Chapter Two – Victory at Belfast
Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
July 4, 1996
In the skies above the city of Belfast, the vast human air fleet closed with its target. The gargantuan City Destroyer was something impossible to miss – but every pilot involved in the attack made sure to keep their planes in attack formation and on track. Proper co-ordination, as well as concentration of firepower, would be the keys to victory in this battle.
Not all of the aircraft would be launching the attack in fixed formation, of course – this only applied to the bombers and strike aircraft. Their sole task was to deliver ordnance to the gigantic craft that loomed ever closer.
The escorting fighters were a different story. The Sea Harriers, Tornado fighters, Drakens and Mirages were already breaking formation to engage the swarms of Alien Attackers that were now swiftly abandoning their attack on the city to engage the human aircraft above them.
The human deception had clearly been exposed – the alien fighters knew they had been lured into an attack on the Belfast ground defences, away from their City Destroyer; a target that was now in the sights of the approaching bombers.
Yet despite their quick reaction, the aliens were changing direction too late – the bombers were too far and out of the invaders' reach, soaring towards their target at high-altitude. Meanwhile, humanity's various jet fighters streaked down from above to intercept and destroy the duped Attackers.
Within seconds, the opposing fighters clashed, duelling in one mighty dogfight above the Belfast skyline. Vapour trails from jet engines and missiles, streams of tracer from cannons, green flashes of alien plasma and the explosions of fallen combatants of both sides soon decorated the clear sky, as the fighters pursued one another in spheres of chaotic manoeuvres and desperate evasions.
The Sea Harriers, flown by expert fighter pilots (Harrier selection standards were always high), deftly manoeuvred amongst their foes, letting loose Sidewinder missiles whenever they achieved a lock. Supersonic Mirages and Drakens streaked to and fro, their sonic-booms echoing adding to the grim orchestra of the battle.
The human pilots had independent thought and decision-making on their side; they adapted their tactics with every turn and twist of combat, dodging plasma shots and duelling the invaders for supremacy of the skies. They coordinated amongst each other, maximising their efforts to bring down as many of the alien fighters as possible.
The Swarm had no such advantage. Their Hive Mind did not allow for it. Had they been human pilots or commanders, they would have recognized that something was seriously wrong the moment their shields went down, and changed tactics.
Had they been capable of individual decision and innovation, there would have been no continued swarming of their enemy with greater numbers of Attackers; such direct methods simply incurred heavy casualties. The Attackers would have re-organised themselves into more flexible and disciplined formations, in order to better dodge enemy fire. Instead of blindly rushing the native defences and fighters, they would have bombarded them from afar, either by using the attackers in high-altitude attacks, or simply using the weapons on the City Destroyer, which weathered the human weaponry far better than its Attacker broods.
As no such individual innovation existed on the part of any their common pilots – and since their systems were still in disarray – the Swarm was slow to respond to these new circumstances.
Every human pilot interviewed after the battle's end stated that there was no change of tactics on the part of any of the alien Attacker pilots they faced, or even any visible attempt to acknowledge and compensate for the loss of their energy shields. The enemy continued to behave as they had done before; with the same single-minded, zealous determination to kill or be killed.
By contrast, the humans had learned fast in the past few days. The invaders paid the price for this.
Flowers of orange fire bloomed as scores of the now-vulnerable Attackers were brought down. Yet they were still lethal – now and then, human aircraft decorated the sky with their own explosions, as the green plasma could still find its lethal mark.
This spectacle in the air easily rivalled the plumes of black smoke from the many fires that burned on throughout the city of Belfast, or the bright lines of AA tracers and booming clouds of flak that had previously dominated the skies. Yet this could still be seen as the anti-aircraft artillery and SAM batteries continued to stitch the sky and any alien craft that entered their sight, while scoring further kills of their own.
However, the ground defences were obliged to reduce their fire, in order to avoid hitting friendly aircraft – while the human fighters were obliged to avoid designated 'flak zones', in order to allow the ack-ack gunners unobstructed and uninterrupted fire in these areas.
