And the gun nut was out there too. Joshua would have liked to believe that he was just a poser, that he would take one look at the conflict and try to run, but he knew the man better than that. It bothered him, somehow, that he didn’t know the man’s name. Once, he would have enquired for his story, or his hot tips to an editor who could be induced to pay a few hundred dollars for them, but now… now he wanted to know for himself. The man would probably die out there, defending his city… and the least that Joshua could do was remember the man’s damned name.
Another wave of explosions shook the city and then, slowly, the fighting started to die away. Silence fell, gradually, as the defenders were either killed or surrendered. He wondered if the aliens would actually take prisoners — he could still hear the occasional gunshot — and if they did, how they would treat them. It didn’t matter so much, now; they held all of Austin in their hands. Or, he thought with a sudden burst of amusement, they held it in their tentacles instead. He still hadn’t seen a live alien.
He told them to surrender, he thought, suddenly. It was the only explanation he could think of for the sudden collapse of resistance, or at least most resistance. His city had been delivered into the hands of its enemies. They hadn’t taken the city building by building, which would at least have been understandable, but through treachery? Or was it simple pragmatism? I wonder how he intends to win re-election in the coming election?
The thought wasn’t that funny. There might not be another election.
“Son of a bitch!”
Captain Brent Roeder shrugged. They might have remained inside the house, rather than going out to join their fellow soldiers fighting to prevent the aliens from entering the city, but they had had access to some elements of MILNET. They hadn’t had any access to classified data, and much of what they could see was obviously outdated, but it was enough to provide a clear view of what was going on. For whatever reason, Governor Brogan had ordered the remaining defenders to surrender… and the aliens were taking control of the city.
See how you like that, you bastards, he thought. There were plenty of guns in Austin and not everyone would obey the Governor’s surrender order. They might wait for a few days, but sooner or later there would be an insurgency directed against the aliens, and probably the Governor himself and anyone else involved in the surrender. Brent had studied insurgency tactics himself and, despite his horror at the situation, was almost looking forward to having a chance to put what he’d learned to use.
Corporal Cody Fahy looked over from his position on the edge of the bed. “Sir, what are we going to do now?”
Brent smiled. They were, now, officially behind enemy lines. They didn’t know what the aliens would do with the remains of the human government, but they had to be counted as suspect, at least for the moment. If the aliens followed one set of human precedent, they would take their families as hostages and force their unwilling cooperation, or they would round them all up and try to govern the city for themselves. They might shoot all of their prisoners at once, or they might press them into service to help them maintaining order, or they might simply imprison them a long way from help. So much depended on how the aliens treated the city that had suddenly fallen into their hands.
It wasn’t going to be easy. The men and women of SF34 knew the city like the back of their hands, and the aliens would be operating in completely unfamiliar territory, but that wouldn’t last. They’d probably be patrolling the city as heavily as possible — he wondered, briefly, just how many of them there were on the ground — and they’d use it as a chance to learn how the city worked. If they controlled the water, the power and the food… far too many people would have no choice, but to do as they wanted and damn the cost to their country.
But they had no choice.
“Well,” he said, finally, “we’re going to give them a few days to get settled down and relax a bit…”
He smiled at their expressions. “And then we’re going to make their lives hell…”
Chapter Fifteen
Do not ask what the Government can do for you. Ask why it doesn’t.
The big situation map was updated constantly as elements of the tactical communications network were re-established, but no one was entirely sure just how accurate it was. A big swath of Texas was covered with the red glow of occupied territory, reaching from Houston in the east to San Angelo in the west and northwards as far as Fort Worth, but it couldn’t all be occupied by the aliens. They might control the entire territory in a grip of steel or they might have restricted themselves to the cities, fighting it out to take and hold them against human resistance. Countless military units, trying to make their way out of the trap and back to the human lines, were filtering through the area, while places like Fort Hood continued to resist the aliens. The entire situation was hopelessly confused.
Paul sighed as he checked the latest updates. The chaos in Texas was only the tip of the iceberg. The alien invasion, even if it had landed in Russia or darkest Africa, would have been disruptive enough, simply through the loss of all the satellites. The landings in Texas were starting to push the United States into chaos; sooner or later, they would have to evict the aliens… and even if they succeeded, what then? As long as the aliens controlled space, they could simply pound the planet into submission… and no one even knew why they were doing it. They clearly wanted Earth intact, or else they would have rendered the planet uninhabitable, but why? What did Earth have that was so attractive to them?
But that didn’t matter, not at the moment. The truth was that the United States Army was on the run, caught between the fires of the alien landings and their bombardment from orbit, exposing countless civilians to the wrath of their new masters. The aliens might treat their captives decently, or they might simply slaughter every human that they found; there was no way to know. In time, reports would filter in through the Internet of what was happening in the occupied territory, but the handful of reports they had were contradictory. He suspected that some of them were actually the product of wishful thinking.
He stood up and walked down the corridor towards the Situation Room. The Secret Service guard at the door checked his ID quickly and professionally — ignoring the fact that if the aliens had managed to create human duplicates, the war with probably hopeless anyway — and allowed him to enter the room. There was a new air of despair floating through the air as the cabinet took their places, a new sense that everything might just be hopeless, but Paul ignored it. They had to keep fighting, if only so they could get better terms…
Easy for me to think, he thought, coldly. He was in a bunker, safe and protected by an entire battalion of infantry… although they would be no protection if the aliens realised their location and dropped a KEW on their heads. He was safe… and millions of American citizens were not. The entire planet wasn’t safe. It was easy to talk of resistance, but how many would resist when their lives and families were under threat from the aliens? Human response to enemy occupation was often a random variable; it depended, too much, on how the occupiers acted and why. The French had been happy to remain quiet under the Germans, but the Russians, knowing that they would be thrown into the gas chambers eventually, had had no choice, but to resist. What did the aliens have in mind for humanity?
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States.”