Invasion

The darkness swallowed him up as he started the walk. Fort Hood was still holding out, if a bitter underground struggle constituted holding out, and the aliens had sealed the area. There were over twenty thousand American soldiers in the area, according to the internet, and the alien attempts to dig them out had, so far, failed completely. Brent was a little surprised the aliens hadn’t simply resorted to nukes, or more KEWs, but given the size of Fort Hood, it would take hundreds of nukes to make a real impact. They had bombed the base once and barely dented the actual danger, as far as they were concerned.

But he had to make sure that they knew he was coming first. The Special Forces had been busy; they’d set up a whole series of hidden fibre-optic cables all over the Red Zone, using them to stay in touch and try to coordinate their operations. Brent didn’t trust them completely, not when the aliens could have found some – either through coincidence or prisoner interrogation – and that meant that they could have been subverted, but there was no choice. If he went blindly into Fort Hood, he would be lucky to find anyone…and if he did, they might shoot him on sight. That would be embarrassing. The data had been sent to his little resistance cell through the Internet – another detail he had kept from Joshua, although that was mainly from habit rather than any operation security procedure, as by now the aliens were well aware of the Internet – but it might not be easy to find the link.

If I can’t find it, I might have to make the walk after all, he thought, as he found an isolated path that ran towards the north. He didn’t dare go down and use the roads; if the aliens didn’t spot him, he might blunder into a IED and be blown up by his own side. There was supposed to be a hide around somewhere, one used by the soldiers who prowled the night and hunted aliens, but if they'd found it…

Dawn was starting to rise when he stumbled across the hide. Someone had been very clever and hidden it from view; the aliens would have to be very lucky to find it, even with directions. He found the entrance, checked it carefully for booby-traps, and opened the hatch. The small electronic panel confronting him lit up and pasted a question for him; which President got a blowjob in the Oval Office? Brent chuckled, clicked on Clinton, and sighed in relief as the bomb defused itself, allowing him to enter the hide. The aliens, even if they got so far, wouldn’t know the answer…although he knew that collaborators would, if the aliens trusted them to hunt their own people.

Now, he thought, where are you?

The hide wasn't as sophisticated as some of the ones he’d seen in Iraq. It was barely more than a hole in the ground, hidden from view, with a tiny cache of food, supplies and a single terminal. He took a breath as he activated the terminal, placing his thumb against the screen and waiting for the scanner to confirm his identity, praying that it included his fingerprints in its memory. There had been times when details like that had been missed from terminals, screwing up entire operations or worse, and there was so much that could go wrong. The terminal bleeped, granting access, and opened up for him, revealing a link that stretched all the way back to Washington. He’d seen enough of the systems to believe that they would continue to work, even with Washington’s destruction.

His hands danced quickly across the keyboard, confirming his identity and sending a message to Fort Hood. The main buildings would have been destroyed, but that wouldn’t worry the soldiers, not the ones hiding out on the grounds. The trick would be to see if he could get there…and if they would be expecting him. It took nearly an hour before a reply arrived, confirming that they could meet him, but he’d have to make it there himself. He checked the location quickly, made a mental note of a route that would take him there by a roundabout route, and settled back into the hide. He’d have to sleep during the day and then make the rest of the journey by night.

He’d wondered if one of the other resistance units would come to the hide, but none came during the day, allowing him to get several hours of uninterrupted sleep. He awoke as darkness started to fall, ate a small MRE quickly, and then sealed off the hide again before starting the long walk. He was tempted to visit some of the smaller towns on his route, but the aliens would be active there, or they would have driven out the human citizens. He’d picked up the reports about them clearing towns by force, but it had taken Joshua to put two and two together and figure out why; the aliens didn’t just want an invasion, they wanted settlement as well. The towns they’d cleared were probably being demolished already.