Invasion

The United States National Command Centre (Virginia) had been constructed in absolute secrecy and, unlike some other bunkers with the same purpose, had never been revealed or leaked to the media. It was an open question if the Russians, or the Chinese, knew about its existence, but as far as the public knew, it didn’t exist. They would have thought, if they had bothered to think about it at all, that the President had gone to Cheyenne Mountain and the complex there, not somewhere much closer to Washington DC. If the aliens managed to capture and interrogate humans from the ISS or from the ground, they wouldn’t be led directly to the President.

Colonel Paul James was relieved to see that the President looked much better in the light. He’d been taken quickly, once the fighting had begun, to the complex, but he’d almost been broken by the sheer scale of the attack. He’d had a few hours sleep, a shower and a shave and almost looked human again; Paul wished that he shared that feeling. He’d been up all night trying to collate the data as the United States – and several other nations – fought a war with the aliens, one that they were losing. The aliens were still faceless, their goals and objective still unknown, but they were winning their war. The human capability to fight a war in space, such as it was, had been almost completely destroyed.

The main briefing room was a combination between a control room, manned by operators with the highest level of security clearance in the United States, and a proper briefing room. A table, at the centre of the room, provided seating for the President, his Cabinet and the handful of senior military officers at the complex, while a large map of the world illuminated one wall, overwhelmed by red icons. The aliens had targeted their projectiles with malice aforethought; they’d hit military bases, docks, bridges, ships and even power stations. Parts of the United States were in darkness, their power suddenly cut down by the alien attack, other parts were almost normal and probably wondering if the alien attack was all a dream. It would take time for the truth to sink in, Paul knew, and by then, it would be too late. If they hadn’t stocked up on food in the past weeks, they might be starving pretty soon. Even at a glance, it was obvious that the global economy had been destroyed overnight.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Colonel Perkins, the commander of the base, said, “the President of the United States.”

“Please be seated,” the President said. His voice sounded better as well. He waited until Deborah Ivey, Tom Spencer, General Hastings and a couple of unnamed military officers took their seats and then nodded to Paul. “Colonel James, if you would…”

Paul bit down a smile and began. “As you know, Mr President, last night the alien starship – the lead alien starship – arrived in Earth orbit and attacked,” he said. “The principle target of their attack was apparently the International Space Station, but they have also attacked hundreds of targets within the continental United States and the rest of the world. Every country that was obviously developed, as seen from space, was targeted from orbit, with a very high death toll, both civilian and military. Information is still flowing in, so we may have to revise the estimates, but at the moment we are looking at over ten million dead, worldwide.”

A small display lit up as he spoke. As he covered each of the items, a pop-up window opened on the display, providing further information. “The military communications network has been seriously disrupted by the loss of all of our satellites, military and civilian, but the landlines have barely been touched. Readiness data on each of our bases is transmitted hourly to the Pentagon and other secure military communications hubs, providing a multiple level of redundancy in case of nuclear attack. At the moment, we can confirm that almost every USAF base, USN harbour and civilian airport within the United States has been destroyed. Army and National Guard bases were attacked as well, but several survived almost untouched, while others were too large to be completely destroyed. Fort Hood, for example, was hit, but most of the base remains intact and usable. That may change, of course.”

The display changed to show a naval map. “The aliens also hit our ships,” he continued. “Based on incomplete data, we can confirm that every carrier in the world – ours, British, French, Russian, Chinese – was sunk from orbit. We have independent confirmation from an agent in Gibraltar about the Charles de Gaulle and its destruction from orbit; British sources confirm the loss of Invincible and Queen Elizabeth. The other ships were treated on more of a hit-or-miss basis; anything that was clearly capable of launching aircraft was sunk, as was anything that could launch missiles towards targets in Low Earth Orbit, but the remaining fleet was generally ignored. Several hundred civilian ships have been lost as well, but again, the targeting seems almost random.”

“They don’t care about the seas,” General Hastings growled. “Why should they care about the water when they can land anywhere they damn well please?”

“Yes, sir,” Paul said. “The damage to our infrastructure has been very severe. So far, we have confirmed that no cities have been destroyed, although a handful of weapons fell within cities and caused considerable damage, but most of the weapons fell outside the cities. Interstate junctions, dams, harbours and power stations were hit, including a handful of nuclear power stations.”

The President blanched. “Do we now have radioactive clouds drifting over the country?”

“No, Mr President,” Paul reassured him. “The three nuclear power stations that were hit were all over-designed to ensure that an airliner crashed into them wouldn’t release radiation or nuclear waste. FEMA is working on the plants now, but it looks as if the worst effect so far is multiple power outrages. Entire sections of the country have lost all power, while other sections have fallen back on backups and secondary systems…”

The President held up a hand. “We can sort out those details later,” he said. At any other time, damage to even a single nuclear power plant, let alone blackouts over a large part of the country, would have been a major disaster. Now, it was just incidental damage, barely worth mentioning. “What happened in orbit? How badly did we hurt them?”

The display clicked back to the image of the ISS, seconds before the aliens opened fire. “The ISS was apparently hit at least once by an alien weapon and opened to vacuum,” Paul said. “NASA won’t commit itself on the possibility of prisoners being taken, but observers watching from the ground, through the most powerful telescopes we have, report that the smaller alien spacecraft recovered most of the ISS before it fell into the atmosphere. It could be that some of the crew survived and were captured, but we don’t know enough to be sure, one way or the other. There were definitely no survivors from the Discovery; the shuttle was clearly blown into atoms. The final telemetry from the ship confirmed that it went down fighting.”

“They’re going to get medals,” the President said, firmly.

“We attacked the aliens quite heavily with the ground-based missiles and laser weapons, as well as laser- armed aircraft,” Paul continued. “Our losses in laser aircraft were total. The download of readings from the aircraft, before they were destroyed, suggest that the aliens targeted them with their own lasers, burning them out of the air. There were no survivors from any of the aircraft. Ground-based missile launchers managed to launch most of their missiles before they were destroyed, but…it’s hard to say just how effective they were.”

General Hastings coughed. “Give us a rough estimate,” he ordered. “What is the best and worst-case scenario?”

“We know we took out three of the parasite craft,” Paul said, after a moment. “The Russians attacked heavily with their ground-based missiles, both ABM and ICBM missiles, firing them straight up and detonating them in space. They claim to have killed five more of the alien ships, but the claims are impossible to verify. There are two more that we damaged, we believe, and a third that was subjected to a heavy pounding from the airborne lasers, but again, it’s hard to say for sure. We know they launched upwards of twenty-five parasite craft; at best, we took out ten between us, at worst, only three…”

“And they’ve killed millions of us,” Tom Spencer said. The Secretary of State looked almost broken by the night. Paul didn’t blame him; if he hadn’t had his duties, knowing what he did, he might have been broken as well. “What the hell do they want?”

“The Earth,” General Hastings said. He scowled over at Spencer. “You talked about the aliens having to be friendly, but now…now, look what they’re doing to us!”

“Enough,” the President said. There was an unaccustomed firmness in his tone. “Colonel, what do you believe the aliens will do next?”

“The analysts here and at other command complexes believe that the attack can only mean one thing,” Paul said. “They’re nothing, but the opening moves of a full-scale invasion of our planet.”

The President’s face paled. No President, outside impractical fiction, had had to live with the possibility of the United States being invaded. No one had the ability and motive to launch such an attack. The Soviet Union, at best, could have thrown away a few parachute divisions in a suicidal attack on the United States, but what would that have gained them? Mexico or Canada could have marched over the border, but one was friendly and the other was