But it was the bombers that were the single most important element of the human battle-plan over Belfast, centred on the ancient Vulcans and Victors that screamed their arrival above the city. They carried the most potent ordnance – and the prime aiming point on the City Destroyer was the skyscraper-sized blocky fin located at what was designated as the prow of these vessels. This structure was now widely acknowledged to be the command centre of the vessel.
As such, it was the bombers' target – and they were not alone.
From their cockpits, the pilots could make out a great cluster of innumerable contrails streaking from the east; a sight that heralded a fleet of cruise missiles fired from ships further along the Irish coast, as well as from submarines hidden further out to sea, arrived over the battlefield after a flight of many hundreds of miles.
The arrival of these missiles looked almost like a fleet of comets, streaking from off-shore and through the atmosphere in fiery trails. Since cruise missiles flew subsonically, it was possible for observers on the ground to see them as they streaked towards the hovering alien leviathan.
With good enough binoculars, it was even possible to make out the shape and features of the missiles themselves, even their type. Most were American Tomahawks, though some Russian-made missiles, launched from that country's submarines, were also present in the great fleet of high explosive that now made contact with the invaders.
The missiles struck, their explosions chaining across the Destroyer's hull and command centre, as the bombers closed in.
The bomber pilots, so focused on their approach, did not notice the sickly green glow from newly-parting openings on the giant ship's underside; a tell-tale sign that its great launch bays were activating once more.
Across the massive hiveship, primitive warheads struck and detonated in quick succession. The native missile attack was well coordinated – it had arrived while nearly all the Attacker swarms were otherwise engaged.
Many of the long-range missiles struck the thick armoured shell of the command centre. The warheads of these weapons had much more explosive power than the previous missiles fired in this battle. Even more violent vibrations shook the Navigator's chamber. Sparks exploded in great fiery showers, erupting from bio-electric conduits as the damage reached the internal systems.
The Navigator snarled in anger, the needle-like teeth in its regressed mouth bared in fury, seething as foul saliva dripped down onto the floor below it.
It was not alone in its fury. Across the Hive Fleet, the same blunders were appearing; the ongoing system error caused by an unexpected native infiltration of the main hiveship, the absent shields, the critical losses inflicted on the Attacker swarms, the damage still being caused; the other Navigators relayed it all from their ships across and above this stubborn prey world.
Worst of all were the huge fleets of native aircraft, screaming towards Destroyers across this planet; aerial forces which should have been all but destroyed.
The Navigator of this vessel felt the anger of the whole Hive Mind, of the whole fleet, funnelled through its brain as one unified, unbearable howl of collective rage. Most of all, it felt the pain of its own badly-wounded brood.
The Swarm had been close to harvesting this delectable prey world. Now the Hive Fleet had been stung - when all resistance should have been ineffective and at this point, extinguished.
So many native aircraft had been destroyed in the past few days. So many nests had been burned away. Yet still they came in strength, for yet another strike; this time their efforts were not futile.
This time, they were causing damage. This time, they were beating the Swarm.
This Navigator's forces had not only been stung, but also deceived – baited into a useless and costly attack on the native ground defences, while the vermin began their own strike from the air. In the skies above this foul nest in the narrow bay, where so many warriors of the Swarm had fallen, they howled out their petulant frustration in the vast gestalt of the Hive Mind's alien consciousness.
The Navigator was compelled to answer that cry.
The Attacker swarms needed to focus solely on bringing down the native aircraft – the Navigator made that clear to them – but they continued to suffer losses and were still taking fire from the vermin ground defences, which even now covered the approach of their bombers.
The swarms needed support. The Navigator signalled for the hangars to launch all of the remaining reserve Attackers. Reinforcements were needed to compensate for the losses suffered, and to engage the newly-arrived bombers.
Then it stretched out another of its sinuous tentacles. The limb plugged into another socket, coated with conductive residues as the pulsating, oversized brain of the Navigator once more interfaced with the vessel's additional systems.
This time, it signalled the broods of ground warriors garrisoned aboard the vessel. There were Troop Transporter craft to spare on board. Those foul missile batteries needed to be destroyed, to relieve pressure from the Attacker swarms and to clear the way for the Destroyer.
