Conquistadors!, page 32
Boone sat, scowling. “I ran, three times now,” he said. “That doesn’t make me a hero.”
Colin winked. “Don’t tell the media that ...”
“Honestly!” Boone snorted. “They’re worse than your interrogators! Do I have a wife? A husband? Children? What do I think about some political thing I don’t know anything about and care less? I want to get back to the front lines!”
“You’ll probably be sent back shortly,” Colin said. He waved a hand at a chair. “The news from Austin isn’t good.”
“I can’t believe the governor would side with the invaders,” Boone said. “She’s not the type.”
“We suspect some of her broadcasts are faked,” Colin said. “Although ... it’s never easy to tell what someone will do, when their city is occupied and a gun is pointed at their heads.”
He gritted his teeth. The precise question of how much collaboration was too much had never been asked in America, not until now. Should local government try to keep the city running, to prevent the invaders from trying to run the city themselves? Should the police keep law and order, for fear of what would happen if the invaders crushed protest marches and hunted down fugitive soldiers instead? It was easy to be contemptuous of the European policemen who had kept their cities orderly, when the Nazis had invaded, yet ... just how bad would it have been, Colin asked himself, if the Nazis had patrolled the streets themselves? But ... at some point, reasonable measures had slipped into open collaboration ...
Boone looked around the office. “I expected more from Washington,” he said. “Where is the expensive desk? The solid gold toilet? The scantily clad secretary?”
“I’m not that important,” Colin said. He’d been appointed as special liaison to General Grey and Admiral Leone, providing a direct link between them and the hastily-expanded Exotic Tech Division, but the only concrete benefit he’d been given was a slightly bigger office and a direct line to his superiors. “I just get more paperwork ... more than ever, these days.”
“No one trusts the computers now,” Boone agreed. “Just how bad is it, out there?”
“Disastrous,” Colin said. “The banking system simply cannot be trusted. Putting the records back together will take years, even using paper. Even if the invaders vanished tomorrow, it’ll still be a very long time before we can sort everything out ... if we ever do. A great many bank accounts, and loan records, have simply vanished.”
Boone leaned forward. “Is there any good news?”
“Some.” Colin couldn’t talk about everything, even to a man whose loyalty was unquestioned, but there were some details he could share. “We’re poking and prodding at their technology, learning more about how it works and how to counter it. Their tech is very good, but we know they’re not gods. We may not be able to duplicate it, not yet, but ...”
“You’re being very vague,” Boone teased. “Do you think we can give them a nasty fright, next time?”
“I think so,” Colin said. “It will cost us, badly, but we can hurt them.”
Boone sobered. “They’ll be adapting their tactics too.”
Colin nodded, meeting his eyes. “There have to be limits,” he said. “Imagine a European army hacking its way through Darkest Africa. They completely dominate the natives ... until the ammunition runs out. The Protectorate must have the same problem.”
He sighed, inwardly. The invader’s base was big enough to have at least some industrial capability, but how much? Did they have 3D printers? Nanotech vats? Or Star Trek replicators? Or ... he’d spent much of his teenage years playing Red Alert 2 and he couldn’t help wondering if the invaders had war factories, boot camps, cloning vats and everything else he’d once deployed on the computer-generated battlefield. The real world didn’t work like that, he knew, but ... if the invader tech was advanced enough, it might. What if they could clone their soldiers and mass-produce their tanks?
“We have some more tricks up our sleeves, for next time,” he said. “The real problem is putting them into production.”
“Tell the government to get all the red tape out of the way,” Boone said. “While you’re at it, get rid of all the gun control legislation. The country has been invaded.”
“I’m not important enough to make such proposals,” Colin said, although he suspected Boone had a point. The more guns in private hands, the harder it would be for the invaders to secure their gains. “I’ll mention it to my superiors.”
He leaned forward. “What would you like to see on the battlefield?”
“The 7th Cavalry.” Boone smiled at his own joke. “Custer thought he was better than the Indians too.”
“True,” Colin agreed. “But more seriously ...?”
“We need better antitank and antiaircraft weapons,” Boone said. “The enemy vehicles are tough. We hit one with a dozen antitank weapons and wrecked it, but ... it shouldn’t have taken so many. Their aircraft are harder to kill, too. The only noted losses came about through their carelessness, not our brilliant tactics. I don’t think we killed a single enemy fighter since the first set of engagements.”
“Telemetry agrees with you,” Colin said, quietly. “Although it is hard to be sure.”
“We probably need better aircraft too,” Boone added. His lips quirked. “Or ... there was a book I read where someone flew a primitive aircraft against alien invaders and did pretty well, because the aircraft was damn near impossible to hit. I don’t know what happened to the Confederate Air Force, but there must be a bunch of other ancient aircraft around.”
“It got renamed,” Colin said, dryly. He made a note to look into what had happened to the Commemorative Air Force’s aircraft. Boone had a point. There was no reason they couldn’t fix a bomb rack onto an older aircraft and point it at the enemy. “Or ...”
