Inside, warriors and a handful of priests waited nervously for the landing. They were, they knew, almost helpless as long as they were in their craft. The natives of the world below had expended most of their weapons that were capable of reaching orbit, but the lower the landing craft came, the more likely it was that they would enter the engagement range of previously unseen weapons, ones designed to engage aircraft rather than spacecraft. The landing craft were completely beyond their ability to stealth; the heat of their entry into the atmosphere alone would provide a perfect target for enemy fire. Some of them prayed, as soldiers had done throughout history, others just waited for the landing and the coming fight. As the first to set foot on the alien world, they could expect vast estates and fame… if they survived.
A handful reviewed what little data was known about the aliens. It was a matter of policy that few warriors would know the alien language, but those that did would have to be in the front lines, in hopes of convincing the aliens — the humans — to surrender without a fight. Few believed that would happen. They’d studied their own history extensively and the Truth had been resisted, constantly, by every breed on their homeworld and every other race they’d encountered. The Unification Wars alone had cost millions of lives, even though it had bred a planetary unity and a determination never to risk extinction again. Earth would become another settled world. It had been written.
And it would be done.
Dawn was breaking as Joshua awoke from his bed and climbed blearily into the shower. Austin had been luckier than some other cities; the power and water supplies had remained on, even four days after the aliens had attacked the planet. The shower wasn’t quite as reassuring as it had once been — and it had a nasty habit of suddenly running cold in the middle of a hot downpour — but it was enough to shock him awake. He climbed out of the shower, dressed rapidly in his standard working clothes, and retrieved the gun from under his pillow. It still seemed to be working.
He scowled down at the weapon and winced. He knew almost nothing about guns. The gun nut who lived on the fifth floor had given it to him, along with a handful of clips, but Joshua had tuned out the lecture on how the gun worked, past the basics. He could take off the safety, fire and reload, but past that… he didn’t even know what type of gun it was. It didn’t give him a feeling of inflated self-esteem, either; he’d almost been disappointed when he’d brandished it for the first time. He wouldn’t have taken the weapon, at all, except for the fact that Austin was clearly a city on the edge; the residents of the apartment had been pushed into banding together to keep themselves alive.
Coffee, he thought, and staggered out the door and down to the next flat. It had never been occupied, or at least it had never been occupied since Joshua had moved in, and it had become the communal kitchen, despite some dark mutterings about creeping communism. Between the thirty men, women and children who lived in the apartment block, they’d amassed quite a surprising amount of food and equipment, including campfire stoves and other camping gear. If the power failed completely, which Joshua suspected was likely to happen sooner or later, they would be still capable of boiling water and cooking their food. The whole arrangement worked on trust and while Joshua would have scoffed before the war, now he was amazed by how well it was working out.
As long as the food holds out, he thought, sourly. Sally Adair, who had been appointed official coffee maker, poured him a cup without even being asked. Joshua didn’t know who’d thought of electing a twelve-year-old girl as coffee-maker, but he had to admit that it had been devious; somehow, trying to cajole or steal more coffee out of her was impossible. Their father had been making daily trips to the bank, trying to build up a supply of dollars, but Joshua suspected that it wouldn’t be much use. The President might have restricted withdrawals to three hundred dollars a day, something that would have been unthinkable a month ago, but dollars were becoming less and less useful. In time, Mr Adair might even find himself faced with his cash becoming useless and the other thing he had to trade would be his daughters…
Joshua shook his head, hoping to banish the image, and took a seat in the corner. Sally got very irritated when people took her coffee mugs away and didn’t return them. The city was slowly being eaten out of food and drink… and when it ran out completely, all hell was going to break loose. A city the size of Austin, which had a population of nearly eight hundred thousand inhabitants, consumed an astonishing amount of food and drink… and while there had been stockpiles, they were being distributed out to the public in hopes of preventing a panic. The Governor had tried to make hording illegal, but as a law, it was about as unenforceable as the laws against copying CDs and putting them on the internet. There had been a couple of cases where the police had met with armed resistance to their plans to distribute some of the larger private stockpiles and the entire city was on edge. The damage to the infrastructure surrounding the city meant that incoming food was going to be reduced… and, when the city dwellers worked that out, there was going to be panic.
He took another sip of his coffee and shivered. The entire global infrastructure, according to the internet, had been completely knocked down by the aliens. Ships were being sunk, more or less at random… and international banking had been destroyed. America didn’t import much in the way of food — in contrast to Japan, which did and therefore would be on the verge of starvation within a week — but everything else that was imported would be… delayed. Chinese steel, Japanese electronics… everything that came from overseas would now never come, while the internal transport network had been shot to hell. No wonder the Governor had thousands of policemen and National Guardsmen patrolling the city; it wouldn’t be too long until the social order started to collapse completely.
Sally called over to him as two more people entered the room. “Good coffee?”
“Yes, thank you,” Joshua replied, placing the cup in the sink and earning a dirty look. It was the work of a moment to clean the cup and place it neatly on the side for someone else to use. He was supposed to be on the guard shift in an hour — so far, no one had tried to break into the apartment, but they all knew that it was just a matter of time — but until then, he had to return to his apartment and start logging into the internet. It wasn’t what it had been before the war… but then, what had?
The thought stayed with him as he walked back to his apartment. America looked the same on the surface, but the entire country had taken a beating. Television was almost completely off the air, apart from a handful of minor channels, and radio was… erratic. Kids had to play with their friends now, rather than watching television all the time, and older children had to grow up fast. Schools and colleges had been cancelled for the moment and most parents were trying to keep their kids off the streets. People were pulling together, with or without help from the feds… but Austin was one of the lucky cities. If the radio or internet was to be believed, Detroit was on the verge of restarting the civil war.
A roar of thunder passed high overhead. He cringed, remembering, deep inside, the silent skies after 9/11. There hadn’t been any aircraft in the skies since the aliens had arrived — the internet claimed that they were all blasted out of the sky by the aliens from orbit — and the sudden change shocked him. A series of thunderclaps followed, the entire building shaking with their impact, and he felt himself stagger. He heard the sound of smashing china below him, back in the kitchen, but ignored it. He had to get to the roof! The elevator had been marked as untrustworthy since long before the invasion, but he could still take the stairs. He ran up them, passing others coming out of their apartments, half of them holding guns as if they believed the aliens were coming down right on their heads… and burst onto the roof.