A ground invasion was the best way to ensure this. The Attackers would be left free to focus all their efforts on the enemy aircraft, while the Destroyer's ground warriors would destroy the vermin anti-aircraft defences, which in turn would be forced to defend themselves on the ground.
When the Destroyer burned the nest, many warriors of the Swarm would still be present on the surface. This was not a concern – they existed only to serve the will of the Swarm. If their sacrifice was required to crush this resistance, so be it.
As mobilization alarms sounded through the ship, new swarms of Attackers poured from the re-opened launch bays. They were followed by the slower Troop Transport ships and Gunships that would clear the way for the landing warriors.
Meanwhile, the Navigator pulsed out another signal into the propulsion systems: increase speed.
They had to move faster. They had to reach the point of firing soon – the Destroyer was still over the sea, and had not cleared the coast.
It could only move so fast – it would take time to reach the firing point. Until then, the warriors of the Swarm would have to clear the way; in the air and on the ground.
For what had seemed like ages now, Chris Stanton's world had been reduced to the sound of the motorcycle engine and the rushing of the wind across his body as he and Geordie sped along the runway of Belfast City Airport. The engines of the other bikes whined in the background, as the SAS troop and their IRA allies dashed along the runway, keeping to the cover of destroyed aircraft.
At least the aliens weren't firing at them now. Soon after the timely intervention by the Sea Harriers, the stingray-like attack craft seemed to have forgotten the humans on the ground altogether, focusing entirely on the newly-arrived air assault.
When Chris looked up from Geordie's back, he could see hundreds of the stingray-ships shooting up into the sky towards the bombers and fast-air jets in great unified streams, like foul black tentacles reaching up into the heavens, grasping at distant prey.
While the Attackers were still just trying to blindly swarm their enemy on an individual level, they were able to collectively change their tack; they did so with inhuman unison.
Even as flak, tracer-fire and SAMs continued to score the sky wherever the aliens flew, shooting a few of them down now and then, every single one of them fervently stayed the course, determined to reach the bombers. Not one of them turned back to attacking the ground defences.
Chris was stunned by how single-minded they were. If he didn't hate them with an absolute passion, he would have admired them. To him, these aliens seemed like a giant ant-hill from space more than anything else.
"Fucking warrior ants…" he whispered as he observed the vast tendril-like clouds of alien ships. That was the only way to describe them. A bloody-great big swarm of warrior ants, with crazy-advanced kit to boot.
He knew they would no longer be baited or fooled. Now, they would engage the primary air threat to their mother-craft. Nothing would distract them from that.
With that in mind, Chris was at a loss as to what use he and his comrades would be, in this phase of the battle.
The missile and triple-A batteries would continue to fire on any alien ship they saw – but the enemy would likely now all be flying beyond the effective altitude of shoulder-fired missiles. Even if they weren't, with so many allied jets in the air chasing the aliens, firing off Stingers or SA-7s into that shit could easily result in a blue-on-blue – friendly fire, in other words.
So if all of the Attackers were now focused on the flyboys, then it was basically all in the hands of the flyboys now. They were the ones whose efforts would matter. Chris and his fellow ground-pounders had been reduced to spectators in this battle – they'd ceased to be relevant.
Chris wasn't happy about that. It made him feel vulnerable, useless; two things no SAS soldier, or any member of any Special Forces unit, would want to be. Still, he was no General – he'd played his intended part. If he and his SAS comrades were now expected by the higher-ups to just sit and twiddle their thumbs, then that was what they would do.
With Sergeant Holmes in the lead, the bikers arrived at the fortified control tower and terminal buildings. Belfast City was smaller than the city's main international airport – it had only opened for commercial flights in the early '80s.
Still, it was large enough to make it a major command post, rally point, staging and supply area for the defending forces. Even now, C-130s and other supply aircraft continued to land on the runway at great risk amidst the air battle, delivering much-needed supplies and reinforcements.
