Conquistadors!, page 10
President Hamlin held up a hand, stilling the debate. “Yes?”
“Mr. President, we picked up a message from the ... ah, alien base,” the kid said, holding out a tablet. “They say they come in peace.”
Felix forced himself to wait as the President took the tablet, then looked up as someone had the presence of mind to put the message on the big screen. It was text only and ... he blinked in surprise. Travellers from an alternate timeline, who’d arrived on Earth by accident ... Felix had heard some absurd stories in his time, like every other politician, but this one took the cake. An accidental jump through the multiverse was one thing, invading a town was quite another. The message was so vague he half-suspected it had been purposely written to make it hard for anyone to decide what to do about the situation.
“They’re human,” the President said, relieved. “They’re ...”
“They say they’re human,” Felix interrupted. “We have no solid proof of anything beyond a single text message. And besides, humans have done some pretty awful things to their fellow humans.”
He scowled inwardly. Human history was one long liturgy of horrors perpetrated by one group of humans on another. The strong bullied the weak, the weak became strong and bullied the next set of weaklings ... the newcomers, the invaders, being human was meaningless. An alien race might not see any point in waging war on humanity. A human might be convinced it was very far from pointless.
“If they got here by accident,” the Secretary of State said, “we should at least try to help them.”
Felix snorted. “If a Chinese aircraft got off course and crash-landed in California, we would of course render them assistance,” he said. “But if that Chinese crew came out shooting ... we would be entitled to assume they’re hostile and respond accordingly.”
The President cleared his throat. “What are our options?”
“These people are not friendly,” Felix said, sharply. He scanned the table, looking for support. “We strike them now, and hard.”
“They also represent an opportunity,” the National Security Advisor said. “If we gain access to their tech, we could advance in leaps and bounds.”
We were already on top of the tech tree, Felix thought coldly, although he had a nasty feeling that was no longer true. But then we went and fucked it all up ...
Carter glanced at his tablet. “We put out a call for all military and emergency personnel to report to their duty stations,” he said. “Fortunately, we were in the middle of a training period at Fort Cavazos, giving us a higher-than-normal number of soldiers to call upon. We can move a rapid deployment force from Fort Cavazos and other bases to the region, then declare an exclusion zone around it, backed up by military force. If these people are on the level, we can talk to them while ensuring our own safety; if not, we’ll have enough firepower in the vicinity to deal with them.”
“Unless their tech is advanced enough to crush us,” Felix said. “The Iraqis outnumbered us hugely, when we invaded Iraq. We still bested them, with very few casualties.”
“There’s nothing to suggest they’re that far ahead of us,” Carter said. “We really have only a handful of choices. We attack them now, with all the force we can muster; we talk to them; we do nothing and hope they go away.”
He smiled. “Does anyone think doing nothing is a good idea?”
Felix didn’t smile. “Remind me of something,” he said. “What happened to the Native Americans when the Europeans arrived?”
He pressed on before anyone could say a word. “They could have united against the newcomers and crushed them,” he said, coldly. He’d never had any time for guilt over crimes committed by men long dead, but sometimes it came in handy. “Instead, they thought they could use the newcomers. But the newcomers were too strong and the Native Americans were crushed instead, driven back to reservations where they’re poor, hopeless, and constantly harassed by idiots from the Wan-Na-Be Tribe. The only reason they’re called Native Americans, rather than Indians or Redskins or something even worse, is because modern society is advanced enough to feel guilt and shame ... not that it is ever enough to get them moving back to Europe!
“These people are not friendly. They may claim to be, but their actions suggest otherwise. And if we give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.”
There was a long, chilling pause. “You’re jumping to conclusions,” the Secretary of State said, finally. “You don’t know they’re hostile.”
“They invaded a town,” Felix countered. “What more proof do you need?”
He suspected, as the argument raged on, that he’d lost. The President was too much of a ditherer to take decisive action. The concept of throwing a ring of steel around the occupied town sounded promising, to him, even though it was hardly enough. The newcomers hadn’t said anything about the locals, or ... Felix didn’t like the sound of that either. They might be treating the townspeople as human shields, which was bad enough, or interrogating them to learn about their new world. And the President would balk at the idea of nuking an American town, with American civilians ...
“Get the troops into place,” the President said, finally. “And then we will see.”
“Yes,” Felix agreed. “We will.”
He studied the map for a long moment. The invaders – if they were invaders – were a long way from Washington DC. Somehow, he didn’t find that reassuring. If they could land in Texas, they could land anywhere ... and what, he asked himself, had happened to the other half of the town? Crushed or ... or what? The military officers kept speaking, outlining units already being prepped to fly into the region and secure the town ... too much detail, Felix noted absently, for a President who knew nothing about the army and cared less. He wasn’t much better, he conceded, but at least he could be decisive. Right now, he had the uneasy sense they were sleepwalking towards the apocalypse. They didn’t know what they were facing ... not yet. The idea of sending in any diplomats seemed absurd.
