“Good,” the High Priest said. There would be time enough, after the missiles had been wiped out, to punish the people who’d fired them. There were more missiles than the Americans could muster, if the details they’d recovered from Texas were correct, involved in the attack, which meant that the other human powers were involved. They would pay for their impudence in due time. “I want those missiles wiped out now.”
The War Leader paused. “There were five shuttles rising from the Texas Foothold when the attack began,” he said, thoughtfully. “Do you wish them diverted to the parasite ships, or to the settlement ship?”
“No,” the High Priest said, after a moment’s thought. The vast stores of war material on the battle section of Guiding Star would be needed in Texas, and they were running out of landing cones. It was a pity that they were use-once items, but not even the humans had invented a drive that could lift things that size to orbit, although there were some interesting thoughts in their engineering journals. Once the war was won, the Takaina would study them and try to develop them for further expansion. “We will need the shuttles here.”
He linked into the main communications network and watched, dispassionately, as the warriors raced to defend the footholds. The warriors remaining in orbit were, even now, bracing themselves for a possible emergency deployment to Texas, if the humans actually did manage to mount a serious attack, with a handful of parasite ships coming in to dock to provide transport. Others were being diverted to deal with the missiles threat from the humans…
Soon, he thought. They had three footholds, two of them effectively impregnable and the third well on the way to becoming firmly subjected to their rule. Soon, we will rule…
“We picked up the FLASH signal from Madagascar,” Paul said, as the Situation Room screen updated itself frantically. The aliens were lighting up their drives in orbit, reacting to something, but it wasn’t until they got the signal through the landline that they knew that the missiles had actually flown. “They launched, Mr President.”
The President stared bleakly at him. Two hundred missiles, most of them carrying at least four nuclear warheads, were flying through space towards Texas. If even one of them landed on a populated area, the consequences could be devastating. The insurgents had even tried to force the aliens hand by assaulting the ground-based laser stations that would normally have served in an ABM role, which meant that they had exposed their own citizens to nuclear fire.
“They launched,” Paul repeated. “Mr President…”
“I heard,” the President snapped. He looked up at the display showing the alien ships in orbit, moving with a stately elegance. “Is it time for Phase Two?”
“Just about,” Paul said, watching the timer. The aliens weren’t creatures armed with advanced technology that looked like magic; they, like the human race, had to obey the laws of orbital mechanics. Turning in space to react to new developments on the ground would be almost impossible. They had to move just a little further. “We’re committed now, sir.”
“I know,” the President said. “We were committed the moment we started the offensive.”
Paul nodded. The timer finished its second countdown. “Mr President, it’s time to start,” he said. “May we proceed?”
“Proceed,” the President said. Both of them knew that it had already begun. “May God go with us.”
“That’s what they’re thinking too,” Paul said, tightly. “God is on their side.”
“That wasn’t funny,” the President said, irritated.
“No,” Paul agreed. Now, they were just spectators on the eve of Armageddon. One more task, one more order, and then all they could do was watch. “It wasn’t meant to be.”
The complex had been built in the south of France, well away from any city or any major town, near one of France’s nuclear reactors. It had been hard to conceal it’s presence from the handful of locals, but the declaration of marital law and the crackdown on any form of unpatriotic activity — defined rather loosely by the government — had prevented any word of it spreading from the locals to the aliens, or those who might seek to topple the government.
“We’re ready,” Chef d’Escadron Renan reported, through the landline to Paris. He would have preferred to be commanding one of the units patrolling the southern cities, keeping the peace with extreme… firmness, but the government had trusted him to handle one of the stations. “We can fire as soon as the timer reaches the appointed time.”
He looked up at the camouflage netting. It would be removed seconds before the lasers and masers opened fire, targeting every alien parasite ship within range, along with a hundred other stations all across the world. From America to China, Britain to Russia, the stations would engage the large alien ships, giving them something else to worry about. Renan doubted that the station would last longer than ten minutes, not with the aliens — high overhead — ready and willing to bring death down on their heads, but they had to fire for as long as possible. The lasers were the most powerful the human race had ever produced and the masers designed specifically to take advantage of alien weaknesses. It was almost as if the Americans had obtained inside information, although he wouldn’t have traded an invasion of France for that data.
The timer reached zero. “Fire,” he ordered, as soon as the covering was recovered. The weapons fire was invisible in the air, but he could feel the heat as the beams burned through the air, reaching up towards a target high overhead. The alien ship would be writhing now, trying to target and destroy them before the lasers burned through something vital, despite the armour. It was a shame that Star Trek weapons were impossible — yet — but the weapons he had would suffice. “Keep hitting the bastards!”
He smiled broadly as the lasers burned into the sky.
He was still smiling when the KEW smashed the station, the lasers and him into dust.
“The aliens are under attack now,” Paul reported. It was hard to tell how much success they were having, but at least one parasite ship had gone completely dead and was falling towards the planet, Earth’s gravity pulling it down to a fiery end. The mass of the ship would probably survive — if parts of the old Skylab had, there was no reason why the alien craft wouldn’t — and would come down like an asteroid, somewhere in Africa. “They’re being forced out of the sky…”
“And our boys?” The President asked. His gaze searched the main display. “Where are they?”
“On their way,” Paul said. The small shuttle was almost beyond detection, assuming that it was the right shuttle. There had been no emergency signal, but that proved nothing. The aliens might have reacted quickly enough to prevent a distress signal from getting out. “It’s time to launch the main attack.”
The President smiled wryly. “Two angles of attack, each one offering the possibility of decisive victory, but if both of them fail, we lose. Is it worth the risk?”
Deborah spoke from her chair. “You saw the report, Mr President,” she said. “Mass starvation across Africa and Europe. The Northeast is no longer capable of functioning. China in ruins and torn apart by civil war. Russia is disintegrating… and hell, we’re disintegrating as well. They’ve killed upwards of a billion humans in three months of war. If they remain in control, well… we’re reaching our limit. A few more months like this and we won’t have a country any more.”