nightmare, and the aliens were untouchable.