“Keep grouping our forces for a push westwards,” he ordered, finally. There was no way to know how the great mass of human civilians would react to their presence. The human government seemed to believe that keeping the civilian population disarmed was a good thing — although some of their measures had seemed so absurd he’d wondered if there was a translation problem — but it was clear that they’d never quite succeeded. Orbital observation indicated mass unrest in parts of the human city. It couldn’t be tolerated. The Land Forces would have to open up the roads to allow supplies to be moved around the region. “And expand our patrol perimeter. I want the humans to feel our foot on their chest.”
Garden House School had been a primary school yesterday, when the world had made sense and aliens were just figments of human imagination. Now, it had been turned into a makeshift medical centre, following emergency plans that had been drawn up sometime during the cold war. Classroom tables had been pushed together and covered with blankets, allowing the wounded somewhere to wait for treatment. Fatima wanted to close her eyes and rest, but there was no time. The small number of medical staff in attendance were doing what they could, yet there seemed to be no end to the wounded. And the civilian volunteers were doing more harm than good. She bandaged up a wound that really needed an operation in a proper hospital, knowing that she might have condemned the patient to a slow and unpleasant death. Any half-trained doctor knew the value of a sterile environment, but they didn’t have a hope of maintaining one in the school.
She removed her scarf as she saw the next patient, a small girl barely old enough to go to school. Her parents seemed to be in shock, pointing at their daughter’s arm as if they expected Fatima to be able to know what was wrong just by looking. She always hated treating children — young children couldn’t tell doctors what was really wrong with them — but there was no choice. She wrapped the scarf around the child’s arm, turning it into a makeshift sling. It crossed her mind that her stepmother would be horrified to see her in public with her hair uncovered and she almost broke down into helpless giggles. After everything else that had happened since the first explosions, it was almost a relief to worry about something so petty.
“She’s in pain,” the mother insisted. “Can’t you give her something for the pain?”
Fatima shook her head, grimly. The school had had a well-stocked medical room, but they’d used almost all of the painkillers within the first hour. They’d sent runners to the nearest hospital in the hopes of getting more, yet none of the runners had returned. Fatima’s superiors had been reduced to urging policemen to take painkillers from nearby shops, along with what other medical supplies they could find. And there still seemed to be no end to the wounded. Leaving a child in pain tore at her heart, but what else could they do?
She heard the sound of screaming from outside and closed her eyes. London had had riots before, but what would happen with an alien invasion force in the heart of the city? She breathed a silent prayer as the sound of gunshots echoed out in the distance, followed by a faint humming that seemed to echo in the back of her head. One of the doctors walked over to the classroom door and peered down the corridor. He jumped back, his face white as a sheet.
“They’re coming,” he said. His legs buckled and he collapsed on the floor. “They’re coming!”
Fatima braced herself as the first of the aliens came into view. It was clear that the alien — she couldn’t tell if it was male or female — seemed to be having trouble in corridors designed for humans. The weapon it carried in one hand looked too large to be carried by a human, although she had to admit that she knew almost nothing about weapons. Dark eyes, seemingly without any colours at all, peered around the room. Fatima met them for a second and was struck by just how alien the alien seemed to be. It turned and headed onwards, followed by a small number of other aliens. Fatima realised, as she felt her own legs give way, that they were expanding outwards. God alone knew what they’d do when they ran into resistance…
And, despite herself, she hoped that they would place the makeshift hospital under guard. If London really did dissolve into chaos, the hospitals and chemists would be among the first places targeted for drugs. Who knew how the aliens would react to rioters?
Building by building, the advancing assault unit swept through the human city. Outside their government centre, it seemed that there had been no time to rig traps or other surprises, although Tra’tro The’Stig knew better than to take anything for granted. His superiors had noted his achievement in the first battles by granting him a lead role in the expansion, along with reinforcements that had been dispatched from orbit. It was a honour he would happily have foregone. The oddly misshapen humans seemed either curious or terrified of his patrol; he watched in amusement as some ran away, while others just stared at them as if they’d never seen a non-human before. He shifted his weapon towards one of the humans who was paying too much attention to them in hopes of scaring the little creature away. The human emitted a high-pitched whine and fled.
The humans had abandoned many of their vehicles in positions that made it harder for the tankers to advance in support of the ground troops. Two of the tanks had already started pushing human vehicles to one side, but the remainder were holding back, nervous about the consequences of meddling with alien technology. Besides, the humans had shown a flair for creating traps and no tanker wished to lose his vehicle to a mere improvised bomb. The’Stig cursed them under his breath, even as he saw another group of humans ahead of him. They were staring at his patrol as if they couldn’t believe their eyes…
A human voice yelled a command and the first projectiles crashed down around them. The’Stig’s first thought was that they were under attack by human soldiers, but they were throwing glass bottles and stones rather than grenades and bullets. A moment later, one of the bottles crashed down on top of a trooper’s head, sending him sprawling down onto the road. The humans might not be soldiers, but they could harm his troopers. Their defiance could not be tolerated.
He snarled as he pulled down on the firing trigger and sprayed bullets over the humans within eyesight. They fell to the ground in bloody heaps, their comrades suddenly running back as if they’d realised that it wasn’t a good idea to challenge the occupation force. The’Stig refused to let them go easily; he lunged forward, firing burst after burst as he moved. The attack ended almost as quickly as it had begun, with a number of humans dead and two of his troopers mildly injured. He silently made a note to praise the body armour in his report. If they hadn’t been so well-protected, they would have certainly had more injured, if not dead.
“Advance,” he ordered, sharply.
The force continued on its way, coordinating with other groups as they pressed out along the human roads. It dawned on him suddenly that they weren’t really controlling the city at all, merely the main roads they intended to use for transporting supplies. They simply didn’t have the numbers to maintain control over the entire city. After a moment of thought, he kept that insight to himself. His superior officers no doubt knew all about it and intended to deal with the humans in another manner. Their city was dependent upon food supplies from outside, wasn’t it? They could simply be starved to death if they refused to cooperate.