The Alien Invasion

Chapter 2: Enter the Silencer

Chapter 2: Enter the Silencer

"Admiral Bzt reports the landings on August are proceeding apace," said Queen Zsst. "And we have reports of only scattered resistance to our landings on other planets. We are beginning to set up reproduction farms and hive factories on all of them."

"You are on schedule," said Baraki approvingly from under his hood. "But what about Grafton?"

"Our assault on Grafton II is to start within the hour," said Zsst. "I have assigned our very best battle troops there. I know how important that planet is, and how difficult the resistance will be."

But if the Queen had really known how difficult the resistance would be on Grafton II, she would have at least quadrupled the size of her invasion force, and even that would've been no guarantee of success.

Grafton II occupied no strategic location in space; it had no important military bases; it had no vital minerals; it wasn't even a formal member of the Directorate or the League. What it did have was very, very good gunfighters.

After hundreds of years scientists still didn't quite understand it, but something on Grafton speeded up the reflexes of the local population, making them extraordinarily quick. This made manual tasks and skills requiring dexterity much easier to accomplish; foremost among those, however, was gunfighting.

Grafton II produced the most sought after soldiers, bodyguards, and killers in the galaxy. They simply could operate much more quickly than anyone else.

For hundreds of years, scientists tried to determine just what it was that speeded up the reflexes. It seemed that anyone who spent a few years on Grafton gained increased dexterity. But once a Graftonite left the planet, his reflexes started to dull; if he had only been on Grafton for a few years, he would lose his abilities in months; if he had been there for decades, he would lose his abilities gradually over several years.

That's why Graftonites were so reluctant to leave home, and when they did so it was for short periods, when they were highly compensated for it. Scientists tried to figure out what speeded up their reflexes--they tried eating large amounts of Grafton food off-planet, but that didn't work; they tried drinking large amounts of Grafton rainwater, but that didn't work; they tried breathing large amounts of Grafton air, but that didn't work. If it was something in the food, or the water, or the air, somehow taking it off-planet nullified its potency.

The effects of Grafton II on its population didn't go unnoticed to the Insects. They were confident that in time they could isolate whatever was speeding up reflexes and instill this ability into all their Insect troopers; but for now they wanted to conquer the planet and set up breeding farms so at least new generations of Insect troopers bred locally would have this ability.

That meant that Grafton had to be conquered, not destroyed. Without a space force of its own, it would be easy enough to bombard the planet from orbit, but because the population was dispersed (besides the capital and two other smaller cities, most of the population was spread out over the countryside), this would have to be done the hard way, by ground assault.

That's why Queen Zsst had allocated 4 brigades of her most fearsome Insect troopers, complete with two companies of giant insect beasts, to take the major population areas. Zsst expected some resistance at first, but once they had driven the humans out of the major population areas, she suspected the humans would be content to be left alone in the countryside. For now, Zsst didn't need the whole planet; hunting every human down over the sparsely populated surface area of the planet would be impractical; all she needed was just a large enough area for the breeding farms. Later, when they had enough of the new enhanced warriors, they could be sent on training missions to hunt and destroy the remaining humans.

Zsst gave the orders for the landings to begin....

********

"For the last time, I'm not interested," said the man in blue, in a dull tone.

He had a name; actually, he had several names. But the one that stuck with him over time was related to his profession.

He was one of the best gunfighters, even on Grafton II. His real name was John Norman.

But everyone just called him the Silencer.

"The Insects are attacking the League!" said his server, Armitoss.

"Are they attacking this house?" the Silencer asked.

"Not yet..."

"Are they on the front lawn?" the Silencer asked.

"Well, no..."

"Has anyone offered to pay me to fight the bugs?" the Silencer inquired.

"No..."

"Then let'm eat cake," the Silencer concluded.

After several hundred years of fighting, and killing, the Silencer was weary of it all. He turned his chair around to face the window. He and his wife had just finished decorating the house, and Annie had finally gotten the landscaping done exactly the way she liked it--with short, green bushes, and several lines of exotic, multi-colored flowers on either side.

"But they're attacking Grafton!" said Armitoss.