The airport buildings themselves were fortified. Anti-aircraft guns fixed to the terminal roofs continued to fire away with deafening shrieks and rattles, sending streams of bright tracers into the sky. Machine-gun and mortar positions dotted vital points, ready to envelop any enemy force that assaulted the airport. Tanks and armoured vehicles were stationed in defence, their turrets tracking back and forth. Soldiers marched to and from their positions, ready for action at any notice.
Sure enough, as the bikes pulled up at the fortified entrance to the squat control building – where the SAS had been ordered to retreat to – a section of British soldiers strode out to meet them.
Chris recognised their unit instantly – after all, he and Geordie had been part of it before graduating into the SAS together. Their proudly-worn maroon berets gave them away. They were men of 2 Para, or the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment.
As the SAS troop and IRA fighters dismounted, Sergeant Holmes was recognised by the ranking officer among the Paras here – Lieutenant Rose, the same officer who'd sent them to the warehouse before the fighting started.
"You're a welcome sight Sergeant," the late twenty-something Lieutenant breathed. "But I see you've had quite a hard time."
Holmes nodded slowly. The death of trooper Doug Hatton had reduced his troop to six. As for the IRA men, only four out of their original group of nine remained.
"Trooper Hatton is KIA sir. So is O'Shea, along with four of his lot. The Rapier battery was wasted too."
"All of them? You didn't see any escape that warehouse?"
"None sir; damn flying bastards were just too fast." He sent a globule of spit on the tarmac – Chris could see it was tinged red. "I'm just glad they're the flyboys' problem now."
The Lieutenant sighed.
"It seems to be that way. As far as we can tell they've completely lost interest in those of us with boots on the ground."
He gestured to the sky, which was now filled with flashes, contrails and the sounds of the war in the air. Sure enough, all of the alien attackers had turned their attentions to the flyboys – none of them were paying any more attention to the human positions in the burning city.
"They just moved on together like a school of fish. Intel and head-shed still reckons they're a hive; worker bees with laser guns and zero free-thinking. So if they've been ordered to go after the air attack they won't deviate."
Geordie spoke up, clearly agitated.
"So what; we just rest up and have a brew then sir?" Chris could tell his mate was disappointed. He really wanted to take the fight to these aliens; it was frustrating that they were all just being rendered redundant like this.
Lieutenant Rose glared back at him, along with Sergeant Holmes. They weren't going to stand for any backtalk.
"Don't count on it trooper; they might just assemble a separate force to go after those of us on the ground. So we need to be ready for any…"
Before Rose could finish his sentence, warning sirens began to blare out across the airport – an undulating, wailing note that made Chris think of those old air raid sirens from the Blitz. PA speakers joined them, barking out orders for units to get to their positions.
"Air raid warning red; repeat, air raid warning red!"
"Top of the roof; now." Lieutenant Rose ordered, keeping his voice and posture as calm as possible. Chris knew officers weren't encouraged to shout, contrary to popular belief. The men around him didn't need much encouragement – they knew what had to be done.
As the now diverse group – SAS men, Paras and IRA fighters – entered the control building and made their way up the stairs to the roof, Chris knew the plan. They would set up their Stinger and SA-7 launchers once more, and meet this new attack.
Why the aliens were now suddenly bothering with the airport when they had seemed so focused on the approaching bombers, Chris didn't know or care. It wasn't his job to know the why – only to deal with the what.
Pushing past soldiers and air force staff who got in their way, the group made it to the roof of the control building.
They were met by the briefly-stunned looks of a few men manning an observation post on the roof, who were trying to track the multitudes of alien ships in the sky above. The Control rotunda, fixed on one side of the building, loomed over them. Chris knew there were forward air controllers stationed in there, directing anti-aircraft and if necessary, artillery fire and airstrikes. Those guys would have their work cut out now.
However, when Chris looked up at the sky - and the looming alien giant advancing through it – once more, he was met by a welcome sight.
"'Dem Basterds are gettin' hammered!" That was the Glaswegian Trooper Duncan Baxter, grinning like a madman.
Chris couldn't help but grin himself. The Vulcans and Victors had reached the Destroyer first, right after the cruise missile strike. Now they were unloading their cargo.
