The Slightest Hope of Victory - SAMPLE

(Outside Context Problem: Book III)

Series Listing

Book One: Outside Context Problem
Book Two: Under Foot
Book Three: The Slightest Hope of Victory

www.chrishanger.net
http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/ChristopherGNuttall

All Comments Welcome!

Cover Blurb

The aliens have landed ... and Earth will never be the same.  A third of the world is occupied, groaning under the weight of alien oppression, while the remainder is in chaos or preparing desperately for the final battle.  As the aliens unveil their long-term plans for humanity, a horror unmatched by any purely human foe, it becomes clear that the end will not be long delayed.  Humanity’s darkest hour is at hand.

But humanity will never give up, not as long as there remains a slightest hope of victory.  From the heartland of America to the skies over Britain, from the deepest depths of the ocean to the cold darkness of space, the battle to decide the future of two races is yet undecided ...

And the Battle for Earth has yet to be won.

Dear Readers

The Slightest Hope of Victory is Book III in the Outside Context Problem series, following Outside Context Problem and Under Foot.  It will probably not be entirely comprehensible to anyone who hasn't read the first two; I did try to write a recap, but it ended up being over six pages long – too long, in my opinion.  You can draw free samples of both books from my site and download them from Amazon Kindle.  

As you may notice, there was a long delay between Under Foot and this volume.  I hope that it matches up well with its two predecessors.  

A number of people were kind enough to read the draft chapters and suggest changes, alterations and improvements.  Accordingly, this book is dedicated to them, without whom it would not have been so readable.

There has also been one major change.  When I wrote Outside Context Problem and Under Foot, I used ‘Edward Stalker’ as a character name.  However, I also used the same name in The Empire’s Corps and its sequels, causing some confusion.  I have therefore renamed the character ‘Edward Tanaka.’

As always, I would be very grateful for reviews, critical comments, error-spotting, etc.

Have fun!

Christopher G. Nuttall

Prologue
Alien Command Ship #2
Day 83 (One Day after Second Washington)

Space.  The final frontier.

Captain Philip Carlson had lived by those words from a very early age.  It had become his dream to travel into space, a dream he had achieved when he had won one of the handful of coveted astronaut slots for himself.  The dream had even kept him going when NASA turned further and further away from actual space exploration, cutting missions and cancelling next-generation programs that should have put the United States in space permanently.  But instead of reaching for the stars, mankind had decided to stay on Earth.

The universe hadn’t left them alone.

Philip stared down at the blue-green orb of Earth and knew despair.  He and the rest of his crew were prisoners on an alien spacecraft larger than many cities, a construction so vast as to be utterly beyond the combined efforts of every human space organisation on Earth.  Not that any human space agency deserved the title, really, compared to what the aliens had built.  Philip had a suspicion that the aliens, far from respecting humanity’s achievements, were actually laughing at them.  The space shuttle, compared to the monstrous alien ship, was nothing more than a toy.  

And now Earth was occupied.  From his vantage point, he could see an endless stream of alien craft – each one far more capable than anything humans had built – heading to and from the planet, carrying alien colonists to their new homeworld.  Humanity’s resistance had been brushed aside, almost casually, once the mothership had arrived in orbit.  The aliens weren’t gods, but they were powerful.  Humanity had inflicted just enough damage to convince them that they had a chance, before the hammer was finally lowered.  Earth no longer belonged to the human race.

He scowled at the thought.  The aliens having taken his crew prisoner, hadn't seemed to have any real idea what to do with them – or perhaps they simply didn’t care.  There were no anal probes, no interrogation to discover what they knew about Earth’s defences ... they hadn't even been locked up!  They’d practically been allowed to wander the ship freely, apart from certain sealed areas.  Philip had explored, along with the rest of his crew, but they’d found nothing that they could use against the aliens.  He would have sold his soul for a nuke.

But even that wouldn't have done more than slow the aliens down.  The massive city-sized ship that held them was one of four, while there was still the mothership itself and the hundreds of smaller craft.  Losing one large craft would have to hurt – they weren't that powerful that they could afford to lose one without wincing – but it wouldn't stop them.  They’d just keep going ... and his crew would have thrown away their lives for nothing.

He gritted his teeth as he stared out into space.  Under other circumstances, the observatory – or so he had dubbed it – would have been an endless source of wonder.  It was far larger than anything the ISS had possessed, allowing him to stare into space and down towards the planet below.  In the distance, he could even see the moon, where NASA had landed a handful of men before it had given up on the space dream.  The aliens had crossed at least ten light years to reach Earth.  No wonder they weren't impressed by anything they saw from humanity.

There was a faint rustling sound behind him and he spun around to see one of the taller aliens standing behind him.  Philip sucked in his breath sharply as he met the dark alien eyes, so dark that there were no pupils or anything else remotely human.  They knew little about how the aliens were organised, but their observations suggested that the taller ones were the ones in charge.  The others certainly seemed to defer to them.

The alien stood taller than the average human, with an inhumanly thin body and oversized head.  It was easy, now, to see the resemblance between the alien abduction reports and real aliens.  Philip had no doubt that humanity had been watched for a long time before the aliens had decided to make their presence known.  He wanted to lash out, to snap the thin alien neck, but he knew that it would do no good.  Alien Warriors would come for the human prisoners and that would be the end.  If all he could do was watch and wait for an opportunity to strike the aliens, he’d wait.  Flying for NASA taught one patience, if little else.

The alien voice was thin, almost completely atonal.  “There have been developments,” he said.  Or at least Philip thought of the alien as male.  It was impossible to tell gender with any certainty.  “Your people destroyed a Command Ship over Washington, your nation’s capital.  We did not believe that you were capable of such a feat.”

Philip said nothing.  The reports they’d intercepted from the ISS had been clear.  The USAF had taken a terrible pounding in the war and had been on the verge of coming apart under the strain.  The aliens had launched wave after wave of attacks, systematically degrading America’s ability to defend itself against further attacks before the mothership arrived in orbit.  Philip had no way of knowing what had happened since the command ship had scooped up and abducted the entire ISS, along with the wreckage of Atlantis – but with thousands upon thousands of aliens heading to their new home, he doubted that it was anything good.  The aliens claimed that they’d brought a billion of their people along on their colonisation mission.  If that were true, they had enough manpower to subdue the entire planet.

It wasn't a pleasant thought.  There wasn't much alien invasion literature that dealt with a world the aliens had successfully occupied, but what little there was didn’t make pleasant reading.  There would be mass starvation, the collapse of human society and disease and deprivation would be rife, while the aliens built their cities and slowly crushed all resistance out of the human race.  Human history would come to an abrupt halt.  It would truly be the end of days.

“It opens up new opportunities,” the alien said.  He turned to look down towards the planet, his dark eyes inscrutable.  “We may be able to work together.”

Philip’s flash of anger overrode common sense.  If someone down on the planet had managed to destroy an alien craft the size of a city, it was clear that the fight was far from hopeless.  Perhaps the human race would wear down the aliens with constant insurgent attacks.  He’d heard rumours about preparations before the ISS had been abducted.

“Why?”  He demanded.  “So we can roll over and surrender our planet to you?”

“No,” the alien replied.  “There is more at stake here than you understand.  If we work together, we can save both of our races from mutual destruction.”

Chapter One

Over Virginia, USA
Day 190

“Are you sure this thing is safe?”

Nicolas Little grinned as he checked the parachute harness.  For some reason of their own, the aliens – the People, they called themselves – had collected a vast amount of human military equipment.  Given their technological superiority, it still puzzled him that they’d even bothered, but it had worked out in his favour.  Locating a SF-capable parachute, even a two-man parachute, had been easy.

“Very safe,” he said.  “Reasonably safe.  Well, sort-of safe, well ...”

“Very funny,” Abigail Walker said.  The auburn-haired reporter gave him a cross look.  “And what happens if we hit the ground?”

Nicolas snorted.  “That is kind of the point,” he pointed out.

Abigail scowled at him.  “What happens if the parachute doesn’t work and we fall until we hit the ground at speed?”

“We die,” Nicolas said, simply.  He finished checking the harness and grinned at her.  “But don’t worry.  I’ve done hundreds of jumps and as long as you’re careful, nothing can actually go wrong.”

He scowled, for he knew that this was no normal jump.  The alien network that controlled their military machine was difficult, almost impossible, to fool.  He knew that the alien rebels were risking exposure by having two prisoners escape from a transport craft, even though there was no other choice.  They could hardly call up what remained of the American government on the telephone, or any other more conventional way of making contact.  He’d thought that the federal government was bad when it came to intruding into its population’s lives.  The aliens had every waking moment supervised by their computer network.  Getting around it as much as the rebels did was very difficult.

“As long as you’re sure,” Abigail said.  “I just …”

“I understand,” Nicolas said.  He’d been nervous before his first parachute jump too.  “Just relax and let me do all the work.  You don’t have to do anything.”

Abigail winced, then giggled.  “I’ve heard that before,” she said.  “I don’t suppose that there is something I can take for nerves?”

Nicolas shook his head.  “Not here,” he said.  “Just close your eyes if you’re too nervous, once we’re out of the hatch.”

There was a faint tap on the door.  “Are you decent in there?”

“Yeah,” Nicolas called back.  “We’re done now.”

Abigail elbowed him in the ribs as the alien doorway flowed open, revealing Captain Philip Carlson.  The former Space Shuttle commander looked grim, but smiled tiredly when he’d saw the other two.  Nicolas couldn't help feeling a twinge of admiration, even if it was rare for any SEAL to feel it for anyone outside the Special Forces.  Carlson had not only survived captivity by the aliens, but linked up with rebels within the alien ranks.  Maybe there truly was a chance at victory.

“They saw that we will be in position in ten minutes,” Carlson said.  “Are you ready?”

Nicolas took one final look at the harness, then pulled it over his head.  “Just about,” he said, as he fixed the straps.  “I just have to tie Abigail to myself, then you can shove us out the hatch.”

Carlson smiled, tiredly.  Nicolas recognised the signs of a man who had pushed himself too hard and now found it hard to care about dangers like exposure and sudden death, even though literally everything was at stake.  If the Rogue Leaders completed their plans, resistance to the alien leadership would not only become futile, but inconceivable.  The freedom of two races hung in the balance, not one.  

“Just don’t go seeking revenge until after the war is over,” Carlson said, as Nicolas checked Abigail’s suit.  High-attitude/high-opening jumps carried their own risks, including goggles shattering from the cold and eyes freezing shut.  The equipment they’d donned should provide them some protection, but Nicolas knew better than to take it completely for granted.  “We have to win first.”

Nicolas scowled.  It was clear to him that Greg, his ex-wife’s second husband, had betrayed him to the alien occupiers.  He’d trusted Greg to take care of his daughter and yet the man had betrayed Nicolas the first chance he’d had.  It staggered Nicolas to think that he might have left his daughter with an unworthy man ... or had Greg simply feared what would happen to her when – if – Nicolas was caught.  The alien database included samples of DNA from almost everyone in the United States, outside the resistance.  If they’d taken his DNA, they would know about his relationship to Nancy – and Greg.  

“I know,” he assured him.  “Personal revenge can be put off, if necessary.”

He tightened a couple of Abigail’s straps and smiled at her pale face.  Nicolas had never been fond of reporters – they had no common sense, particularly when it came to reporting on military matters – but he’d come to like Abigail.  She had a wicked sense of humour and, in her own way, had done a great deal of damage to the alien cause.  And she was one of the few people who even knew that there was a faction of alien rebels.  

“Don’t worry,” he promised.  “I’ll take care of you.”

They followed Carlson into the next compartment, which was partly transparent, allowing them to look down on the globe as the craft completed its pre-planned course towards the alien mothership.  America was just coming into view, a darkened continent.  Nicolas shuddered as he recalled just how brightly lit the country had been, before the aliens arrived to take over the world.  Now, there was scarcely a light to be seen.  Even the great cities were dark.  

They keep turning out the power to remind us that we’re at their mercy, he thought, sourly.  Chicago taught them that they could do that.

Carlson turned to look at them, his face tight.  “You have everything you need?”

“Yes,” Nicolas said, simply.  He pulled Abigail towards him, clicked her harness into his, and then waddled towards the hatch.  “We’re ready.”

He shivered as he saw one of the alien workers appear out of nowhere, one hand holding a small object no larger than an Iphone.  The workers were far less unpleasant than the warriors, but there was something about them that chilled him to the bone.  Knowing that they’d literally been bred for obedience, even before the Rogue Leaders started genetically-modifying their own people, Nicolas suspected he knew why he hated even the sight of the little creatures.  The Rogue Leaders had a similar fate in mind for all of humanity.  

“Twenty seconds,” the alien said.  As always, the voice was flat, completely atonal.  “Stand on the glowing square on the floor.”

Deck, part of Nicolas's mind whispered.

“Good luck,” Carlson said.

There was a sudden shift in ... something and they plummeted into the night.  Abigail jerked against him once as the cold struck her, seeping into her very pores, then she seemed to freeze.  Nicolas guessed that her eyes were tightly closed.  The sight of the ground coming up to meet them, even if it seemed agonisingly slow, was not for the faint-hearted.  There were hardened soldiers who went pale at the mere thought of having to jump out of the aircraft and fall towards the ground.

The chute jerked as it automatically deployed the parachute, slowing their fall.  Nicolas scowled, inwardly.  He hadn't discussed it with Abigail – it would only upset her – but there was a very real possibility that the alien sensor network would pick up the parachute as it fell from the heavens.  He’d actually considered dropping much further towards the planet before deploying the chute, then decided that it was unlikely to draw more attention.  Besides, the alien rebels had been fairly sure that they could insert him and Abigail back onto Earth without drawing attention.

He looked upwards, watching the stars as they blazed out in the night sky.  Here, so high above the Earth, there was little twinkling ... and some of the stars were moving.  It took him a moment to realise that he was looking at the alien ships as they moved in orbit around the Earth, transporting alien colonists from the mothership to their new homes.  There was nothing human in orbit any longer.  The aliens had taken out the remainder of the satellite network once they’d realised that the human resistance was using it for their operations.  

And then they gave us an improved communications system we don’t dare use, Nicolas thought, bitterly.  The alien servers were faster than anything humans had managed to produce for themselves, but if they weren't rigged to allow every message that passed through them to be scrutinised, Nicolas would have been astonished.  Few people truly understood that emails passed through a series of servers before they reached their destinations, let alone how easy it could be to intercept and copy the messages.  Quite a few terrorists had been caught through not observing proper communications security.

He watched as the American continent took on shape and form.  They’d planned to drop him over Virginia, but given the problems with arranging the right flight path he’d known that it was quite possible that he would miss the planned landing site by miles.  There was a time when that would have humiliated him – shared jumps were meant to ensure that all of the SEALs arrived in the right place – but now it no longer seemed to matter.  All that mattered was landing, making contact with the resistance and then linking into the underground network.  And that wasn't going to be easy.  

The internet was still working and, at his request, the rebels had sent a message asking the resistance to meet them.  It was a message that should have gone unnoticed by the alien filters – a human book was used to substitute innocuous words for words that might have attracted attention – but they might well know that he’d been captured.  And if that was the case, the resistance might have assumed that it was a trick and refused to show.  

And they might think we’re Walking Dead, he thought, grimly.  If that happens, they might plan a mercy kill.

He scowled at the thought.  The Rogue Leaders had spent decades abducting humans from Earth before they showed themselves to humanity, carrying out experiments that would have made the Nazi scientists from World War Two blanch.  But, as inhuman as it was, it had paid off for them.  They could brainwash a human into becoming their loyal servant – and, so far, no one human had discovered a way to reverse the mental conditioning.  It made resistance much harder if the aliens, instead of looking for collaborators, could make them for themselves.  

The Walking Dead, thankfully, were easy to spot.  They were cold, utterly inhuman, more alien than the aliens themselves.  There was no way that someone could be captured, brainwashed and then returned to their friends, not without being spotted.  It was such an obvious ploy that Nicolas hadn't been surprised to discover that the Rogue Leaders were working on ways to create Walking Dead that didn't act like zombies.  If they succeeded, it would be the beginning of the end.

They can’t brainwash everyone, he told himself.  But it was no consolation.  

The ground came closer, until he realised that they were almost definitely going to land near the planned landing zone.  Bracing himself, he pulled on the parachute to slow their descent further and smiled as his feet touched the ground.  He hadn't even realise how being on the alien ships had affected him until he touched solid earth.  It was almost like being at sea, although he hadn't felt seasick.  But then, what sort of SEAL would feel seasick?

He tugged at the harness, releasing Abigail.  She staggered forward – for a moment, he was sure that she was going to be violently sick – and then caught herself, turning to face him.  Nicolas pulled at her mask, checked her eyes and then grinned at her.  She grinned back.

“If you think that’s bad, wait till you get a chance to try a HALO jump,” he said.  High-attitude/low opening jumps were one hell of a rush.  “Welcome back to Earth.”

He glanced around as he gathered in the remains of the chute.  The clearing they’d landed in was in the midst of forest, well away from civilisation – or what passed for it, these days – but he knew better than to think that they were completely alone.  Apart from the resistance, there was no shortage of people who had decided that camping out in the wilderness was better than staying in their homes to face the aliens – or their human collaborators.  Nicolas couldn't blame them, even though the first winter was likely to kill far too many of them.  The Walking Dead were bad enough, but the willing collaborators were worse.  They looted, raped and killed with impunity.  

Which might be the point, he thought.  Compared to the Order Police, the alien warriors are almost popular.  

Abigail rubbed her hands together and then placed them against her face.  “I don’t think I’ll ever be warm again,” she said, crossly.  “Does it get better?”

Nicolas smirked, remembering his first drop.  “Yes, it does,” he said.  He’d felt the same way too.  “You’ll warm up after some heavy exercise.”

He removed the small shovel from his pack and started to dig a hole.  Abigail joined him a moment later, digging until the hole was big enough to take the chute and their suits.  Nicolas would have preferred to wear the uniform, but it would have attracted attention if they were seen by alien collaborators.  They’d been known to arrest anyone wearing something that even reassembled a uniform.  Most Americans with military experience had joined the survivalists trying to eke out an existence outside the cities, if they hadn't joined the resistance.  No one knew what had happened to most of those who hadn't vanished quickly enough, but it probably wasn't anything good ...

He froze.  There was someone out there, watching them.

One hand twitched towards the pistol at his belt, before he stopped himself.  They’d told the resistance they were coming, after all.  But what if it was the Order Police?  Nicolas hesitated, then stood up, peering into the darkened forest.  There had to be someone there ...

