Invasion полностью

He came free in an instant and almost stumbled over the small pile of wood. “Never mind that now,” Brent snapped, as he caught his arm and dragged him back towards the rubble. The crowd, knowing what the aliens did when it came to counter-insurgency, had dispersed, but a handful of aliens had taken cover and were still trying to fire back. They were pinned down and effectively helpless – he hoped – unless they wanted to die, but the longer he kept his forces in one place, the more time the aliens had to organise a counterattack and slaughter his men. “Come with me!”

He keyed the second remote control and heard the series of explosions as they blasted through the alien complacency. If they were lucky, the IEDs would convince the aliens that they faced a third all-out insurgency, rather than a relatively limited strike aimed at embarrassing them. A handful of collaborators, men and women forced into serving the aliens, had risked their lives to smuggle in the devices, which would have the added side benefit that the aliens would no longer be able to trust their collaborators – if they ever had. He counted the explosions quickly, noted that one of the devices seemed to have failed, and then smiled in relief as a final explosion billowed up in the distance.

“Now, run,” he snapped, and led the charge down the street. The remainder of his men would have seen him flee and would be disengaging as well, while the aliens, still trapped, would be unable to impede their retreat. He felt, more than heard, the presence of alien helicopters swooping in from high above, but by now they were under some cover and fairly safe. “Don’t look back, just run!”

The area had been devastated by one of the earlier rounds of fighting, but there were still some families squatting in the remains, unwilling or unable to move. The aliens, for some reason, had started to move families into intact buildings, and then they’d stopped. It was a mystery, but not one he had any time to solve, not when the entire alien army was likely to be on their trail. They could simply devastate the area from orbit, but he was gambling on them not being prepared to shatter a few kilometres of the city just to kill a handful of insurgents. By the time they realised they’d been tricked, he hoped, the pair of them should be well away.

“Thanks, I think,” his rescued captive said. Brent had to laugh as the tension wore off. He might be still trapped in the midst of an alien-controlled city, with thousands of embarrassed and humiliated aliens coming after him, but for the moment they were safe. “I thought I was a goner there.”

“You pretty nearly were steak and fries,” Brent agreed. He checked the corridor quickly, and then opened the battered and looted apartment, recovering the suitcase that they'd hidden under the bed. “Strip off, completely, and change into what’s in the case.”

The man seemed inclined to object. “But…”

“But nothing,” Brent snapped. “Those bastards are tricky. Ten gets you twenty that you have a tracer somewhere on your clothes and if they start looking now, they’re going to find us.”

That, he noticed, got the man’s clothes off quicker than a teenage boy faced with a naked and ready girl. His body was pale, like his face and hands, but there were bruises everywhere. It didn’t look as if he'd been tortured, but the alien guards had probably worked him over once or twice, just to make the point that they could do whatever they liked to him. The alien concept of treachery and perversion might not be the same as a human concept, but they clearly took it seriously; he hadn’t seen them trying to burn anyone before.

Doesn’t mean they’re not doing it elsewhere, he thought. They’d invaded the Middle East, according to their tame humans, and so far the Arabs had just prostrated themselves before them. Brent suspected that the aliens were lying; he’d been in the Middle East and fought there, in some countries that it would have surprised the general public to know that American troops had ever fought, and he knew that defeating them wouldn’t be a pushover. Their armies were crap, commanded by poor leaders who got their jobs because of their contacts or lack of competence, but as insurgents, they were formidable. The US had killed off thousands of the incompetent insurgents, and the Iraqi Army had been completing the process, but hundreds of very experienced bastards had fled Iraq, into Saudi or Iran, where they’d started to cause trouble for the established rulers. The aliens might be having more difficulties than they were prepared to admit…

“Good,” he said, finally. The man now wore a pair of jeans, a shirt that looked as if it had seen better days, and a baseball cap that concealed his hair. “What’s your name?”

“Joshua,” the man said. He looked as if he was going to fall dead at any second, but his eyes were bright with determination. “If they had a tracer on me, shouldn’t we move?”