Invasion

Time to make it a bit harder, he thought, as they reached the gas station. The aliens had destroyed every official religious building in the city and, in doing so, had created a few million more enemies. If they applied that standard on a wider scale…it didn’t bode well for human religious cities. He suspected that the aliens hadn’t realised just how many human sects didn’t want or need religious buildings – Baptists didn’t need a meeting house – or, for that matter, how many religious books were in private hands. He couldn’t even begin to guess at how many bibles existed in Texas alone, let alone the other religious texts. Their response was likely to be brutal and unpleasant. The only reason he could think of for destroying religious buildings was that they wanted to replace them with their own…and that wouldn’t sit well with humanity.

He scouted out the gas station yesterday and was relieved to discover that it hadn’t been looted. It had been operated by a Pakistani family who’d later tried to flee the city, abandoning their home and livelihood. They'd also left a gas tanker that had been used to make deliveries. The aliens still prevented humans from using any kind of motor vehicle, sometimes shooting up a few cars to make the point, and so it had been abandoned, along with its cargo. It wasn't completely full, unfortunately, but there was enough to make one hell of a bang. He made a series of hand signals to his men, ordering them to take up their positions, and then slipped into the driver’s seat. It was a matter of moments to hotwire the tanker and move it forward so that it was closer to the road. He left his little surprise in the vehicle and slipped out again, back into the darkness.

The aliens, it seemed, patrolled on a regular basis. They had ten minutes until the next patrol would hover down the road. Two of his men quickly pushed a car into the middle of the street, blocking it, even as the others scattered a handful of other surprises around the area. As soon as they were finished, they drew back and waited for the aliens to arrive. If they’d changed their schedule…

Brent smiled as he heard the hum of the alien vehicles. He’d been nervous that they’d send a tank along, but instead they’d merely been using their armoured fighting vehicles. There was something about their design that suggested that they were used to fighting insurgencies, but he guessed they’d learnt out of a book, rather than real experience. No sane and experienced soldier would have driven up to a blockade without checking the area first.

Got you, you bastards, he thought. From his vantage point, he could see the alien hatches opening and a platoon of alien soldiers emerging, wearing their dark masks. That was more worrying than he liked to admit – no one knew what kind of night-vision gear the aliens had – but they were committed now. Four of the aliens headed towards the blocking car, the others fanned out towards the gas station…and the waiting ambush. There wasn’t any time, any longer, to wait for more aliens to emerge. He pushed down on the small detonator and all hell broke loose. The gas tanker exploded and a sheet of fire cascaded down onto the alien vehicles.

“Move,” he snapped, and ran for his life. The aliens smashed every radio transmitter, without fail, and they might try to target him from orbit. It seemed insane to waste a projectile on a single man, but everything since the war had begun had been insane. Shots started to ring out as his three snipers started to pour fire onto the remaining aliens and their burning vehicles; he heard their ammunition start to cook off in the midst of the fire, creating a new hazard for anyone nearby. Trapped, the handful of surviving aliens had no choice, but to hunker down and hope that they could hold out until help arrived. Ironically, Brent wanted them to survive, now; they represented a lure to the remainder of the aliens. Without them, it was possible that the aliens would just write them off and not bother to send help.

“They’re coming,” Fahy shouted, his voice almost drowned out by the roar of the fires and the shooting. “I see two heavy tanks and three smaller vehicles.”

Brent grinned. The aliens were about to make a bad situation worse, much worse. High overhead, he heard the noise of a helicopter, one that he’d never heard before. It had to be an alien craft and so he nodded to one of his men, who brought up a Stinger and prepared to target the alien aircraft. Brent was already moving towards the second ambush site when the Stinger was launched, blasting up towards the unsuspecting alien craft, which was hit and fell burning out of the sky. There was no sign that the crew had escaped.