He clicked his radio. “Go,” he ordered. The snipers positioned on nearby rooftops opened fire, picking off the aliens within view. Their patrollers fell to the ground or dived for cover, trying to bring their own weapons up to return fire. They’d have some problems spotting the snipers, Chris hoped. “Javelin teams — go!”
The Javelin teams ran forward, taking up position to launch their antitank missiles directly at the alien gates. Chris had seen them used before to take out bunkers and other fortified positions, but as far as he could recall no one had ever used them to take out a gate. The missiles were fired before the aliens had a chance to react, blasting down towards the alien positions and slamming into their heavy gates. Chris watched as the gate he could see personally toppled inwards, squashing a couple of aliens who had been behind it when the attack began. The alien defences had been crippled.
He keyed his radio again. “Mortar teams, go,” he ordered. “Fire at will.”
The sound of mortars started to echo out over London as the teams opened fire, lobbing shells into the alien base to force the defenders to keep their heads down. Other teams all over London would be assaulting alien patrols, hoping to prevent them from turning and charging to the rescue of their leadership. In the early hours of the invasion, human military and police forces had been badly scattered, their command and control networks broken down and fragmented, leaving them facing their individual nightmares. Now the boot was on the other foot. The aliens were going to have to deal with an unfolding crisis as individuals.
He glanced over at Abdul, who was monitoring the results of the mortar strikes. “Not too bad,” he commented. “Shame we couldn’t get into the tunnels — we could have popped up right in the midst of them.”
Chris shrugged. “Alpha team,” he said, picking up his rifle, “go!”
As one, they started to run towards the alien gates, covered by the snipers. Up close, the sound of the mortars was louder. A single shell falling short might take out friendly soldiers, yet there was no time to call off the strikes. No one was entirely sure what the aliens used to build their base, but they did know that it was strong; alien bases across the world had stood off everything from RPGs to guided missiles. They had to keep the aliens pinned up while they deployed into position to assault the base itself.
He smiled as he saw a pair of wounded aliens staggering back inside the base, only to be shot down before they could escape. They took cover behind what remained of the gate and glanced around, taking out any remaining aliens outside before they advanced into the base proper. Maybe they’d die without ever knowing what had hit them, but the aliens faith in their own invincibility was about to suffer one hell of a knock.
“Go,” he ordered.
Ju’tro Oheghizh had been reading the report from the latest round of interrogations when the attack began. There had been rumours that something was being planned, but an attack in the centre of London hadn’t been expected. Everyone had known that the aliens and their collaborators controlled the city and attacking their base was merely a way to get encircled, trapped, and then exterminated. But it was clear that the humans hadn’t gotten the message. The hooting of the aliens was growing louder, just as the first shells started impacting on the metal shielding.
He lunged towards the command room, expecting to see his officers already reacting to the crisis and summoning assistance from the other garrisons scattered over the city. Instead, the big board had lit up with glowing icons — and then frozen. His officers were trying desperately to reactivate the command network, but it had clearly crashed. Or hacked — the humans were marvels with computer technology. They’d developed entire libraries of tactics for attacking and defending their own computer systems — why wouldn’t they be able to come up with something targeted against his computer systems?
And if they’d taken down the systems assigned to him, had they taken down everything?
The sound of the human bombardment grew louder. They didn’t have a properly-trained computer tech at the base and they couldn’t assume that someone who was only familiar with their own systems would be able to fix the damage the humans had inflicted, even if they had had a tech. And that meant that they’d been thrown back on their own resources. The higher commanders had loved the communications systems — it allowed them to supervise operations from on high — but the humans had turned it into a colossal weakness.
“Leave the computers,” he ordered. There were emergency procedures for computer failure, although he had no idea how many would have the time to implement them if the humans were attacking everywhere. “Get the radios passed out” — unless the humans had managed to set up a jamming system — “and then arm yourselves. This base is under attack.”
He picked up a weapon himself to illustrate the point. The command techs were unused to being in danger — they certainly hadn’t been on the first drop into London, or on any of the more dangerous landings after the pre-invasion bombardment — but there was no choice. They’d be able to summon help from the bases surrounding London, if they could hold out long enough for help to arrive.
Another explosion shook the base. The command techs, almost on the verge of panic, cried out in shock. “If they had anything that could break through the shield, they’d have used it by now,” Oheghizh snarled at them. A nuclear weapon could have broken through — they hadn’t been able to account for some of the human tactical weapons, let alone the devices they’d installed on their missile submarines — but the humans had been oddly reluctant to use nuclear weapons against the invaders. Apart from the Chinese… and China was now a wasteland of competing warlords, trying desperately to survive. “Get out of here and down to the inner defence lines. We don’t know how long we have until they start breaking in.”
The first warning of attack had come when the shells started landing inside the base. U’tra The’Stig, who had been preparing for the latest sweep against human insurgents, had taken immediate action, ordering the base’s own counter-battery weapons to return fire. He didn’t realise that the entire command network had been taken down until he’d deployed two Assault Units to sweep the area around the base and capture, kill or drive away the human insurgents. It was only when higher command had failed to take command that he’d discovered the truth.
“Get the radios out,” he ordered. He was supposed to direct his units from the mobile command vehicle, but half of its communications functions had been disabled. There was no way of knowing what the humans had done and they didn’t have time to try to fix it. The handful of reports they had had before the system failed had warned that the entire network of bases around London had come under attack. “And then prepare for immediate deployment.”
For a moment, he found himself lost in indecision. There was clearly a major attack underway, yet he didn’t know what was being targeted — which meant he didn’t know where he should send his troops. The base itself had only been lightly shelled, but the humans were tricky. It could have been an attempt to force them to stay in the base, a division… or merely the prelude to a more intensive bombardment. He’d have to keep shifting his troopers out and hope that the humans hadn’t anticipated his actions and taken precautions. There were horror stories from many other bases about deploying their forces in pursuit of human raiders, only to walk right into an ambush that bled them heavily before they fell back.