Invasion

“You didn’t answer the question,” Gary said. He leaned forward carefully. “Anyone want to confess?”

“I can’t stand horses,” Sonja admitted, suddenly. “I rode on one once, fell off and broke my arm…and since then, I haven’t been able to deal with them at all. You, sir?”

Gary shrugged. “I’m scared of falling into vacuum,” he admitted. “It focuses the mind a bit on the station. Anyone else?”

“I used to be terrified of the Germans,” Philippe said. “No offence, Sophia.”

“None taken,” Sophia said. “My family weren’t in Germany during the war.”

“Perhaps we should forget about humanity’s long history of war,” Stanislav suggested. “After all, this is the dawn of a new era, right?”

On the screen, the alien starship raced closer.

Chapter Five

Then came the night of the first falling star. It was seen early in the morning, rushing over Winchester eastward, a line of flame high in the atmosphere. Hundreds must have seen it, and taken it for an ordinary falling star.

– The War of the Worlds

Colonel Paul James watched as the President took his chair in the middle of the White House National Command Centre. The decision to have the President in the White House, even though he was actually in the underground command centre, hadn’t been an easy one for the Secret Service to swallow. They’d read countless novels of alien invasion, and seen Independence Day and other big-screen versions of alien invasion, and they feared that Washington would be attacked almost at once. They’d wanted the President in one of the massive command centres, well away from anything that might draw alien fire, but the President had insisted on remaining in the White House. First Contact, he’d said, on national television, would not be made with him cowering in a bunker somewhere.

The Vice President, Theodore Taylor, had been packed off to a command centre, despite his protests. If the aliens attacked Washington, it was likely that he would be President of the United States within the next hour. The NCC was supposed to be proof against a nuclear detonation, built using the most advanced bunker-building techniques known to man, but there was no such thing as absolute security. If the aliens dropped an asteroid on the city, the shockwave alone would probably collapse the bunker completely. Paul watched, dispassionately, as the President glanced around at his fellows, from the operators working at various consoles to the handful of Cabinet members who’d joined him for the alien arrival.

There was one hour to go.

Paul caught the eye of one of the Secret Service men and nodded briefly. The man didn’t respond. He’d seen Secret Service men who fitted the stereotype exactly and men who blended perfectly into the background, but they all had one thing in common; they couldn’t be distracted from their primary task. They would all put themselves between the President and lethal danger, yet they knew that there were limits to their protective abilities, particularly against such a dangerously unknown faction. The aliens might have weapons that were beyond human imagination; Paul was reasonably certain they wouldn’t be flying City Destroyers into the atmosphere and blasting Washington with a death ray, but even the weapons encompassed by their observed technological level were formidable. A single asteroid would completely ruin their day.

His eyes strayed to the big screen, overlooking the room. Normally, it would show the President, at a glance, the precise status of the entire United States military machine. Now, it showed the images from the ISS and the orbiting telescopes, including a pair of highly-classified spy satellites that had been re-tasked from watching for terrorists to studying the alien craft. The larger alien starship, the one that was still a week away, was still almost impossible to resolve, even in the most powerful telescopes, but the smaller one was much easier to comprehend. NASA’s scientists believed that it didn’t have any gravity of its own, which suggested that it was designed for high- speed manoeuvring, rather than a slow and stately entrance into Earth orbit. The ship’s hull, vaguely conical in form, was studded with bumps and blisters, some of which looked like smaller spacecraft, attached to their mothership like giant parasites. The more Paul studied the footage, the more worried he became; if nothing else, the aliens had made a hideously effective show of strength.

The President looked over at him from his chair. “Colonel?”

“Ah, yes, Mr President,” Paul said, ashamed of having been caught unprepared. The sheer size of the alien craft was daunting. He checked his terminal briefly before speaking. “I have the latest reports from the joint defence program.”

The President lifted an eyebrow. “The FAA has grounded, at our request, almost all civilian air traffic,” Paul said. It hadn’t been a hard decision; almost everyone in America, and indeed the rest of the world, had decided to stay at home and watch the alien arrival. The live feed from the ISS was going to have more viewers than anything else in human history; companies, resigned to the inevitable, had decided to give their employees a day off to watch the show. No one seriously believed that anyone who had a choice would come in to work…and, for those whose service was essential, they were still glued to television sets or watching streaming internet broadcasts. “The only aircraft in CONUS, apart from emergency aircraft, are military aircraft maintaining a CAP over our cities and defence bases, and the Boeing 747 aircraft that we adapted to carry laser weapons.”

He paused. “Please, continue,” the President said. “What about our ground forces?”

“The soldiers are in their deployment zones and ready for action, if called upon,” Paul said. Most of them would be watching their television sets as well, even in the bases. “Police departments across the nation have been called out completely to maintain order, if necessary, but everyone seems to be staying home. Crime seems to have dropped to almost nothing over the last couple of days. The street parties in New York and San Francisco for the alien arrival have been boisterous, but almost completely non-violent.”

Deborah scowled. “They need proper jobs,” she said. “Policy isn’t decided by people shouting their heads off in the streets.”

“They have a right to express themselves,” Spencer snapped. It was an old argument. “If they want to protest what they think of as injustice…”

“We want a peaceful contact as well,” Deborah snapped back. “Don’t they know that?”

“Not today,” the President said, firmly. The two scowled at each other and then returned their attention to the main display. “Colonel?”

Paul had used the brief diversion to catch up with the reports. “The THAAD launchers, Patriot missile batteries and Air Defence Artillery are on standby and ready for action, if required,” he continued. “The ground-based radar network is up and running at full capability and hard linkages between each site have been checked and confirmed. If we lose the satellites, we should still be able to coordinate our operations. The Navy has deployed antiaircraft ships in positions to provide extra firepower to defend our ports and other installations; the ballistic missile submarines and other strategic assets have been placed on alert. We have a direct link to Discovery and the ISS, Mr President; we’re as ready as we’re ever going to be.”

The President nodded slowly. An unnatural air of peace had settled over the entire world. Everyone was watching the alien contact, even the people whose leaders had tried to keep the fact of alien existence from them; wars, disputes and even underground insurgencies had almost come to a stop. The President was fundamentally a man of peace, but he had come to power in a world of endless war, one where he had to wage a war against shadowy opponents. The peace wouldn’t last…but then, did it ever?

“That leaves one question,” he said, looking up at the alien craft. “What about the rest of the world?”

Paul spoke without taking his eyes off the screen. “The Russians, Chinese, French and British have launched and dispersed their ballistic missile submarines,” he said. “Russian and Chinese ASAT systems have been brought online and, in line with the secret protocols, have been linked into our tracking system. The EU will do what they can, but their ASAT weapons are rather more limited than either the Russians or ours. In short, everyone who has some ASAT capability is preparing it for operations, while everyone else is merely going on alert and praying.”

The President snorted. “And the aliens themselves?”

Paul shook his head. “Nothing, Mr President,” he said. “They’ve said nothing to us.”