Abigail looked over at him.  “What ...?”

“All right, folks,” a new voice drawled.  “Keep your hands where we can see them and make no false moves.”

“No better friend,” Nicolas said, as Abigail froze.

“No worse enemy,” the new voice said.  “Which is pretty damn obvious, if you ask me.”

Nicolas relaxed, slightly.  The first part of the sign and countersign was obvious, but the Walking Dead wouldn't have pointed out that out.  And yet that was the real countersign.  

“Say something funny,” the unknown voice ordered.  “Please.”

“A joke?”  Nicolas asked.  It wasn't something he would have thought up, but he had to admit that it was a neat test for Walking Dead.  They lost their sense of humour as well as their freedom of thought.  “Why did the chicken cross the road?  To get to the other side!”

Abigail giggled.  

“Yeah, very funny,” the voice said.  “You’re under seven guns, Lady and Gent; I suggest that you offer no resistance.”

“We won’t,” Nicolas assured him.

The resistance fighters ghosted out of the trees.  None of the ones who showed themselves were carrying weapons, something that amused and appalled Nicolas in equal measure.  The United States had been awash with weapons even before the President had removed all the restrictions, seeking to prepare the country for alien occupation, but all of the ammunition plants had been shut down by the aliens.  What if the resistance was finally running out of bullets.

On the other hand, he told himself, they wouldn't want to put guns within our reach.

He offered no resistance as the fighters took his hands, pulled them behind his back and cuffed them.  Abigail let out a squeak as she was cuffed as well.  The resistance wasn't taking chances, he was pleased to see; they searched both of their prisoners carefully and removed anything that could be dangerous.

One of them held an alien device up in front of him.  “What is this?”

“Classified,” Nicolas said.  It was risky, but the fewer people who knew about what he’d brought, the better.  “It’s to go to the higher-ups.”

“Really,” the first voice drawled.  Nicolas looked around to see a grizzled combat veteran, holding a shotgun in one hand.  “And how do we know that you’re not collaborators?”

Nicolas scowled.  The Walking Dead couldn't be blamed for their actions – and the resistance, while it killed them, didn't linger over it.  Collaborators, on the other hand, had chosen their own path through life; the resistance didn't just kill them, it killed them brutally.  If they were mistaken for collaborators ... after everything he'd done, it would be the ultimate irony.

“Check with my superiors,” Nicolas said, patiently.  He’d hoped that a survivor from his own resistance team would have met them, but in hindsight it had been pretty unlikely.  Someone who had known him might not have pulled the trigger if Nicolas had clearly been one of the Walking Dead.  “And then run whatever tests you feel necessary.”

The combat veteran – he looked old enough to have served in Vietnam, rather than modern wars Nicolas had fought in – eyed him for a long moment.

“You will be taken to a particular location,” he said, finally.  “And if you are found to be lying, I will execute you personally.”

“We’re not lying,” Nicolas said, mentally cursing the Rogue Leaders.  No doubt they’d watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers while they’d been studying Earth, preparing for the invasion.  An enemy could wear a friendly face.  A loyalist could become a collaborator during a few short hours when he might be separated from his friends.  “And it is vitally important that we speak to someone higher up the chain as quickly as possible.”

“No doubt,” the veteran sneered.  “But you will be tested first.”

He nodded to two of his men, who pushed Nicolas forward, into the forest.  Nicolas caught sight of Abigail’s expression and allowed himself a moment of pride.  Compared to how the aliens had treated her, the resistance were being downright gentlemanly.  

Which won’t stop them killing us if they think we’re collaborators, he thought, bitterly.  This could still go very wrong.

Chapter Two

Near Casper, Wyoming, USA
Day 191

“It shouldn't happen in America.”

Master Sergeant Edward Tanaka refrained, just barely, from rolling his eyes.  Specialist Georgina Benton was a trained combat medic – she'd actually been working towards W1, Special Operations Combat Medic before the aliens had invaded – but there was a certain naivety around her that bothered him.  No one who had spent time in the military, let alone been deployed into combat zones – and Georgina had – should have been that naive.

But then, he admitted privately, a year ago he wouldn't have believed that it could have happened in America either.  

The refugee camp wasn't quite as bad as some of the camps he'd seen in Afghanistan or Africa, but it was quite bad enough.  Thousands of people, some of whom had been doing nothing more than living in their homes minding their own business, had been uprooted and pushed away by the aliens and their collaborators.  Large sections of Wyoming might have been effectively unpopulated before the aliens landed, but they’d just kept expanding until they’d pushed half of the state’s population into refugee camps.  Or maybe they were just worried about how easily large numbers of insurgents could hide in the countryside or in the mountains.  Moving most of the local population into camps would be a neat way to keep control of them.

He’d smelled the camp a long time before they even approached it, a faint stench of shit and piss and hopelessness that threatened to overwhelm him.  Edward had never placed much faith in FEMA even before the government agency had had so many problems dealing with the aftermath of hurricanes, but even FEMA hadn't done such a bad job of taking care of refugees.  But then, they’d always intended those refugees to go back to their homes, while these refugees knew they would never be returning.  Even if they escaped the camp, their homes had been destroyed.  Where would they go?

“Bastards,” Edward hissed.  He'd thought himself desensitised after his escape from Chicago before the aliens finished grinding the city into dust.  But seeing this reminded him, again, of just why they had to fight.  “Fucking filthy bastards.”

He peered through his binoculars as a handful of alien warriors moved in front of the camp, watching the human guards through beady eyes.  The guards themselves were a mixture of Walking Dead and collaborators, the latter apparently under close supervision.  Edward couldn't decide if that was a deliberate attempt to minimise the problems caused by the camp or just random chance.  If the former, it struck Edward as pointless.  The refugees had lost everything.  Did the aliens think they were going to start liking them because they were also protecting them from rape and other forms of abuse?

Maybe it’s just a plot to keep them under control, he thought, as he moved his gaze to the refugees themselves.  And keep them fed.

Unlike some of the early POW camps the aliens had used, the refugees had been allowed to bring their own tents – and anything else they could carry on their backs.  The result was a crazed mix of holiday camp and prison camp, with colourful tents lined up in neat rows beyond the wire.  Behind them, there were a handful of military surplus tents that had been placed there for the benefit of anyone who hadn't brought a tent of their own.  The aliens had even provided toilets, fresh water and some kind of rapidly-produced food.  

They could feed themselves if they were allowed to hunt, Edward thought, bitterly.  But, naturally, the one thing the aliens had made sure to do was to confiscate all of the guns the refugees carried with them.  Maybe it made sense – no matter how comfortable the camp was, there would be fights as tensions rose and tempers frayed – but it also ensured that the refugees couldn't rise up against their guards.  Any major attempt at resistance and the aliens would simply rip them apart.

“Damn them,” he muttered out loud.  Given enough time, the refugees would either become broken – or they’d become fanatics.  The latter, at least, might fight.  “Let’s go.”

It was nearly an hour before they reached a place where they could observe the first alien city.  The warriors were out in force, patrolling the area around the alien base; there were several times when Edward was sure that they’d been spotted, before the aliens had moved on and left them alone.  There was no sign of any other aliens, something that puzzled him; surely, if the aliens wanted to keep Earth for themselves, they would be trying to exploit it.  But then, there were insurgents – and independents – in the mountains.  They might well take advantage of finding a few aliens on their own, utterly unprotected.  

“Look at that,” Georgina muttered.  “They just ... burned it.”

Edward nodded.  There had been a town near the alien base, judging by the road network, but it no longer existed as anything other than a large patch of burned ground.  He’d seen the aliens burning their way through Chicago, but this was different; they’d eradicated almost all evidence that the town had even existed.  A few years and there would be nothing left at all.  

He caught himself wondering what the people who lived there had been like, before the aliens had come for their land.  Had they been friendly and welcoming to strangers, or had they eyed them suspiciously and turned away when the strangers came?  There was no way to know; right now, the only survivors would be in the alien refugee camps, or lurking up in the mountains.  

Cursing, he turned his gaze and looked out on the alien city.  It was ... strange.  If he hadn't known about the aliens, he suspected that he still would have pegged it for an alien city, rather than anything built by humans.  It was just too weird to be human ... and Edward, who had served in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Japan, knew just how many different designs humanity had produced for itself.

The alien city looked as if it was built out of melted plastic, as if it had once been a much larger city before the heat had taken its toll.  Some of the buildings reassembled skyscrapers, but others reassembled nothing so much as melted cheese and hamburgers ... he almost started chuckling, before remembering that it didn't really matter how bizarre the alien aesthetics seemed to him.  They were still hugely powerful in every way that mattered.  He caught sight of an alien transport coming to a halt over the city before lowering itself to the ground and shivered.  The aliens and their collaborators had a tactical mobility unmatched by any purely human force, even before America had been occupied.  And they were learning how to cope with human weapons and tactics.

He peered through his binoculars, allowing him to see the aliens as they moved through the city.  There was something about their movements that puzzled him, something that nagged at his mind until it finally hit him.  They almost seemed to be working in unison.  A human city would have a population that did hundreds of disparate things, from students and unemployed to policemen and even soldiers, but the aliens seemed almost part of an ant colony rather than a normal city.  The tiny workers ... worked.  None of them seemed to be enjoying themselves, or relaxing, or even jerking off.  

Maybe they’re real party animals when they’re off shift, he thought, although it didn't seem very likely.  The workers rarely showed much independence, according to the information he’d picked up from the internet and the resistance’s underground channels.  They certainly never seemed to act as individuals.  Maybe the aliens didn't have a hive mind – it was clear that what one alien knew wasn't automatically shared by others – but their society was regimented to a degree that few humans would have been able to tolerate.  Perhaps they could have made communism work.  

But maybe it wasn't too surprising.  The human societies that were tightly regimented were that way because of external pressure.  It was often the only way to survive, particularly if resources were limited.  The aliens had been on a giant spacecraft, a vast but self-contained structure, for God knew how long.  Regimenting their society might have been the only way they could have coped with the trip.  

“Maybe they’ll loosen up in a decade or so,” Georgina suggested, when he said that out loud.  “Or maybe they’re just ... made that way.”

“Maybe,” Edward grunted.  

It wasn't a thought he enjoyed contemplating.  The Indian caste system was nothing more than racism, based on the colour of a person’s skin.  Like all other forms of racism, it was nothing more than a fancy excuse to keep people under control – and deny them basic human rights.  There was no real physical difference, apart from skin colour, between a Brahmin and an Untouchable.  

But that wasn't true of the aliens.  Workers were small slight beings, although reports from brief encounters suggested that they were stronger than they seemed.  Warriors were fast, strong and extremely difficult to kill.  Edward had seen them take shots that would have killed a human instantly and they’d just kept coming.  You practically had to behead one in order to stop it.  Alien leaders were tall, willowy and – it seemed – extremely smart.  Or so he had been told.  And then there were the crossbreeds, who could be chillingly unpredictable.  

If Hitler had been able to genetically engineer human beings, Edward knew what he would have done.  He would have made his delusions of the Master Race real.  Had that been, he couldn't help wondering, how the aliens had become a caste-based society?  Or had they simply evolved that way?

As if the thought had brought them into existence, more alien warriors materialised from one of the buildings and started to stride through the alien city.  None of the workers, Edward noticed, flinched away from them, or even took any notice of the warriors at all.  That was odd – and quite inhuman.  Edward had seen civilians flinch away from soldiers in uniform, as if they feared that the military men would turn violent at any moment.  And yet the aliens showed no reaction at all.

“It is a goddamned ant colony,” he said, grimly.

“Not just ants,” Georgina said, tartly.  “Look over there.”

Edward followed her gaze.  There was a small group of figures being moved from one building to another – human figures.  At first, he thought that they were collaborators, even though all of the reports from infiltrators had agreed that no humans were allowed into the alien city.  And then he saw how they walked and knew, instantly, that they were prisoners.

He sucked in his breath sharply as he realised that they were all young girls, although it was difficult to tell just how old they actually were.  American youth had largely been able to grow up without major problems – which hadn't stopped them believing that their relatively small problems were actually end-of-the-world problems – but youths in less fortunate countries often looked older than they actually were.  The girls he was staring at were physically in their early twenties, if that, yet they seemed older.  And several of them were clearly pregnant.

“Those bastards,” Georgina hissed, from beside him.  “They’re ... they’re children.”

Edward shrugged.  He hadn't considered himself a child since he’d turned thirteen, although it had been several years before his parents actually accepted that their little boy had grown up.  Joining the Marine Corps had probably had something to do with it ... far too many children remained childish until they hit their thirties, if they didn't move out and set up somewhere on their own.  

But she was right.  The girls had been kidnapped.

He studied them thoughtfully, activating the recording function on the binoculars.  The records would be scrutinised by the higher-ups in hopes of identifying the girls, although it was unlikely they would find anything.  Once, a missing teenage girl would have shocked the nation and everyone from the local police force to the FBI would turn out to search for her.  Now, the list of missing people included millions of names, ranging from military personnel who’d gone underground to criminals who had taken advantage of the chaos to hide.  And, of course, hundreds of thousands of civilians who had died during the invasion.  It was unlikely in the extreme that they would ever identify the prisoners ...

And then he swore as he zoomed in and studied one particular girl.  She looked ... familiar, oddly so.  The memory was on the edge of his mind, mocking him.  He closed his eyes and concentrated, silently asking where he had seen the girl before.  For a long moment, his mind refused to cooperate ... and then it hit him.  She’d been a prize-winning sharpshooter in Chicago – no mean feat – before the aliens had landed.  And then she’d gone hunting aliens and their collaborators ... and then she’d actually shot an alien leader.  There were very few people, including military snipers, who could make that claim.

Edward had given the matter no thought, but he knew that if he had he would have assumed that the girl – it bugged him that he couldn't remember her name – had been killed in the final bloody hours before Chicago fell.  The aliens had reinforced their Arab collaborators with their own forces and advanced, intent on nothing less than pulverising any part of the city that dared show resistance.  According to the last reports, the population had been more than halved – and those that remained were kept under tight control at all times.  Any remaining resistance fighters would be keeping their heads down.  

And they brought her here, he thought.  Why?

It made no sense.  The girl – Dolly, he recalled now – was hardly an important prisoner.  It wasn't as if she was the President, or the Head of the NSA or someone else who had become a high-fugitive after the invasion and Fall of Washington.  They would have killed her, or turned her into a gruesome example of what happened to people who killed alien leaders, or maybe even turned her into one of the Walking Dead.  Instead, they were keeping her prisoner in one of their cities.  It made no sense.  It wasn't as if they had a shortage of POW camps for prisoners they deemed unworthy of being turned into the Walking Dead.

He studied the girl as she stumbled into the next building, feeling a twinge of pity as he realised just how listless she was.  She walked as if she was on the verge of tumbling over; the alien at her side, which he’d assumed to be a guard, might have been there to help her if she fell over.  Her hair had clearly been left unattended for weeks, as if she no longer cared to take the effort to brush and comb it every day.  Even prisoners in maximum security prisons had more dignity than that.  

“She’s been drugged,” Georgina said, quietly.  “They’ve all been drugged.”

Edward snorted.  “Isn't that against the Geneva Conventions?”

The thought was bitterly amusing.  For whatever reasons suited them, the aliens had been surprisingly good at taking care of prisoners, at least the ones they deemed to be of no actual use to them.  And they were feeding the refugees, rather than allowing them to die, along with most of the rest of the urban population in the United States.  But they did other things too, things that seemed utterly inhuman.  Brainwashing prisoners and then putting them to work as allies was worse than anything the Taliban had ever done.

We’re dealing with an alien morality here, he reminded himself.  They’re not even remotely human.  

They shared a long look, then started to crawl back, heading towards where they’d hidden the tent and camping gear.  According to their cover story, they were a married couple from one of the destroyed towns and they had the paperwork to prove it.  Edward privately had his doubts about how well it would stand up to scrutiny.  There was no shortage of people who had hidden rather than register, but the Order Police conducted routine checks of civilian papers and insisted that shopkeepers check that their customers had papers before selling them anything.  Now that the New Dollar was finally entering circulation ...

Luck was with them.  They skirted a pair of checkpoints, including one that hadn’t been there earlier, and then made it to the campsite without further incident.  Edward had privately suspected that someone would eventually discover the site and rob them, but so far they’d been lucky.  Maybe the other people hiding in the mountains had decided to stay well away from them, just in case.

Shaking his head, he climbed into the tent, carefully disarmed the booby-trap he’d set to obliterate any unwanted evidence if someone discovered the tent and pulled out a modified laptop.  Once he’d entered the password, he inserted the memory card from the binoculars, copied the files onto the laptop and then wrote out a full report.  Later, once darkness had fallen completely, he would take the laptop to one of the hidden cables and upload the report to his superiors.  They’d use the data for something, he hoped.  Maybe it would even point them to the alien weakness that could be turned against the bastards.

Edward gritted his teeth after he finished writing the report, wondering just when they would be able to kick the aliens off Earth – or at least out of America – for good.  The longer the occupation lasted, the greater the damage to America’s social integrity.  It was already breaking apart down south, ever since California had finally gone under ... hell, if the aliens hadn't garrisoned the area, it would have been much more.

He shook his head, tiredly.  Just how much more could the country take before it was shattered beyond repair?

Chapter Three

Virginia, USA
Day 191

Abigail Walker was almost dead on her feet by the time they were finally marched into a hidden building and down a long stairwell, somewhere in rural Virginia.  She had absolutely no idea where she was beyond a rough idea of the state – and they felt as if they had walked far enough to cross the state line into another state.  Her wrists hurt from the cuffs, her legs hurt because of all the walking and no one seemed to care.  Nicolas had warned her that the resistance would probably be suspicious of them and she’d claimed to understand, but she hadn't really understood what he’d meant until they’d landed.  They were effectively being treated as prisoners.

“If you’re genuinely who you claim to be – and no one has done anything to your mind – then I’m sorry about this,” their greeter said.  No names had been exchanged and half of their escort wore black facemasks.  “If not ... then we will find out and liberate you from your servitude.”

Nicolas let out a droll chuckle.  “Get on with it,” he ordered.  “There really isn't much time.”

Abigail was pushed into a second room, which looked surprisingly like a doctor’s surgery, complete with examination table and a couple of chairs.  She was still staring at the table when she felt someone cutting into her clothes and removing them, one by one.  Her one protest was angrily cut off, leaving her fuming silently as she was stripped.  They didn't even leave her with her panties.  