"As long as they don't enter my estate, they're welcome to the rest of the planet," said the Silencer generously.

"But how will your wife get thru the blockade--"

"Annie's not back for three days. I expect things will be sorted out by then, one way or another," said the Silencer. If he had to, he'd go up in his ship and meet her transport himself.

Annie Oakley was his wife. For several hundred years he thought he'd never find a woman who'd make him feel anything... anything at all. But then he met Annie Oakley. Not the name she had been born with, of course, any more than his was the Silencer. But that's who she was now, one of the fastest women gunfighters in the Alliance.

Suddenly there was a beeping sound from his portable holocomm. The Silencer let the device ping for a few seconds, thought about it, let it ping a few seconds more, and then, very reluctantly, pressed a button on the side of it.

An image of a Graftonite appeared. "John, we need your help," said the man. It was his friend, Bob Range.

"What is it?" said the Silencer.

"The bugs are getting ready to invade."

"So?"

"We've got to band together to stop them."

"Why?" the Silencer wanted to know.

"Do you want Grafton to be overrun with those things?"

"As long as they're not on my lawn-"

"Don't give me your lawn speech!" Range snapped.

The Silencer simply stared at Range.

"Sorry," said Range. "But John, this is important, the alien ships are in orbit."

"Wasn't the League supposed to do something or other about it?" The Silencer asked. He didn't follow politics very closely.

"They're all dead."

"All dead?" said the Silencer. His face showed a moderate amount of surprise, which was unusual.

"The League fleet was ambushed at Vitalics. The League is being invaded too."

"I see," said the Silencer.

"But the bugs have also sent a fleet here," said Range.

"What do you want me to do about it?" the Silencer asked.

"We're having a meeting by holo. I want you to join in," Range said.

The Silencer paused.

"At least listen in! Even your presence can help sway people."

The Silencer said nothing.

"It won't cost anything, and it won't take much of your time," said Range, knowing how the Silencer's mind worked.

"...all right," said the Silencer reluctantly.

"Good," said Range. "I'm patching you in."

The Silencer continued to see Range, but could now hear the voices of many other Graftonites.

"-we have to do something" someone was saying.

"The Silencer has joined us," said Range.

"The Silencer?" "The Silencer?" "The Silencer!" several voices said.

"Are you going to help us fight the invaders?" said one voice.

"No," said the Silencer.

"Not yet," Range said, hastily amending the Silencer's statement.

"But the bugs have invaded the west coast!" said another voice. "They've driven me out of my home!"

"You have my sympathies," said the Silencer.

"Aren't you going to help us fight them?"

"How much will you pay?" said the Silencer.

"Pay?" said the man. "Our planet is being invaded!"

"Then it should be important enough for you to pay a considerable amount," said the Silencer.

Suddenly, he heard the sound of a vehicle stopping outside. The Silencer looked out the windows.

"Sir," said Armitoss. "Alien invaders are entering the property."

The Silencer nodded and lifted up the holocomm and slowly went to the front door. He stepped out onto the front porch and calmly putting the holocomm down, and surveyed the scene.

Two Insects were exiting some sort of scout craft. The Silencer heard buzzing sounds, and a second and third vehicle could be seen coming down the road.

The Silencer calmly drew his blasters and shot them dead.

"What was that?" said one of voices from the holotransmitter.

"Nothing important," said the Silencer.

Two more Insects from the first vehicle moved forward. The Silencer waited until they raised their weapons, and shot them dead too. He winced as they fell onto some of Annie's prized flowers. She wouldn't like that. Could he get Armitoss to find replacement flowers so similar that Annie wouldn't notice the difference? He'd have to ask. The Silencer was beginning to hate this invasion. It was creating work for him.

"That sounds like weapons fire," said a voice from the holocomm.

The second and third vehicles pulled up. They were flatbed gravtrucks, each containing a dozen or more Insect troopers.

The Silencer casually shot them as they got off the truck. It got a little trickier when they started coming out of both trucks, and because of their numbers one or two actually got a shot off in his direction. But unfortunately he couldn't mask the sound of the gunfire.

"John, what's going on?" that was Range's voice.

