Christopher Nuttall - Invasion

“Good,” Philippe said. They’d improved their targeting, he saw; logically, they’d picked up plenty of intelligence from Texas. He would have blamed the Americans if anyone had seriously considered the dangers of a copy of some encyclopaedia falling into alien hands. The human race hadn’t even known that there were aliens three months ago. The fighting in the Middle East had probably provided them with more intelligence… and one hell of an economic club to beat the Europeans with. “Where are we going then?”

“Round here,” the driver said, and drove back down the river. Philippe watched in amusement as a line of demonstrators passed them, their placards calling for military support to free Mecca from the aliens. The irony almost made him laugh; years ago, they would have been complaining about western military forces in the Middle East… and now they wanted them to get back in. There had been similar protests in France, but they’d been banned there, mainly because of the prospects for violence. He was rather surprised that the British hadn’t done the same. “Simon wanted you to see the remains of Ten Downing Street first.”

“Oh,” Philippe said. The aliens didn’t make a habit of bombing individual cars, but if there were so few in London these days, would they try to pick him off just to see if they got someone important? Their targeting, as far as Europe was concerned, was almost random… apart from Rome. The destruction of the city had concentrated more than a few minds. “Next time, I’ll show him the ruins of the Eiffel Tower.”

The car slid into an underground parking lot and came to a halt. Two men dressed in simple black suits, but moving in a style that suggested that they were actually very dangerous men, came up to it and opened the door, inviting Philippe out into the open air. They checked his face against a file, ran his ID card through a scanner, and then beckoned him to follow them through a heavy door and into a elevator lobby. There was no music as the elevator slowly descended; no one spoke until it reached the bottom, where the doors opened, revealing a single man dressed in a suit.

“Welcome to the Vault,” he said, shaking Philippe’s hand. “If you’ll come with me, they’re just getting ready for you.”

The Vault was functional, but surprisingly cosy for a glorified fallout shelter, one that the general British public probably didn’t even know existed. Philippe had read classified briefing papers that warned that London was honey-combed with Cold War bunkers, classified research labs and other surprises, but he’d never been invited into a functional installation before. The cold air helped to sharpen his mind as the civil servant showed him into a simple meeting room. He looked around and smiled in sudden recognition; Ambassador Francis Prachthauser, his former comrade onboard the alien starship, was standing there waiting for him.

“Francis,” he said, in delight. The former Ambassador looked older than he remembered; his country had been torn apart by alien forces. France’s problems had been relatively minor compared to that. “How have you been?”

“I survive, Mr Ambassador,” Francis said, returning the handshake. “I assume that you know Prime Minister Thompson?”

The British Prime Minister had something of the same air as the French President, the sense that no matter what happened, or what orders he gave, the country was going to go through a very bad patch. He was shorter than Philippe remembered, dignified enough to pass for an aristocrat, and yet there was more white in his hair than there had been a year before, when they’d last met.

“Charmed,” Philippe said, as they shook hands. “By the by, it’s Special Representative of the President these days.”

“The same with me,” Francis returned. “The President has had me going around the world and trying to drum up support for the war. It’s not easy, I fear; I wish that Li had survived. The Chinese are in two minds about everything and desperately short of oil. If the aliens offer to help them to recover Taiwan, they might seriously consider joining their side… and I don’t know what the Russians are planning. They’re a riddle wrapped inside an enigma wrapped inside a mystery.”

”I think that’s a misquote,” Philippe said, more to conceal his own concern than anything else. He’d visited most of the European countries in the past month, trying to keep some semblance of the alliance apart, but the Russians had been completely non-committal. “I’m surprised to see you here, but… damn, it’s good to see you again.”

“We were asked to keep that detail to ourselves,” Thompson said, as he took his own seat. “The Ambassador has a request for us.”

Philippe lifted an eyebrow. “A request?”

“A request,” Francis confirmed. “We are formally requesting your support under the NATO treaty.”

Philippe frowned, inwardly. The NATO treaty had, before the invasion, either been alive or a dead duck, depending on whom you asked. The disputes over Iraq and the War on Terror had hampered French willingness to send forces to join American wars — even though most French politicians had known that they were French wars as well — and, politically, selling any sort of aid to America to the people would be tricky. There were also practical problems as well…

“I understand your request,” he said, finally. He did understand, but how could they help? “You do know that we can’t send an army to America?”

Francis nodded. Even if a fully-prepared and deployable force was ready, even if the Americans would welcome a French force on their soil, even if the shipping and transport capability existed, even if the French Army wasn’t required at home… the aliens would still simply sink the transport fleet from orbit. The French Navy was in tatters these days, with almost every major unit sunk from orbit, and there was no way that the remaining combined European forces could provide cover. The aliens would simply wait until the transports were in the mid-Atlantic, sink every one of them, and in doing so, win a free victory. Thousands of soldiers would die without even a hope of taking an enemy soldier with them.

“That’s not what we need,” he said. “I assume that you’ve been following the events in America?”

“Yes,” Philippe said, flatly.

“We have been having some success with shipping in Special Forces and other units into the Red Zone — alien-occupied territory — and using them to harass the aliens,” Francis said. “That’s hardly a secret, but you must understand that almost all of our capability for doing that — mounting strikes against isolated alien units, destroying infrastructure, contaminating electronic systems and so on — is tied up in that war. We had several thousand troops left in Iraq, but most of them were scattered or slaughtered by the aliens when they invaded.”

“A handful did manage to get out,” Thompson injected. “They got to Europe and were shipped to one of the bases here.”

“We need to set the Middle East ablaze, to tie them down,” Francis said. “We’re asking you to concentrate on doing just that.”

“You want us to send supplies to the Middle East?” Philippe asked. “If we do that, most of the supplies will end up being pointed at us instead.”

“We don’t just need supplies, but actual Special Forces units,” Francis said. “We’re cutting loose what we can, but we need most of our special forces at home. The problem is that if the aliens gain undisputed control over the Middle East, either by converting or killing the entire population, they can expand. We have some reason to believe, in fact, that the aliens actually intend to settle there themselves. If they do…”