“Make sure you don’t destroy any of the tools we brought with us,” Nicolas ordered.  They’d stripped him too, but he seemed utterly unperturbed.  On the other hand, everyone else in the room was male too.  “Put them in a strongbox if you like, but don’t destroy them.”

“Understood,” the resistance leader – if he was the leader – said, as the doctor stepped forward.  “Stand very still, all right?”

Abigail watched as the doctor carried out what looked like a thoroughly unpleasant exam, starting with a full physical search and then placing several electrodes against Nicolas’s head, checking his brainwaves.  It took her a moment to realise that he was actually looking for the implants that turned a person into an alien slave; there’d been quite a bit of information about them passed through the underground network.  So far, no one had successfully managed to remove the implants, let alone deactivate them.  The Walking Dead would stay alien slaves, permanently.  Or so the Rogue Leaders believed.

“He appears to be clean,” the doctor said, finally.  “Young lady?”

He gave Abigail a droll smile as she was pushed forward.  “I’m gay,” he said, dryly.  She couldn't help noticing Nicolas jump in shock.  “Don’t worry about a thing.”

Abigail gritted her teeth as he scanned her body with several different devices, then inspected each and every one of her cavities.  By the time he was done, she felt almost violated, even though the inspection had been completely impersonal.  She looked around to see that most of the resistance fighters had turned their backs, clearly having decided to offer her privacy rather than keep a sharp eye on her.  At least they had more human decency than the aliens and their collaborators.  

“They both appear to be clean,” the doctor said.  “I found nothing on either of them.”

Abigail flushed.  “We could have told you that,” she snapped.  “You didn't have to ...”

“They couldn’t have taken our word for it,” Nicolas pointed out, mildly.  He looked over at the resistance leader.  “We need to send a message to whoever is in charge of the state resistance, quickly.  And the message has to remain absolutely secure.”

“I can handle that,” the leader said.  He nodded to two of his men, who pushed Abigail towards yet another door.  “I think you’d better get cleaned up and have a shower, then we can talk properly.”

Abigail smiled.  “You mean that we can get out of these cuffs?”

“Yes,” the leader said.  He seemed to have relaxed, slightly.  “But you will still be watched, closely.”

“Oh,” Abigail said.

She scowled.  It looked like privacy was going to be a thing of the past; hell, she’d had more privacy on the alien command ship.  But then, compared to what she’d expected to face after the aliens finally caught on to her double game, she was in heaven.  What was a little nakedness compared to being turned into an alien slave, so badly warped that she wouldn't even know that she should resist?

Or a drooling idiot, like the VP, she thought, grimly.

They were shown into a small bedroom, the cuffs were removed and they were left alone.  “You did fine,” Nicolas assured her, as soon as the door was audibly locked.  “I’ve known people who would have been horrified at such an ... intrusive physical search.”

Abigail winced as she sat down.  “I know how they feel,” she said.  “Where are we?”

Nicolas shrugged.  “One of the secret government bunkers, I assume,” he said.  “We’re not that far from Washington DC.  A bunker or two up here would be easy to hide, even from the locals.  If nuclear war broke out, someone from the government would be sent here to hide and take command in the event of everyone above him being killed.”

“Oh,” Abigail said.  Her eyes opened wide.  “Does that mean that the President is here?”

“I rather doubt it,” Nicolas admitted.  “They wouldn't have brought us here if the President was here too.  Even if they believed us without an examination, we could easily be carrying a surveillance bug or two on our bodies, if it was a trick.  If humans can make bugs so small that they can barely be seen with the naked eye, I’d bet that the aliens could make them a whole lot smaller.”

He nodded towards the bathroom.  “Go have a shower and a nap,” he ordered.  “We could be here for some time.”

Abigail nodded and obeyed.

***
It was several hours later – after Abigail had finally dropped off into an uncomfortable sleep – that the door opened, revealing four men wearing masks.  Nicolas didn't recognise them personally, but he recognised the grim assurance that they were the best of the best common to Special Forces operators all around the world.  Knowing that the following interrogation was likely to be unpleasant, be bade a silent farewell to the sleeping Abigail and allowed the men to lead him outside the room and down a concrete corridor.

“Here,” one of them grunted, passing him a pair of silk pyjamas.  “Wear these.”

Nicolas rolled his eyes.  The silk outfit would allow him to keep his dignity, while preventing him from going unnoticed anywhere in the complex.  On the other hand, if he meant harm, he could easily knock someone out and take their uniform for himself ... pulling it on, he decided that at least they were taking security seriously.  Once he was dressed, they opened another door and pushed him into a small office.  A man, wearing yet another mask, sat on the other side of the desk.

“Sir,” Nicolas said.  

The man pulled off his mask, revealing a craggy face that Nicolas recognised from BUD/S.  Colonel Oldham had been one of their supervisors – and, although he’d been too old for active service, he’d been supervising black ops in Afghanistan while the war wound down.

“Little,” Colonel Oldham said.  “I think we can be reasonably sure that you’re not under alien control, but are you their willing collaborator?”

“No,” Nicolas snapped.  “Sir, I ...”

“I have to ask,” the Colonel pointed out.  “Almost everyone who has gone into an alien POW facility has either come out ... changed or simply never been seen again.  The only exceptions are people who have been liberated by our forces, in the early days of the occupation.  And now you.”

“They let me go,” Nicolas said.  “Sir, this changes everything.”

Colonel Oldham settled back in his chair.  “Then make your report, son,” he ordered.  “Tell me what happened since you were captured.  And, coming to think of it, what happened to get you captured?”

Nicolas hesitated, then ran through the entire story, starting with the alien attack on the resistance camp and his decision to seek sanctuary with Greg and his daughter.  Oldham’s expression didn't change, even when Nicolas admitted that he’d been betrayed.  Nicolas honestly hadn't realised that the resistance hadn't known what had happened to him, or how he’d been captured.  If he hadn't contacted them himself, they might never have suspected a thing ...

And then they would have shot me when I tried to explain, he thought, as he talked about the alien rebels and how he’d made contact with them.  That would have been a sorry end.

“So,” Colonel Oldham said.  “You’re thinking that these aliens are actually on the level?”

Nicolas hesitated, then nodded.

“Indeed,” Colonel Oldham said.  “And is it not equally likely that they might be setting you up to betray the rest of us?”

“I was not implanted,” Nicolas pointed out, sharply.  “Nor was Abigail.”

“On first-name terms with a reporter?”  Colonel Oldham asked.  “Dear me!  It must be love.”

Nicolas, realising that the Colonel was trying to irritate him, kept his temper under firm control.  “She was there too,” he insisted.  “They exposed themselves to her too.”

The Colonel pretended not to hear.  “A reporter and a SEAL,” he said.  “It sounds like the plot of a bad romantic comedy.”  

His expression shifted with staggering speed.  “Are you sure that they’re on the level?”

“Yes,” Nicolas said, flatly.

“Why?”

Nicolas took a moment to gather his thoughts.  “They could have killed both of us, or tried to turn us both into Walking Dead,” he said.  “Abigail would have made an excellent propagandist and helped them to round up the underground newspapers.  I would have made a good recruit for the Order Police.  Or they could have just shoved us into a POW camp and left us to rot.  I think they took one hell of a risk making contact the way they did ...”

“Not as much as you might think,” Colonel Oldham said.  “They could have just dropped you overboard if it hadn't worked out.”

“I don’t think it would have been that easy,” Nicolas said.  “From what they told us of how their network works, rerouting a couple of prisoners might well have been noticed.”

“Yeah,” Colonel Oldham said.  “But let me play devil’s advocate for a moment.  You may believe what you’re telling me, but your new friends are actually lying to you.  Would you recognise a lie when you were told it?”

Nicolas scowled at him.  He was fairly good at reading humans, but reading the aliens was almost impossible.  No one really knew how they showed emotion, even though he’d heard that some of the aliens were practicing human expressions.  If an alien chose to tell him a bare-faced lie, would he realise it before it was too late?  

“Carlson believed them,” he said, reluctantly.

“But he has been a prisoner ever since the ISS was destroyed,” Oldham pointed out, mildly.  “How do you know he isn't one of the Walking Dead?”

“He was emotional,” Nicolas said.  He’d spent time undercover in Afghanistan and he knew something about blending into a foreign country, but it would be harder to blend into an alien crew, even if he wasn't trying to hide.  “There was none of the ... coldness that marks the Walking Dead.”

“But, you see,” Oldham said, “he could be a new kind of Walking Dead?  He might be able to project a human face, without actually being a collaborator instead of just another victim ...”

Nicolas shook his head.  “I don’t think that’s possible,” he said.  “If they could do that, we’d all be dead by now.”

Oldham lifted both eyebrows, inviting him to continue.

“A Walking Dead cannot pass for a normal human,” Nicolas said.  “They appear cold and inhuman; their previous emotional connections and ties are all gone.  Even if confronted with their families, or offered sex, they remain disinterested.  We can pick them out easily, even without talking to them.  There’s no point in them sending one of them to try to infiltrate our group.  We’d know immediately.

“If they could control someone like me, someone who could still laugh and cry and make love, without leaving any signs, they would have done so,” he continued.  “There would have been hundreds of prisoners released, or allowed to escape, and they would have led the aliens straight to the resistance bases.  If I’d been implanted, do you think I would have sent you a message that was bound to raise your suspicions?”

“It did happen once,” Oldham said, quietly.  “To a Jihadist cell in Iran.  One of the women was apparently implanted.”

Nicolas blinked, then nodded in understanding.  “Just how many connections did she have to the men there?”

Oldham smiled.  “Point,” he said.

Devious bastards, Nicolas thought.  Just because their technology had limits didn't stop them from figuring out ways to overcome those limits.  How very human of them.  A woman in a complete veil would be almost invisible, particularly to men who thought of women as being good for nothing more than doing housework and making babies.  And she would have been there, listening, as all of their plans were discussed.  The aliens must have been laughing.

“There were quite a few devices on your person,” Oldham said, changing the subject.  “Would you care to talk about them?”

Nicolas nodded.  “One of them is a recorded message for the President, proposing an alliance,” he said.  “Another is a small collection of tactical data, also for the President or for the analysts.  The others ...”

He took a deep breath.  “The others are designed to free someone from their clutches,” he explained.  “We can free the Walking Dead.”

Oldham stared at him.  “And are you sure that it would work?”

Nicolas smiled.  “I think we can test it,” he pointed out, dryly.  “And if it works, we can decide what to do next.”

There was an almost hungry expression in Oldham’s eyes.  “Tell me how it works,” he ordered.  “Now.”

Nicolas explained as best as he could.  “The implants themselves are designed to interface comprehensively with the human brain,” he said.  “Attempting to remove them through human medical techniques will destroy the host’s brain; attempting to shut them down will inflict crippling damage too.  However, they can be taken to pieces from the inside.  Each of the vials contains enough nanomachines to liberate one person from the Walking Dead implants.”

Oldham’s eyes narrowed.  “And what happens after that?”

“They weren't certain,” Nicolas admitted.  “They were confident that the implants would be disabled without killing the host, but they weren't sure about what would happen afterwards, once the person was free.  There might be permanent damage, sir, or they might be able to walk and act normally.  The whole process is apparently more risky than they were prepared to admit.”

He hesitated.  “The VP, sir, was a failure,” he added.  “The implant process didn't work quite right.  Right now, he’s effectively a drooling idiot.  They have to puppet his body directly when they parade him in front of the cameras.”

Oldham scowled.  “That doesn't explain why he was the only failure,” he said.

“He wasn't,” Nicolas said, flatly.  “The process apparently fails at least once in every ten attempts, no matter how they refine their implants.  He’s ... just the unlucky bastard who can't simply be reduced to his component atoms and disposed of.”

“Which explains their reluctance to implant everyone,” Oldham mused.  He looked over at Nicolas for a long searching moment.  “You do realise that this will have to be tested?”

“Yes, sir,” Nicolas said.  

“And if it fails, we may have to consider the fact that you are lying?”

Nicolas nodded impatiently.

“I shall discuss it with higher authority,” Oldham said.  He tapped the table, loudly enough to be heard outside the room.  A moment later, both of the guards walked into the compartment.  “Until then, I’m afraid that you will have to remain a prisoner.”

Nicolas rolled his eyes, inwardly, but understood that Oldham had no choice.  

“Take me back to prison, guys,” he said, to the two guards.

***
Abigail’s interrogation was much the same as Nicolas had described his own, although there were three people – all masked – facing her.  It bothered Abigail that they didn't seem to trust her, even though she would probably have done the same thing in their shoes.  She was a reporter, a person who would always be in search of the next hot scoop – never mind how many lives might be put at risk by what she published.  It was impossible to think of a way to explain that she knew better, or that she’d risked her own life challenging the aliens.  All she could do was answer the questions and hope that what she told them was actually useful.  

“Your ideas for spreading the word were inventive,” one of her interviewers said, afterwards.  “They appear to have spread.”

“Good,” Abigail said.  They might no longer have been able to trust the internet, or any accredited reporter now that the aliens were pulling their strings, but there would be ways of getting the word out.  “That’s what I meant it to do.”

“However, you will have to remain here for a while,” the interviewer added.  “We cannot risk word getting out, not now.”

“I understand,” Abigail said.  “I won’t breathe a word to anyone.”

She allowed them to show her back to their room, then sat down on the bed.  “I think they want to believe us,” she said, “but I can't blame them for being suspicious.”

“War is Darwinian,” Nicolas said.  He didn't seem too bothered by the fact they were effectively prisoners, somehow.  “The smarter ones survive by not taking chances.”

Chapter Four

Alien Base, Near Casper, Wyoming, USA
Day 193

“What have you done to me?”

The alien doctors – or so she thought of them, for the alternatives were even more frightening – ignored her.  They rarely answered her questions; indeed, she had a feeling that only a couple of them could even talk.  Instead, they examined her body, injected her with a tailored regime of drugs and otherwise left her to wander her room while her child grew inside her.  No, not her child.  Their child.

Dolly had lost track of how long it had been since she’d been taken prisoner, then transferred to the alien base and impregnated.  It seemed like something out of a bad movie and there were times when she thought that it was all a nightmare, from which she could wake up if she only tried hard enough.  But maybe that wasn't surprising.  The aliens drugged her regularly, leaving her utterly dependent on them.  It might easily have been six months since she had been impregnated, or more.  There was no way to know.

She put a hand on her belly, feeling the child growing inside her.  It seemed to be developing awfully fast, although she was no doctor or midwife.  The few sex education classes she had taken hadn't been very detailed on just what happened as a child grew in the womb, but she did recall that the average child took around nine months from conception to birth.  Had she been a prisoner for nine months or was the alien baby growing faster than a human child?

One of the aliens pushed at her gently and she lay down on the examination table.  The first few times, she had tried to resist or even to bargain, but they’d simply done ... something ... to her and she’d lost the will to try to fight.  They didn't seem inclined to cause her pain deliberately, unlike the human collaborators who had captured her, yet they didn’t allow her objections to stop them from doing what they needed to do.  Grey leathery hands touched her flesh lightly, as if the aliens were marvelling over the feel of human flesh, then they started waving sensors over her body, concentrating on her belly.  No doubt they wanted to see how the child was developing.

Dolly looked over at one of the taller aliens, trying to get its attention.  The alien seemed disinclined to pay any attention to the human on the table; they didn't seem to recognise her as anything, but a surrogate mother for their child.  Dolly had puzzled over that, when she’d been able to think relatively clearly; what sort of evolutionary process would produce a race that needed another race to carry its children?  She’d heard of birds that laid eggs in nests that belonged to other birds, but how could that work when the two races came from very different ecosystems?  Surely there weren't humans on the alien homeworld.

They could have been coming here for years, she thought, numbly.  They could have had centuries to plan their invasion.  

She remembered, dimly, all the hope and optimism that had swept the globe when the alien mothership had been detected for the first time.  Humanity had hoped that the aliens would have all the answers and that they would share them with humanity, a hope that now seemed naive and pointless.  Dolly could see, now, that the aliens had lied to them long enough to convince humanity to lower its guard, then they’d attacked with stunning force.  For all she knew, they could control the entire world by now, directly or indirectly.

One of the aliens stepped in front of her, holding a medical tool that looked alarmingly like a dagger.  Dolly tensed, wondering if they literally intended to cut the alien baby out of her womb; the alien touched her forehead and her panic faded away into nothingness.  A numbness fell over her body, broken only by a faintly unpleasant sensation from between her breasts.  Moments later, that too was gone and she fell into blackness.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself in what she thought of as the alien recovery room.  It was a plain and unadorned as the rest of the alien complex – there were no paintings, or artworks, or anything else that humans recognised as decoration – but it seemed to have been designed specifically for humans.  The table and chairs were just right, unlike most of the alien furniture.  

Sitting upright, unsure of just how long she had been out of it, she patted her body looking for the scars.  The child was still inside her, she realised, but there was a faint pain between her breasts that was slowly fading away.  Dolly peered down, trying to see what they’d done, yet her skin was unblemished, utterly unmarked.  If it wasn't for the pain, she would have wondered if she’d imagined it all.  

She looked up – and almost jumped out of her skin.  One of the aliens was standing there, facing her ... how the hell had she missed his presence?  He didn't seem to have slipped through a hidden door, although it was hard to find the doors in the alien complex.  One of the more normal prisoners, the ones who hadn't given up hope yet, had even suggested that the aliens saw colours differently from humanity.  It was quite possible that the doors were clearly marked as such, but the human eye couldn't see the markings.  Or, for that matter, that the walls were covered in invisible artworks.  

“Our child is growing as predicted,” the alien said.  As always, there was no hint of emotion in its voice.  “You have no reason to fear.”

Dolly tried to glare at the alien.  It could never have been mistaken for human, no matter where it went.  The creature was inhumanly tall and thin, with an oversized head, dark eyes and long fingers that seemed designed for precision work.  It wore a simple white tunic, but there were no bumps or protrusions that might have indicated sex ... at least in humanity.  For all she knew, the aliens might pollinate like flowers, rather than the messy lovemaking of humanity.

“Thank you,” she snarled.  “What have you done to me?”

The alien seemed utterly unaffected by her tone.  “You are bearing the future in your womb,” he informed her.  “Your child will be the first of a new era.”

Dolly gritted her teeth.  Every woman had the nightmare of being raped, of being forced into sex against her will ... and of carrying her attacker’s child to term.  The thought of being raped by aliens was absurd, surely, and yet it had happened.  They’d impregnated her, turning her into a brood mare ... she would almost sooner have dealt with a human rapist.  The cool clinical approach of the aliens didn't disguise the fact that they’d treated her like a piece of meat.  They didn't even have sexual lusts to drive them forwards.  

