The President leaned forward, interested. “If that’s the case,” he said, “why do most of the scenarios I saw when I became President show a massive outbreak across the United States?”
Herald had the grace to look slightly abashed. “It was anticipated that the political leadership wouldn’t be willing to take action until it was already too late,” he admitted, ignoring Senator Ovitz’s snort. “If a case was discovered in Washington, it would be necessary to seal off Washington completely… and probably several other cities as well, while shutting down air transport and everything else. It would be hard for the political leadership to act like Jack Ryan and take the heat for overreacting if it was a false alarm. Worse, the ideal biological warfare attack would be focused on several Patient Zeros and, therefore, would defeat any blockade.”
He paused. “But we’re getting away from the point,” he continued. “We don’t have a sample of any alien disease to experiment with. Even if we did have one, we wouldn’t know what we were doing, at least not at first. And, if we did come up with a usable bio-weapon, we couldn’t get it to all of the aliens at once. In short, we’ll keep researching, but I doubt that we’ll find a biological angle of attack.”
Deborah spoke into the silence. “And you can’t modify something of ours to attack them?”
“No,” Herald said, flatly. “It’s a completely different biological system. Oh, we may discover that something of ours isn’t good for them, but the odds are against finding a magic bullet.”
“Perhaps that’s not a bad thing,” the President said. “I would not care to be faced with the choice between deploying a bio-weapon — and committing genocide — and losing the war.”
“With all due respect, Mr President,” Senator Ovitz said, “my people are being crushed under the alien boot. They do not have time for your fancy northern morality.”
“We’re doing what we can for them,” the President said. “General?”
General Hastings scowled. “We have actually managed to take advantage of the alien distraction — and their invasion of the Middle East — and use the time to slip in a few thousand more Special Forces, mainly Green Berets, Force Recon and a handful of lower-key units. Intelligence types have been infiltrating the alien-controlled cities and towns and have been reporting back to us on how the aliens are conducting themselves. In short, Mr President, we’re making it much harder for them to conduct further offensive operations against us.”
His voice darkened. “But not, I fear, impossible,” he added. “The reports were unconfirmed at first, but it appears likely that the aliens intend to launch a northwards thrust, perhaps into Arkansas or Mississippi. Our forces, which have been gathering there, are not in any state to resist such an attack, even without the addition of space-based weapons. They may believe that attacking us will force us to stop supporting the insurgents, or they may simply intend to add to their human resources…”
The President winced. “Are you sure that they’re going to expand?”
“We believe that that is what they have in mind, yes,” General Hastings said. “The intelligence and signals units are unable to actually read the alien transmissions, but there has been a steady increase in transmissions from bases they have established in north-east Texas. They may be intending a punch at our bases, perhaps a spoiling attack, or they may have another advance in mind.”
“Mr President, we need to consider the nuclear option,” Deborah said, firmly. “If we cannot stop the aliens from expanding, we have to look at other possibilities.”
Senator Ovitz nodded in agreement. “They have to be stopped,” he said. “If that means turning a section of America to glass…”
“There are American citizens under any nuclear blast,” the President snapped. Paul could hear the pain in his voice. “Do you want to butcher them like the aliens did the Pope and the Vatican?”
“What choice do we have?” Senator Ovitz demanded. “General, can the army stop them if they come at you?”
General Hastings’s face was unreadable. “Delay them, yes,” he said. His voice soured. “Stop them… no. They have too many advantages. I’m seriously considering suggesting that we only delay them and prepare the ground for a much larger insurgency.”
“And would nukes add to our chances of stopping them?”
“Not easily,” Paul said, sparing General Hastings. “The aliens can — and do — shoot down every missile we launch at them. The mass use of every known ICBM left on Earth would probably not destroy the Red Zone. Long-range fire from artillery has also been shot down in flight. We would have to hide the weapons along the expected lines of advance…”
“But we could use them,” Senator Ovitz said. “We could put an end to their threat…”
“The issue is closed,” the President snapped, firmly. “Colonel James, what progress has been made with the SSTO program?”
“Useless,” Senator Ovitz muttered, just loudly enough to be heard.
Paul privately agreed — partly — but kept that thought to himself. “The program for constructing our own fleet of SSTO craft has been accelerated, now that we have a working model of our own,” he said. “We hope that within two to three months we will have around thirty craft that we can deploy — if we can get rid of the alien orbiting systems. As long as they control space, we cannot actually get anything of our own into orbit — and they will be very aware that as long as they control space, their ultimate victory is assured.”
“So, son,” Senator Ovitz said, “are you saying that it’s time to haul up the white flag?”
“Hardly,” Paul said. “The one great advantage of the war is that a lot of research programs into advanced weapons and concepts have been kicked into high gear. We may not be able to duplicate the alien laser weapons, not yet, but we have other weapons of our own now. The latest models of lasers can actually harm the alien craft in orbit, although they cannot inflict significant damage in seconds. The alien parasites have too much armour to be easily taken out from the ground — and, of course, any missile boosting upwards from Earth is easy to detect. We took down their space-based radar network in Operation Lone Star and forced them to use parasite ships in that role, but that means that we cannot take the network down again, not easily.”
He paused. “But we do have options,” he continued. “Give us three months and we might be able to convince the aliens that they’ve been in a fight.”
“Three months,” Senator Ovitz said, more thoughtfully. He looked over at the world map, showing the Red Zone in Texas and another, larger one, covering most of the Middle East. It would only be a matter of time before Israel fell and the aliens ruled from the Suez to the Pakistani border. They even had diplomats from the Middle East talking to their counterparts from Europe and the rest of the world. Quite a few African nations were on the verge of surrendering. “Can we hold out that long?”
“If we deploy the weapons we have now, we will lose the advantage of surprise,” General Hastings warned. “Some of the newer weapons will only be useful if deployed all at once, without the aliens having any kind of warning. Others can only be deployed if we have reasonably clear skies and a chance to work without alien interference. We cannot liberate Texas yet, sir, but give us enough time and we’ll have a very real chance at victory.”