"Just mowing the lawn," said the Silencer casually, still picking the Insects off. They were falling to the ground almost as fast as they could get off the transport. The Silencer, a blaster in each hand, aimed and fired in a blur, picking them off. Finally, when they stopped appearing, the Silencer frowned, hearing a buzzing sound. He walked around the end of the truck to see two Insects hiding in ambush. Even though they had their weapons aimed and ready, the Silencer, with his Graftonite reflexes, was quicker, gunning both down before their claws could depress their trigger fingers.

The Silencer casually walked back to the holocomm, ignoring the cries for information until he stood right beside the device.

"It was nothing special," said the Silencer. "Just a few dozen of them."

"They're attacking your home!" said Range. "Does this convince you?"

"Pay me and we'll see," said the Silencer. "Even the bug exterminator gets paid; why shouldn't I?"

While the Silencer continued to haggle over price, the Insects made their first mistake.

Admiral Tstss stood on the bridge of her command ship. "Opposition?" she inquired.

A subordinate being said, "No ships, no orbiting stations. But our initial combat probes haven't fared well."

"What is their status?"

"We've gained some ground, but we're having stiff resistance taking the Regular spaceport."

Grafton didn't have much in the way of cities; its largest city, Regular, had one of the only two major spaceports on the planet. When the Insects landed there, the Graftonites who worked at the spaceport blasted them immediately. The Graftonites weren't merely upset that the Insects were invading; rather, they were more peeved that the Insects weren't paying landing fees. The spaceport, like everything else on Grafton, was owned by a private company whose job it was to make money. And anyone who didn't pay the arrival fee got shot. Even the Insects.

So a few dozen spaceport employees gunned down two hundred Insect troopers. With their superior reflexes, it was hardly a significant chore for the Graftonites.

"How many from our combat probe survived?" Admiral Tstss asked.

"None sir."

"None!" said the Admiral. "Well, we'll just have to soften them up. Prepare for orbital bombardment."

That was the Admiral's first mistake.

When the Insects opened fire on the spaceport, the spaceport employees retreated further into Regular. The Insects were able to land, but when they tried to get out of the spaceport, however, they encountered stiff resistance. That caused the Admiral to order the bombing of Regular itself.

That only got the Graftonites even madder. Regular, as the largest city on Grafton II and a main transport hub, held many of the important warehouses and factories on the planet. It also was the home of many of the planet's largest corporations. In short, a lot of property owned by a lot of Graftonites was being destroyed.

This united the Graftonites like no invasion could. Thousands of Graftonites lost property or savings in the bombing. Thousands more lost access to consumer goods provided by these corporations. And these thousands had thousands of sympathetic friends and relatives. This united several hundred thousand Graftonites against the Insects.

The Silencer was going to join the counterattack (he owned stock in several of the corporations that had been attacked) when Armitoss came to him with an important message.

"Sir!' said Armitoss. "I'm getting a faint transmission from your wife over the central comm unit. Please hurry!"

The Silencer suddenly came alive, leaping over his desk and pressing the enable button on the comm unit.

"John?" came her voice in a very staticy picture. "We're under attack. I don't know how long we have-"

"Annie!" The Silencer yelled, raising his voice.

The transmission broke up.

"Annie!" The Silencer yelled again, smashing his hand against the wall near the console, creating a fist sized dent.

Armitoss bent down to pick up some plaster from the rug. When he stood up, he started to ask, "Sir, will you be needing your ship-", but he was speaking to empty air.

********

"Only one spacefighter eluded our blockade." Admiral Tstss's aide reported

That sounded like a fine record of interdiction. "How many tried to breach the blockade?"

The aide checked. "...only one, sir."

Suddenly that was less impressive, Tstss thought.

"What is the status of the main invasion force?"

"They are launching now, sir."

When the main invasion force started to descend, they were counter attacked by overwhelming force. Graftonites didn't have big ships, but each family usually owned at least one star fighter, which, given that this was Grafton, were nearly all armed. When the Insects tried to land their first large wave of transports, they were all shot down.