It might work out, he told himself, as the discussion switched to managing the media and foreign affairs. There’d been no way to hide the surge ... the media was calling it an EMP, even though it wasn’t. The public would be terrified and the rest of the world deeply concerned, not least everyone who’d lost one or more satellites only a few short hours ago. They were lucky it hadn’t started a war. Everyone else is going to want in, if we do start talking to the newcomers ... and who knows what will happen then?
A shiver ran down his spine. There was a joke, a very old and sharp one, about how things would have been different if the Native Americans had had an immigration policy ...
Somehow, it didn’t seem so funny now.
Chapter Ten: Wolfe Airfield, Texas, North America, Timeline F (OTL)
“Here they come,” the guard said.
Callam nodded, curtly, as the first of the V-22 Osprey aircraft came into view. He’d flown in the tilt rotors himself, back when he’d been in the Corps, and he’d rapidly learnt to appreciate their value for moving troops from place to place without a proper airfield or landing zone. There would be heavier transports on the way – the airfield was apparently designed to take even the largest aircraft – but whoever was in command of the military response would want to secure the landing zone first. He wondered, idly, if the unit was flying out of Fort Cavazos or somewhere further away. God alone knew what sort of unit had been on standby, ready to respond to a crisis no one had anticipated.
He glanced west, feeling vaguely uneasy despite the new arrivals. There’d been no sign of the enemy, no sense they were about to be attacked, but his instincts kept warning him they were being watched. He was in the middle of America, on a guarded airfield, and yet he’d felt as if he were poking his way through a poppy field in Afghanistan, just waiting for the Taliban to spring an ambush. The sensation didn’t fade as more aircraft came into view, hugging the ground in a manner rare outside training exercises. It was dangerous ... but flying too high might be dangerous too.
The first aircraft landed, a force of armed Marines spilling out to take up position as if they expected to come under fire at any moment. They looked tough and professional, but ... Callam was experienced enough to know they were nervous, their fingers far too close to the triggers for anyone’s comfort. Any hope the whole affair might be a particularly insane exercise, a test of their readiness or their credulity, would have faded over the last few hours, leaving them aware they were heading into the unknown. The second and third aircraft landed; one disgorging more troops, the other expelling a bunch of laptop-carrying men who hurried to the hangar as if they expected to be shot in the back. Callam rolled his eyes, although he knew the coordinators were very far from REMFs. The tables were already waiting for them, allowing them to set up with astonishing speed. Who knew how quickly everything could go to hell?
He smiled as he saw a flight of assault helicopters following, orbiting the airfield to provide fire support to the groundpounders, then felt his chest tighten as he saw an officer disengage from the group of operators and make his way towards him. The man’s uniform was purposely bare – it was dangerous for a senior officer to show himself too openly in a combat zone – but he was clearly a man of authority. Callam didn’t recognise him – he couldn’t help thinking the officer could have stepped off a recruitment poster – yet that didn’t matter, as long as he knew what he was doing. The thought almost made him smile, despite everything. Did anyone really know what was going on?
“Good to see you,” the officer said. “I’m Major Hammond.”
“Sheriff Callam Boone,” Callam said. He carefully didn’t salute. He had no reason to think they were being watched by snipers, but it was well to be careful. “You got my report?”
“I did.” Hammond motioned for Callam to follow him, leaving the guard behind. “I also heard from a handful of other refugees.”
Callam allowed himself a moment of relief. The Feds were on their way back to Washington and ... he hoped someone else had escaped, someone who could back up his report, but there’d been no way to know for sure. He had no idea what the others had seen, and he was honest enough to admit that he, himself, might not have believed the first reports either, yet ...
“Right now, we know very little,” Hammond continued, as they walked into the hangar and headed towards a map someone had pinned to the wall. The hangar was huge and yet it seemed to have become a bustling office in the wink of an eye, operators yammering away on radios and cellphones while tapping laptops and drinking coffee. “There’s been some communication, as of the last update, but nothing concrete.”
“They talked to us?” Callam kicked himself for not considering the possibility. He’d read quite a few alien invasion books where the invaders had tried to learn how to talk to the humans, if only to tell them what to do. The only ones where the aliens hadn’t made the effort, or made humans do the hard work, had been ones where the aliens were bent on genocide rather than conquest and slavery. “Who are they?”
A nasty thought struck him. “And what are they doing with my people?”
The floor shook, slightly, as a heavy transport aircraft landed. Callam looked back, just in time to see the massive plane come to a halt and start disgorging antiaircraft missile batteries and radar domes. Another followed, bringing more heavy weapons to the troops on the ground. Officers barked orders, steering some of the missile batteries to cover the airfield and others to take up position further west. There’d be tanks on the way too, Callam thought, to match the invader tanks. He hoped they’d get there soon. In theory, the army could have twenty to thirty thousand troops in position within a day or two. In practice ... he doubted it.
“They’re apparently travellers from an alternate world who got lost,” Hammond said. He sounded as though he didn’t believe it. “Our orders are to keep them pinned down while the diplomats try to sort it out.”
