“If we could all coordinate, we might have a chance at actually throwing them out,” the leader had told him. Pataki had been told that the leader had been an accountant in a previous life, but he would have bet good money that there was some military experience in there somewhere. “As it happens, we can only hurt them and hope that people outside the red zone can get supplies in to us.”
Pataki had been astonished to discover how many different groups there were. Mercenaries in training at one of Blackwater’s training camps had proven surprisingly effective…but then, most of them had been ex-servicemen of one kind or another. The inner city gangs had fought the aliens with the same determination they’d used to keep the police out of their territory, but the aliens had brought up heavy firepower and systematically blasted them out of their hiding places. Thousands of soldiers, cut off from the front lines, had turned into insurgents…and Fort Hood, he’d been told, was pinning down thousands of aliens in trying to sweep out the remains of the soldiers there. The entire situation was a bloody mess; he almost felt sorry for the aliens.
Almost. Their base, ahead of him, had been built on the remains of yet another small town. It had been deserted before they arrived, but according to observers, the aliens had flattened all the buildings anyway, paying special attention to the two churches. It seemed to fit their normal pattern; the only religious places they left alone were graveyards, perhaps preferring to leave the dead alone. It was strange thinking of a star-faring race as being scared of ghosts, but maybe that was the answer, although he cautioned himself that just because he wanted to believe it didn’t make it true. The aliens had provoked more attacks on themselves by destroying religious buildings…and, by placing the base so far from major support, they’d handed the resistance a chance at a real success.
Or, perhaps, it was a trap.
The briefing had been clear enough. The aliens had deployed powerful radars around the red zone. Between them, they controlled the skies and blasted anything, aircraft or missile, out of them before they got close enough to do some damage. No aircraft flew on Earth now, apart from the handful of alien helicopters, which at least meant they could fire off anti-aircraft weapons at anything in the sky. The aliens didn’t seem – thank god – to deploy any heavy aircraft, either fighters or bombers, but they didn’t need them. If they were under heavy attack, they called in strikes from orbit…and they’d been doing more of that lately. Something had to be done to throw them back on their heels.
He peered through his night-vision goggles towards the alien base. It was nothing much; a handful of vehicles, carefully organised to protect the vehicle in the centre, the source of all the radar emissions. The techs had gone on and on about multi-phased radar algorithms and bullshit like that, but as far as Pataki was concerned, his only task was to destroy the radar vehicle. No one had told him so, specifically, but he’d picked up enough to guess that his assault wasn't the only one being mounted. If they could knock down all of the alien radars…but then, they’d still have the ones in space. The very concept astonished him; the aliens could literally sweep the ground with radar emissions from orbit and pick up on any moving vehicle, maybe even a moving person. If it didn’t have the right IFF, it got blasted, automatically.
The aliens had billeted their forces in what had probably once been a school. A handful were patrolling around the outskirts of the village, but the remainder were supporting the vehicles, watching for any incoming threat. It all looked surprisingly lax to him –
“Sarge,” one of his men whispered. “Look.”
Pataki followed the pointing finger. A group of humans sat there, chained to a truck, a human truck. They didn’t look very pleased to be there, which probably meant that they were slaves, as he had been, rather than collaborators. There were actually quite a few alien collaborators now, although most of them were working for the aliens under duress, their families held hostage for their good behaviour. Pataki was glad, despite himself, that he didn’t have any family in Texas; what would he do if he were told that he had the choice between betraying the resistance, or his family being killed?
“We’ll get them out,” he muttered. “Are the mortar teams ready?”
