Invasion

the absence of the satellites. The Iraqis hadn’t realised just how important they’d become until they’d been destroyed by the aliens. An hour passed slowly while he tried to muster some kind of defence…and he realised that while there were over three thousand soldiers left alive, mostly reporting in from Basra, he was the senior officer.

“Send out a scouting unit,” Brooks advised. The aliens had landed somewhere to the south and would probably be advancing against him soon. Judging by the rising columns of smoke from the direction of Kuwait, they were attacking the Kuwaitis first. “Find out what they’re doing and then prepare to counter it.”

There wasn't much in the way of defences to the south, Karim knew. There had been some reason for it, mainly to show that the new Iraq had nothing, but fraternal feelings towards the Kuwaitis, but it was starting to look like a major oversight. He didn’t have much in the way of armour or supporting vehicles either; if the Americans were to be believed, the aliens could simply pick them off from orbit. His infantrymen could make their stand, but if the aliens came at them, they would probably be slaughtered. As much as he hated to admit it, he was out of his depth and sinking fast.

“Move the antitank teams up to the main road,” he added, after a moment’s thought. The men knew it intimately. The American experience had suggested that the aliens liked using roads, although the terrain was different in Iraq, and they might have a chance to mount an ambush. The aliens were still landing – he could see signs of their massive landing craft falling out of the sky to land somewhere to the south – but he didn’t know what they were doing. The aliens had left him blind and deaf. “I want…”

A green flare burst up in the distance. Without radio, he’d been forced to fall back on a more primitive method of signalling an alien advance, a flare. The aliens were coming up from Kuwait to attack Basra, whereupon they would probably cut the city off and head northwards. He barked orders, ordering most of his men back towards the city; their only hope was to try and hold the city and hope that the Iraqi forces further to the north could muster a counter-attack in time. Somehow, he doubted that they would make it; the aliens had probably dropped all the old and new bridges from orbit. His force was almost completely on its own.

There was a brief skirmish when the aliens engaged the antitank teams, and then they pressed on towards Basra. Karim had found a vantage point along the outskirts of the city, while his men struggled to organise the residents of the city to defend it, watching as Sunni and Shia forgot their traditional hatreds to defend Basra. They’d all see the footage of what had happened in America and there were shrines and mosques aplenty in Basra. He’d had his tanks pulled back to hiding places, but three of them had been picked off from orbit, the alien fire almost vaporising the tanks and their crews. The others had been rapidly abandoned, which might have been the alien plan all along; they probably wanted to force him to abandon some of his firepower. Their UAV-like aircraft buzzed high overhead; two of his men had tried to bring them down with antiaircraft missiles, but the aliens had avoided them neatly.

“Here they come,” Brooks said. There was a new anticipation in his voice, a chance to get stuck into the enemy who had devastated his country. The aliens were still landing in the background, but their ranks seemed never ending, led by hovering tanks. The sight was almost out of a science-fiction movie. “Hold your fire until they’re right on top of you, then engage them before they can call in fire from orbit.”

“Got it,” Karim said. His remaining sergeants were moving among the volunteers now, passing on the same message, even though he hoped that most of the civilians would stay out of the fighting. If they were caught with weapons they would be treated as hostiles, if the aliens stuck to their standard tactics…and there were thousands of weapons in Basra. People tended to carry them around as a status symbol. The government had tried to warn people of the danger, but there were too many old wounds from Saddam’s era and the invasion. “It’s been nice knowing you.”

Brooks looked at the aliens as they carefully surrounded the city. “Yeah,” he said. “You too.”

One by one, the roads and railways leading out of the city were occupied and severed. People who were trying to leave the city were encouraged to return by brief bursts of heavy firing from machine guns. A pair of Iraqi army snipers, who’d made a career of picking off unsuspecting terrorists, took down a handful of aliens with headshots, before their hiding places were picked off from orbit. Karim watched the buildings collapse, praying that only a few people had been caught up in the fallen rubble, and wondered how they did that. It wasn't easy to locate a sniper, but for all he knew, they had some alien sensor trick that could track him by his sweat or some other bodily odour. The Americans had shown enough impossible tricks to convince him that still others were possible.

The aliens didn’t bother to demand a surrender; they simply opened fire. One by one, their tanks advanced towards his positions, while their heavy guns boomed fire into the city. Karim and his men held their fire until the aliens were close, whereupon they opened fire with their rifles and a handful of antitank weapons, picking off four alien tanks. A pair of men who’d been close-lipped about their past, but toting RPGs fired them as well, hitting and damaging two tanks. It didn’t seem that they’d been damaged too badly; they were still moving, and still firing. Shells crashed into buildings and detonated, shattering them and sending masonry falling to the ground, while their machine guns swept across the suddenly-visible men. Explosions billowed out across the city as the aliens started their advance and pushed into the city. The damage rapidly grew into a nightmare.

Damn them, Karim thought, as his command and control disintegrated. His ability to coordinate the fight had vanished almost as soon as the aliens opened fire. They were calling down strikes from orbit even as their infantrymen swarmed into the city, a seemingly never-ending rush of black-clad humanoids, their armour protecting them from most shots. It took headshots to kill them, or grenades, while they could kill the Iraqis. A line of civilians, men carrying old AK-47s, charged the aliens, screaming aloud…and the aliens mowed them down without even breaking step. Basra was dying as the aliens hacked their way into the city…and the best Karim and his remaining men could do was harass the aliens through hit-and-run tactics. The rubble provided plenty of places to hide.

“They’re just killing us all,” he shouted at Brooks, as the American picked off a pair of aliens. The burst of return fire almost shattered the building they were using as cover. The fight had grown completely out of hand, but the aliens, somehow, were coordinating their advance perfectly, tightening the noose around the city. “What’s the point of this?”

“Who knows?” Brooks answered, as they found themselves stumbling into a mosque. It had taken a shell from somewhere, shattering the minaret, but the interior of the building was somehow unharmed. The worshippers, praying desperately for salvation, hadn’t found it; they’d been crushed under the rubble. “I don’t know what they’re thinking…”

Another round of explosions revealed, suddenly, that they were surrounded and alone. Karim realised, feeling absolutely calm, that he was going to die. He checked his rifle, loaded his final clip, and smiled tiredly at Brooks. The American had run out of rifle ammunition, so he’d drawn his handgun and checked it quickly.

“I don’t feel like surrendering,” Brooks said, as he unhooked a grenade from his belt. “You?”

“Hell, no,” Karim said, as Brooks prepared to throw the final grenade. The smoke from the growing fires was making it harder to think; his eyes were stinging and burning. He had a nasty suspicion that he was on the verge of going deaf from all the noise. “Hit them!”

Brooks threw the grenade in a practiced toss towards the alien position. A moment later, the aliens fired back, a heavy burst of machine gun fire that shattered the walls and tore through their bodies before they could escape. The remains of the building collapsed inwards and buried their bodies.

Both men died instantly.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I never really hated a one true God, but the God of the people I hated.

– Marilyn Manson

Oddly enough, pure fanatics were rare among the Takaina, those who followed the Truth. They had no problem with fighting and dying for their religion, but the idea of throwing their lives away for nothing was alien to them, allowing their commanders to cut their losses if a battle was going badly. To retreat, honestly and openly, was not a sin among them, although some of the Inquisitors might have disagreed. They, shaped into a mould that rejected all personality, all individuality, watched for heresy in their own manner, while disregarding their own safety. They