Invasion

“And effectively abandoning the advance,” the High Priest said. He kept his own voice under careful control. The last thing he needed, now, was to hear what they thought he wanted to hear. He had to heat honest advice…just for a moment, he wished that the War Leader was a sterile female, as blasphemous as the thought was. It might have been easier to get advice then. “How should we react to the human action?”

“They have killed enough of us to force us to redeploy,” the War Leader said. The High Priest nodded impatiently. It was true that seven thousand was considerably less than a billion, but as part of the force deployed to hold the American occupied zone, it was a serious loss. If the humans had had the capability to mount a counterattack, it might have proven decisive. “They cannot destroy the foothold, but we can no longer advance, at least without redeploying additional vehicles and warriors to the area.”

And those we deploy there from orbit we cannot recover quickly, the High Priest thought. Getting them down was easy. Getting them back up was much harder. The logistics alone argued against further deployment, but with the preparations for settlement, they had to strengthen their position. The human insurgency had swelled up again and additional soldiers were needed. Moving one unit of warriors from an occupied and – supposedly – pacified area meant that it very rapidly turned out not to be pacified after all. Some genius

of an Inquisitor had decided to take all the children from a small town to be brought up in a religious training centre…and the entire town had risen in rebellion. They had all had to be slaughtered.

The situation was even worse in the Middle East. The natives there were even more bent on protecting their religion than the Americans. They came at the occupying forces, dying in vast numbers…and yet they kept fighting. Warriors who’d never experienced real fighting found themselves learning on the job…and discovering how much their training hadn’t prepared them for. They were learning fast, and plenty of humans were dying before they could pass on their own lessons, but it was still becoming well past uncontrollable. He was confident that, when settlement began, they would bring the area firmly under their control, but the humans there were so unreliable. They had kept oil workers working – for them – only to discover that a handful of them had betrayed their new employers. It meant that developing the entire region would take time, time they didn’t have.

“We need to respond harshly and decisively,” the High Priest said, firmly. The use of nuclear weapons against his forces was a dangerous threat…and one that had to be prevented, whatever the cost. If the humans got the idea that they could use nukes without any serious consequences, they would start smuggling them into the footholds and destroying them…and the war would be within shouting distance of being lost. If they started to use their nukes on the settlements, they would slaughter thousands of settlers, even the females. “None of our prior wars have been anything like this…”

He looked over at the War Leader. “We will strike them hard,” he said. “I will order the Inquisitors to take out one of their cities. They will not be permitted to use nukes without a mass slaughter of their civilians in response.”

***

Washington just wasn't what it had once been, Patrolman Keith Glass decided, as he ambled down one of the streets. In some ways, the city was safer than it had ever been, patrolled not only by the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, but by countless neighbourhood watches, guardian angels and self-help protective associations. The streets might have been almost empty of traffic, but they were also empty of drug dealers, thieves and rapists. In theory, none of the associations had any law enforcement powers, although some of them had been deputised by the police, but in practice they tended to drive away undesirable people. The streets had never been safer and children, enjoying the quiet streets, played freely with their friends. As Glass passed a park, he waved cheerfully towards some of the other patrollers, receiving everything from a wave to a salute in return.