He pointed to the map. “The President has declared a total exclusion zone around Flint. No civilians will be allowed within ten miles of the town. The other towns within the zone will be evacuated – FEMA is already setting up camps for the displaced people – and, if there is no other choice, turned into defensive strongpoints. The media ...”
Callam scowled. “Sir, the townspeople will not take kindly to being evacuated.”
“Right now, there’s no choice,” Hammond told him. “A handful of your people got out, in the first few moments of the invasion, and then nothing. We don’t know what’s happening to them, or what the invaders are doing. Better to get everyone else out of the firing range before it’s too late.”
He went on, briskly. “The media will not be permitted entry, nor will any foreign residents. If the diplomats really can sort this out, great. If not, we’ll have heavy forces arrayed around the town to handle anything they throw at us. My big guns will be in place in an hour or two, ranged to rain heavy shells on the enemy ... base. If they put up a fight ... we’ll kick their asses back to their own world.”
“I hope you’re right, sir,” Callam said. He doubted it would be that easy. The invaders were doing nothing ... perhaps they were preparing their forces, or perhaps they were simply waiting for the defenders to offer them decent targets. Why bother trying to track down Army formations within a vast country when you could just let them assemble around you, then open fire? “With all due respect, should we not be attacking?”
“Washington’s orders are clear,” Hammond said. “We are to refrain from doing anything hostile, unless they fire first.”
They did, Callam thought. And they took an entire town.
“Now,” Hammond said. “What – precisely – happened when they arrived?”
Callam took a breath and ran through the entire story again, trying to hide his irritation as Hammond asked question after question, interrogating Callam with as little delicacy as Callam would show a suspect he caught red-handed. The questions made sense, he supposed, but they also reminded him of just how little he knew about what was really going on. He’d seen tanks – and yes, he could tell the difference between a tank and an IFV – yet he had no idea what weapons they carried or how the enemy would deploy them in combat. The cyborgs ... men in armour? Walking around in silver armour was just asking to be shot, which was worrying. It suggested the enemy didn’t think they needed to worry about being fired upon ... was their armour that good? Or were they unused to being under fire?
God knew, we didn’t give them any reason to be scared, he thought. Flint had had quite a few gun nuts, with enough guns and ammo to fight a small war, but there’d been no time to organise resistance. Callam liked to think the townspeople had at least tried, yet ... a wave of shame washed over him. Cold logic told him he’d done the right thing, running to get word out, but he felt otherwise. They might think we’re no better armed than any other random town.
“I wish I could tell you more,” he said, finally. If he ever returned to his duties, he’d be a little kinder to suspects. His head felt as if it had been kicked repeatedly and then fed through a mincing machine. Hammond needed to ask questions, but Callam hadn’t been given a grand tour of the alien – invader – compound before being kicked out on his ass. He’d seen a handful of things and nothing more. “What do we do now?”
Hammond opened his mouth to answer, but a junior officer hurried up to him to make an urgent report. Callam turned away, staring out at the runway as another transport landed, unloaded its men and materiel, then took off again. Hammond had the operation running smoothly – it spoke well of him that he wasn’t trying to micromanage – but Callam couldn’t help fearing it wouldn’t be enough. Long lines of men marched around the airfield as sergeants sorted them out, then were pointed to dig trenches or dispatched to the front lines. Others ... he caught sight of a Special Forces unit, probably with orders to get as close to the invader compound as possible. He’d often thought they were show-offs, swaggering around bases with equipment the regulars never saw, but here they might be needed. Getting hard intelligence on the invaders was a matter of urgent priority ...
“Right now, we concentrate on getting troops into place,” Hammond said. “If we’re lucky, they’ll give us time to set up before they do something.”
“Unless they want you to get into range before they open fire,” Callam said. “This could turn into Independence Day. Or Battle: LA.”
Hammond gave him a sharp look. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, the battles we’ve fought over the last two decades were against enemies who were massively inferior to us,” Callam said. “The last time anyone in the West fought a peer power was the British, when they were pushing Argentina back out of the Falklands, and that was a very close-run thing. Iraq? Afghanistan? We were limited more by our rules of engagement and our concepts of how a war should be fought, more than enemy actions ever limited us. We owned the skies, we could rain down shells anywhere we wished ... neither Iraq nor Afghanistan had anything resembling a modern military, and what Iraq had was badly weakened over a decade before the invasion. These guys ...”
He met Hammond’s eyes. “These guys might be far more advanced than us. We don’t know what they can do, or what they really want, or anything. They sent us a message and ... that message could be nothing more than lies, or ... or what? We tell ourselves we’re ready for anything, and that our training is the best in the world, but we’ve never fought an equal opponent. Not in living memory, anyway. We might be on the verge of a one-sided curb-stomp.”
“That’s very pessimistic,” Hammond said. “What do you think we should do?”
“I think we should attack now,” Callam said, bluntly. Once, years ago, he’d taken part in an exercise in which the attackers had been allowed to land and set up before the defenders counterattacked. The attackers had won. “Giving them time to deploy is like ceding the beachhead. We might not be able to push them back into the sea. Or wherever they came from.”
