Invasion

He blew his whistle as he retreated out of the camp, knowing that the other three would be abandoning their positions and falling back with him, back towards the camels. The aliens would be on their way from their nearest base and no one knew how long it would be until they arrived. He could have wished for better intelligence; the aliens had learned enough from Texas to almost isolate the Middle East from the remainder of the world. If it hadn’t been for the invasion, the general death and slaughter and aliens intent on replacing Islam with their own religion, parts of the population would probably have been quite happy with that.

They could see the approaching lights of an alien rapid reaction force as they headed back over the sand. Through a dark coincidence, the aliens were going to pass close to their position, so they fell to the ground and hugged the sand as the aliens raced closer. Sean thought, for one terrifying moment, that the aliens were going to actually drive over them, but instead they veered off down towards the camp. He heard the sound of shooting, lots of shooting, in the distance, but he was sure that at least some of the prisoners would have made it.

“Shit,” Loomis said.

Sean followed his gaze and swore. The aliens hadn’t been as stupid as he’d thought. They’d put two and two together and, while on their flight to the camp, had fired a spread of missiles into the tents and the camels. The poor beasts were dead now…and the aliens probably thought that the tribesmen were dead as well. Getting somewhere where they could wreck more havoc was going to be harder than he had thought.

“Get into the hide,” he ordered finally. They’d be detected easily if they were walking on the desert in daylight. “Tonight, we’ll head for Riyadh.”

“If nothing else,” Loomis said, as they bedded down, “we put one hell of a dent in their pride.”

”Sure,” Sean said. “All we have to do now is make sure that someone knows what we did. Anyone up for the quickie book deal? Alien Two Zero

?”

Chapter Thirty-Five

No military force can remain on guard indefinitely.

– Anon

Forty cycles – or six weeks, as humans reckoned time – after the first landings, WarPriest Allon felt that he had some grounds for relief. The first and second human insurgencies within the cities had been dangerous, and there was a constant series of attacks out in the countryside, including some that had been embarrassing, if not disastrous, but the grip on the occupied zone was fairly secure. The warriors had learned, quickly, that not all of the collaborators could be trusted, but they had enough to keep a lid on trouble. The occupation forces had been moved towards the human-controlled area, prepared for their advance further into the country called America, and enough forces had been deployed in the rear area to ensure security.

It had taken him longer than he had expected to obtain the High Priest’s consent to the advance, but really…there was little choice. A constant stream of soldiers, weapons and other equipment were flowing into the occupied zone from the remainder of America…and some of them were deadly indeed. The warriors patrolled the border, but it was a vast area of land and they discovered, quickly, that isolated units tended to come under attack. In fact, smaller units were used as bait to draw larger units into a bigger trap, sometimes leaving them with heavy casualties for nothing. There seemed to be an unlimited number of humans willing to fight directly, while he knew that his own strength was limited. With the massive landings in the Middle East and the insurgency there, the High Priest was unlikely to be willing to risk the foothold on America.

But there was no choice. The humans were very good at camouflage, but the observers high above had picked up on new human forces arriving along the borders. It was possible that they would launch a second major counterattack…and even through he knew that they wouldn’t be able to actually burn the Takaina out of Texas, they could launch spoiling attacks or even reinforce the insurgents. The handful of KEWs that had been used to hit likely targets had not, as far as he could tell, taken out anything vital; in fact, going by the human skill at deception, he had a nasty suspicion that half of them had been dropped on decoys. The humans were good

at tricking automated systems.

He watched, for a long moment, the live feed from the orbiting cameras, and then issued the order. “Advance.”

***

They called it No Man’s Land.