Human religions, according to the researchers, discouraged thinking. That was alien to the Takaina — literally. They needed their warriors as dangerous as possible and that meant training them to think and react to any situation, without having to wait for orders from higher up the chain. The majority of the population was actually fairly young, due to the magic of cold sleep, and they were thinking… and wondering why they didn’t have so much themselves. The Truth had originated — and the High Priest mentally punished himself for even thinking of it — in a part of their homeworld where resources had been scarce. That had driven them onwards, to conquest and glory… and yet, it seemed so weak when suddenly faced with so much obvious wealth. Young warriors, down on Earth without the strictures of their clans, might make the wrong decisions…
He cast his attention towards the new landing sites. The landings had been on a much larger scale, but this time, they’d known where to bombard. The humans didn’t seem to have any concept of basic security; the researchers had discovered, fairly easily, entire books of tactical and strategic data on the entire world. Instead of telling their people what they needed to know, the humans were allowing them to know everything… or, at least, far more than they really needed to know, or even care about. A chart of bases in the Middle East, useless to the human who’d died defending his home, had been very useful to the planners when the invasion began…
This time, it was going to be a far more powerful offensive. The bombardment had been much more carefully planned, and, now that they had better intelligence, should be almost decisive on its own. The landing forces had landed in three human countries… and then were expanding out as rapidly as possible. The most powerful country in the region might be a problem, which was why it had been left for last — there was also a human religious element involved, although none of the researchers could explain why it was still there — but the remaining militaries would just melt away. They didn’t know it, yet, but they had nowhere to hide. The cities of Jerusalem and Mecca would be taken soon… and they would be used to bring down the human religions and replace them with the Truth. The High Priest was certain of it…
So why did he have those quiet nagging doubts?
He dismissed them and turned to the War Leader. “I want the enemy organised resistance quelled within the next two cycles,” he ordered. The human resistance had been disorganised all over the region; some units had fought well, if utterly outclassed, and some had just scattered and run. They’d had to be rounded up quickly to prevent them from turning into insurgents later. “Keep up the pressure on their governments and don’t let them have a chance to form a new defence line.”
“Of course, Your Holiness,” the War Leader said. “As unprepared as they were, they will fall before us.”
“Good,” the High Priest said. If nothing else, a second round of fighting would keep the warriors from having uncomfortable thoughts. “Keep me updated on the progress of the invasion.”
The War Leader bowed and retreated. The High Priest knew that he should relax. He’d done all he could to ensure victory… but he still had those nagging doubts. Only victory would salve his concerns… and victory was just around the corner. It just felt as if they’d made a terrible mistake.
He was sure of it.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded.
His name was Naseer Ziad and he was nineteen years old.
Like most other boys in Riyadh, he’d been brought up in a very conservative household. As the oldest male child, Naseer had a degree of freedom denied to his sisters, or even to his younger brothers, one that he’d used to ensure that he had very little actual work to do. Along with most of his contemporaries, he’d gone into an Islamic school when he was very young, and through that school, had gained a near-perfect knowledge of the Qu’ran. He could recite a surah on command… but he didn’t understand it. His learning had been learning by rote, a mixture of the form of Islam officially practiced in Saudi Arabia and hatred, hatred of the Great Satan, the Little Satan, and the other official Enemies of Islam…
And it led him nowhere. He’d found out fairly quickly that there was little chance of a job without training or connections… and he had neither. He considered the Saudi military to be beneath him — and, besides, an older cousin he looked up to was in the National Guard and told him that it wasn’t a pleasant job. The highly-paid — and without doing any actual work- posts were denied to someone without the right blood, or the right connections… and, again, he lacked them. The American and European companies doing business within Saudi Arabia wouldn’t hire someone who could offer them nothing, not even introductions to the right people, and the Saudi companies reserved most of their slots for princes or their lackeys. At eighteen, he found himself unemployed and, it seemed, stuck.
He’d drifted into the radical fringe merely for something to do. He couldn’t swear to any kind of devout belief, merely a conviction that the Americans, or the Jews, or the British were to blame for his troubles. He’d certainly enjoyed the trip to Bahrain he’d made with his father as an eighteen-year-old birthday present, where he’d tasted alcohol and lost his virginity. He was nineteen… and unmarried, unemployed, and completely without prospects. No father or brother would consider him as a possible relative… and, caught up in his need to blame someone, he’d gone radical. The teachers and contacts he’d met in the radical mosques had singled the young Naseer out — there was little wrong with his intelligence, only his learning and application — and played on his fears and beliefs until he was willing to do almost anything for them. They’d seen it a thousand times before; the products of the Saudi educational system, designed to co-opt or keep down the Saudi population, found themselves in a world where their skills were worthless. The recruiters gave them a cause and something to die for.
The radical mosques had praised the aliens to the skies, at first, for running roughshod over Texas. Cartoons of former President Bush performing oral sex on one of the aliens had been passed around the mosques for weeks, despite Wahhabi bans on images of human beings, while the radicals had delighted in the Royal Family’s discomfort. They held the whip hand for once; as long as they seemed to speak for the people, the Royals didn’t dare move against them. Naseer had learned to hate the Royal Family — he’d been assured that they kept the job rate down just to prevent people like him from having their own chance at reaching power — and he’d joined in the protests and demonstrations with the others, seeing for the first time the weakness of the regime. A power that could — and had — lock up all the believers in democracy couldn’t cope with the forces of hatred and revolution seething up from the deepest, darkest part of their nation. Their time was coming…