Invasion

General Hastings lifted a single eyebrow. “What possible good would that do them?”

“You mean apart from controlling the oil?” Philippe asked dryly. The French Ambassador had obviously followed the same line of logic. “The land is…well, Holy. We’ve been killing each other there for centuries over religion. Even now, we have Jews, Arabs, American soldiers and thousands of mercenaries battling it out for religion.”

“We didn’t invade Iraq for religious reasons,” the President said, coldly.

“That’s not what many of them think,” Philippe countered. “It doesn’t matter that much, Mr President, but if they destroy religious places wherever they find them, they will go, sooner or later, for the Holy Cities. They could devastate the entire Middle East with ease.”

The President looked up at the map. “We have to warn them,” he whispered. “We have to tell them that they might be the next targets…how long do they have?”

“I honestly couldn’t tell you,” Paul admitted. “It would depend on when then found out. They’re looting every library they come across in Texas, so they would have the information, if they bothered to use it. The more secure they feel in Texas, the more likely it will be that they will feel able to launch a second offensive against the Middle East.”

The President nodded slowly. “General, what are the odds of the Middle East beating off the aliens?”

“Piss-poor,” General Hastings said. “The Iraqis have the second-best army in the region, trained and equipped by us, as well as a large contingent of our own soldiers, but they’d take a second beating when the aliens land. The Saudi Army’s best units aren’t up to our standards and the worst aren’t good for more than cracking unarmed skulls. The Iranians could put up a fight, but they’re mainly an infantry army…which, coming to think of it, might just put them in a better position than I thought. Israel…is the joker in the deck. They’re tough, the best army in the region, and they have nukes. It could get messy.”

He paused, thoughtfully. “I can’t see them failing to crush the Middle East,” he added. “They have too many advantages. They’d still face a massive insurgency and everything would depend on the tactics they used to quell it.”

“They want to destroy religion, human religion,” Paul said. “It would get messy.”

“And they want us to surrender,” the President said. “If we surrender, what’s going to be our fate?”

Francis scowled. “They provided us with a surprising amount of data,” he said. “I haven’t had time to go through it all, but they intend to basically accept humans – converted humans – as equals in their society, where we will start rising up to join them. Its going to cause massive social unrest, Mr President; if they try to force their society and social norms on us, it’s not going to be the Middle East alone that fights back.”

“Colonel James, go through the material as quickly as you can,” the President said. “Report back to me when you’ve finished.” Paul nodded. “Gentlemen, is there anything I can do for you?”

Philippe nodded. “I have to return to Paris,” he said. He gave a slight, self-depredating smile. “I was going to have to beg you for transport.”

“That might be tricky,” General Hastings said dryly. “Anything that flies, except on very short flights, gets swatted eventually.”

“Oh, the fighter jocks have to hate that,” Gary said, with a sudden laugh. “They’re going to be pissed as hell that they have to stay on the ground. Can we conscript them as infantrymen, please?”

Francis gave him an odd look. “I thought you were a former fighter jock?”

The President ignored the by-play. “If the communications devices work, we can ask the aliens to leave your flight alone,” he said. “If not, getting you back home might take a few weeks, but we can and will do it. What do you intend to suggest that your government does?”

Philippe hesitated. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “If some of the reports here are right, I might not have a government any longer to report back to.”

***

The small cube-shaped room had, Paul had decided the first time he used it, been designed by a sadist. It was uncomfortable, small enough to induce acute claustrophobia in anyone unlucky enough to stay there overnight and barely habitable. The metal desk, the small computer and the hard chair all spoke of efficiency over comfort, of a mindset that prized business more than happiness. The person responsible had probably been promoted.

He opened the file of alien documents, settled back with a cup of coffee – the only advantage the underground bunker had, as far as he could tell, was that it had excellent coffee – and started to skim through the documents, searching for the important points. The aliens…spoke excellent English, but sometimes their writing and sentence structure looked like Microsoft Word on a bad day. They might have understood English, but they were a long way from learning to compose properly…which still put them ahead of many school graduates. The spellings were a little weird as well – PHONE was spelt F-O-N-E – but it was straightforward to sound out the words and realise what they meant. The aliens had actually provided a surprising amount of data…

The problem was that little of it was of any use. Their history, according to them, had been dark and barren before the Truth had arisen and united their planet in a series of Unification Wars. They hadn’t suffered the collapse of a global empire, or even a serious heretical challenge, if the documents were to be trusted. They had already been reaching into space, in a manner humanity had only dreamed of, and they had started to expand across the stars. The documents were vague on exact timescales, but reading between the lines, Paul had the sense that they’d been expanding for a long time.

They’re burning off resources by sending the surplus population to other worlds, he realised, with a touch of awe. The religion seemed to control everything, having built a fairly stable social structure, but as the society got richer, it would face more internal challenges. Their solution had been to throw resources into building the generation starships that spanned out across the universe, slowly, very slowly, carrying the Truth to hundreds of nearby stars. It was awe-inspiring, humbling…and terrifying. Wherever the aliens came from – and the documents were silent on that point – had been sending out starships for hundreds of years. They could have settled vast reaches of space…while the human race had grubbed around in the dirt.

Hot tears of rage stung his eyes at all the missed opportunities. If the human race had just started serious space exploration, the aliens wouldn’t have stood a chance. Their only hope had been to discover a pre-space world and that had been, effectively, what they’d found. It would be aliens who studied and settled the Solar System, mining the asteroids and gas giants, while humans became their subjects, a slavery that would be sanctioned by a religion that had originated far from Earth. The human race would, indeed, adept to service them. They couldn’t even remember any other religion.

And they claim that there’s a billion of them on their mothership, he thought, angrily. The separated, larger, section of the alien starship had entered a Lagrange Point, waiting for the time when the settlers would be called down to Earth, well out of range of any possible attack. There had been a vague report from the Russians that they’d attacked the aliens in orbit, again, but that had been unconfirmed and the aliens had seemed unworried by the attack, if indeed it had taken place.

He stood up and walked through the corridors, back to the President’s suite. The President had looked better when his friend had returned from orbit, but he wouldn’t be happy to hear the news. When he was finally allowed into the room, he was surprised to see not only the President, but General Hastings and Deborah Ivey as well, briefing the President on Operation Lone Star. The name might have to be changed, he knew, before it was discussed outside the bunker; they could even borrow a trick from the British and pick something completely unrelated to the target. If the aliens figured out that Texas was the Lone Star State, they would know the target of the American attack…and take precautions.

“Colonel,” the President said, sounding almost relieved. He had the task of deciding if Lone Star should be launched or not…and, in the wake of the alien surrender demand, he might have had no choice, but to order the operation. “What have the aliens told us?”

“Quite a bit,” Paul said, and outlined what he’d read. “They seem to be determined to expand everywhere, following their own form of manifest destiny, until they have all of the stars in the galaxy.”

“But that would take them…centuries,” General Hastings protested. “Haven’t they run into someone bigger than them out there?”

“Apparently not,” Paul said. “The documents read like one of those after-action reports Saddam’s people published, ones where they could do no wrong and their enemies made every mistake in the book and were wiped