Invasion

growing breech in the hull…and wondered if the entire station was plunging down towards the planet. It would destroy them without any need for further expenditure of alien weapons. It was so hard to think now…

Something moved at the edge of his perception. He turned slowly, feeling his body slowly turning to ice, and saw something moving towards them, coming through the steadily growing rent in the hull. It looked human, at first, and he wondered if one of the crew had managed to don a spacesuit, but as it came closer, manoeuvring with the aid of a small gas pack mounted on its back, he realised that it was humanoid, but far from human. It was impossible to make out any features in the black spacesuit, if spacesuit it was, but all the proportions were wrong. Looking at the featureless humanoid, Francis realised that it was moving… oddly, as if it had grown up on a very different world. The alien came closer and closer… and then one hand reached out and pulled Gary’s air tube free of the wall.

Gary thrashed, desperately, as he started to run out of air. The alien ignored his struggles and carefully pulled him away from the wall and into an inflatable bubble, leaving him floating in the middle of the room. Francis stared, convinced that the alien intended to kill them all personally, and then he realised that Gary was breathing normally, inside his bubble. A moment later, the alien pulled Sophia free of her chair and added her to his catch, seemingly unconcerned or unaware that she was female. A second bubble inflated and the alien pushed Philippe into its warm confinement, and then added Stanislav and Damiani’s body to the catch. A third bubble inflated and Francis cringed as the alien reached for him, breaking the air hose with one hand and pushing him forward into the bubble. He fought to prevent himself from breathing, irrationally terrified that the aliens breathed poison, but in the end he had to take a breath. The air was hotter and dryer than the ISS had been, almost like being in a desert, but it was breathable. A wide-eyed Katy Garland, one of the scientists on the ISS, joined him; the alien left the remaining bodies behind, perhaps for later recovery. Damiani and the remainder of the crew had to be dead.

Damn you, Francis thought, staring at the alien shape. The alien’s features were completely hidden, but he tried, desperately, to gain a sense of how his – or her – body language worked. It was impossible and he gave it up after a few moments of struggle, choosing instead to lean back and watch as the alien started to tow his – he decided to think of the alien as male until he knew for sure – human captives out towards the rent in the hull. A moment of insane panic swept up in his mind as the alien tugged them out of the hull and into space, Earth glowing below them as they were dragged towards the alien ship. The parasite vessel, a blocky shape reminiscent of Thunderbird Two, awaited them.

“No,” Katy said, her voice breaking with shock. “Sir, look…”

Francis followed her gaze back towards the ISS. The station had looked fragile when he’d first seen it…and now, all of his fears seemed to be coming true. The ISS was slowly tearing itself apart, spinning in space and flickering with light as the solar power panels came apart. The once-neat modules were torn and broken; he felt a bitter lump in his throat as the alien pulled them through a hatch into a small chamber. It was as featureless as the alien helmet and protective spacesuit, but there were seven other aliens in the chamber, watching emotionlessly as the humans were escorted forward.

Of course, they could be gloating, Francis thought, bitterly. He’d given up most science-fiction because of its reliance on space barbarians…and an hour ago, he would have sworn that they didn’t exist. Of course, the Soviet Union or the Communist Chinese had managed to accomplish wonders, despite having a very unfree society…and the more repressive states on present-day Earth could simply buy most of the items they couldn’t produce for themselves. It seemed impossible that the aliens could have so much without developing democracy, but they might have somehow accomplished it…or maybe they were a hive mind, or…endlessly, he contemplated the problem, using it as a way of avoiding the real question. What were they going to do with their captives?

Reality intruded as the lead alien pulled out a sharp knife and started to cut the bubble open. Katy screamed as the alien pulled her out and left her floating in the room; Francis, more sedately, followed her a moment later. An alien stepped forward, somehow walking on the deck despite the lack of gravity, and caught him. He saw a second flashing knife and feared the worst, but all the alien did was slice all of his clothes away from his body. The protective outfit might have protected against the vacuum, but it was no protection against the knife, which cut through it sharply and left him floating naked in space. The aliens showed no interest in their human captives once they were naked, transferring out the remains of their clothes and various electronic gadgets through a tube, leaving the humans floating helplessly in the middle of the room.

Bastards, Francis thought angrily, trying not to look at either of the two girls. They’d taken four men captive and two women, and they’d stripped them all. It made a certain kind of sense – the aliens might not recognise a human weapon on sight, so they’d removed anything that could possibly be a weapon – but it was inhuman. The thought made him smile, bitterly. They were in a very inhuman position. The aliens just… watched them, unconcerned by their protests or attempts to talk. Francis tried to speak directly to one of the aliens, but got no response, not even a sign that the alien could even hear him. It was like dealing with robots, or automations.

He met Gary’s eyes briefly and saw the hell in the former ISS commander’s eyes. He’d lost his command and almost all of his crew…and, now, he was a prisoner. The aliens had him under their thumbs and there was no way out, not without weapons. Francis lifted an eyebrow, wondering if the far more experienced Gary had any idea what was going on, but the former commander merely shook his head. They were trapped.

A dull rumble ran through the alien craft. Francis felt the craft shift under silent acceleration and felt himself wafting towards the wall. The aliens ignored their struggles and allowed them to grip hold of handles set into the wall, while the craft shivered slightly as it moved on in its orbit. Francis hoped, despite knowing that it would mean their certain death, that they were under attack from the ground, but he knew that that was unlikely. The aliens were probably safe from anything that the human race could throw at them.

The rumbling grew louder. They were on the move.

***

Philippe Laroche was not a man given to panic. Unlike most of his contemporaries – and his fellows who’d been onboard the ISS – he was used to being in stressful situations in his roving brief as the President of France’s special representative. He’d been held hostage in terrorist training camps, threatened by armed militants in countries where France had ‘interests,’ and fired upon by one side or the other in various civil wars. He knew enough to be fairly certain that the aliens didn’t intend to kill them outright – they could have destroyed the ISS completely or merely left them to suffocate or freeze to death – and that meant that, sooner or later, they would be talking. It was a power game, like those played by human militants; they would do what they had to do to show that they were The Boss…and then they would talk. Being naked didn’t bother him, much; he’d been stripped naked before, by at least a dozen highly suspicious factions.

Besides, it’s not as if the aliens are interested in human bodies, he thought, and concentrated on acting harmless. Stanislav looked as if he was furious – he might even have jumped the aliens if they’d been kept in gravity – and the American representative looked to be on the edge. Sophia, the UN representative, was shaking madly, her eyes wide with panic and fear. Naked, she was pretty…and almost completely helpless. Philippe watched with a certain private amusement as she clutched the handles and waited for death. It would be a long time in coming.

The pressure pushing them against the wall suddenly eased. Like Francis, Philippe had considered the possibility that the craft was under attack, but it wasn't something he could do anything about. Chances were if the craft was destroyed, they would die before they knew what had hit them, but in any case there was nothing they could do about it. The aliens would talk to them, in time, and when they did, he would be prepared to open a line of communication. Perhaps he could even convince them that Earth was harmless and attacking the planet was hardly productive.

He turned his attention, briefly, to the aliens. They were as featureless as ever, but the more he studied them, the more he could pick out slight differences in height and, he suspected, weight. If they were alien soldiers, they would be fit and healthy, but he couldn’t tell how strong they were, relative to a human soldier. Philippe had more experience with the military, particularly the French covert operations unit, than he cared to admit…and he found himself studying the aliens from a tactical point of view. It was a shame that he couldn’t see their weapons in action, but…

Another dull thump echoed through the ship. A moment later, the aliens started to pull the humans off the