The telephone rang. “Excuse me.”
Colin picked up the handset and braced himself. The telephone network was primitive, by modern standards, but – in theory – it was a great deal harder to hack. The techs swore blind the enemy wouldn’t even know it was there, although Colin was sure they’d at least consider the possibility. They must have gone through their own version of the Information Age too.
He swallowed, hard, as he heard the news. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be right over.”
Boone stared at him as he put the phone down. “They’re moving north?”
“You could say that.” Colin felt as if he’d been punched in the chest. “They just landed in New York.”
Chapter Thirty-Three: New York, North America, Timeline F (OTL)
Sally felt ...
She didn’t know how she felt, not really, as the invasion force descended on New York. Her mind was spinning in circles. She hadn’t been a virgin when she’d returned to Flint – like most college girls, she’d experimented in ways that would have shocked her parents – but she’d never really let herself fall for anyone. How could she? The men she’d met in her life had either been soft college boys in touch with their inner feelings or embittered men who no longer had any hope of a better life, neither of which she found particularly appealing. But James ... there was something about him that drew her like a moth to a flame, even though it could easily end badly. She had been putty in his hands and she knew it. He had taken her, in every sense of the word, and she had loved it.
It was hard to think clearly, even as she sat at the back of the operational theatre and watched the displays update with terrifying speed. Her mind kept going back to the nights they’d shared together, the nights ... she swallowed hard, biting her lip and telling herself she was being silly. She sounded like a naive teenage girl, not a grown woman who could make choices for herself. And yet, the way he’d taken her left her wanting more. It really was hard to concentrate.
She watched James issuing orders in a calm voice as the transport dropped towards the airport. The enemy – she couldn’t think of them as her people, not any longer – were trying to fight, but they’d been taken completely by surprise. James’s staff had hacked their networks, sent warning messages to the police and other emergency services, then crashed the computer and cellphone networks so complete that each military and police force was effectively isolated from the rest. Sally hoped the NYPD would do as it was told, keeping order in the streets while making no attempt to impede the Protectorate, but she feared otherwise. Their area was being invaded.
“Enemy aircraft approaching on attack vector,” a staffer said. “Flyers moving to intercept.”
James seemed unbothered. “Deploy penetrator missiles to take out the defences,” he ordered. He spoke as if he were ordering lunch in a fancy restaurant, not commanding a major military operation. “And then land the assault force.”
“Aye, sir.”
Sally braced herself as the transport fell towards the ground and landed, roughly. The pod was deployed a moment later, the first tanks advancing onto the runway and heading straight towards the terminals. She couldn’t help feeling a flicker of vindictive glee as she saw the smoke billowing, marking missile strikes that had taken out the National Guard and TSA posts. She’d passed through Newark years ago and she’d been singled out for enhanced screening, probably for the dread crime of being young and blonde. There had been no point in filing a complaint, not then. Now ... she hoped the asshole who’d touched her was lying dead in the rubble, his body waiting to be tossed into a mass grave. He deserved no less.
“Deploy the first assault forces,” James ordered. He showed no sign of fear, even though he was on the front lines. Sally had been assured the command vehicle was damn’ near indestructible – they could survive a near-miss with a nuke – but she’d seen Cromwell tanks and IFVs destroyed in the recent engagements. She knew they could both die in a flash ... weirdly, she found it a little exciting. “Move to secure the principal locations.”
Sally sucked in her breath. The airborne assault on Austin had been risky, at least until the groundpounders had punched their way through the front lines and opened a pathway to the city, but here ... there were nearly two thousand miles between the front lines and New York, a distance that simply could not be covered in a hurry. Protectorate vehicles were fast, yet ... it would still take a day to get to New York, if nothing tried to stop them. James knew better. The enemy lines between the two cities were hardening, ensuring that any thrust north would be slowed, perhaps even stopped. James was taking one hell of a gamble. The thrill of knowing he could lose, she thought, seemed to excite him.
“Direct strikes on enemy installations,” another staffer reported. Sally looked at the live feed from an orbiting drone and saw flames rising from a dozen locations. “Preliminary assessment suggests total destruction ...”
“Don’t take that for granted,” James ordered, calmly. “Continue the offensive.”
Sally nodded, studying the image. Dozens – perhaps hundreds – of boats, from tiny sailing boats to giant freighters, were undocking and heading out into open waters as fast as they could move. A couple appeared to have collided, in their haste to get away; it didn’t look as if any of the local authorities, or the Coast Guard, were trying to sort out the mess before it was too late. Sally felt a twinge of sympathy for the sailors, mixed with irritation. They could have listened to the messages, damn them. The Protectorate could have made good use of trained and experienced sailors.
She sat back in her chair, watching as resistance flickered and flared. History was unfolding, right in front of her. New York hadn’t been attacked since 9/11 – the city hadn’t been invaded since the Revolutionary War – and even COVID-19 hadn’t been enough to bring it down, but now ... she saw tanks crushing cars that didn’t get off the road in time, harassing citizens who didn’t listen to orders telling them to stay inside, to stay at home or in their workplaces or anywhere, as long as they stayed off the road. She told herself everything would be better, once the Protectorate was in control; she knew it, from what she’d seen. Cheap power alone would revolutionise the world.
