Invasion

It was the bodies that almost made him throw up. He hadn’t realised just how many people had been killed until he’d seen the pile of bodies, just tossed there without any concern for funeral rites or the feelings of their relatives. Men, women…the tiny broken bodies of children, caught up in a war they’d never asked for nor wanted. The aliens seemed to be sorting them out themselves, without regard for human feelings, piling up the bodies until it seemed that the stink alone would drive them out of Austin. There was a brief pause as a pile of bodies was finished…and then flames flared through the pile, consuming all the bodies in a wave of irresistible heat. Joshua gagged at the smell of burning flesh and this time, he did throw up. The aliens ignored him, despite the vomiting; their masks probably provided all the protection they needed from the smell.

“Bastards,” he hissed, as soon as he could speak again. His stomach felt as if he’d thrown up everything he’d eaten and yet, he was still trying to retch. “They could have buried the bodies, but no…”

It took everything he had just to keep moving, just to get away from the smell, but somehow he managed to stagger back to the apartment. The smell seemed to be everywhere, but at least it wasn't as bad inside, although most of the residents were wearing masks. They seemed to think that the aliens were trying to gas them all out and kill them; they didn’t want to know what the smell actually was. Mr Adair suggested that the real reason the aliens were burning the bodies was to prevent them from decaying and spreading diseases, but there really was no way to know.

Others came in and reported other news. The aliens were ransacking libraries, for some reason, taking all of the books, loading them onto their vehicles and driving them away. Joshua guessed that the real reason was that they intended to study the human books and learn more about humanity, something they wouldn’t have been able to do from orbit, allowing them to chose their tactics more carefully. They’d already damaged the world significantly, but if they knew exactly how it worked, they could take over completely.

“I’m going to blog,” he said, and went to his apartment. The laptop was where he’d left it – one advantage of the apartment union was that theft was almost impossible – and he powered it up quickly, gambling that the aliens couldn’t have interfered with the internet that much. They hadn’t; it might have been slow and erratic, but it was working. “Now, lets see what I can post.”

He wrote up the entire story of the downfall of Governor Brogan and what he’d seen in the streets quickly and concisely, and then uploaded it to a dozen news sites, using his private key to confirm authorship. The internet news media had redesigned itself in the last few days; instead of the mainstream media, there was now an entire series of bloggers reporting on what they saw, outdoing the MSM. The MSM was probably on the verge of falling apart anyway; they wouldn’t be getting any income, they weren’t broadcasting and the newspaper distribution network had been shot to hell. He smiled as he typed, enjoying the thought…and feeling like a real reporter for the first time in far too long.

***

The first day of the occupation passed quietly, too quietly. There were a handful of incidents in the inner city, an area that seemed to have been completely abandoned to the gangs of young humans, but they were dealt with quickly. Allon couldn’t understand why the humans had even allowed them to flourish; it wouldn’t have happened at home and it wouldn’t have been difficult for the humans to clear them all out. The young humans had been easy to crush once he’d sent in a few hundred warriors and the survivors, those who hadn’t escaped to spread the word that lawlessness would not be tolerated, had been added to the clean-up crews.

“WarPriest,” the Inquisitor said. Allon eyed him with carefully concealed disliked. Inquisitors were all the same; they stuck their noses into everything, often without any concern for propriety. “We have completed our survey of human religions establishments within this city.”

Allon felt a flicker of annoyance. He’d assumed that it would take longer for the Inquisitors to locate all of the human religious buildings. His people weren’t prepared to hold down the city if it erupted against them, not yet. The warriors were poking their heads into every nook and cranny, confiscating all the weapons they could find, but he was far from convinced that they’d found all of the weapons. The city seemed to have a quite amazing amount of weapons in civilian hands, something that the Truth strictly forbade, and the humans seemed to dislike losing them.