Invasion

Chapter Nine

Honour? There ain't no honour in this war. The machine guns killed it. And if the machine-guns didn't, then the artillery did. And if the artillery didn't, then the chlorine gas sure as hell did.

– Harry Turtledove, Great War: American Front

Bastards, Joshua Bourjaily thought, as the live feed from the ISS showed the alien starship approaching the station. There’s no one going to profit from this, but NASA.

A moment later, the alien starship opened fire. Joshua came to his feet, shocked out of his complacency and cynicism by the sudden attack, as the alien weapons started to fire…and the live feed from the ISS cut off sharply. He’d seen something like it before, when watching live feeds from combat zones around the world, and that could only mean that the source of the live feed had been destroyed. The camera had been mounted on Discovery, if he recalled correctly, and the unarmed space shuttle would have been a sitting duck to alien weapons.

“They…they opened fire,” the talking head said, sounding shocked. The image switched to the live feed from a commercial satellite orbiting near the ISS. The alien starship was breaking up into an entire armada of smaller ships, spreading out from their mothership to attack the planet below. There was a graceful inevitability about the hazy images coming through the network and then the image vanished as the satellite was destroyed. “We seem to have technical problems…”

“They took out the satellite, you stupid bitch,” Joshua yelled at the screen as it switched back to the talking head. The blonde-haired girl looked stressed out of her mind. “They destroyed the system and you’re calling it technical difficulties…”

The television fuzzed once and failed. A single line of red writing appeared on the display. NO SIGNAL. Joshua stared at it in disbelief; ever since he had been a child, there had been literally hundreds of channels available to the discriminating viewer, more than anyone could have watched in their entire life. The growing presence of satellite television had only added to the constant barrage of news, entertainment and boredom from the media, but now…now it was dying, fast. He cycled the television through a set of channels and watched as, one by one, other stations vanished off the air. The BBC vanished in the middle of a stunned discourse by a professional astronomer on how the aliens couldn’t possibly be hostile; Al Jazeera flickered into nothingness during a live feed from a ground-based observatory.

His telephone rang once. When he picked it up, there was nothing, not even a dial tone. On impulse, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and examined it, unsurprised to discover that there was no longer any link to the satellite. The modern make of cell phones used satellites rather than ground-based stations…and they were all going to be destroyed. High overhead, the aliens were blasting them out of space…and suddenly Joshua’s horizons shrunk to the four walls of his apartment. He checked the radio quickly and discovered that it was still working, barely.

“This is an emergency broadcast,” someone said. Despite the static, it didn’t sound like the President or the Governor. Joshua didn’t recognise the voice at all…and yet, it sounded vaguely familiar. “The aliens have opened fire on orbital targets. Remain in your homes. Do not go onto the streets. Do not place yourself in danger…”

A wash of static echoed through the machine. When it cleared, a different voice could be heard. “We speak now to astronomer David Berkinshaw,” it said. Joshua couldn’t tell if it was male or female. It could have been either. “David, you predicted that the aliens were friendly. How does this tie in with the current state of affairs?”

“They could have been provoked, somehow,” the astronomer said. Joshua smiled briefly as he heard the stunned disbelief in his voice. Few had considered the possibility of the aliens being hostile, as far as the news media was concerned; they had preferred to focus on how the world would change once the aliens arrived and brought the new millennium. “Science-fiction is full of wars starting by accident. I would ask you all to broadcast messages of peace towards the alien craft…”

The ground shook, violently. A thin layer of dust shivered down from the ceiling. “My God, they’re attacking,” Joshua gasped, and dived under the table. A moment later, the building shook again and a flare of light spilled up through the window. He pulled himself up and headed for the door, catching his camera in one hand and his recorder in the other, and ran up the stairs. If Austin was under attack, he was in the perfect position to record the images for future distribution. He passed a handful of his neighbours, all looking as stunned as he was, as he ran upstairs, ignoring their shouts to remain down under cover.

He ran out onto the roof garden and stopped dead. The starry night was ablaze with light. For a moment, he thought he was staring at fireworks, then he realised that there was a battle going on, high above the world. Streaks of light seemed to be flaring through space, rising up to challenge the aliens high above, while the aliens moved in their stately orbits around the planet. He lifted his camera and peered through the zoom function, but he couldn’t see enough to tell who was winning…and then he saw the fires.

The Austin skyline was marred with towering flames. They came from the direction of the airport and he remembered, with a sudden burst of guilt, that he’d reported on the deployment of a Patriot missile battery to the airport. The aliens had hit the civilian airport – they’d hit civilians – and had he somehow encouraged them to target the men deployed to defend the location? Had he betrayed them to the enemy? Cold logic suggested otherwise…and yet, cold logic wasn't very reassuring, not now. The entire towering furnace had to be the fuel and aircraft going up in flames; what had the aliens done to it to cause such devastation?

“I should go down to the bank and take out the rest of my savings,” a voice said. Joshua turned suddenly to see Mr Adair from the flat below his. He was watching the conflict in space through a telescope and wincing as more bursts of light sparkled out high above. “They have to give me my money, right?”

“Right,” Joshua agreed, thoughtfully. He might have joined the father of two girls, both of whom were entering their teens and knew it, but it wasn't as if he had much in the way of money. He’d kept most of what he earned safe in his apartment, where the IRS and other busybodies couldn’t find it. There wasn't enough to make it worth taking special precautions. “I think you’d better get moving fast…”

Another burst of light, high above, illustrated his point. A moment later, a streak of light appeared from space, racing down towards the planet, striking…somewhere kilometres to the west. He wondered, suddenly, if that was where Fort Hood was located; there was a flash of light in the distance, followed suddenly by a long rumble of thunder. More flashes in the distance caught his eye and he found himself wondering, suddenly, what was under attack. Had the aliens gone after everywhere? Was Austin the last city left on Earth?

It was silly, he knew, but in the air of unreality surrounding the entire war, it was easy to believe that they were alone in the world.

“Yeah,” Mr Adair said. “Do you want to come with me?”

“No, thank you,” Joshua said. Banding together, along with the others in the apartment, probably wasn't a bad idea; one of the permanent inhabitants had even started a neighbourhood watch and encouraged the other residents to stock up on guns, just in case. At the moment, Joshua wondered if he’d been precognitive, or just paranoid. The media had been full of stories about collapsing gun control programs everywhere as the reality of alien contact sank in. “I’ll stay and watch…”

An hour passed slowly. Shelia, one of the other residents, appeared with a flask of hot soup, which she distributed around to the residents. Joshua hadn’t realised that they’d been joined by five others, including two children, but he was grateful for the soup and for the quiet buzz from the radio one of the others had brought. It was a more powerful model than his own, but despite constant channel sweeps, they heard very little. The static – or, he suspected, the jamming – seemed to be everywhere.

It cleared, suddenly. “All designated emergency personnel are to report for duty at once,” it said. Again, the voice was almost impossible to recognise under the static, but it sounded like the FEMA manager he’d interviewed once in the wake of a building collapse in the city. “All FEMA volunteers are to report to their local emergency centres; all others are advised to stay inside and off the streets…”

There was another burst of static. High overhead, he heard the sound of an aircraft, racing towards…what? A wink of light flared up and a streak of flame fell towards the ground, coming down somewhere to the east. This