Invasion

The display altered as, one by one, the satellites started to wink out of existence. The entire network of radars and observatories was falling apart as powerful radars were targeted from orbit and destroyed, but enough remained to show the alien craft as they encircled the Earth, firing constantly down on the surface of the planet. Radars that could track billiard balls in orbit had no problem tracking the precisely targeted kinetic energy weapons – they couldn’t be anything else – as they slashed down and destroyed their targets. Bases, airports, ships…all were being targeted and destroyed.

”Mr President,” General Hastings reported. “We have to engage the enemy!”

“We have to get the President out of here,” Deborah snapped. Her face had tightened sharply. “They might go for Washington next!”

“It has to be a mistake,” Spencer babbled. “They…they can’t do this to us!”

“It’s happening,” General Hastings growled. “Mr President, do I have your permission to engage the enemy before we lose everything?”

The President seemed to stagger inwardly. “Yes,” he said, shaking his head hopelessly. Paul realised, with a sudden moment of fear, that the President was almost beyond his limits. He couldn’t deal with the steady destruction of America. “General, hit them. Hit them hard!”

“We just received an update from the Russians,” someone shouted. “They’re engaging with everything they have!”

Or so they claim, Paul thought coldly. Russia was actually more vulnerable to precise orbital bombardment than the United States. The Russian ABM and ASAT weapons had never been tested under such circumstances, any more than the American weapons had been tested. God alone knew how well they would perform…and how long the enemy would allow them to maintain their missile bases on the ground. The aliens would track the weapons as soon as they were launched and destroying the bases would be one certain way of limiting their deployment.

“Clear to engage, clear to engage,” General Hastings snapped. “Transmit the engagement signal to all units earmarked for Skywalker; fire at will, I repeat, fire at will!”

“Transmitting,” one of the technicians said. The display updated itself rapidly as THAAD missiles started to launch from their launch sites, scattered over the United States. Another red icon blinked up as an alien kinetic weapon came down near New York. “Signal sent…”

“God help us all,” the President breathed.

***

“We have an engagement command,” Captain Duke Connolly snapped, as the Boeing 747-400F twisted in the air. The crew had been preparing desperately to engage the alien ships before they got around to destroying the Boeing 747, but without clear orders to engage, they couldn’t proceed. “Get me a track on an alien craft, now!”

“Here, sir,” one of the radar operators snapped. Normally, the Boeing 747 would get a direct uplink from the ground or space-based radar systems, but now the latter were completely out of action and the former were being hammered from space. The Boeing 747 carried its own radar dome, but if they lit it up, they might as well call the aliens directly and ask to be killed. The radar pulses would almost certainly draw alien fire. “There are four alien craft within engagement range.”

“You are cleared to open fire,” Connolly said. “Burn them out of space.”

The lights dimmed slightly as the aircraft rerouted power to the laser. The modified Boeing 747-400F – classed as a Boeing YAL-1 Airborne Laser weapons system – carried a megawatt-class chemical oxygen iodine laser that could engage targets in the air or near-space. It had been designed to engage incoming ballistic missiles, burning through their heat shields and destroying them a long time before they could detonate, but it could be used to engage alien spacecraft as well. Indeed, there had been a movie made around that very premise, although Connolly had gone to see it with his girlfriend…and had laughed so much that they’d asked him to leave the cinema.

He watched as the alien spacecraft’s orbit took it closer to their position in the atmosphere. The other Boeing 747’s would be engaging as well, along with a surprising number of ABM and ASAT systems, but no one knew what sort of armour the alien craft carried. It might even have a perfect shield against laser fire, in which case their attack was worse than useless…but as he saw chunks of the hull burning off, he realised that the laser was having an effect. The only question was how badly they were damaging the craft…and how the aliens would respond…

“Laser fire,” the pilot snapped suddenly. The 747 lurched as the pilot threw the aircraft into an evasive pattern, trying to break free of the alien attack, even as the computers automatically kept the chemical laser burning away at the alien ship. The alien craft appeared to be in trouble, but how much trouble. “Sir…”

The plane screeched like a living thing. “Eject,” the pilot bellowed suddenly. “Eject…”