The ground shook, violently, as an office block was struck from high above. Two of his snipers had been positioned there and they had to have been killed in the collapsing building, along with however many other humans there were inside, hiding out from the aliens. He could hear the sounds of more aliens approaching, marching out and setting up a cordon around the area, hoping to trap and destroy his force. He gave a quick whistle, waited for the response, and then headed down towards a shopping mall. He’d picked the location for the ambush with malice aforethought; it was not only the perfect place to get in a solid blow, but a fairly easy place to escape from, given some careful planning.
The aliens didn’t stop shooting. Brent wasn’t sure, but he thought he could hear the sound of other weapons booming out in the distance, human weapons. It sounded as if the entire town had risen up against the aliens, although it was much more likely that there were only a few groups taking advantage of the chaos to strike a few blows at the aliens. It would have been much easier if they could coordinate the various groups, but that would have been impossible, not without risking SF34 being exposed to the aliens. The civilians would be on their own. Other alien aircraft flew overhead, but now they didn’t dare try to engage them; they might as well have put out a call to the aliens inviting them to come kill them.
“In here,” Fahy muttered. He looked scarred, but Brent was glad to see that they were all right. The five remaining men hadn’t been seriously wounded. The others might have survived, but he doubted it; the aliens had smashed the building to rubble. The interior of the mall looked eerie in darkness, with smashed glass and shattered shops everywhere; the looters had stripped the building rather comprehensively. He couldn’t understand why someone would want to strip a shop of the latest dolls, or even crass souvenirs of Texas, but people did strange things when society broke down. The odds were that they would be desperately hunting for food in a few days, if they weren’t already. All the thousand-dollar dolls in the world wouldn’t buy them food. “Sir?”
Brent looked quickly back towards the scene of the engagement, still wrapped in flame, and then followed him into the shaft. They’d checked it out first and getting down to the underground tunnels and sewers was fairly straightforward, if unpleasant. The smell was worse than it had been when the aliens had started to burn bodies, but he tolerated it, hooking up a breath mask as they made their way through the tunnels, up towards an exit five kilometres away, in an old warehouse. They could hole up there until the dawn broke, then change their clothes and slip back to their base. The odds were that it wasn’t going to be a very pleasant night for the aliens.
The window shattered as a hail of bullets crashed through the tape.
“Get down,” Mr Adair shouted, as the wall was pocketed with bullet marks. Joshua didn’t have to be told twice. He was on the floor within seconds, watching in horror as the burst of fire tore the room to bits. He could hear one of the girls screaming, one of the other boys laughing in awe as the endless stream of bullets chewed into the wall. After what felt like hours, but was probably seconds, the bullets stopped… and a dull ominous silence fell.
He looked over at Mr Adair. “Are you all right?”
“Hell no,” Mr Adair said, his face very pale. The candles they’d been using to illuminate the apartment had to have been visible from outside… and someone had opened fire on them. It might have been the aliens, or it might have been a resistance group, or… there was really no way to tell, not at the moment. “Girls, stay low; when I tell you, start crawling down towards the basement.”
Sally looked fearful, but determined. “Dad, what about the coffee?”
Joshua chuckled and broke it off, suddenly, when Mr Adair glared at him. “Your life is much more important than the coffee,” he reproved his daughter, making the point with a sharp slap to her rump. Joshua hid his smile at her outraged yelp. “Now, get crawling down there and stay low!”
The three of them left, slowly, leaving Joshua alone. His laptop was where he’d left it, but he didn’t dare power it up, not when the light might draw more fire. He crawled over to the candles, mounted on the table, and blew them out, one by one. Darkness fell in the room and, with it, he could see flickering light from outside. Greatly daring, surprising himself by his own courage, he crawled over to the window and peered, carefully, out over the city. Flames and smoke were everywhere and he could hear, in the distance, the sound of shots.
They’re revolting, he thought, with a sudden sense of awe. He wanted to get up and go join them down on the streets, but he didn’t quite dare that much, not when he didn’t know who’d been shooting at them. The streets below were almost empty, but he saw a gang of teenage boys, running towards the fighting and carrying bottles in their hands. He hoped, for their sake, that they were only alcohol, not Molotov Cocktails. The kids wouldn’t last more than a few seconds when the aliens saw them. The anarchy on the streets might be drawing them like a magnet, but they wouldn’t be able to hurt the aliens, now that they were warned…
A burst of fire, fired from somewhere out of his view, came down towards the kids and tore them apart. Joshua watched in horror as an pair of alien vehicles rushed past, one of them firing its heavy gun towards an unidentified target, the sound of the impact and detonation echoing through the air. He saw, briefly, a sniper crawling over a nearby rooftop… and realised that he didn’t dare go onto the roof. Soldiers had mistaken reporters for insurgents before… and the alien rules of engagement, it seemed, were much more liberal than any that American forces had used. He didn’t dare leave, though; he wanted — needed — to know what was going on. Below, the bodies sprawled, abandoned. If they were still alive, they would die there, on the streets.
He saw a beam of light, reaching down from high above like a pointing finger, striking somewhere to the north. The sound of the explosion reached him a second later and he realised he had seen a falling KEW; the aliens, in their anger or desperation, had reached for the heavy firepower. A series of secondary explosions echoed out over the city; he watched, grimly, as a new line of alien vehicles passed, heading northwards as well. The hovercraft drove over the bodies and, when they finished, there was very little left of what had once been human youths.
Bastards, he thought suddenly, as more aliens passed. They were heading towards the Texas State Centre, he realised suddenly, or at least they were heading in the same direction. Some of the great reporting heroes had been on the ground when American or British bases had been attacked by insurgents, surrounded, but never broken, and he wondered if that was what had happened to the aliens. They’d taken over the government buildings in the city and… hell, he’d have bet good money that attacking them would have been one of the population’s fondest dreams. How capable would the aliens be at defending a building they barely knew?
It was the arrival of the reinforcements from the camps outside the city, WarPriest Allon knew, that had turned the tide of the battle. The warriors charged with guarding the human buildings had fought well, but the best they could do was hold out against the attackers, knowing that they might run out of ammunition and be hacked down before they could escape. Nine tanks had been deployed to cover the human buildings — and every human they’d found in the area had been taken to the camps, just in case — but four of them were now burning and two more had been disabled. There had been too many warriors in the area to call in a KEW strike; the entire battle had been a close-run thing.