The Silencer, heading off-planet in his personal starfighter, didn't think anything of the naval blockade the Insects had established around Grafton--a bunch of capital ships and four squadrons of fighters. He didn't even bother to fire back when his fighter came under attack. But he was a Graftonite, and he adjusted his course and speed almost before the enemy laser bolts hit; and not one of them came within 200 feet of his tiny, darting ship.

Within moments he had passed the command ship on the perimeter, and was gone.

Two days of steady flying got him to the point where he calculated the convoy, four cargo ships and the passenger transport, were flying. He had no trouble finding the coordinates.

But when he got there all he found was a field of debris.

Meanwhile, the invasion of Grafton proceeded.

Troop transports peeled off from the Insect fleet in orbit and slowly entered Grafton's atmosphere, escorted by a ring of Insect fighters.

The fighters didn't help. The Graftonite starfighters shot down all the transports, and most of the escorts too.

********

"What? Totally destroyed! How?" Admiral Tstss demanded to know.

"Fighters, from the surface."

"Target the airfields they launched from!"

There was a moment while the scanners were in play. "Sir, as far as we can tell, there were no fields they were launched from. These are vertical lift fighters that are scattered all over the countryside. They could lift from anywhere--a field, a driveway, a road--anywhere. And when they're grounded they can be easily concealed due to their small size."

Admiral Tstss twitched. "Signal the entire fleet. We're going in again."

"Admiral, we only have two squadrons of fighters left to defend the remaining transports. Are you sure?"

'All capital ships are going in-atmosphere to cover the remaining transports on the way down," Tstss ordered. "What can a few hundred of those little fighters do to us?"

All 27 ships in Admiral Tstss's task force started to descend into the planet's atmosphere. There were ten heavy transports filled with several brigades of troops, and 17 capital ships, ranging from three destroyers to two battleships, one of them Tstss's flagship.

The ships slowly entered the atmosphere. As they entered the middle layers, the sensor being called out, "Attackers, on their way!"

"How many?"

There were a pause. "1000... 1,500... 1,800... over 2,000!"

"Activate anti-fighter lasers!" Tstss ordered.

The Graftonite fighters swarmed over the descending fleet. The battleships and heavy cruisers tried to use their bulk to defend the transports, but the fighters darted through the smallest spaces between ships to hit the troop transports, using not just lasers but missiles and heavy rockets.

Tstss's laser batteries scored several hits, but most of the fighters were too fast and too elusive to be hit by capital ship laser fire.

One by one the transports were hit and caught fire. Damage to the capital ships was minimal; Tstss's battleship was too heavily armored and shielded to be damaged by laser fire, or even small missile impacts; but some of the smaller ships didn't fare as well--one of the frigates blew up, scattering pieces that hit the other ship. A destroyer lost its drive section and went crashing into the planet.

When they had gotten halfway to the surface, Tstss realized it was hopeless. They had already lost seven transports and there was no way the remaining three would survive.

"Retreat to orbit!" she ordered.

The remaining three transports were destroyed long before they reached orbit, and then the fighters turned on Tstss's battleship, scoring hits and minor breaches. By the time they reached orbit all the smaller ships--destroyers, frigates, and troop transports--were gone. 25,000 fighting creatures had been destroyed, and the enemy had taken almost no casualties.

"Inform the fleet of our situation and signal for reinforcements," said Tstss. At a minimum, of course, she would be relieved of command; probably her wings would be plucked and she would be beheaded in disgrace as well. Tstss sat back limply in her command chair to await her fate.

********

Admiral Tstss's fate was decided a lot more quickly than she thought. She had expected reinforcements, and her replacement, to arrive in a week; but it was only a little over four days later before her command ended.

"Human fighter approaching, from outside our perimeter."

What did it matter? Tstss's command was over. Let the fighter go where it wanted. Tstss didn't have any fighters left to intercept it anyway.

"Admiral?"

"Let it go," she said wearily.

"But Admiral, it's headed straight for us!"

"What?" Tstss sat up in her chair for the first time in two days. The fighter was indeed heading straight for her command ship. Was it attempting a suicide run? A fighter that small?

"Activate laser guns," said Tstss.

Shots from the lasers never came near the bobbing and weaving ship, even as it got closer to her command ship. It looked like it was about to ram, and then... it disappeared off the screens altogether.