“I don’t want the child,” she said, although her feelings were mixed.  How could she refuse to accept a child from her body?  But was it really a child of hers?  A rapist’s child would still be partly hers, yet the aliens ... was she anything more than a host mother?  She wished that she had spent more time paying attention in biology class.  “How could you do this to me?”

The alien seemed surprised, although that could have just been her imagination.  “You do want the child,” it insisted.  “You must want the child.”

Dolly scowled.  “Go away,” she snarled, “and leave me alone.”

They normally ignored her when she shouted insults or demands at them.  This time, the alien turned and walked out of the chamber.  Dolly watched him stepping through a door that hadn't been there a moment ago and sagged, feeling hot tears prickling at her eyes.  The alien might have left, but she had no illusions about her fate.  She was still their captive and she was still carrying their child.  And God alone knew what they would do to her after she’d given birth.  For all she knew, they might just put another child in her – and continue the process time after time.

She touched a belly and thought, again, about killing herself.  But the thought refused to focus.  They’d done something to her mind, she realised dully; there had been plenty of times in the past she’d considered suicide as a possible escape hatch from pain and suffering. Now, the very thought was repulsive ... even though she was far worse off than she’d been as a child.  How could she have seen the problems of her teenage years as the end of her world?

Because I was young and stupid, she thought, answering her own question.  And because I didn't know just how bad it could get.

***
 “You think that they know we’re here?”

“I hope not,” Edward muttered, in response.  “But if they did, they’d come after us.”

They’d spent most of the last two days hiding cameras near the alien city, although they hadn't been able to actually set them to transmit their signals to a nearby receiving station.  It was terrifying to realise just how much they’d lost, now they were fighting with a far more advanced opponent.  There were no longer drones to orbit target complexes so high in the sky that they couldn't be seen, let alone combat radios and other ways to coordinate a large force as it advanced against the enemy.  Using radios would have brought the aliens down on them like the hammer of God.  

He shook his head.  No, they would just have to carry out the surveillance operation the old-fashioned way.  Every few days, they would go to the cameras, recover the memory cards and take them back to the tent, where they could attach the recordings to emails and send them out over the hidden cable network.  Edward would have preferred to attach the cameras to the cables directly, but it was an unacceptable risk when the discovery of one camera could lead directly to the others – and the cable network.  Given enough time, the aliens could disable it – or use it to track down the other resistance cells.  

A faint hum echoed through the sky as another alien transport passed overhead, dropping down towards the city.  As always, the sight evoked wonder and terror in him; the aliens just seemed to ignore the laws of physics as humans understood them.  No aircraft he’d ever seen could just stop dead and hang in the sky, not even a helicopter.  It gave the aliens a tremendous advantage when it came to dogfighting with human aircraft, an advantage they’d utilized ruthlessly.  The once-mighty USAF had been battered out of the sky in barely two weeks of fighting. 

“That's the camera in place,” Georgina assured him.  “They should get plenty of pictures of the alien city.”

“Excellent,” Edward said.  “Time to move on to the next vantage point.”

He’d wondered, while lying awake at night, just what was the point of gathering so much intelligence.  The only plan he’d been able to think of for attacking the alien city involved smuggling a tactical nuke into the area, then detonating it – the aliens would have no idea who to blame for the attack, or how to hit back.  But the resistance had learned the hard way that the alien sensors were much better than humanity’s systems.  It was quite possible that they would detect a nuke in transit and either capture it or destroy it from a safe distance.  

The only alternative was to put together an infantry force to attack on the ground, but that would be an operation fraught with risks.  There were hundreds of alien warriors in view around the city at any one time, while there were no doubt others in the buildings or nearby, ready to come to the city’s aid.  Unlike humanity, they could keep their rapid reaction force in orbit or on the other side of the globe and they’d still be able to get it into attack position within minutes.  

And we know nothing about the interior of the city, he thought, sourly.  We don’t even know how many aliens live there.

It was difficult, almost impossible, to tell the difference between two aliens, at least ones who shared the same caste.  Their society didn't seem to admit of any individuality, as far as Edward could tell; the workers seemed interchangeable, while even the warriors and leaders faded into a shapeless mass.  The only real signs of individuality he’d seen were war wounds; the aliens didn't seem to go in for a hair styles, uniforms or anything else that separated one person from another.  Georgina had pointed out that the aliens might have their own ways of recognising one another – and that they might have the same problem telling humans apart – but Edward was sticking with his original theory.  The aliens were, effectively, an ant colony.  

He was sure that there was a clue to attacking them in that theory.  Years ago, as a child, he had deliberately damaged an anthill, just to watch them swarming over and trying to repair the damage.  Before his mother had dragged him home, he’d learned that the ants reacted quickly to the damage, no matter how impossible it was on their scale.  They just kept trying to repair the damage anyway.  It rather suggested a shortage of imagination.

There were human societies that had seemed to be short of imagination, although that was more a product of government and cultural conditioning than any intrinsic failure.  He’d served in the Middle East and had decided that most of the people there wouldn't be so dangerous if they weren't allowed to buy weapons from more productive societies, or if their habits of sloppy maintenance weren’t allowed to go unchallenged.  They just didn't have the mindset that would turn them into proper soldiers and their governments were unwilling to make the effort to shape that mindset.  But the Middle East could parasite on the rest of the world.  Who had the aliens used as the source of their innovations?

But they can innovate, he thought, remembering the damage the aliens had inflicted on careless resistance cells.  They’re not stupid.

He shook his head tiredly.  It just didn't make sense.  If the aliens couldn’t innovate and couldn't progress beyond a certain point, how the hell had they developed space travel in the first place?  But if the aliens could innovate, why was their society such an ... ant colony?  Or was there a specific caste of innovators?  

“The parents are out again,” Georgina said, breaking into his thoughts.  “Some of them look even more pregnant.”

Edward winced as he panned the binoculars over a small group of young girls, all looking as if they were on the verge of giving birth.  How long had they been prisoners?  The aliens hadn't really had them long enough to get them that pregnant ... had they?  But he’d seen the base in Antarctica, where the aliens had carried out their first experiments on abducted humans ... the girls might just have been taken their first, then removed before the base had been destroyed by American Special Forces.  No, he realised as he caught sight of Dolly.  She hadn't been pregnant when she’d fought alongside the resistance.

“They must have done something to ensure that the children grew quickly,” Georgina said, softly.  “There were theories about ways to speed up the whole process of giving birth, but I don’t think that any of them were ever tested.”

“Because a premature baby could have mental or physical damage,” Edward said.  He’d known a Marine who had had a premature child – and while she was a sweet girl, she would never be truly normal, able to find her own place in society.  “Do you think that will happen to the alien children?”

Georgina gave him a sharp look.  “Biologically, it’s impossible for one species to impregnate another,” she said, crossly.  “There have been cases of gorillas raping human females, but none of those ever led to pregnancy.  If the aliens have somehow found a way to crossbreed humans and themselves, the normal rulebook has been thrown out of the window.  There’s no data to use as a starting point.”

She scowled.  “But if they’re experimenting on finding ways to breed more humans, I wouldn't have thought they needed to bother,” she added.  “It isn't as if there’s a shortage of human children.”

Edward shivered.  In America alone, there were hundreds of thousands of orphaned children, their parents killed by the aliens or by more human threats.  According to the internet, several resistance cells had found themselves battling child traffickers instead of the aliens, or making arrangements for orphaned children to be adopted by rural families.  At least adoption was much easier now that the government bureaucracy was gone.  The alien-backed government didn't seem inclined to care about who adopted what child.  

And then there was the endless chaos in Africa, the Chinese Civil War, the meltdown in Europe ... no, the aliens hardly needed to breed more human children.  They could simply round up as many as they needed, either taking them by force or simply buying them from their parents or traffickers.  The crossbreed theory, as insane as it seemed, was the most likely.

“Time to move on,” he said, and led the way towards the next vantage point.  There were two more cameras to plant, then they could get back to the tent.  After that, they’d have to make regular visits to the cameras to switch out the memory cards.  “There’s work to be done.”

He took one last look at the alien city, shuddering.  He’d seen horrors in Antarctica – and that had been when the aliens were worried about detection.  Now ... now, they could do whatever the hell they liked to captive humans.  After all, who was going to stop them?

Chapter Five

Virginia, USA
Day 193

Nicolas heard the faint knock on the door and sat upright, brushing sleep away as the door opened to reveal the same masked guards.  He glanced over at Abigail, sleeping deeply on her bed, then swung his legs over the side of his bed and stood upright, silently grateful that their hosts had finally provided some clothes.  Being with a naked girl had been very distracting.

“Come with us,” the first guard said.  They said very little, even though Nicolas was sure that they had quite a few things in common.  “Now.”

Nicolas said nothing until they were outside the room, with the door firmly closed.

“I’m here,” he said, finally.  “Are there more questions for me?”

The guards ignored him, merely motioning for him to follow them down the corridor.  Nicolas sighed, but obeyed; they’d been interrogated every day, often going over the same material time and time again.  Clearly, the resistance cells wanted to believe what he’d told them, but at the same time they were fearful that it was a trap.  Nicolas hadn't really understood how frustrating the whole process of interrogating defectors had been for the defectors until he’d effectively been in their shoes.

Colonel Oldham met him in a small room.  For a moment, Nicolas wondered if they’d brought him to the wrong room; interrogation rooms were normally split between the section holding the interrogator and his subject and the section holding the observers.  He’d always been in the interrogation section before, but now he was in the observation section.  It seemed a little odd.

“Good morning,” Colonel Oldham greeted him.  He sounded ridiculously cheerful.  “And how are you this morning?”

“Excellent,” Nicolas said, trying to project an equal amount of cheer.  It wasn't as if he wasn't used to being ordered out of bed at all hours of the day.  Anyone who needed a solid nine hours of sleep each night didn't try out for the SEALs.  “Breakfast was delightfully non-fattening, sir.”

Oldham laughed, then nodded towards the transparent window.  “You are familiar with these rooms, are you not?”

“Only from the other side,” Nicolas said.  Field interrogations were rare – and were never as quick and simple as the media portrayed them.  “I assume that the people here can ask questions?”

“The interrogator has an earpiece that allows us to suggest questions,” Oldham confirmed.  He nodded towards the window.  “There should be no clue that the interviewee is being watched, naturally.  To the naked eye, the wall looks to be nothing more than solid concrete.”

“Yes, sir,” Nicolas said, wondering if the man was ever going to get to the point.  “Why don’t we use cameras instead?”

“Studies have proven that observers do better if they’re right next door to the interview,” Oldham said.  He gave Nicolas a smirk that suggested that he wasn't entirely convinced that the studies were accurate.  “That ... and the fact we were too cheap to install the cameras when they became available.  This base dates all the way back to the Cold War.”

Nicolas nodded.  “Is it completely off the books?”

“It should be,” Oldham said.  “But you know what Washington is – was – like.”

Nicolas nodded, grimly.  Like all SEALS, he had developed a healthy respect for Sensitive Site Exploitation teams, the military forensic detectives who examined every captured terrorist base and found clues that often led to the discovery of other terrorist bases.  It astonished him just how much sensitive data terrorists wrote down, but he supposed they didn't have much choice.  Keeping track of their numbers without taking notes would have been difficult ... and terrorists were not exactly renowned for their intelligence.  The SSE teams had often been able to use the terrorist lack of thought against them.

And the terrorists had been trying to hide.  No one in Washington, certainly not since the end of the Cold War, had seriously imagined that the country might be overrun and the city occupied by enemy forces.  It should have been impossible for someone to slip an army over the seas to America, let alone battle their way to Washington.  But the aliens had done it ... and inherited whatever paperwork hadn't been destroyed by the time they took the city.  Even if the bunker was officially off the books, there might be some evidence left for the aliens to find.  And, if they’d converted the bureaucrats into Walking Dead, the paper-pushers wouldn't have the option of simply keeping their mouths shut.  

“Not good, sir,” he said, finally.  

He scowled.  How long had it been – it felt like years – since they’d come up with plans for post-war insurgencies?  Given a few months to prepare, he was confident that they could have given the aliens one hell of a bloody nose.  But no one had seriously believed that they might need stay-behind teams either.  America was an invincible citadel, protected by the iron laws of geopolitics.  The foe who had overrun the country existed outside human geopolitics, let alone geography.  

Oldham tapped a switch.  “Bring in the prisoner,” he ordered.  “At once, if you please.”

Nicolas leaned forward, peering through the barrier, as a door opened in the far end of the room and a trolley was wheeled inside.  The person on the trolley was so heavily shackled that he couldn't move a muscle, which didn't stop him from glaring around him as he was parked in the centre of the room.  Nicolas shivered inwardly as he caught sight of just how solidly the man was held down.  It seemed like massive overkill.  Surely handcuffs and leg shackles would have been enough ...

He scowled as he realised just what he was seeing.  “One of the Walking Dead?”

“I’m afraid so,” Oldham said.  “We dare not risk giving him the slightest chance to break free.”

Nicolas nodded in understanding.  The Walking Dead might not be anything like as strong as the alien warriors, but when forced to fight they seemed to be desensitised to pain and unwilling to flee to safety.  Or, for that matter, to be cowed by threats.  Capturing one was not easy, nor was keeping one prisoner.  Nicolas had heard that, after the first experiments to attempt to free the Walking Dead had failed, orders had been passed down from the higher ups to simply shoot all Walking Dead on sight.  It would be a mercy.  

“We had to keep him strapped down for his own safety, as well as ours,” Oldham said, grimly.  “He’s effectively a colossal suicide risk.”

“Yes, sir,” Nicolas said.  The Walking Dead killed themselves when they saw no other choice, just like captured aliens.  Did that mean that the Rogue Leaders knew that their controlling systems were imperfect?  “We don’t want him biting out his own tongue?”

He watched as a pair of doctors fussed around the bound man.  “Who was he?”

“He used to be a military bureaucrat,” Oldham explained, drolly.  “He was stationed at the Pentagon when Washington fell; we’re not quite sure why he wasn't pulled out of the city along with many of his comrades.  We’re assuming that he was one of the volunteers to stay behind and keep the building active as long as possible, but we don’t know for sure.  It’s quite possible that he was picked up later, identified and then implanted.  Or that he answered General Howery’s call for military officials to return to their posts and got implanted then.”

Nicolas scowled.  The Walking Dead might have been completely loyal to the aliens, but that didn't make them stupid.  If General Howery had commanded troops up to the standards of the pre-invasion military, the resistance would have been obliterated by now.  As it was, the last reports he’d heard had insisted that the Order Police were receiving much more detailed training from the aliens and their unwilling slaves.  It wouldn't be long before they were far more capable of hunting down the resistance.  

A question struck him.  “What’s his name?”

Oldham gave him an odd look.  “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” Nicolas said, flatly.

“Peter Sanderson,” Oldham said, after a long moment.  “Why did you want to know?”

Nicolas hesitated.  Peter Sanderson was about to prove that the implants could be disabled, but there was a strong possibility that he was about to die in the process.  If so ... he hadn't wanted to remain ignorant of the man’s name, even if he hadn't volunteered to be tested.  There was no way of knowing what kind of man he had been before the invasion, before the aliens had stuck implants in his head, but right now he was risking his life for his country.  Nicolas liked to think that he would have volunteered if he’d had a free choice.  

“I thought I should know,” he admitted, finally.

Oldham nodded.  Perhaps he'd had the same thought.

There was a buzz from the intercom.  “Sir?  We’re ready to inject the nanomachines.”

“We examined them as best as we could, but our facilities are limited here,” Oldham explained.  “In the end, it was decided that we should test them on a live subject.”

Nicolas nodded.  At least that explained the delay – and it was a wise precaution.  

Oldham tapped his radio.  “You may proceed when ready,” he said.  “We’re watching.”

The alien rebels had explained that the nanomachines were actually small enough to slip between the molecules of a person’s skin and enter their bodies without causing any damage.  Nicolas had read enough science-fiction to be thoroughly terrified of all the possibilities, although the aliens had reassured him that outright self-reproducing nanites were still beyond either human or alien capabilities.  The vision of the entire planet dissolving into a mass of nanomachines was still terrifying.  Who knew what would happen when human researchers started messing around with alien technology?

They’d also explained that the nanomachines were dormant in the vials, but when they were activated – by being shot into a person’s body – they had a very short lifespan.  Nicolas suspected that was a safety precaution, although he found it a little disappointing.  If they managed to produce nanites that lasted indefinitely, perhaps by drawing their power from the body’s warmth, they might be halfway towards super-soldiers.  What would happen if wounds healed as quickly as they were made?  

“Here we go,” he muttered.  “The dawn of a new era.”

Oldham gave him an odd look, but said nothing.

The doctors pressed the alien device against the man’s forehead and pushed the button on the end, injecting the nanomachines into Sanderson’s skull.  Nicolas’s instructions had been explicit; the nanomachines had to be injected directly into the skull, although the aliens hadn't bothered to provide a full explanation.  It was possible, he supposed, that the nanite lifespan was measured in seconds, rather than minutes, and they needed to be close to their targets.  If nanotechnology even halfway lived up to the promise of science-fiction, patients might be cured in bare seconds.  

Oldham watched grimly as Peter Sanderson’s body twitched as far as it could against the restraints, then fell silent.  “He’s dead ...”

“Wait,” Nicolas said.  There was a long moment when he feared that he was wrong, that the process had failed to work properly ... and then the body twitched again.  “I think he’s alive.”

“He seems to have survived,” the doctor said, through the intercom.  “We’re just running checks now, sir.”

It was an hour before the doctors had something to report, which they did in a conference room.  Nicolas sipped a cup of coffee – coffee was increasingly expensive and rare, even for collaborators – and listened as the doctors made their report.  

“We have studied several of the Walking Dead since they first made their appearance and one thing is clear; the implants warp their thoughts to some degree,” the lead doctor said.  He hadn't bothered to introduce himself.  “We don’t understand exactly how it works; our own experiments with meddling with brains never produced anything as seemingly reliable as the alien technology.  On the other hand, we were never able to steer and direct currents in the brain without doing serious damage to the test subject.”

You mean the victim, Nicolas thought, coldly.  He’d heard rumours of experiments conducted by the CIA, carried out on unsuspecting victims, but he’d never seen any actual proof.  Now ... if there were doctors who specialised in brain manipulation, they would have been pushed into service to try to break the alien conditioning.  

