Christopher Nuttall - Invasion

“But some of them want to impeach the President,” Ovitz continued. “They think that he is not living up to the role.”

“They say that in every war,” Deborah said, angrily. She had a sneaking suspicion — more than a suspicion — about who was behind it. “Did any of them seriously believe in aliens before we detected the mothership?”

“Jacqueline probably did,” Ovitz said, wryly. “They want the President to get rid of the aliens, post haste.”

Deborah thought fast. It was hard to tell what was really an impeachable offence; generally, it was whatever Congress thought it was. Every President since Nixon had faced the possibility of impeachment, although proceedings hadn’t always gotten underway. It was used more as a club to beat the President with rather than a serious threat. They didn’t have a case… but if they were angry enough, they might be able to impeach the President anyway.

“And how much better would anyone else do?”

“They just think that someone else could do a better job,” Ovitz said.

“That’s what always happens,” Deborah said, frustrated. “We have a war… people start second-guessing the President and the Government. We should be doing this, no, we should be doing that, no, we should never have done that, yes, we should have bombed there instead…”

She leaned forward, genuinely angry. “The President cannot fix the country with a wave of his hand,” she snapped. “No one can do that!”

Ovitz smiled. “You don’t think that the President should be held as accountable as everyone else?”

“You think that merely sitting in the White House confers omnipotence?”

“There have been Presidents who have believed that,” Ovitz countered.

“They were morons,” Deborah snapped. Her voice grew sharper. “The President might be the most powerful person — the most powerful human — in the world, but he was always far from omnipotent. He had power and leverage, but using half of that power would only make the situation much worse. The entire world system was based on America and damaging it would have damaged America.”

Ovitz smiled. “Are we better off now?”

“I doubt the dead or unemployed would agree,” Deborah said. Millions had died in the war and millions more were completely out of work. “We cannot be anything, but sneaky now, if we want to win.”

“All we have is an insane plan that might fail… and fail badly enough to convince the aliens to wipe us out,” Ovitz grumbled. “What happens if that fails?”

“It’s the best plan we have,” Deborah said. “Failure remains a possibility, but… what choice do we have?”

“If the plan fails, and the country suffers, we will move for impeachment,” Ovitz warned. “The country is on the verge of collapse. New blood is needed.”

“Well, you’ve been in politics for nearly forty years, so you don’t count,” Deborah snapped, standing up sharply. “If it fails, I dare say that the best the new government could do is get a slightly better deal out of the aliens. Good day, sir!”

“You’ve looked better,” Ambassador Francis Prachthauser said, as he was shown into the President’s private room. He hadn’t seen the President for nearly a month and was shocked by the changes. The President looked to be permanently on the verge of a stroke, or a heart attack. “Have you been eating properly?”

“You’re my Ambassador and Special Representative, not my mother,” the President said. He sounded as if he was amused, but his voice was as thin as tearing paper. “I have been eating enough food to feed a mouse, all very bad for me, of course.”

“Of course,” Francis agreed, genuinely concerned. The President was the best looked after person in the world, but there was nothing the staff could do about the real problem. The only plan they had was halfway insane. He’d finally secured permission to brief a handful of non-Americans, but it had only made it clear just how insane the plan actually was. “You need a break.”

The President snorted. “Yes, I suppose I could go to Camp David and have a month away from the stress of government,” he said. He laughed harshly. “A year ago, a crisis could be handled with proper reflection and I could take hours to decide what to do. Now… if I don’t react at once, the crisis will just get worse… and the entire country has a knife to its throat, while I’m stuck in this bunker.”

He paused. “Do you know how many plots there have been to kill me?”

Francis blinked. “Mr President?”

“The Secret Service and FBI broke up several,” the President said. He smiled thinly at Francis, who could only stare at him. Plots against the President were hardly unknown, but in times of war? “They didn’t know about the bunker, but the White House got attacked twice by people who blamed me for the invasion and everything else. The Senate blames me for their loss of influence, the rest of the world thinks that I should have deployed some super-secret weapon system that only exists in the imagination of a science-fiction author and blown the aliens out of space and the aliens… the aliens want me dead. At least they’re honest about it.”

He sat up suddenly. “But enough of that,” he added. Bright eyes focused directly on Francis. “What news do you have for me?”

Francis felt almost relieved. The President wasn’t as far gone as he’d feared. “The French, Germans, British and Russians are onboard,” he said. The President looked relieved. The absence of any one of them would have made the plan much harder. “They’re convinced that the plan is absolutely crazy, but they don’t have any other option, although they drove a hard bargain and demanded the plans for the shuttles.”

“Not such a bad move,” the President said, dryly. He seemed to be considering events properly again, even if there was a morbid note to his thoughts. “If America gets scorched from end to end because of this, they’re going to have to try it next.”

“If they can,” Francis warned. “Europe’s been pretty much coordinating the insurgency in the Middle East, as far as anyone can, with weapons, aid and even commando units, hitting the aliens as hard as possible. They have plenty of young Muslim men who want to fight in a jihad and they’re shipping them in by the boatload. Now that North Africa is under alien control, it’s a lot easier to slip in weapons and supplies, and there were a lot on the ground anyway. Someone actually managed to fire a string of Scuds directly at an alien base… and actually got one of them down to the ground.”

The President laughed. “How did they manage that?”

“The Egyptians had designed them to break through Israel’s defences and they were configured to confuse any defences,” Francis explained. “All, but one of them got shot down, but the one that landed packed enough punch to really ruin their day.”

He scowled. “The bad news is that most chemical weapons don’t seem to work on them either,” he added. “The Libyans managed to deploy some chemical weapons they didn’t have — officially — and drenched the aliens in some, but no apparent effect. It could be just their masks, but the scientists in Europe are wondering if their biology is so different from ours that nothing designed for us affects them.”

“That was our conclusion,” the President said. “Overall, how are the Europeans with the plan?”

“They need a month to finish their preparations,” Francis said. “That said, once the weapons are set up and ready, they could move at a moment’s notice. Coordinated action is our only hope for any victory and they all understand that. Now that we have the new communications links set up, we’ll have the submarines in position and ready to act.”