Christopher Nuttall - Invasion

He rounded up the men of his company — the only injury had been a soldier who’d accidentally banged his arm against a wall and was hamming it up in fine style, claiming to have been crippled — and they collected their weapons and supplies. One thing they’d learned from the early days had been to keep a close eye on their own weapons, even though Iraq was swimming in weapons, just to prevent further losses to the enemy. He recalled a newly-formed unit that had been thrown into the deep end and collapsed under fire, surrendering all their weapons to the terrorists, and was determined that that wouldn’t happen again. Like most young officers, he had a wife and children… and they would never have any cause to be ashamed of him.

“Back to barracks,” he ordered. “By the left, quick march!”

It still amazed him how many people were willing to wave and cheer as the soldiers marched past, even if they were blocking up the roads. The streets were much safer now then they’d been during the insurgency, back when it had been dangerous for armed men, let alone women and children, and the civilians knew who had cleared the streets. Karim was more than happy to let them cheer, knowing that many young boys would want to become soldiers if they saw the ceremony, and…

He sensed, more than heard, the falling KEW. A blast of light, followed by a massive explosion, rose up from the docks. A second later, the shockwave flashed out across the city, shattering windows and sending glass cascading onto the streets. Men and women, caught under the falling shower, were cut and torn by the glass as it sliced into their skin. A second explosion followed, then a third, sending new explosions billowing into the air. It looked as if they’d hit the military complex outside the city and perhaps the new airfield that had been under construction, smashed it from orbit. An instant later, he heard the thunderclaps of other strikes, hitting targets all over the area.

“The aliens,” the American said. Master Sergeant Robin Brooks was even more experienced than the Iraqis; he’d been in Iraq almost constantly since 2003, barely pausing for leave. Karim expected him to take an Iraqi wife and settle down any day now. “They’re hitting the bases!”

Karim had to agree. The population was starting to panic. “We have to get back to the base,” he snapped, trying to understand what was going on. The docks had been hit… which meant that thousands of Iraqis had just been killed. He couldn’t even understand why they’d hit the docks. “Come on!”

Basra was in ferment as the soldiers quick-timed it through the streets, but the police were starting to restore order, encouraging people to return to their homes. Imams and Mullahs were trying to restore calm as well, although a flood of worshippers had descended on the mosques, seeking guidance and prayer. The sound of alien bombardment was fainter now, drifting through the air, but he suspected that it meant that the aliens were moving their targeting further northwards, towards Baghdad. He wanted to shout at the skies, cursing the aliens for doing so much damage after it had been painstakingly rebuilt, but what was the point? The aliens wouldn’t hear…

The American pointed into the distance. “Look,” he said. “They’re landing!”

Karim knew, just for a moment, what Saddam’s poor soldiers must have felt when they’d seen invincible American tanks heading into Iraq. A line of massive… craft were falling out of the sky, leaving massive trails of light behind them. They looked as if they were coming down to the south, towards the Saudi border, and he found himself hoping that they’d head south into Saudi rather than into Iraq. He’d done enough patrols of the border and arrested enough Saudis trying to sneak into Iraq that he wouldn’t have minded if the aliens invaded and crushed Saudi Arabia. Everyone in Iraq knew that the Saudis were behind all of their torment. One of the best-selling Iraqi books had blamed everything on them, from the American invasion to the insurgency. It had been very popular, largely because everyone wanted someone to blame.

“Shit,” he muttered, as they headed out of the city towards the base. “What have they done to it?”

“Kinetic energy weapon,” Brooks said. The barracks had once held thousands of soldiers. Now, they were flaming debris, those that were left. They’d been designed to stand up to an IED at close range, but the KEW had shattered them with ease. A handful of vehicles survived in the tank shed, but most of them had been destroyed from orbit, caught up in the blasts. The aliens, he was starting to realise, played for keeps. “You’d better try and get in touch with Baghdad.”

Karim barked orders, getting his men to sort out the survivors and treat the wounded, while sending others to hunt for a working communications system. His radio, which should have been powerful enough to reach the next base, was suffering from jamming, while the American-designed satellite communications system was useless in the absence of the satellites. The Iraqis hadn’t realised just how important they’d become until they’d been destroyed by the aliens. An hour passed slowly while he tried to muster some kind of defence… and he realised that while there were over three thousand soldiers left alive, mostly reporting in from Basra, he was the senior officer.

“Send out a scouting unit,” Brooks advised. The aliens had landed somewhere to the south and would probably be advancing against him soon. Judging by the rising columns of smoke from the direction of Kuwait, they were attacking the Kuwaitis first. “Find out what they’re doing and then prepare to counter it.”

There wasn’t much in the way of defences to the south, Karim knew. There had been some reason for it, mainly to show that the new Iraq had nothing, but fraternal feelings towards the Kuwaitis, but it was starting to look like a major oversight. He didn’t have much in the way of armour or supporting vehicles either; if the Americans were to be believed, the aliens could simply pick them off from orbit. His infantrymen could make their stand, but if the aliens came at them, they would probably be slaughtered. As much as he hated to admit it, he was out of his depth and sinking fast.

“Move the antitank teams up to the main road,” he added, after a moment’s thought. The men knew it intimately. The American experience had suggested that the aliens liked using roads, although the terrain was different in Iraq, and they might have a chance to mount an ambush. The aliens were still landing — he could see signs of their massive landing craft falling out of the sky to land somewhere to the south — but he didn’t know what they were doing. The aliens had left him blind and deaf. “I want…”

A green flare burst up in the distance. Without radio, he’d been forced to fall back on a more primitive method of signalling an alien advance, a flare. The aliens were coming up from Kuwait to attack Basra, whereupon they would probably cut the city off and head northwards. He barked orders, ordering most of his men back towards the city; their only hope was to try and hold the city and hope that the Iraqi forces further to the north could muster a counter-attack in time. Somehow, he doubted that they would make it; the aliens had probably dropped all the old and new bridges from orbit. His force was almost completely on its own.

There was a brief skirmish when the aliens engaged the antitank teams, and then they pressed on towards Basra. Karim had found a vantage point along the outskirts of the city, while his men struggled to organise the residents of the city to defend it, watching as Sunni and Shia forgot their traditional hatreds to defend Basra. They’d all see the footage of what had happened in America and there were shrines and mosques aplenty in Basra. He’d had his tanks pulled back to hiding places, but three of them had been picked off from orbit, the alien fire almost vaporising the tanks and their crews. The others had been rapidly abandoned, which might have been the alien plan all along; they probably wanted to force him to abandon some of his firepower. Their UAV-like aircraft buzzed high overhead; two of his men had tried to bring them down with antiaircraft missiles, but the aliens had avoided them neatly.