Invasion

entire alien army was likely to be on their trail. They could simply devastate the area from orbit, but he was gambling on them not being prepared to shatter a few kilometres of the city just to kill a handful of insurgents. By the time they realised they’d been tricked, he hoped, the pair of them should be well away.

“Thanks, I think,” his rescued captive said. Brent had to laugh as the tension wore off. He might be still trapped in the midst of an alien-controlled city, with thousands of embarrassed and humiliated aliens coming after him, but for the moment they were safe. “I thought I was a goner there.”

“You pretty nearly were steak and fries,” Brent agreed. He checked the corridor quickly, and then opened the battered and looted apartment, recovering the suitcase that they'd hidden under the bed. “Strip off, completely, and change into what’s in the case.”

The man seemed inclined to object. “But…”

“But nothing,” Brent snapped. “Those bastards are tricky. Ten gets you twenty that you have a tracer somewhere on your clothes and if they start looking now, they’re going to find us.”

That, he noticed, got the man’s clothes off quicker than a teenage boy faced with a naked and ready girl. His body was pale, like his face and hands, but there were bruises everywhere. It didn’t look as if he'd been tortured, but the alien guards had probably worked him over once or twice, just to make the point that they could do whatever they liked to him. The alien concept of treachery and perversion might not be the same as a human concept, but they clearly took it seriously; he hadn’t seen them trying to burn anyone before.

Doesn’t mean they’re not doing it elsewhere, he thought. They’d invaded the Middle East, according to their tame humans, and so far the Arabs had just prostrated themselves before them. Brent suspected that the aliens were lying; he’d been in the Middle East and fought there, in some countries that it would have surprised the general public to know that American troops had ever fought, and he knew that defeating them wouldn’t be a pushover. Their armies were crap, commanded by poor leaders who got their jobs because of their contacts or lack of competence, but as insurgents, they were formidable. The US had killed off thousands of the incompetent insurgents, and the Iraqi Army had been completing the process, but hundreds of very experienced bastards had fled Iraq, into Saudi or Iran, where they’d started to cause trouble for the established rulers. The aliens might be having more difficulties than they were prepared to admit…

“Good,” he said, finally. The man now wore a pair of jeans, a shirt that looked as if it had seen better days, and a baseball cap that concealed his hair. “What’s your name?”

“Joshua,” the man said. He looked as if he was going to fall dead at any second, but his eyes were bright with determination. “If they had a tracer on me, shouldn’t we move?”

“Yep,” Brent said, and quickly stuffed the remaining clothes in the briefcase. The aliens would probably be able to track the tracer through the cloth – at least, he hoped they could – but when they found the briefcase, the thermite grenade he'd rigged up as part of the case would detonate, hopefully in their faces. He dumped the handgun and his coat in the case, returned it to the bed, and activated the trap. “Come on…and remember, act casual.”

“I could go back to my apartment,” Joshua said, sounding as if he were coming down from a high. He’d probably never had such excitement in his life before. “If we split up, they would still be looking for two men…”

“And then you’d be picked up again when they checked that,” Brent said, as they stepped out onto the street. Automatically, he lowered his voice. “The aliens aren’t stupid, buddy, and your face and fingerprints are known to them. Given time, they’ll check out everywhere you could go, but if you come with me to a safe house, you should be safe for the moment.”

Joshua winced. “There’s really nothing else left, is there?” He asked. “Existence as I know it is over?”

“And resistance is futile,” Brent agreed gravely. “On the plus side, you won’t have to repay any money you owe.”

The aliens, much to his relief, hadn’t managed to get a proper cordon up in time to catch them both. He still had his ID card, the one that they’d issued to him, but it wouldn’t save Joshua, whose card was lost somewhere in the alien headquarters. He reminded himself not to take anything for granted, but it looked to him as if the aliens hadn’t yet realised the target of the attack, or perhaps thought that Joshua, whoever he was, had been killed in the IED blast. Their object lesson to the human population had been foiled…and, given how he suspected they thought, they would be more concerned with finding a second victim than chasing down Joshua.

The question nagged at him as they slipped into the outskirts, past a group of aliens who paid them no heed, and into their street. It was fortunate that there had been so many people moving around the city in the days and weeks following the invasion; no matter what the aliens did, tracking it all was going to be a major pain in the ass. In time, he was sure, they would lock down Austin and the remainder of the Red Zone properly, but until then, the insurgents could move relatively freely if they were careful. The last house had had to be abandoned – one of his men had been wounded and fallen into alien hands – but the new one was suitable for the purpose. He hadn’t wanted to bring Joshua here, but given how little time they’d had to plan the snatch, there had been little choice.

“Stay back,” he said, as he opened the outer door. The inner door had been rigged with all the ingenuity of a pack of Special Forces soldiers, free to use some of their more advanced training at last, and would be rather… dangerous for anyone opening it without special precautions. The string had been exactly where they’d left it, but the slightest misstep would detonate the claymore they’d rigged up and blow them both to pieces; carefully, he dismantled enough of the trap to allow them both to enter. “This place is rigged, so stay on the upper floor unless you want to kill us all.”

He showed Joshua the stairs and the washroom and waited, patiently, while he had a shower and a shave. He almost looked human again when he emerged, although the remainder of the bruises wouldn’t fade until he’d had time to sleep and perhaps been taken someplace where humans still ruled themselves. The remainder of his group – the five who were left after nearly six weeks of constant fighting, hiding and fighting again – had arrived in the meantime and it was a thoughtful, but elated group that met up again in what had once been the master bedroom. The previous owner of the house, Brent had decided long since, had either been filthy rich or owed some banks a great deal of money.

Enough greenbacks to carpet the moon, he thought, as he took a beer and relaxed.

“So,” he said, finally, once he'd caught up with his people. “What did they get you for, eh?”

“I’m a reporter,” Joshua admitted. “I used to blog a lot about life under occupation. They didn’t like it.”

There was a long pause. “Well, fuck me,” Sergeant Mancil said, finally. “Are you telling me that I risked life and limb to rescue a fucking reporter?”

***

Joshua hadn’t been expecting rescue at all, let alone in such a dramatic manner, and he was grateful to them for their timely appearance, but there was no way that he was going to let that pass.

“Tell me something,” he said, acidly. “Is there something wrong with being a reporter?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sergeant Mancil said. “Only countless missions compromised, lives put at stake, reputations ruined, minor and isolated incidents blown out of all proportion…I’d say that there’s a lot wrong with being a reporter.”

“I must have been doing something right,” Joshua countered. He’d had similar debates before and they'd always ended up as screaming matches. It might have been childish, but there was a part of him that would never abandon an argument. “They wanted to kill me…and not just kill me, but make an example of me.”

“And there are others who sing the praises of the enemy,” Sergeant Mancil hissed. “In every war we have fought, people like you have served as a fifth column, sapping the morale of our side and encouraging the enemy. Do you have any idea how much damage you do with a single unquestioned report from the enemy? Do you even care if the facts are right, provided that the story is hot enough to get you a promotion and some fame?”

Joshua’s eyes glinted. “And you don’t think the public has a right to know?”

Sergeant Mancil matched him. “You think the public has a right to know everything? Do they have a right to know that an operation is kicking off well in advance of its start? Do you have a right to tell the world everything about our damn deployments?”