Christopher Nuttall - Invasion

Anything less like a small group of soldiers would be hard to imagine. The four men rode on a set of six camels, using two of them to carry their baggage as they travelled across the desert, navigating by the stars. They wore Bedouin outfits, concealing most of their faces from the handful of others they encountered as they travelled east, ignored or sneered at by the inhabitants of the small villages they visited. A handful of villages were blackened ruins, the sight of a brief struggle against the alien infidels who had violated the Holy Land, but they passed on without pause. Their target was further to the east.

Sergeant Sean Gartlan peered into the heat haze as they kept moving. His face was tanned and slightly tinted, but he couldn’t have passed for an Arab for long, even though he spoke Arabic like a native. The three Corporals with him were even less Arabic, but as long as they kept their faces hidden, they should be fine. The locals tended to treat the wandering Bedouin with a mixture of awe — they travelled the desert, like their ancestors had once done — and contempt. The townspeople often disliked the wanderers, which actually provided the small SAS squad with a surprisingly effective cover. Once button-holed, it was easy for observers to miss important and yet vital details, such as the fact they were a tiny party. Sean had been careful to assure anyone who asked too many questions that they were merely on a wandering pilgrimage, but a quick check of their saddlebags would have revealed the weapons and ammunition. Openly, they carried AK-47s, enough to prevent robbery — particularly when they had nothing, not even women, with them — but the saddlebags contained more advanced weapons than simple tribesmen should possess.

It might not make a difference, Sean reflected. He’d served in Iraq and Afghanistan and he’d seen an astonishing variety of weapons in the hands of the enemy, from American-built M16s to Chinese-built knock-offs of Russian antitank weapons. There had even been a man in Afghanistan who’d possessed an intact Stinger from the war against the Soviets, one that he had never dared use, because it would have knocked his status down from Big Man to a lower level. The weapon, once it had been confiscated, had been so corroded that anyone using it would be lucky if they didn’t blow themselves to bits. Very few of the supporting aircraft had ever had to face a Stinger from that particular war, although some of them had had to face ore modern weapons, smuggled into the country for the insurgency. It was quite possible that anyone who searched them would think that there was nothing odd in their arsenal.

But of course that can’t be allowed , Sean thought, as they moved on. Navigating by dead reckoning wasn’t easy, but in some ways, he almost felt freer. There were no longer any satellite phones or radios that could be used by senior commanders to issue orders while watching over his shoulder, or to suddenly change the rules of engagement at exactly the wrong time. They were completely on their own… and, if they ran into thieves, would have to kill them or escape. They couldn’t lose their weapons, not before they’d used them on the aliens.

He scowled. The aliens, it was well known, used a space-based radar system to track everything that moved on the ground — and, if they didn’t like the cut of its jib, to blast it with a KEW from orbit. In theory, they could pick off an individual human, let alone their vehicles, but the American reports from Texas showed that only large masses of vehicles, or obviously military units, drew fire. They could have taken a jeep from one of the Jordanian military units that were trying to hide out in the desert — and had probably been ignored because they were more of a danger to each other than to the aliens — and driven down into Saudi, but that was too much of a risk. The aliens worked hard to shut down most human transport and an individual jeep might have attracted attention. No, they had to rely on the camels, even though they were mangy beasts.

A faint whistle from behind him caught his ear and he frowned, one hand falling to the AK-47 as he searched the horizon for threats. The remains of the Saudi Army, he’d been told, were cowering in the desert… but the reports were at least two weeks out of date. The aliens had probably rounded them all up by now. He saw, moving quicker than he had imagined, a line of vehicles buzzing across the sand, heading for the small village they’d passed through a couple of days ago. They came closer and closer, close enough to spook the animals, but didn’t seem inclined to stop and chat to the humans. Instead, they just kept moving…

It was the first time he’d seen the aliens close up and he was fascinated. Their vehicles didn’t look that different to human vehicles, but they floated on a cushion of air, rather than tracks. Judging by the way the sand moved and swirled around them, they were probably immune from sand getting into the engines as well, which made them even more deadly in the desert. Sean had done a few months with Arabic forces and, apart from the Iraqis, they tended not to worry about actually maintaining their engines and vehicles. They’d been defeated a long time before the aliens had landed… and they’d done it mainly to themselves.

The aliens themselves were the black-clad figures he’d seen in the webcasts from Texas, but there was an indefinable air of wrongness about them, even standing at their guns and ready to blast them if they had even looked like a threat. The images he’d seen hadn’t — they couldn’t — conveyed their alien nature; they’d gone, in a second, from men in suits to a genuine alien threat. He felt sweat trickling down his spine as they accelerated past the camels and their riders, heading onwards towards their destination… and leaving them in the dust of their passing.

Corporal Loomis spoke for them all. “Well, fuck me, sir.”

“Perhaps not,” Sean said, trying to get the image of the aliens out of his head. “I suppose if I spent longer than a few weeks in this women-less country you might start looking attractive.”

They bantered back and forth for a few minutes, before they sank back into thought. Sean, in particular, thought about his adopted father… and how he would react to the aliens. His mother had lost her first husband at an early age, four years after Sean had been born, and he’d grown up without a male role model. He’d run rampant across Birmingham, completely out of control, until his mother had married again, this time to a former Royal Marine who’d fought in the Falklands War. Sean hadn’t been impressed and had made the mistake of mouthing off to his new father, who had challenged him to a fight, beaten him with ease — he’d never had a serious opponent before — and informed him flatly that he was going to be brought up properly, or else. It had turned Sean’s life around and he’d actually scraped through school with some qualifications, but in some ways he’d remained a rebel. Instead of signing up with the Royal Marines, he’d become an infantryman… and then passed the dreaded SAS Selection course. His father — he couldn’t really remember his real father — had fought humans, not… aliens. What would he have thought of the mission?

He would want me to do my duty , Sean thought, as they found the hide. The Americans had sworn blind that it would be where they’d said, but it wouldn’t be the first time that American intelligence had been lacking, with even the best will in the world. The SAS team managed to enter the tiny underground bunker, sort out their equipment, and catch some rest. Having pitched their tents near the bunker, they looked — as always — like natives.