“Get the lead assault squads to the bridges, quickly,” James ordered. “They need to be taken before they can be blown.”
“Aye, sir.”
***
Police Commissioner Jared Greisens found himself, not for the first time, utterly unsure of what to do. His morning had been interrupted by a radio message warning him that the city was about to be attacked, and that the NYPD was to keep order without getting itself involved in the fighting, a message he’d thought a joke before the first missiles arrived. He had no idea why 1 Police Plaza hadn’t been attacked, but ... he’d gone up to the rooftop himself, as explosions rocked the city, and looked around with a pair of binoculars. The invaders had left the police HQ alone, thankfully, but they’d plastered a bunch of other military and government targets right across the city. The communications blackout meant he couldn’t even get in touch with the Mayor, let alone the rest of the world.
A runner joined him as he stood in the central office, staring at the map. “Sir, we have reports of landings at all the major airports, as well as enemy aircraft overhead ...”
Jared barely heard him. New York had plans for civil unrest, and everything from terrorist biological attacks to truck bombs and even another onslaught like 9/11, but they had no operational plans for an outright invasion. He kicked himself, mentally, for not insisting they draw up such plans after Austin had been hit, although there was over a thousand miles between New York and the front lines. It should have been impossible for the invaders to leapfrog so far so fast, not without warning ... he wondered, numbly, if their aircraft could literally turn invisible, or if they’d flown over the ocean and descended on New York from the east. It should have been impossible ... but it had happened.
The central display was dead. The NYPD had invested millions in a command-and-control network that should have let the police respond to anything, but the communications network was down. There were over 30,000 officers in the force – nothing he’d been able to offer had slowed the drain, as experienced policemen left New York for cities and towns that didn’t attack them first and get the facts later – yet most were scattered over the city, isolated from the greater force and facing their own private hells. It was quite possible many were already dead, caught up in the panicking or rioting or simply gunned down by the invaders as they stormed the city. New York was a big city, one that could be defended ... if the defenders had had a chance to get organised. They’d left it too late and now ...
He glanced at the runner. “Is there anything from City Hall?”
“No, sir,” the runner said.
Jared gritted his teeth. The Mayor was probably on the run. His close protection team would be escorting him out of the city, or ... he shook his head. If he didn’t know which roads were safe and which were blocked – by cars, or rioters, or enemy troops – the mayor’s bodyguards wouldn’t be any the wiser. It was ironic. There had been plenty of times, he thought ruefully, in which he’d wanted the politicians to shut their mouths and let the police get on with their jobs, but now he wanted a superior to tell him what to do ...
“See if you can get a link to the military command authority,” he said, although with scant hope of success. The civilian network was down ... the military net would be down too. There were strong military presences at the airports ... no, they were probably gone now. “Or even the outside world.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jared forced himself to think, cursing under his breath. They’d had a week to make some preparations, but they’d never thought to try. Damn it ... they could have prepped the bridges and tunnels for demolition, perhaps killing some of the invaders as they tried to make their way from Newark to Manhattan. It wouldn’t have been that hard to take the bridges down ... he wondered, numbly, if they had time to organise it. He doubted it. The NYPD had bomb disposal teams, but not demolition squads. Perhaps they could find a civilian company ... no. There was no time.
Something exploded, in the distance. He shivered.
Another runner hurried into the room. “Sir, enemy armour is pushing across the Hudson!”
Jared blinked. “They’re taking the tunnels?”
A sudden wild hope flickered within his mind. They could find a way to blow the tunnels ... seize a gas tanker perhaps, and drive it into the tunnel in hopes the enemy would fire on the tanker and blow it to hell. There weren’t that many bridges. If they could block the tunnels, they could delay the enemy long enough for the military to get organised. They were always on the spot very quickly, in the movies, but the real world was much less obliging. Or ...
“No, sir,” the runner said. “They’re hovercraft!”
“Fuck!”
Jared sucked in his breath. If the enemy was crossing the Hudson now, and also pushing up from the east, they were screwed. And that meant ... he swallowed, hard. Should he order his men to surrender, and help keep civil order ... or would that just get him hanged as a traitor, when the war was over? Or shot in the back by one of his own men? They’d never planned for occupation, either. The possibility had never even been considered.
His mind ran in circles. If he fought, his police force would be wiped out piece by piece. Two-thirds of his men were out of contact ... no, that was optimistic. He could evacuate the plaza, tell his men to ditch their uniforms and go home, leaving the invaders to try to control the city themselves ... he shuddered. That wasn’t an option, unless he wanted a repeat of Tiananmen Square in Times Square. Reports from Occupied Texas were vague and somewhat contradictory, but it was clear the invaders reacted harshly to any challenge to their authority. If he left, all the coming bloodshed would be squarely on his hands.