“We experimented a great deal on people with mental problems or incurable sociopathic natures,” the doctor continued.  “What we discovered was that it was possible to push people in specific directions, but those directions were always vague.  For example, we could dull the sexual lusts of sex criminals by manipulating their pleasure centres, yet we could never differentiate between normal lusts and perverse lusts.  Actually reading their minds was pretty much impossible.”

Or they thought that it was normal to have paedophilic desires, Nicolas though, coldly.  After all, everyone is normal in their own mind.

“That’s unfortunately true,” the doctor agreed, when he said it out loud.  “A good example would be homosexuals, who do not – at base – see anything wrong with what they are doing, even though society disagrees.  They still have the sexual lusts; it’s just directed at their own sex.”

Nicolas scowled.  Just what had the doctor been doing before he’d been pulled into the resistance?

“As fascinating as this is,” Oldham said darkly, “could you kindly get to the point?”

“We have successfully disabled the implants in Sanderson’s brain,” the doctor said.  “At the moment, however, his brainwaves are in flux; we cannot decide if he is returning to normal or if he is on the verge of a complete mental collapse.  What we are seeing is largely unprecedented.  It would help if we knew more about how the alien technology actually worked.  None of our agents have been able to tell us what happens when someone is transformed into one of the Walking Dead.”

Nicolas looked over at the doctor.  “What is your best guess?”

“My best guess is that the aliens stamped some commands into Sanderson’s head and then used the implants to keep him in line,” the doctor said.  “Their grasp of how our brains work must be far superior to our own.  Every time Sanderson had an unapproved thought, he would be zapped back into compliance.  I suspect that this actually explains the apparent lack of real emotions from the Walking Dead.  They’re conditioned to avoid emotions – and patriotism, for example, is an emotion.”

“If that was true,” Oldham said thoughtfully, “surely there would be people who could break the conditioning ...”

The doctor shook his head.  “As children, we learn not to touch hot stoves because we do it once and get burned,” he said, simply.  “The experience is burned into our minds.  Now, the Walking Dead get their thoughts rerouted every time they think a disloyal thought – or, rather, a thought tinged with the emotions that lead to disloyalty.  By the time they are sent out to do alien work, they’re incapable of breaking out.  The mere act of trying to break out would be punished.  I suspect that it doesn't actually take long to break their minds into servitude.

“In the long term, I think that the Walking Dead are going to eventually have mental breakdowns and collapse,” he continued.  “There actually was a report of one dying for no apparent reason, down in Texas.  It’s quite possible that they have started to reach the limits of their endurance.”

“Except they can keep producing more and more of the bastards,” Nicolas growled.  “Everyone they catch can be turned into a slave, an unwilling collaborator.  Hell, if they spread the word that the Walking Dead die quickly, the other collaborators will be even more willing to prove themselves useful.”

The doctor’s pager buzzed and he glanced down at it.  “Sanderson is awake,” he said.  “Do you want to see him?”

Nicolas nodded.

The doctor led them into a small private room, where Sanderson lay on a bed, his hands and feet manacled to the railings.  Nicolas was shaken by just how unsteady the man looked, as if he would have collapsed if he’d been trying to stand upright.  His face was covered in sweat and his eyes were moving around wildly, as if he expected to be attacked at any moment.  Perhaps he did, Nicolas realised.  He’d had something in his brain controlling his actions and monitoring his thoughts.  Stronger men would have been broken by such treatment.

Oldham was oddly gentle.  “I’m Colonel Oldham, your superior officer,” he said.  “Can you tell us what happened to you?”

Sanderson’s eyes focused on Oldham, then he started to laugh, a high-pitched sound that became a giggle.  “You’re my CO?  My CO is in my brain.”

Nicolas looked over at the doctor, who scowled.

“The man probably needs years of treatment,” he said, grimly.  “I suggest that you let us work on him.  If we manage to get through to him, we might have a working treatment for dealing with others.”

“True,” Oldham said.  “Let me know the moment you make a breakthrough, of any kind.”

He led Nicolas outside the room.  “If we manage to save him,” he said, “I believe that we will have the basis for an agreement with your friends.  But if not ...”

Nicolas understood.  Any fool could kill one of the Walking Dead.

“It should work,” he said.  “It may just take some time for the results to become apparent.”

“I hope you’re right,” Oldham said.  he nodded to the guards.  “These men will take you back to your room.  Have fun with your reporter.”

“She wants some books,” Nicolas said.  “I don’t suppose you have some good books in this bunker?”

Oldham laughed.  “Books?  I’ll see what I can do.”

Nicolas nodded, then allowed the guards to lead him away.  He’d just have to pray that Sanderson made a full recovery.  If he didn’t, the resistance would draw the only reasonable conclusion ...

... and the last hope of victory would be lost forever.

Chapter Six

Area 52, Nevada, USA
Day 197

Alex Midgard had the distant feeling that he was suffering from cabin fever.

Area 52 wasn't a large military base.  It was small – and smaller still, in a way, because half of its interior was taken up by the underground hanger, the biohazard research laboratories and the base’s power plant.  The base CO had decided, as the alien grip on the USA tightened, that there would be as little contact as possible with the outside world.  Alex couldn't put a foot outside the research levels without having grim-faced guards ordering him to go back inside.

The security precautions were necessary, he knew.  If the aliens ever realised that a large team of scientists was working, right under their noses, to unlock the secrets of their first crashed ship, they would have come after Area 52 with all the force they could muster.  And if they realised that the sole alien to be held captive was in Area 53, only a few kilometres away ... Alex was privately surprised that the aliens hadn't stumbled across the base already.  But then, it looked like nothing more than a disused airport from high overhead, not even close to a large population centre.  

He gritted his teeth as he stared down at the report, feeling his eyes starting to blur.  Area 52 had become the principle clearing house for intelligence-gathering in the USA, and for much of the world.  Most of America’s intelligence assets overseas had been lost when Washington fell, but enough remained to give the underground a picture of what was going on.  It didn't make pleasant reading.  The aliens were still in control of the Middle East, what remained of Israel was either fleeing or submitting to alien rule ... and the rest of the world seemed to be going into the toilet.  China was in the midst of a civil war, brought on by a colossal economic crash, Europe teetered on the brink of civil war, and Russia ... Russia was a mystery, wrapped inside an enigma.  The last reports had spoken of martial law and tanks on the streets.  After that ... nothing.

It’s as if the aliens don’t exist, he thought, bitterly.  All the resources that could be put to work fighting the bastards are thrown at our fellow humans instead.

The news wasn’t good anywhere.  Australia was facing a threat from the north as the civil war in Indonesia threatened to embroil Australia in war.  Japan was in dire economic trouble and slowly starving, thanks to the colossal disruption in world shipping.  Britain was hanging on, barely, while France was clearly having its own problems.  Canada was desperately neutral, fearful of attracting alien attention, while Mexico had collapsed into civil war, a war that had spread across the border into the Southern US.  

And, above it all, the aliens were quietly moving ahead with the settlement of Earth.

The reports were clear.  There were no less than fifty alien cities on American territory, the population uprooted and forced into refugee camps to make room for the aliens.  They didn't seem to want a single human near their cities, which made a certain kind of sense; humans had a habit of launching suicide attacks on alien installations.  Not even the collaborators were allowed anywhere near the cities.  It was worse in the Middle East and North Africa, where the aliens had over a hundred cities.  Given time, Alex was sure that they would expand into Russia and China too.

After the population has thoughtfully wasted much of its military power on one another, he thought, sourly.  India and Pakistan had already had a nuclear exchange, one that had shattered Pakistan and crippled India ... and killed millions on both sides.  The aliens had probably quietly encouraged the war, hoping to remove two nuclear-armed human powers without having to intervene openly.  If that was their plan, Alex had to admit, it had worked perfectly.  Neither Pakistan nor India were in any state to fight the aliens.  

Angrily, he stood up and strode over to the drinks cabinet.  Area 52’s small supply of good alcohol had been drunk months ago, but a mechanic in the garage had managed to rig up a small still and produce something that was almost, yet not completely undrinkable.  He had warned that it was likely to damage the drinker’s teeth, but no one seemed to care.  Alex poured himself a hefty slug and drank, scowling at the taste.  No one drank it so they could come up with flowery lines to describe the sensation.

He thought briefly of Robert Nguyen, the computer expert who had started to unlock the secrets of the alien computer system.  He’d vanished somewhere in Washington and no one knew what had happened to him.  The only real proof that the aliens hadn't taken him alive was the fact they hadn’t modified their systems to prevent further intrusion.  But it was yet another frustration in a war that had too many frustrations.  Everything they did, at best, seemed to stave off defeat.

There was a knock on the door.  “Go away,” Alex snapped.  “I don’t want to talk.”

The door opened.  “I think you should,” Doctor Jane Hatchery said.  She was tall and beautiful and absolutely the last person Alex wanted to see right now.  “There have been developments.”

She sniffed the air.  “And I really think that you shouldn't be drinking that,” she added.  “Brake fluid isn't a very healthy source of alcohol.”

Alex scowled at her.  “Yes, mother,” he said, sardonically.

Jane ignored his tone.  “You need to see this,” she said, passing him a set of papers.  “It is important.”

Alex sighed, irked.  Jane didn't seem to mind their enforced confinement; she had several alien bodies to dissect and study, along with reports from other medical researchers to read.  She could do something useful on the base ... once, Alex had believed that they’d make a discovery that would save the human race.  Now, he had a feeling that even if they managed to mass produce the energy weapons and other tricks they’d mastered from studying the alien technology, it would simply be too late to do any good.  Humanity was being weakened day by day ... and when the aliens weren't cutting away at humanity, it was other humans.

He took the report and glared down at it.  A moment later, he looked up.  “This is serious?”

“Apparently so,” Jane said.  “They tested the cure on five Walking Dead.  All, but one made a rapid recovery when treated properly.”

Alex skimmed through the rest of the paper, scowled at the medical terminology and then looked back at the summery.  It insisted that four of five Walking Dead had been ready to talk three or four hours after injection, while the fifth had started bleeding internally and dropped dead shortly after he’d been treated.  Alex had seen the reports; they’d tried everything they could and had never managed to break the alien confinement.  Now ... someone had succeeded.  But who?

“Get a shower and a shave,” Jane said, when he asked.  “We’re currently arranging a conference call with Torchwood.  You’ll want to attend.”

Alex snorted.  During the closing days of the war, several alien ships and bodies – shot down by the USAF or ground defences – had been shipped to Britain, where British and European scientists had started to work on them.  Now that America was occupied, the main focus of research had to be in Britain ... and everyone in the know prayed daily that the aliens left the British alone.  If the aliens had cut through the USAF and occupied America, they wouldn’t have much trouble wrecking Britain.

“Understood,” he said, tiredly.  “I’ll go now.”

The fresh water and shave invigorated him.  He washed himself thoroughly and stepped back into his room, finding a clean pair of shorts and a shirt.  Jane had made herself scarce, unsurprisingly.  Alex wondered, briefly, if he would have ever had a chance with her, then dismissed the thought.  Their current living conditions weren't designed for romance.  

Besides, he told himself, there are more important things to worry about.

The Tiger Team had gathered in the base’s main conference room, a simple concrete bunker with a metal table and uncomfortable chairs.  Alex had a mild suspicion that the designers had intended to convince people to end their meetings quickly, just by providing uncomfortable chairs.  They’d reckoned without the bureaucrats, who seemed to have asses of steel and bottomless bladders.  The thought made Alex smile as he sat down beside Jane and grinned at her.  Surprisingly, she smiled back.  

“Secure link, online,” a female voice said.  The cable connecting America and Britain was completely secure, as far as they knew.  Even so, the conversation would be heavily encrypted.  “Direct connection to location one; online.  Direct connection to location two; online.  Direct connection to location three; online.  Line integrity; confirmed.”

Alex scowled.  The only way – the only human way – to intercept messages passed over a cable was to link into the cable directly, something that could be detected with the right equipment.  But the aliens were so advanced that they might have a trick that allowed them to do it ... he shook his head.  If they had known, they would have ensured that Area 52, Area 53 and RAF Machrihanish were wiped off the map.

“Good morning,” Tony Jones said.  “There have been developments of a most interesting nature.  Doctor Hatchery?”

Jane cleared her throat.  “Several days ago, a possible cure for the Walking Dead fell into our hands,” she said.  She didn't go into details.  “Accordingly, the cure was tested on five captured Walking Dead.  In four cases, the Walking Dead returned to normal – although they were clearly traumatised by their experience.  The fifth died – according to the autopsy, there was considerable damage to the brain and, eventually, internal bleeding.”

Steve Taylor sucked in his breath sharply.  “They’re normal?  No longer alien slaves?”

“We believe so,” Jane said.  “Two of them were insisting on returning to the fight as soon as possible, while the other two need a long period of relaxation ... but they seem to be normal.”

She scowled.  “One problem is that they don’t seem to know much about what happened to them,” she added.  “It became a nightmare in their minds.  The knowledge that it was real probably help tip them over the edge.”

“So we can't get useful intelligence from them,” Taylor mused.  “Or might they recover their memories, perhaps through hypnosis?”

“They’re working on that,” Jane said.  “However, the whole brainwashing process was traumatising.  They have fairly comprehensive memories of much of their time as Walking Dead, but they’re somewhat dreamlike.  The ones who remembered the most were the ones who had been under their control for longer.  We don’t know why, yet.”

“This does offer us an interesting opportunity,” Taylor said.  “How long does it take to cure someone, completely?”

“At least five hours, assuming that nothing goes wrong,” Jane said.  “However, it may take a considerable amount of time for them to overcome the trauma.  The reports state, for example, that three of them have regular panic attacks; the fourth sometimes just zones out, then snaps back to normal with no memory of the attack.  I’ve looked for reputable psychologists to consult, but this level of trauma is largely unprecedented.  There may also be long-term health issues that have yet to surface.”

Taylor smiled.  “Could one of the healed Walking Dead pose as a Walking Dead?”

Jane stared at him.  “Are you suggesting that one of them could go back into the alien lair and pretend to be on their side?”

“It isn't as if we are short of infiltrators who joined the Order Police,” Taylor pointed out, coldly.  “This is a little more complicated ...”

“It may be damn near impossible,” Jane snapped, icily.  “Weren't you listening to me?  Of the five we tested, one died, three have panic attacks and the last one has moments when their thoughts just zoom away from them!  You cannot expect them to pass as Walking Dead indefinitely; I wouldn't expect any of them to fool their fellow Walking Dead for more than a few seconds.  Just because the aliens don’t really understand our expressions – if we assume that, which I don’t believe to be true – doesn't mean that they can fool the Walking Dead!”

“Or the collaborators, for that matter,” Jones pointed out.  

“It’s still worth considering,” Taylor insisted.  “If we could refine the process ...”

He trailed off at Jane’s glare.

“You seem to think that it is worth risking their lives to spy on the aliens,” Jane snapped.  “Do you think they could pass as normal Walking Dead for longer than a few seconds?”

Alex held up his hand.  “The process clearly needs to be refined,” he said.  “Where did the technology come from?  Britain?”

“Not ... exactly,” Ben Santini said.  The military advisor leaned forward.  “I don’t think I need to tell you that this is considered utterly secret – and you are not to discuss it with anyone on the rest of the base, let alone outside the base.  Do you understand me?”

Alex snorted – they weren't allowed out of the base – but nodded in agreement.

“Very good,” Santini said.  He looked from face to face.  “We seem to have allies among the alien ranks.”

There was a long moment of absolute silence.

Taylor broke it.  “There are some friendly aliens?”

“Yes,” Santini said.  He briefly ran through the entire story.  “In short, they provided us with the cure, which they admitted hadn’t been tested properly, some tactical data and a means to send messages back to them.  We have tested the cure ourselves and discovered that it works, at least to some extent.  The question now, ladies and gentlemen, is simple.  Do we trust them – or do we assume that we are dealing with an alien sting operation?”

Jane frowned.  “They gave us the cure to the Walking Dead and yet you think they might be plotting to betray us?”

“It's a standard intelligence trick,” Taylor said.  “You give the enemy a piece of intelligence he can verify, then add a piece of information he can't verify, having used the first piece to prove your credentials.  In this case ... they’ve given us something that we want dearly, but it’s too limited to allow us to use it properly.  And in return they want ... what?”

“An alliance,” Santini said.  “I had the files they sent us copied, then transmitted to another location and printed out.  Extreme precautions, perhaps, but you all know the dangers of discovery.  However ... if this is genuine, it could be the turning point of the war.”

Alex lifted a hand.  “What do they actually want?”

Santini blinked.  “I told you,” he said.  “They want an alliance.”

“From what they told us, they literally cannot go to another star system, or even to Mars,” Alex said.  “If we work with them, what is going to happen to the alien population?  Are they going to cut their throats after the war so that we don’t have to deal with them?”

“I see your point,” Santini said.  “We have to think about what the world will look like afterwards, after the war.”

Alex nodded.  “If we had willing allies, combined with the other tech we’ve been designing in Britain, we might be able to turn the tables on them,” he said.  “We’d have far more of a chance at victory than we have now, to be precise.  But I don’t think we can expect some of them to turn on their own people so completely.  I think we’d need clarification of their terms beforehand.”

He shrugged.  “At the very least,” he added, “it would make their story more believable.”

Santini put his hands together, fingertips touching.  “And if they had terms,” he said, “what would we consider acceptable?”

Jane snorted.  “I believe you only get to dictate terms once you win the war,” she pointed out, snidely.  “We have yet to win, or even to make more than a dent in their forces.”

Alex nodded.  “I’d suggest that we asked for alien tech and for the complete evacuation of the American mainland,” he said.  “They can keep the Middle East – God knows that we got nothing, but trouble from there.  Hell, offer to let them keep China if they want to land and restore order there too.”

Jones coughed over the communications link.  “You don’t think we’ll want the oil?”

“It will be useless once we get the alien tech into production,” Alex said.  “Demand will certainly be much reduced.”

He’d been giving alien tech some consideration, once some of the mysteries had been unravelled at Area 52 and Torchwood.  Their batteries alone would make electric cars actually practical ... and, combined with their spacecraft drive fields, the world would change overnight.  America’s demand for oil would fall sharply, until domestic production could meet every one of its demands.  It would be bad for the oil monarchies of the Middle East, but the aliens had already crushed them.  None of the Western-backed states had lasted more than a day when the aliens had attacked.  Iran had put up a far more determined fight.  

The thought made him scowl.  Throughout history, populations had been displaced by invaders who were also colonisers.  The Native Americans had eventually ended up a despised, effectively powerless minority.  If the Europeans hadn't eventually decided that they posed no further threat, they might have been wiped out entirely.

