And, if some of them were
He blew his whistle as he retreated out of the camp, knowing that the other three would be abandoning their positions and falling back with him, back towards the camels. The aliens would be on their way from their nearest base and no one knew how long it would be until they arrived. He could have wished for better intelligence; the aliens had learned enough from Texas to almost isolate the Middle East from the remainder of the world. If it hadn’t been for the invasion, the general death and slaughter and aliens intent on replacing Islam with their own religion, parts of the population would probably have been quite happy with that.
They could see the approaching lights of an alien rapid reaction force as they headed back over the sand. Through a dark coincidence, the aliens were going to pass close to their position, so they fell to the ground and hugged the sand as the aliens raced closer. Sean thought, for one terrifying moment, that the aliens were going to actually drive over them, but instead they veered off down towards the camp. He heard the sound of shooting, lots of shooting, in the distance, but he was sure that at least some of the prisoners would have made it.
“Shit,” Loomis said.
Sean followed his gaze and swore. The aliens hadn’t been as stupid as he’d thought. They’d put two and two together and, while on their flight to the camp, had fired a spread of missiles into the tents and the camels. The poor beasts were dead now…and the aliens probably thought that the tribesmen were dead as well. Getting somewhere where they could wreck more havoc was going to be harder than he had thought.
“Get into the hide,” he ordered finally. They’d be detected easily if they were walking on the desert in daylight. “Tonight, we’ll head for Riyadh.”
“If nothing else,” Loomis said, as they bedded down, “we put one hell of a dent in their pride.”
”Sure,” Sean said. “All we have to do now is make sure that someone knows what we did. Anyone up for the quickie book deal?
Chapter Thirty-Five
– Anon
Forty cycles – or six weeks, as humans reckoned time – after the first landings, WarPriest Allon felt that he had some grounds for relief. The first and second human insurgencies within the cities had been dangerous, and there was a constant series of attacks out in the countryside, including some that had been embarrassing, if not disastrous, but the grip on the occupied zone was fairly secure. The warriors had learned, quickly, that not all of the collaborators could be trusted, but they had enough to keep a lid on trouble. The occupation forces had been moved towards the human-controlled area, prepared for their advance further into the country called America, and enough forces had been deployed in the rear area to ensure security.
It had taken him longer than he had expected to obtain the High Priest’s consent to the advance, but really… there was little choice. A constant stream of soldiers, weapons and other equipment were flowing into the occupied zone from the remainder of America…and some of them were deadly indeed. The warriors patrolled the border, but it was a vast area of land and they discovered, quickly, that isolated units tended to come under attack. In fact, smaller units were used as bait to draw larger units into a bigger trap, sometimes leaving them with heavy casualties for nothing. There seemed to be an unlimited number of humans willing to fight directly, while he knew that his own strength was limited. With the massive landings in the Middle East and the insurgency there, the High Priest was unlikely to be willing to risk the foothold on America.
But there was no choice. The humans were very good at camouflage, but the observers high above had picked up on new human forces arriving along the borders. It was possible that they would launch a second major counterattack…and even through he knew that they wouldn’t be able to actually burn the Takaina out of Texas, they could launch spoiling attacks or even reinforce the insurgents. The handful of KEWs that had been used to hit likely targets had not, as far as he could tell, taken out anything vital; in fact, going by the human skill at deception, he had a nasty suspicion that half of them had been dropped on decoys. The humans were
He watched, for a long moment, the live feed from the orbiting cameras, and then issued the order. “Advance.”
They called it No Man’s Land.
Sergeant Darryl Tyler wiped his forehead as the small patrol made its way across the devastated country. Sage, his Atika-Husky bitch, looked up at him, her tongue hanging out, as if to ask why the patrol had stopped. Technically, the presence of a dog was against regulations, but Sage had saved their lives several times during the first battles with the aliens, if only howling to warn them of their advance. No man in the small patrol, or even in the entire army, would have refused to allow her to serve, despite what the rules said.
“Don’t worry,” he said, more to her than the rest of the men. The seven men and two women of the patrol had been on duty for several hours and it was getting hotter. “We’ll be on the road again soon.”
The Army’s defeat had scared hell out of the civilians, he reflected, as he peered into the distance, towards the Red Zone. Only the presence of a black helicopter, several kilometres away, warned him that anything was amiss. The civilians who were actually army-reservists had been drafted back into service, while the remainder had been evacuated from the area to somewhere safer, although there weren't many places in the United States that could be termed as ‘safe’ these days. The Marine and Special Forces operators had been through a three-kilometre wide area and carefully rigged the entire zone with booby-traps. Lake Palestine was no longer a safe place for swimmers, while the towns had been converted into death traps. Snipers and survivalists lurked in the bushes, prepared to shoot any alien who so much as showed his face, even though most of the locals had been removed. They had wanted to stay and defend their homes, but instead they’d been removed. The army couldn’t take the risk of them falling into enemy hands.
Sage barked and gambolled around while the patrol checked around. The problem these days was simple; the aliens could come at them at any time, with very little warning. They moved awesomely fast on the ground, weren't bothered by the destroyed or rigged bridges and radio transmissions tended to draw a strike from orbit. The Special Forces had rigged up a lot of dummy transmitters, trying to dissuade the aliens from taking pot shots at every transmitter, but still, using radio was dangerous. The patrol was, effectively speaking, on its own.
“Move out,” he said, and strode off, confident that his men would follow him. They were a confusing mixture of reservists, soldiers whose units had been destroyed in Operation Lone Star and even a pair of civilians who had somehow talked their way into a military unit, but they knew their stuff. If they were attacked, he was confident that they would manage to acquit themselves well. They marched up a hill, watching out for infiltrators…and saw, instead, a line of alien vehicles, advancing right towards Athens. They were coming directly up the road, their passage almost soundless, right towards the defence lines.
“Shit,” he snapped, and pulled a small radio out off his belt. Keying in a single command, he placed it down by a rock, and then led the patrol away from the radio. Thirty seconds after he’d left it, the radio sent a single burst transmission and then shut down. The aliens didn’t bother to destroy the radio from orbit; the odds were, he decided, that they had already started to jam the human communications. When they decided to put on a blitzkrieg, they were almost unstoppable. “Come on.”
He led the patrol down towards a possible ambush point. They could have retreated into one of the hidden outposts the Army Engineers had scattered around the cleared zone, but that wasn't in his nature. He knew that there was little that they could do to slow the aliens, despite the mines and suchlike that had been left in the area, but they had no choice, but to try. The aliens were not going to break through the lines without a fight.
In the distance, he could see the light of falling KEWs. Overhead, a seemingly endless swarm of enemy helicopters passed, heading towards the human lines. The aliens were definitely on the move…and all they could do was die bravely. By now, they probably couldn’t even make it back to the human lines.