“The President will have to make the final decision,” Jones said.  “However, I want you all to start looking at possible options for making use of this new intelligence.  In particular, we should see what we can verify by talking to our captive.  Maybe he can tell us something that supports their claims.”

Alex grinned.  “Did they ask about him?”

Santini shook his head.  “Not according to the report,” he said.  “I’ll forward you all copies, but they never mentioned a prisoner ... I don’t think they realise that we’ve got him.”

“An independent source,” Taylor said.  His face twisted into a smile.  “He might be worth his weight in gold.”

“That wouldn't actually be very much at today’s prices,” Jane pointed out.  

Alex rolled his eyes in her direction.

“Children, please,” Santini said.  “The adults are talking.”

“Let’s hope so,” Jones said.  “I’ll communicate with the President.  After that, he can make the final decision.  Until then, you know what to do.”

On that note, the meeting ended.

Chapter Seven

Mannington, Virginia, USA
Day 198

“Every so often, you have to gamble,” Pepper said.  She tapped her naked breasts to illustrate the point.  After they’d started sleeping together, they’d both largely abandoned clothes in the bunker.  “But is it worth the risk?”

President Andrew Chalk couldn’t help wondering if she was actually talking about the alien contact or their new relationship.  People who were pushed close together, without any space to be themselves, either became very close or they wound up hating each other – or both.  Normally, it was a mistake for the President to get close to anyone – Bill Clinton should certainly have proved that – but he had never anticipated being on the run.  No one had seriously imagined the President of the United States being a wanted fugitive, with a single Secret Service agent for protection.

He was, perhaps, the most powerless President in history.  Buchannan had been unable to avert the Civil War, Nixon had been impeached for bad conduct, but neither of them had been on the run.  If the aliens had their way, President Chalk would go down in history as the last President of the United States, assuming they bothered to keep recording human history.  He hadn't been able to help wondering just how they would slant it, when they wrote it down – if, of course, they bothered to do so.  There had never been any sign that they troubled themselves with the same search for self-justification that was a hallmark of human politics.  

The President knew that he had to remain underground, literally.  If he went out to fight, he would be nothing more than another resistance fighter, while if the aliens caught him, it would be a propaganda coup of the first order.  A quick visit to their brainwashing chambers and he’d be their greatest ally, helping them to unravel the resistance network and crush the remains of the American nation.  Whatever had turned the VP into a drooling wreck might not save him from becoming an alien slave.  

“I don’t know,” he admitted.  The bunker was tiny, barely large enough to house the communications gear, a large amount of foodstuffs and a handful of people.  Even with just two of them in permanent residence, it was starting to seem claustrophobic.  He wanted out – and he knew that urge was pushing him forward.  “If they’re telling the truth, this could be the turning point in the war.  If not ...”

He picked up the tablet PC and ran through the data the alien rebels had provided.  They’d been remarkably frank, which led him to wonder just how much they thought the human race had already discovered for itself.  The alien caste system had been understood – at least in the vague outline – but other details had been a mystery.  It seemed that the aliens had avoided both sexism and racism, yet had their own problems based on caste.  And that had been true even before the Rogue Leaders had set out to make themselves the undisputed rulers of alien society.  

The President had been a politician as well as a military officer and he understood the value of persuasion.  Simply barking out orders might work in the military, where everyone had volunteered to join, but it was far more useful for a politician to have people helping of their own free will.  Many of his volunteers had done far better work than the paid cronies so beloved of political candidates.  But if the alien leadership caste was just better at convincing others to go along with them ... he couldn't help thinking that it would have warped their society anyway.  And if the Rogue Leaders wanted to prevent the other castes from being able to disobey ...

He shuddered as he looked down at the long-term plan for Earth.  The Rogue Leaders had been experimenting for years, searching for ways to create a human-alien hybrid – or a human who would be subordinate to the Rogue Leaders.  It was chilling to realise just how many humans had been abducted permanently and taken to Antarctica, where they’d been used as test subjects and then killed, but it was worse to realise just what the aliens had in mind.  Once they had proved that the new human race was viable, they would ensure that it replaced humanity.  Details were fuzzy – it seemed that the Rogue Leaders were keeping their options open – but there was no doubting their intent.  The twilight of humanity was at hand.

“There’s never been anything like this,” he said, softly.  “Compared to this, Hitler was nothing more than a stupid asshole and Genghis Khan a piker.  They’re talking about replacing the human race with an improved model and then exterminating the old breed.”

“Or just waiting for it to die out,” Pepper pointed out.  She’d read the reports too.  “Or maybe they think they can alter our DNA so that all future children will be their servants.”

The President shuddered.  He understood politics, or tanks moving into battle, but this was different, an assault on a scale so vast that he found it hard to comprehend.  How could anyone work on such a scale?  Even the Holocaust, an act so shocking that it was hard to understand how anyone could calmly plan and carry out, wasn't so all-encompassing.  But then, the aliens had already killed vast numbers of humans, directly or indirectly.  Why shouldn't they seek to destroy whatever threat humans posed once and for all?

He frowned as he looked down at the latest data forwarded from Area 52.  If the aliens were so intent on using Earth as their new homeworld, he was surprised that they chose to tolerate the presence of humanity at all.  It would be child’s play for them to unleash an unstoppable plague on Earth, killing most of the human race, without ever showing their hand.  God knew that they’d been probing Earth for years without ever being detected.  If it hadn't been for one of their craft suffering a malfunction and crashing on American soil, the mothership might have managed to get much closer before being detected.  

It wasn't as if humanity could claim the moral high ground.  The President had seen the evils humans practiced on other humans; the religious, sexual and racial discrimination of the Taliban and the Middle East, the refugee camps in Africa and Palestine, the imprisonment of entire countries in North Korea or Iran ... hell, there was a case to be made that the aliens were more moral.  They hadn't distributed smallpox-infested blankets to the locals in the hopes that the disease would do the hard work of exterminating them.  How could humanity complain if the aliens warred in the same way humanity warred on itself?

But instead the aliens seemed to need humanity for some reason.  It puzzled the President – and most of his analysts.  There were a billion aliens, if they accepted their claim; they didn't really need humanity at all.  And yet, instead of simply wiping out the human race, they seemed intent on turning them into slaves.  Could it be that they simply wanted people to do the grunt work?  Or did they have a darker motive?

The alien rebels wanted an alliance.  Right now, the President would have made a deal with the devil if it kept the human race alive.  

He looked over at Pepper, naked and lovely, and smiled.  “I think it is worth the risk,” he said, seriously.  “I also don’t think that we have much choice.”

The message he’d been sent from Area 52 had discussed their possible choices in some detail, although thankfully it was more concise than the bureaucratic reports the President had had to read in the White House.  If the alien rebels were genuine rebels, humanity needed their help – and could make a deal with them.  But if it was a trick of some kind ... humanity risked exposing the underground network to their enemies.  The result could be disastrous.  

Pepper listened as he summed it up, then smiled.  “At the moment,” she said, “what are our odds of actually winning?”

“Point,” the President agreed.

The thought galled him, but he faced it squarely.  America had been reluctant to take a single casualty in war, something that had caused its enemies to view the country as weak, unwilling to pay the price for using force.  Body-bags coming home could always be relied upon to dampen the country’s enthusiasm for war.  It was far easier to fight from a distance, to rely on air power and indigenous forces to do the job ... and if that meant that matters weren't settled in the long term, it wasn't ever noticed by the chattering classes.

But the aliens didn't seem to care about casualties – and they had the Order Police, spearheaded by the Walking Dead.  Hell, they’d used Arab forces in the attack on Chicago that had crushed the entire city.  No matter how many collaborators the humans killed, there would always be replacements, an infinite supply of manpower for the aliens to deploy as they saw fit.  And then there were the alien warriors ... it didn't seem as if the human race could inflict enough damage to get the aliens out of the country, let alone kick them off the planet.  

There was no shortage of guns and ammunition in America.  He’d signed orders for production plants to be hidden around the country, just to ensure that the resistance didn't run out of bullets and bombs.  But, if the aliens were prepared to keep fighting for years, eventually they would grind the insurgency out of existence.  The ID cards, the mass registrations, the human labour departments ... piece by piece, they were rebuilding American society to suit themselves.  If the underground fighters were fish in the sea of the people, what happened when the sea turned poisonous?

He had no doubt that the underground would keep fighting for years.  But how effective would they be?

“Our chances of victory are low,” he admitted.  There was the prospect of new weapons from Britain, but could they produce enough to make a difference?  Most of America’s vast industrial base had been locked down by the aliens now, with the workers given orders to start producing items for the aliens.  “But that’s why this offer is so tempting.”

“Then we need to make use of it,” Pepper said.  “What happens if the alien leadership discovers that they have rebels in their midst?”

The President nodded, sourly.  No government could take the presence of traitors lightly – and he had no doubt that the Rogue Leaders would regard the alien rebels as traitors.  There was no way to know what sort of punishment would be meted out to them, but the President suspected that it would be something ghastly.  They’d want to discourage others from following in the rebel footsteps.  

“So we contact them, using the instructions they provided,” he said, wishing – once again – that he’d stayed a simple soldier.  Cloak-and-dagger work wasn't his forte, even if he had been given a crash course when he’d become President.  “And then we ask for something that proves their bona fides.”

“If they can give us something,” Pepper said, darkly.  “I don’t think a signed paper is going to impress anyone.”

The President nodded, ruefully.  No doubt the rebels wouldn't want to write anything down.  

It struck him a moment later and he flicked through the files on the tablet, looking for the latest updates from Area 52 and Torchwood.  The British, not having to hide their activities so extensively, were making considerable progress on unravelling the secrets behind the alien ships, but there were still hundreds of unanswered questions.  One analyst had even wondered if the aliens had taken technology from another race and written a paper to that effect, something that had made the President laugh when he’d read it.  Anyone dissecting the 3rd Infantry Division would have wondered the same thing.

He smiled, remembering the paper.  Guns were simple, easy to understand, but the network of GPS satellites, battlespace monitoring systems and other advanced technology was far more complicated.  A soldier from 1940 who saw the 3rd ID would find himself confronted with a mixture of understandable technology and technology that might as well be magic.  The best scientists of that era wouldn't have been able to make the jumps to understanding its existence, let alone figuring out a way to duplicate it.  They might not even have recognised a stealth bomber if one happened to crash right in front of them.  

But if they’d had help ... who knew what they could have achieved?

“We’ll tell them that we want technical data,” he said, as he started to write out a response.  “Something that tells us how to parse out the rest of their technology.  And that we want to know what sort of post-war world they envisage.”

Pepper crossed her arms under her breasts.  “You might also want to ask them to refine the process for liberating the Walking Dead,” she said.  “If we could get something that worked very quickly, with a high success rate ...”

The President could see the possible advantages easily.  It was clear that the aliens trusted the Walking Dead – and their trust was not misplaced.  After all, the reports agreed that the Walking Dead simply couldn’t be disloyal.  But if there was a way to break one free when he was right next to the aliens ... the President looked over at the organisational chart he’d composed, piece by piece, for the collaborator government.  A liberated Walking Dead in the right place could do one hell of a lot of damage to the alien cause.  

And they wouldn't be able to trust the others either, he thought, with grim amusement.  They might find themselves forced to purge them completely.  

“We’ll have to see if it is technically possible,” he said, flatly.  The glimmerings of a plan were starting to form in his mind.  “And we will need to get out of here.”

Pepper looked up, sharply.  “Out of here?”

She had a point, the President knew.  Mannington wasn't regarded as a high priority by the alien authorities, but they had placed a small garrison of collaborator troops not too far away, which they’d used to wreak havoc on a resistance cell.  Sneaking out of Mannington would be tricky, even for the best-trained Special Forces ... and neither of them had been trained so extensively.  If they were caught, the best they could hope for was a quick death.  And for that to happen, they’d have to make damn sure that the President wasn't identified.  

But they will identify me, the President thought, numbly.  They hadn't realised just how capable the alien DNA readers were until they’d started rounding up the families of captured resistance fighters.  There were reports that family members on the other side of the country, men and women who hadn't seen their relatives in years, had been arrested and taken away – and no one knew what had happened to them.  If the aliens had recovered a sample of the President’s DNA, they’d know who he was as soon as they tested him.  If ...

“We can't do this alone,” he said, flatly.  “We’re going to have to work with the rest of the world, as well as the alien rebels.  And they’re going to need an agreement with the President, not his representative.”

Pepper gave him a long considering look.  “And how much of that is genuine conviction and how much of it is cabin fever?”

The President considered it, thoughtfully.  

“You’re not just anyone,” Pepper reminded him, again.  She’d given him the same lecture every third or fourth day of their captivity.  “You’re the President, the legally-elected leader of the United States.  Merely knowing that you’re still free gives us a boost ...”

“True,” the President agreed, “but this needs my presence.”

He shook his head when she continued the argument.  In truth, his position was worthless in all but name.  No President could rule the country in such a state and his ability to enforce his orders was very limited, almost non-existent.  There were resistance cells that were turning to crime to support themselves, despite his orders.  They’d prey on their fellow humans, who would eventually betray them to the aliens.  Why not?  The Sunni of Iraq had eventually betrayed their so-called co-religionists to the Americans.  

“Besides,” he added, “what happens if they decide to search the town thoroughly?”

Pepper grimaced.  There was one person in the town who knew just what was hidden underground and that person was now caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.  If the Order Police pressed him, without knowing quite what he was hiding, the results were likely to be unpleasant.  They could make the lives of everyone in the town very nasty, for a start – and they’d destroyed entire towns in the past, just to make an example.  And, while the bunker was well-hidden, she had no illusions about what a careful search of the town might find, particularly if they were betrayed.  

“You know who was caught here,” the President said.  “There are already too many eyes on Mannington.”

“True,” Pepper agreed, reluctantly.  “I’ll start planning the op.  We’ll need a distraction, at the very least.  And don’t do anything stupid.”

The President grinned at her.  “Me?  Stupid?”

He watched her walking over to the map of the town and surrounding countryside, feeling an odd twinge of guilt.  He’d been a widower when he’d run for office and being President hadn't given him much time to court other women ... he honestly had no idea how Kennedy and Clinton had found time to have sex in the Oval Office.  Actually, it was more likely that part of the story was exaggerated.  There was just no time.

But he was old enough to be Pepper’s father, if he’d started young.

He pushed the thought away.  Soon, they would be out of Mannington and things could start moving.  And then they could try to throw the aliens out of the country.  

Chapter Eight

Near Mannington, Virginia, USA
Day 199

“I have come home,” Nicolas muttered.  

He’d become intimately familiar with Virginia in the years since Greg and Nancy had moved to Mannington.  There had been plenty of rambles around the countryside with Nancy, where they’d talked and tried to build up a relationship that would survive the months Nicolas had spent on active deployment, well away from his family.  Deployments put stress on marriages between adults; it would have been understandable if Nancy had practically forgotten her father in the months between visits.  Compared to many, Nicolas had been lucky.  Greg had never tried to bar him from visiting. 

No, he just betrayed me to the aliens instead, he thought, sourly.

He looked down at the piece of alien technology in his hand.  It was tiny, little larger than a matchbox, made out of a silvery material the technicians hadn't been able to identify.  They’d poked, prodded and x-rayed the device, but it had stubbornly refused to give up its secrets, no matter what they did.  Some of the researchers had wanted to crack it open, something Nicolas had hastily vetoed.  There was no guarantee that they could put the device back together again.  

From what the alien rebels had said, they could slip messages through their communications network with a high probability of escaping detection, but Nicolas had had the distinct feeling that they weren't as confident as they claimed.  For one thing, he'd been told not to use the communicator regularly – and never to use it too close to a resistance camp.  The alien communications technology might be undetectable by human tech, but they might well be able to track it for themselves.  And if they realised that humans had one of their communicators ...

Actually, the rebels hadn't been so worried about that.  The human resistance had captured dozens of examples of alien technology, including weapons and communications devices.  It would be only natural for them to experiment with the captured gear to see how it worked, but even so using it was likely to draw attention if a single mistake was made.  Nicolas took a breath, wondering if the next few seconds would be his last, and then pressed his thumb firmly against the device’s topside.  A moment passed and then the device unfolded in front of him, projecting a holographic image of wavy lines into the air.  Nicolas couldn't help wondering if he was looking at an alien screensaver.  

He counted seven seconds before the wavy lines vanished, replaced by a human face.  “Philip,” Nicolas said, in some relief.  “I have news.”

He briefly outlined what had happened since they’d dropped to Earth, ending with the requests for information and an improved method of liberating the Walking Dead.  There didn't seem to be any time delay between his words and Philip’s answers, although that meant nothing.  Unless the command ship they’d visited had gone to the moon between their release and now, there shouldn't have been any time delay at all.  

“I’ll have to ask them to improve the nanites,” Philip said, when Nicolas had finished.  “Do you have a copy of the results?”

“Yes,” Nicolas said, dryly, “but how do we get them to you?”

He saw Philip scowl and fought back a smile.  Alien technology didn't seem to be compatible with Windows 2016, let alone the government-issue user interface used in the bunker.  No doubt the aliens had seen Independence Day and decided that they didn’t want someone uploading a virus into their computers and taking down their force shields, just in time for a drunken pilot to save the day.  Of course, after computer viruses had been used to cripple the Iranian nuclear program, they might not have needed a bad movie to warn them of the risks.  

“I’ll have to get back to you on that,” Philip said.  “And on the other data as well.”

Nicolas rolled his eyes, but nodded.  Philip wasn't in a position to make deals, or speak on behalf of the alien rebels.  At least he wasn't one of the Walking Dead.  Nicolas had chatted to him long enough to be sure of that, unless the paranoid naysayers were right and the aliens had cracked the secret of controlling someone without making it obvious.  But if they had, the human race was thoroughly screwed anyway.  

“Good,” he said.  “Be seeing you.”

He switched off the alien device and watched, with a certain amount of amusement, as it folded back up into a matchbox.  Once Disney got hold of the technology, he suspected, there would be a revolution in home entertainment.  Instead of watching a movie on a flat screen, the watchers could literally step into the movie and watch it from any angle.  Coming to think of it, if there was ever a safe way to download information into a human brain, it would be a second revolution.  His experiences as a SEAL could be recorded and shared with everyone.

And porno merchants would be delighted, he thought, as he stuffed the alien device into the secure box.  According to the sensors, it wasn't radiating anything, but that meant nothing, particularly when the sensors hadn't picked up anything when the device was active.  Nicolas had no idea if that meant the sensors just weren't advanced enough, or if what the device did was simply well above human technology.  If the latter, it would suggest worrying possibilities for future developments.  

Shaking his head, he walked back towards where the rest of the raiding party was hiding.

***
Ken Warwick was nervous, understandably so.  His education had been largely worthless, his part-time job had evaporated along with most of the economy and he was the sole breadwinner for his mother and kid sisters, their father having vanished back when Ken had been a kid himself.  Desperate and starving, he had joined the Order Police.  It had seemed a good idea at the time.  

It hadn't taken long for him to realise that it had been a mistake.  The vast majority of the population hated the Order Policemen more than they hated the aliens, or even the Walking Dead.  Ken had seen the alien-controlled slaves issue orders for mass slaughter and the destruction of entire towns, as calmly as if they were ordering dinner, but still they weren’t hated with the same intensity as the Order Police.  But then, the Walking Dead had never volunteered to be turned into alien slaves.  The Order Policemen had joined willingly.

He gritted his teeth as the warm night breeze drifted over Mannington and brushed over the checkpoint.  At least Mannington wasn't as bad as some of the other places he’d been posted, where the Order Police and the resistance had sought to outdo each other in committing atrocities.  Ken had been lucky not to be assigned to one of the ‘pacification’ units; from what he’d heard, they were forced to loot, rape and burn everywhere until the rest of the population submitted to their control.  Even where he was, it was hard to avoid the pressure to join in the atrocities.  Most of the Order Policemen relished their role.  

What do you expect?  He asked himself, bitterly.  They recruited everyone who wanted power over their fellow humans.  The criminal, the mad, the sociopathic monsters ... they all found a home in the Order Police.

The thought made him sick.  No one knew how many of the rumours were actually true, but he’d seen enough to give credence to them all.  And yet, what could he do?  If he escaped, the aliens would hunt him down as a deserter – and the resistance would kill him, for being part of the Order Police.  There was nowhere to hide, not when everyone was required to carry an ID card at all times.  They’d arrest him, check his fingerprints and then shoot him for desertion.  There was no way out.  

He glanced up in surprise as he heard a truck making its way down the road towards him.  It was rare to see unescorted trucks these days, not after supplies of gas had been heavily restricted by the aliens.  It helped keep the population under control, he’d been told, even though it also made it much harder for them to fend for themselves.  In America, having a car could literally be the difference between life and death.  But with the economy effectively gone, it hardly mattered.  The aliens were feeding everyone anyway.

“Let’s hope that it’s a young and pretty driver,” his comrade said.  “Someone we can have some fun with ...”

Ken shuddered.  And to think that his comrade was fairly sensible, as Order Policemen went!

He scowled, hoping that the driver was an old and ugly man.  They might rough him up a little, if there was a problem with his papers, but they wouldn’t do anything else to him.  Everyone who complained about the TSA had never met the Order Police.  Even the semi-decent ones wouldn't pass up the chance for a grope and perhaps a little more ...

“Let’s hope,” he agreed, neutrally.

The checkpoint was fairly basic, as checkpoints went.  Everyone who had a reason to travel outside the towns and cities was expected to check in as they went in and out, allowing the aliens to monitor their movements carefully.  Someone caught trying to sneak around the checkpoints would be automatically assumed to be up to something and could be engaged with deadly force, or thrown into the nearest POW camp.  The truck started to slow down, as the driver saw the warning signs.

“It is a girl,” his comrade said.  “Look!”

Ken winced inwardly, hoping that it wasn't visible on his face.  He knew what was about to happen and it wasn't going to be pretty.  And it was something that he was powerless to prevent.  

“You can flag her down,” he said, numbly.  “Just don’t forget to search the vehicle before you have any fun.”

His comrade gave him an odd glance, than sauntered onto the road, rifle in hand.

***
Melissa shuddered inwardly as the Order Policeman came forward, his face twisted into a leer.  It brought back memories of the first time she’d encountered an Order Policeman, a twisted monster in human form, who had ... her mind refused to remember the exact details, through the haze of pain and suffering.  She’d been raped, then mutilated ... and she’d done nothing.  The man had been bored.  No one else had done anything, of course.  They’d been too scared of the aliens to even try.

Her life hadn't just been ruined, it had been utterly destroyed.  No one wanted to even look at her, because they knew that what had happened to her could easily happen to them.  The adults shuddered and kept their daughters inside, but they shunned Melissa.  They didn't want to even think about the damage, or how much medical attention it had taken to save her life.  And now, the doctors had warned, the shortage in medical supplies was so dangerous that anyone else who suffered the same fate was unlikely to survive.  Melissa had considered suicide, before she’d had another idea.

It had been surprisingly easy to find the resistance.  There was a recruiter in town and he had been happy to forward her to another cell.  They'd asked for volunteers for a mission, knowing that it might be suicide, and Melissa had volunteered.  She’d had nothing left to live for, but revenge.  And she had a motive to alter her orders, just slightly.  

She reached down and placed her hand on the detonator, arming the bomb.  If she was shot, if her hand was knocked away from the lever, the bomb would detonate.  She’d been told to set the timer, take it as close as she could to the checkpoint, and then abandon the vehicle.  Her own plans had been much simpler.  It was astonishing what she could consider doing now that she’d made the decision to sacrifice her life.

The Order Policeman leered at him; she gave him a completely sweet, completely fake smile.  It wasn't the one who had hurt her, she realised, but it hardly mattered.  They were all psychopaths in a parody of a police uniform, nothing like the kindly officers she remembered from her youth, before the world had been turned upside down.  She pushed hard down on the accelerator, her smile widening as the truck lurched forward, charging straight at the checkpoint.  There was a dull thump as she ran right into the Order Policeman and knocked him down ...

... And a click as she released the detonator.

***
Ken had bare seconds to realise that something had gone horribly wrong before the truck was on him.  Letting it get so close had been a tactical mistake, part of his mind nagged, even as he lifted his rifle and took aim at the driver.  She was grinning broadly from ear to ear, he noticed, her face twisted in mocking joy.

And then the world went white and faded away.

***
There was a brilliant flash of white light, followed by a fireball rising up into the darkened sky.  Seconds later, a thunderclap rent the air.  

“The checkpoint is gone,” the radio buzzed.  “Mission accomplished.”

Major Robert Greely nodded.  There was no point in maintaining radio silence now; the aliens and their lapdogs would have no doubt that they were under attack.  The other two bombs were already on their way towards their targets, but clearing the checkpoint had been the first priority.  Or so the higher-ups had said.  There seemed to be no obvious reason for the decision.  

He looked over at his mortar teams and smiled.  “You may fire when ready,” he ordered.  “And don’t miss!”

There was a dull thump as the first mortar launched its deadly shell into the air, aimed towards the Order Police garrison.  They’d be running around like headless chickens, according to the plan, and a handful of mortar shells would teach them a lesson.  Not that the crews could stay in place longer than a minute or two; the aliens would have no difficulty in tracking the shells back to their launchers and doing something about it.  They’d learned the hard way that the aliens were very quick to react.

The radio buzzed again.  “Direct hit,” the spotter reported.  “They’re not happy, boss.”

Glad to hear it, Robert thought, ruefully.  It had been years since he’d last served in active duty, back in Vietnam.  If it hadn’t been for the alien invasion, he would have spent the rest of his life wishing that he could go back to the military.  But then, fighting was a young man’s game.  He’d only been given the mortar crew, he suspected, because he wouldn't be a great loss if he were killed.  

He raised his voice.  “Bug out,” he ordered.  “Now!”

The mortar crews had practiced endlessly for this moment, breaking down the mortar and transporting the components away from the firing site.  There had been no time to dig proper bunkers or anything else that might protect them from enemy retaliatory fire.  Instead, they would have to rely on speed and stealth.  Robert watched as a pair of former soldiers set up an IED in place to take out Order Policemen if they came to locate the mortars personally, then followed the rest of his men away from the firing zone.  They were barely in time to escape.

***
Sergeant John Roper sucked in his breath as the alien craft passed overhead, its presence marked by an eerie hum that seemed just below hearing level.  Bolts of shimmering blue-white light lanced down from the craft, targeting the mortar firing positions; John silently prayed that they’d managed to escape before it was too late.  But there was no way to know.

He pulled the Stinger missile launcher from his back and took aim at the alien craft.  The seeker heads had been heavily modified – he’d been told that the work had been done in underground factories, although he wasn't sure he believed it – to track the alien craft, although that was no guarantee of a hit.  The craft was so fast that they could be halfway around the world by the time the missile reached their previous location, or they could turn their energy weapons on the incoming missile.  If they hadn't been such poor shots, the missiles would have been completely useless.

The seeker head growled as it locked onto the target, allowing him to pull the trigger.  It jerked in his hands as the missile lanced upwards towards the alien craft, before he threw it away and started to run.  There was no point in staying where he was now; as soon as the aliens had escaped the missile, it would come after him.  He was surprised that they hadn't learned that MANPAD launchers could only fire one missile before they were thrown away, but maybe they had a point.  Killing the people who fired the weapons might convince others not to do the same.  

This time, the aliens were unlucky.  The missile struck the craft, sending brilliant flares of light spinning over its darkened hull.   For a chilling moment, John thought that it would survive, before it careened over and plummeted towards the ground.  There was a colossal thump when it hit the earth, setting fire to the forest around it.  John winced inwardly, wondering if the fires would make it harder to escape after the attack was completed, before he kept moving.  One craft might have been taken down, but others would be on their way ...

... And they’d be much more careful now they knew that the insurgents were armed with MANPAD weapons.   

He smiled to himself as the sound of gunfire echoed through the night air.  If nothing else, a great many Order Policemen were dead and the aliens had lost a craft.  A very good day’s work.  

Chapter Nine

Near Mannington, Virginia, USA
Day 199/200

Judith Dent watched with grim amusement as the Order Policemen scurried around like ants, unsure of what to do.  The mortar attacks had unhinged them, while the two successful suicide attacks had made them panic.  Judith was unsure of just what they thought they were shooting at when they fired their guns out into the darkness, but she was fairly sure that all they were doing was wasting ammunition.  They had depended on the aliens to provide them with cover and the first craft the aliens had sent was now burning in the midst of the forest.  

She peered through her scope as someone started to take charge, bellowing orders and laying about him with a swagger stick to restore some degree of order.  He was brave, she had to admit, even if he was fighting for the wrong side.  She wouldn't have wanted to lash out at men who were both armed and on the verge of panicking completely.  But she couldn't allow him to continue trying to rally his men.  

Instead, she took aim and fired, once.  The bullet passed through the man’s head, sending him crumpling to the ground.  His men stared in horror, then started hunting for cover.  Judith smiled tightly, then shot two more of them dead in quick succession.  Whatever discipline they’d kept crumbled under her fire; they fled, rather than trying to fight back.

The hills have eyes, she thought, as she slung her rifle over her back and started to walk back to the RV point.  Shooting at men no longer bothered her, even if she had been sick the first time she'd killed a man, no matter how much he’d deserved it.  She’d become what she needed to be to survive.

***
It had been years since the President had gone into action and longer still since he’d been an infantryman, but he’d been careful to keep up with his shooting skills on the White House shooting range.  The Secret Service had been horrified at the thought of the President ever having to defend himself in person, yet he’d insisted – and besides, he could imagine the targets as having the faces of his political opponents.  Now, as he clutched his pistol in one hand, he was silently grateful for his own paranoia.  

“Stay here,” Pepper ordered, as she started to open the hatch.  “If we are discovered ...”

The President nodded.  Their bunker had two exits, but one of them was far too close to the enemy base for comfort.  Pepper had agonised for hours, trying to decide if that was a coincidence or a sign that the aliens knew where they were, before the President had pointed out that if the aliens knew they would hardly need to play games when they could just have stormed the bunker and dragged the President out over Pepper’s dead body.  It was much more likely that it was just a coincidence.  

He watched Pepper as she opened the hatch and climbed out, holding her pistol in one hand.  The house above them had been purchased, years ago, by a patriot who hadn't asked too many questions, the paper trail carefully obscured by the Secret Service.  At one point, the President had found it amusing; an accountant, doing a standard audit, might have stumbled across the scheme and unravelled it without ever really knowing what he was doing.  But the owner had died in Washington and few people were asking questions about house ownership these days.

I suppose we’re lucky the new authorities didn't earmark the house for someone else to use, he thought, straining his ears for a sound.  Something – anything – that wasn't from the bunker.  We might have popped up under a family of innocents – or collaborators.  No one would have believed that they didn’t know.

He smiled at the thought as Pepper stuck her head back into the passageway.  “You can come up,” she said, very quietly.  “But be on the alert.”

The President nodded, clambering up the ladder with one hand while holding his gun in the other.  It was irritating just how far his body had decayed from his military days; there had been a time when he’d been able to carry the full 36+kg without any major problems, or scramble down a rope ladder into the teeth of enemy fire.  Now ... he was a fat-assed politician, just like the ones he’d bitched and moaned about while he’d been a soldier.  The irony didn't amuse him.

He glanced around as they came up into the basement, seeing nothing apart from a handful of decaying pieces of furniture.  The team in charge of making the house look normal had decided not to stockpile food or survival gear, even though there had been a growing craze for such stockpiles in the years after Wall Street had fallen into depression.  Some of the survivalists, the President had heard, had been lording it over their less well-prepared brethren.  It was hard to blame them.  Precautions often looked excessive until the emergency actually arrived, at which point it was usually too late to take them.  God knew that the government’s preparations for alien invasion had proved laughable when the shit had hit the fan.

“Up here,” Pepper said, from above.  “Hurry.”

The President could hear shooting as he climbed up the stairs and stepped out of the basement, finding himself in a fairly normal kitchen.  Dust lay everywhere; his nose twitched as he smelled the unmistakable stench of rotting food.  The planners had put a freezer in the kitchen, of course, but it had failed when the aliens turned off the power and never replaced.  He wrinkled his nose – the stench was appalling – and then followed Pepper into the darkened yard.

He’d never visited Mannington in daylight, but he’d assumed – despite the footage from hidden cameras and other surveillance devices – that it was a normal American town, glowing with life.  Instead, he could sense fear, a pervading sensation that seemed to crawl down his spine, a mocking reminder that humanity was no longer in control of its own destiny.  The only light was provided by the fires in the distance.  It made him wonder just how the aliens were distributing power, if they were even bothering.  Denying the population unfettered access to power would make it harder for the resistance to operate freely.  

But it would also irritate people, he thought, recalling some of the emergency manuals he’d been encouraged to read in the Oval Office.  The planners had come up with workable scenarios for everything from civil war to a mass disease outbreak.  They’d even tagged the latter The Coward’s Way of War.  But the plans for alien invasion had been laughable.  The planners had never fully comprehended what they faced, even after the first alien craft had crash-landed.  He still found it hard to comprehend just how much the world had changed.  

“Stay in the shadows,” Pepper hissed.  The sound of shooting was growing louder – and closer.  “Don’t let anyone see you.”

The President gave her an icy look, but nodded.  It was unlikely that anyone would recognise him, yet they didn't dare take the chance.  He’d been one of the most famous people in the world, after all.  Now, he was the prime alien target – and, if they caught him, he would be brainwashed.

Another explosion billowed up in the distance, casting an eerie light over the town.  

“Coming,” he said.  He clutched his pistol tightly, watching for aliens or their collaborators as he started to move.  “Let's go.”

***
Nancy didn't know what he’d done, Greg knew.  The alien collaborators had interrogated her, but they’d been surprisingly gentle with both of them.  It was the reward for collaboration, Greg suspected – and he was a collaborator.  He might not fight for the monsters, yet he’d collaborated.  There was no avoiding that simple fact.

He wished with all his heart that Nicolas had never shown up at his house, requesting sanctuary; the bastard, Nancy’s true father, had knowingly put his daughter’s life in terrible danger.  Greg knew what the aliens would do to Nancy if they caught Nicolas living there – and the longer he stayed, the greater the chance of capture.  The aliens monitored everything; if Greg started to buy more food, they’d know ... and they’d start asking why.  Their collaborators had caught several women housing refugee children just by looking at their shopping records.  

And if he’d hesitated, they would have asked him why ...

He’d had no choice, he told himself, time and time again.  Nicolas couldn't stay – and if the aliens discovered that he’d hidden him, Nancy would be at their mercy.  Perhaps they would give her to someone else to raise, or perhaps they would throw her to the Order Police’s more perverted members.  There had been no choice.

But that didn't stop him feeling guilty, or horrified at what he’d done.  

No one else knew what had really happened.  The aliens and the Order Police did raid houses from time to time, either because they had suspicions or because they were simply bored.  No one knew that he’d become a collaborator, or that he’d betrayed a member of the resistance.  But he couldn't help imagining, as he lay in bed, that they did know, that they were merely biding their time until they could do him in.  He wouldn't mind if it was him alone – God knew he deserved no less – but what if they killed Nancy too?

He’d collaborated.  And now he was alone and friendless and scared.

The sound of shooting woke him up from a fitful sleep and he threw himself out of bed automatically, then crawled out of the room and into Nancy’s bedroom.  The little girl – not so little any longer, he told himself, because she’d seen her father taken away and her stepfather exposed as helpless – had done as she had been told; she’d rolled out of bed too and dropped to the floor.

“Come here,” he hissed.  “Hurry.”

Nancy crawled over to him, her eyes clearly nervous.  She was taking it much better than he had, part of his mind noted.  It must have been Nicolas’s genes showing up in her.  If half of the SEAL’s stories were true, he was practically a superman; brave, fearless and utterly implacable.  And now, at best, he was a POW.  And it was Greg’s fault.

“Daddy?”  Nancy asked.  “What’s happening?”

Greg winced.  “I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said.  It sounded like World War Three had broken out in Mannington.  “I just don’t know.”

***
Nicolas peered through his NVGs as the attack proceeded, wishing that he could get closer and actually tear into the aliens himself.  But it wasn't a possibility, something that had been made clear to him when he’d volunteered.  He simply knew too much to be allowed to risk his life, at least until they developed a permanent countermeasure to alien implantation.  Instead, all he could do was watch and wait.

The aliens, assuming they thought like humans, would have seen a major attack developing from the north, attacking every checkpoint and garrison in the area.  There were other attacks being mounted against other towns, although Mannington had come in for special attention.  Nicolas wasn't happy about that, because it ensured that the aliens would have their suspicions that the Mannington attack was key to the overall plan, but there was no choice.  They had to suppress all of the enemy forces within the town.

There was a faint buzz from the radio, followed by a line of gibberish.  “Charlie, Bateman, Hillocks, Hello Jimmy.”

“Good,” Nicolas muttered.  

He scowled.  The aliens could crack normal human encryption codes – and, given the right technology, they might even be able to crack book-based codes – but they would have no way of knowing what the words meant, even if they had been sent in the clear.  They were encrypted, on the off-chance that the aliens would find the gibberish and decide it couldn’t possibly be the answer.  Nicolas had his doubts – a simple dictionary would tell them that they’d found real words – but it was worth a try.  

The plan seemed to be working, which bothered him.  Common sense suggested that if the enemy were attacking, it was wise to send reinforcements – and there were reinforcements, stationed at the checkpoints to the south of Mannington.  But the attack might have been a division, or the CO might have been killed, or someone would decide just to sit on their asses and do nothing.  Fighting the Order Police was always tricky, if only because it was hard to predict what the amateurs might do.

But they were doing exactly what they were supposed to do ...

***
The President froze as a line of men carrying torches ran through Mannington, heading towards the north of the town.  It was clear that they were reinforcements drawn away from the south, rather than patrollers looking for runaway Presidents, but that didn't stop them being dangerous.  He hid in the shadows and silently prayed for their safe escape as the Order Policeman ran past, towards the shooting.  Once they were gone, Pepper led him onwards.

“Not safe yet, sir,” she muttered, as they reached the outskirts of the city.  “We have to get through the checkpoint without being stopped.”

***
Olli – who hadn’t been called anything else since he’d joined the Rangers – held his breath as he crawled up towards the checkpoint.  For Order Policemen who had been fighting insurgents who would do literally anything to kill them, they were remarkably lax about security; it didn't seem to have occurred to them that someone might attack their position from the side.  The three Order Policemen outside the checkpoint were peering into the darkness, while the ones inside the small building seemed to be trying to ignore the noise as their comrades came under attack.

He unhooked the grenade from his belt and hurled it into the building.  The idiots hadn't even thought to put railings on their windows when they wanted some fresh air!  There were shouts, followed by an explosion that would have killed or maimed everyone in the building – and frightened hell out of the ones on the outside.  Olli would have preferred to use his knife to deal with them, but there was no time.  As he came around the building, he shot the first one through the head and the second one through the chest.  The third threw himself on the ground and begged for mercy.

“Get fucked,” Olli said.

The Order Policeman had no time to react before Olli shot him too.

***
“Clear,” Pepper muttered.  “Now, run!”

The President obeyed, feeling the blood pumping through his veins as he ran towards the checkpoint and the single man who’d taken out the guards.  He saw the man’s eyes widen in recognition before he nodded to Pepper and then pointed towards a road that led away from Mannington.  The President smiled, but he kept running, ruefully aware that either of them wouldn't hesitate to kick him if he didn't run fast enough.  It wasn't career suicide if there was no other choice.

A small group of men waited under the trees to meet him.  “Mr. President,” the leader said.  “It’s good to see you again.”

The President had always had a good memory for faces, but he found it impossible to place the man standing in front of him.  But then, he’d darkened his face to make it harder for anyone to see.  His own mother probably wouldn't have recognised him.

“Thank you,” the President said, instead.  “What now?”

“We run,” the man said.

They set a punishing pace, but the President found it hard to care.  He was free!

***
“Stay in your homes,” the loudspeaker bellowed.  “Stay off the streets.  Anyone found outside will be arrested and detained.  Stay in your homes.”

Greg shivered as he saw the sun slowly rising up above Mannington, illuminating the troubled town.  There was no visible damage, as far as he could see from his windows, but something had clearly happened last night.  The Order Policemen who were patrolling the streets looked nervous, jumpy enough to fire at shadows.  And several alien craft were hanging overhead, just daring the population to try something.

He shook his head as he looked over at where Nancy was sleeping. The corner had seemed the safest place for her, even before he’d positioned furniture to provide some degree of protection for her frail form.  It had been hard to resist the temptation just to join her and cower in the corner until they both starved, but there was no choice.  Someone had to fix them breakfast.  

“At least I don’t have a job anymore,” he muttered to himself.  The tasteless slop the aliens provided was free – and it was worth every cent.  “I don’t have to leave Nancy alone.”

But what did it matter?  If he was with her, or not, they could still come and take her away at any moment.  Hell, what would happen when they reopened the schools!  Would Nancy keep her mouth shut, or would she say something indiscreet?  She was smart, but she was still a child.  It was easy to imagine her saying something innocent that told the world what her stepfather had done.  

He looked back outside at the alien craft and shivered.  Once, hanging in the air with no visible means of propulsion, they would have excited his sense of awe.  Now, they brought nothing, but terror.  And the aliens inside them were even worse.  They didn't even care about human life.  That was easy to learn from their actions.

Scowling, he looked over at his drinks cabinet.  The Order Police had taken everything, naturally, even the expensive whiskey he’d brought home from Scotland.  It was just another reminder of how powerless he truly was ...

And of just how much danger he’d brought into his stepdaughter’s life.  

Chapter Ten

Washington DC, USA
Day 200

“Wake up,” a voice hissed.  “Karen?”

Karen opened her eyes, quickly.  She was lying in her bed in Washington’s Green Zone, the heart of the collaborator government.  Jasmine, one of the maids, who’d somehow become her lover, was whispering to her.  

“What ...?”  She cleared her throat and started again.  “What’s happening?”

“You received an emergency call from Director Fairchild,” Jasmine said.  The maid gave her a worried look.  “She wants to see you, immediately.”

Karen sat upright, reaching for her watch.  It was 6 o’clock in the morning.

“Oh,” she said.  “Did she say why?”

Jasmine shook her head.

“I see,” Karen said, as she pulled herself out of bed.  “I’ll be along in a moment or two.”

The bedroom had belonged to a congressman, she’d been told; the sheer luxury of the room had stunned her when she’d first seen it.  Nothing, but the best for the collaborator government and their assistants; they had the best food and drink the country could provide, even foodstuffs that were in short supply elsewhere.  Karen could drink as much coffee as she liked and no one would bat an eyelid, even though coffee was scarce outside the walls.  And that was merely the tip of the iceberg.

She briefly considered, as she pulled on her shorts and shirt, using her emergency escape plan.  There were ID cards that should get her out of the guarded part of the complex and into the rest of Washington DC, where she could link up with the remainder of the resistance.  A second set of cards should get them through the checkpoints and out into the countryside.  If they knew that she’d been spying for the resistance ...

No, she told herself.  If they'd known, they would have kicked down the door, grabbed her and implanted her with controlling implants.  And then she would have been Daisy’s slave, as well as being used to mislead the resistance.  It was a great deal harder to detect one of the Walking Dead on the other end of an email.  She glanced at her reflection in the mirror, shivered at her haunted eyes, and then gave Jasmine a quick kiss.  Moments later, she was outside the door and heading downstairs.  There would be a car already waiting for her.

Despite the early hour, the lower floors were very active, with dozens of collaborators moving around helping themselves to the food.  The aliens and their servants knew how to indulge themselves, Karen had to admit; almost every chef in Washington was employed by the collaborators to prepare their meals.  She’d wondered why none of them tried to poison the collaborators, before discovering that their families had been rounded up and were held in a POW camp.  If a single one of them poisoned the collaborators, every family would suffer and die – if they were lucky.  There were fates worse than death.

She kept her expression blank as she looked over at the buffet table.  There was fresh milk, cereal, bacon and eggs ... even fresh bread and meat.  It was staggering, even by the standards of pre-invasion America – and now it was a shocking display of conspicuous consumption.  There were people starving on the streets of Washington, or being forced to eat the tasteless slop the aliens provided as their daily rations, but the collaborators were living large.  It was their reward for serving the aliens.  

It wasn't the only one, Karen had discovered.  The aliens provided drink, drugs and women to anyone who was interested.  It was sickening to realise just how many tastes they were prepared to satisfy, as long as someone remained loyal.  The half-naked maids serving breakfast were merely the tip of the iceberg.  Karen had heard rumours that some of the collaborators had truly perverse tastes.  She wasn't sure what she would have done if she’d being confronted with proof.  What could she have done?

Karen walked outside into the cold air and climbed into the waiting car.  That was another sign of luxury, she knew; apart from the Fire Department and a handful of medical services, no one had fuel unless they were collaborators.  She yawned as the driver took her away from the commandeered mansion and down towards the block of buildings that had been converted into the country’s administrative centre.  The aliens had occupied the White House and the Pentagon for themselves.

She smiled, briefly, as she saw the towering ship of the crashed alien ship in the distance, still looming over the city.  The resistance had done ... something to bring it down, even though it might have crashed on Washington and crushed the city under its weight.  As it was, even the force of the impact had been enough to cause an earthquake and knock down dozens of buildings in Washington.  No one knew how many people had died in the chaos.  It was tragic, but at least it showed that the aliens were far from invincible.  They could be bested.

The car stopped outside the administrative centre and Karen climbed out, nodding goodbye to the driver.  Two guards came to meet her; they scanned her body with alien designed sensors, before reluctantly agreeing that she seemed harmless.  Karen couldn't blame them for being paranoid, even though it was annoying.  The resistance had never stopped testing the defences of the Green Zone, even going so far as to use suicide bombers.  And none of the collaborators expected mercy if they happened to be captured by the resistance.

She shivered as she was escorted into the building and up nine flights of stairs.  The resistance leadership might know who she was, and what she’d done for them, but none of the rank-and-file would know a thing.  It was quite possible that a resistance fighter might kill her, without ever knowing who he’d really killed.  Karen hadn’t fully realised it when she’d committed herself to spying for the resistance, but there was no escaping it now.  She might well wind up being targeted by both sides.  

The core of the collaborator government was assembling in a large conference room that overlooked Washington DC.  Karen peered through the window, wondering quite why she’d been summoned, and looked down towards the darkened city.  There were no lights at all outside the Green Zone, no suggestion that Washington had once been the most powerful city in the world.  Now, it was effectively a prison camp, with thousands of homeless people squatting in abandoned buildings.  And many of them had joined the resistance.

“Karen,” Daisy Fairchild said.  “I want a full record of this meeting.”

Karen nodded and pulled her notebook and pen out of her pocket.  Daisy had been appointed the Director of Human Resources, the alien-backed organisation that determined how human manpower would be utilized to serve their purposes.  She was an ambitious person, Karen knew, and wouldn't care if she sold out the rest of the human race, as long as she achieved her aim of power and responsibility.  And, unfortunately, she was genuinely competent.  SETI had made good use of her, before the aliens arrived.  They had even more reason to be grateful for her.  

She scowled, inwardly, as General Howery walked into the room.  His face had been warm and expressive when she’d first met him, but now he was an emotionless monster, one of the Walking Dead.  The imprisoned emotions she had once seen in his eyes were gone, leaving behind a soulless shell.  If someone hadn't insisted that he shave and look reasonably presentable, he wouldn't have cared about his appearance at all.  All he cared about was pleasing his alien masters.  

The thought chilled her to the bone.  If she was discovered, she could expect no less.  And then she’d be a helpless slave too.  

Karen clamped down on her emotions as the final person walked into the room.  The alien was inhumanly tall and thin, with dark eyes that seemed to stare right into a person’s soul.  Karen suspected that she was imagining it – if the aliens could read minds, surely they would have known about her treachery – but she still had as little to do with the aliens as she could.  Daisy didn't seem to mind; the more she monopolised their attention, the more effective power she held in her hands.  

“Be seated,” Ethos said, in his whispery voice.  “We have work to do.”

Karen leaned against the wall – a mere assistant was hardly allowed to sit at the table – and watched the committee members as they sat down.  None of them seemed very pleased that the alien was there, or that they were under scrutiny.  Karen wasn't too surprised; the aliens didn't seem to care about their collaborators enriching themselves, as long as it didn't impinge on their activities, but quite a few of the bastards were breaking that rule.  If they pushed the aliens too far ... well, they could just look at Howery and know what was in store.  

She tried to avoid looking at the alien, even though her eyes kept creeping back towards the strange creature.  Ethos wore a one-piece suit that covered everything below the neck, but it was still easy to see the shape of his body – and to realise that there was nothing that might be recognised as genitals.  There was no penis between his legs, no breasts ... not even a hint of a vagina.  Was Ethos male or female?  There was no way to know.  

“Five hours ago,” Howery said, “there was a major attack on a series of garrisons near Mannington, Virginia.  The attack used a level of force we have not seen for quite some time.”

Karen winced, inwardly.  America might have had a reputation for having more guns than people, but those were pistols and rifles, not antiaircraft missiles and machine guns.  The President might have cancelled all of the gun control laws, yet there just hadn't been time to distribute heavier weapons all over the country.  It would be years before the resistance ran out of small arms, but heavier weapons were harder to replace.  

The aliens had leaned heavily on America’s former allies and trading partners, threatening dire revenge if they were caught shipping weapons into America – or any other occupied territory, for that matter.  Karen suspected that Europe and Russia were quietly ignoring the alien demands, working through middlemen to keep the resistance supplied.  Both powers would have good reason to want to keep the aliens tied down.  Even so, it was unlikely that they could meet the resistance’s requirements.  Unlike Afghanistan, when the US had supplied man-portable antiaircraft missiles to the insurgents, their countries were under direct threat.  

“The question before us,” Howery continued, “is if the attack was meant as a sharp blow in its own right or if they were trying to keep us distracted from something else.”

Daisy frowned.  “Surely they intended to hit a vulnerable force,” she said.  “How could something so large be a distraction?”

“There's no reason why the distraction force can’t be larger than the true threat,” Howery pointed out, his voice still toneless.  “In this case, they may well have wanted us to look elsewhere while they did something else.”

“Throwing away men and equipment to do it,” Daisy pointed out.  “Inefficient.”

Karen rolled her eyes, silently relieved that she wasn’t expected to offer her contribution to the debate.  Daisy might well have a point, she decided, but liberating Mannington – or anywhere else for that matter – wouldn’t have benefited the resistance at all.  The aliens would just move forces over to seal off the liberated town, then attack, hoping to take out as much of the resistance force as possible.  Any time the resistance got into a stand-up fight with overwhelming alien firepower, the outcome was inevitable.  

No, the resistance hadn't been trying to liberate the town.  They’d had something else in mind.

The debate went on for what felt like hours as everyone competed to have their say – and impress the silent alien.  Karen kept notes, as per her orders, wondering why Daisy didn't simply record the meetings.  But then, records would have been easy to share with the others and Daisy, a past mistress of bureaucratic  infighting, knew better than to let them see her notes.  

“Steps must be taken to prevent a repeat of the attack,” Ethos said, finally.  “I want the entire area cleared of humans, then razed to the ground.  If there was some other purpose in mounting the offensive, we will disrupt it by ripping the area apart and searching it thoroughly.  Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” Daisy said.

Karen shivered.  She'd known how the aliens had been evicting human settlers from the lands near their cities, forcing them into refugee camps as the first step in moving them away from their former homes, but she hadn’t realised that they were prepared to do it elsewhere.  But why not?  If there was a reason the resistance had targeted Mannington, forcing the population to move might expose the resistance – or disrupt whatever they were planning before it could come to fruitarian.  The fact that the decision was cold and heartless – and that it would cause no shortage of misery – didn't seem to worry anyone.

General Howery had an excuse; his emotions had been torn out of him and replaced with unwavering dedication to the alien cause.  The rest of the collaborators had no such excuse.  They were prepared to do anything to maintain their power and claim alien protection, anything at all.  And if that included forcing humans off their lands, just so the aliens could move in ... they’d do it without a second thought. 

“It will take several days to set up the camps and provide a source of food and drink,” Daisy said.  Her department had rounded up FEMA experts, but it had also collected every scoutmaster or military logistics officer it could find.  They were all experienced at taking care of people who had been forced to leave their homes.  “Once that’s done, we can start clearing the area.”

The alien bowed his great head in an exaggerated nod.  No one really knew what their body language was like, or how to read it.  The only caste that showed anything close to human emotions was the warriors, who seemed to lack the reserve of their fellows.  They were so much like humans that some posters on the internet had wondered if they were humans, the results of alien experimentation with human DNA.  It didn't seem likely.  

“We shall discuss other considerations,” Ethos said.  It was hard to pick out any emotion in the alien voice, but he certainly sounded accusatory.  “The supply of components for lunar operations has been delayed.”

“We’re working on solving the bottlenecks as fast as possible,” Daisy assured him, quickly.  “There were just too many dependencies on China ...”

Karen concealed her amusement with an effort.  The United States had gotten into the habit of purchasing far too much from China, a source that had collapsed into civil war after their economy evaporated into nothingness.  She suspected that the aliens were relieved that they wouldn't have to fight the Chinese as well as the rest of the world, but it had accidentally put a crimp in their plans.  It would take time to rebuild the industrial sectors that had been allowed to wither, even without the resistance destroying everything they could.  She privately doubted that the aliens would see a return to full production in less than ten years.

But it was a mystery why the aliens even wanted human production.  Compared to their craft, the space shuttle was a sick joke.  The craft could barely get up into orbit and NASA had been on the verge of cancelling the whole program before the aliens had arrived.  Humanity had sent a handful of men to the moon; the aliens had sent a billion colonists from one star to another.  There was no comparison.  If the aliens had met humanity in space, perhaps they would have been inclined to give the human race more respect.  

She’d added that question to the emails she’d sent to the resistance, but there was no reply.  They rarely told her anything ...

“I think we’re finished here,” Daisy said, brightly.  Only someone who knew her well could see how frayed she was around the edges.  “I shall be hosting meetings to discuss specific subjects later on.”

Karen watched as the room emptied itself, the alien leaving through a separate door that led up towards the craft resting on the roof.  For whatever reason, the aliens rarely slept in human dwellings, preferring to use their own ships and buildings.  Maybe they just found them a little uncomfortable.  The melted plastic design they used for their own cities didn't attract humans either.  

“You can type up the notes on the computer and then forward them to me,” Daisy ordered Karen, as soon as they were alone.  “And then I want the manpower reports from Mannington and the surrounding areas.  There have to be people there we can use.”

Karen shivered.  She wanted to ask if Daisy cared about the people living in the area, but she already knew the answer.  Daisy’s sole concern was maintaining her own position – and if that meant that Mannington and its inhabitants were to be sacrificed, it didn't matter to her.  All that mattered was herself.

“Yes, Director,” she said.  “I shall see to it at once.”

And I shall pass on the warning, she added, in the privacy of her own mind.  Maybe the resistance can do something to stop them.

But she couldn't think of anything they could do.  The aliens might even be hoping that they would try, just so they could deal with them once and for all.  A chance to catch the resistance was certainly worth sacrificing a whole town.

And there was nothing she could do to stop it.