The Vulcans were the first to drop their bombs. The last time they had done so, it had been over the single runway of the airport in tiny Port Stanley, capital of the then Argentine-occupied Falkland Islands.
The effect of that attack – carried out by one Vulcan at a time, refuelled by dozens of Victor tankers on a journey of thousands of miles from Ascension Island to the Falklands – had been a scattering of craters across that airfield, including a single large one in the runway itself.
Here, the attack was much larger – four Vulcans each dropped twenty-one 1,000 pound high explosive bombs on and around the skyscraper-sized fin that was the bridge of the City Destroyer.
The Vulcans swept over that great fin, banking wildly away from their target after releasing their ordnance, the distinctive roar of their engines filling the air.
That great sound was followed by eight-four great explosions that erupted in a furious storm around the Destroyer's fin. Not even the cheering of Chris, his comrades and everyone around them in this airport could compete with the crescendo of the Vulcans' attack.
It all looked and sounded like a judgement from God himself, upon these creatures from hell. It was joined by others. The Victors came next, releasing their own sticks of high-explosive. More thunderous flashes erupted across the Destroyer's hull. Smaller strike aircraft followed, dropping laser-guided bombs and firing homing missiles.
As the bombers made their runs, Chris could see that they were causing damage. The control fin (or tower, to give it justice) and the hull around it was badly cratered. Fires burned in the stricken areas, and Chris swore that he could even see sparks from what looked like severed power lines.
But the aliens weren't going to let this stand. Some of the Attackers had been able to fight their way through the escorting fighters. The slower bombers were now at their mercy.
Chris saw two Attackers gain on one of the Vulcans, hunting it down like a great whale. Salvos of green fire struck the ancient aircraft right in the Rolls-Royce Olympus engines.
Its propulsion system in flames, the Vulcan spiralled to oblivion, the stricken engines letting out a haunting wail of death.
That wail ended when the flames caught the fuel tanks – and the Vulcan exploded mid-air in a thunderclap, leaving behind a great ball of fire and smoke. Flaming wreckage cascaded downward.
In a Vulcan bomber crew, only the pilot and co-pilot sat in ejector seats. The other three crewmembers – those not seated in the cockpit but in the compartment below it – had to make do with the entry/exit hatch in the fuselage, along with the silk on their backs.
Chris did not see any parachutes.
Another Vulcan was also hunted down and hit, trailing flames from its engines in a macabre contrail as it plunged to Earth. The Victors were just as vulnerable; several of these aircraft also met their fiery ends at the hands of alien pilots.
The flyboys were paying a high price today. Everyone around Chris, though, saw him staring up at the air battle.
"Focus on what's coming our way!" Lieutenant Rose snapped, as the SAS troop and their allies rushed to set up their MANPADs again.
Chris and Geordie got their Stinger launcher loaded and ready. Soon enough, what was headed to attack the airport came into view.
It wasn't pretty; a large formation of alien craft that Chris had not seen before, in the previous few days. They weren't the swift stingrays. They flew much slower, for one thing. At first sight in the distance, they looked to Chris like flying mussels or some other bulbous shellfish.
The way they moved – ponderous yet steady – as well as their armoured appearance and clear and straight trajectory from their giant mother-craft towards the city below, might have given away their purpose.
Chris was already guessing at what they were. He could see other groups of these same ships, heading to various locations across the city.
Landing craft, he thought. They must be sending in ground troops. He decided to give voice to that thought.
"Sir," he called to Lieutenant Rose, "I think they might be drop ships."
"What?"
"Troop carriers sir. Look at what they're doing – they're not going in for bombing runs."
Further off into the distance, a smaller group of these strange new craft was touching down in the still-burning parish of Holywood, to the north-east. They were under heavy AA fire as they made their approach.
Chris noticed there were a couple of other ships of a different type leading them – they looked like giant flying crabs. From their pincers, plasma rained as they cleared the way for the ships behind them. The ack-ack fire slackened, suppressed by the heavily armed craft.
Gunships – Chris knew they couldn't be called anything else.
They were clearing an LZ. Sure enough, in the wake of the Gunships' fire, three mussel-like troopships began to touch down in Holywood. The Gunships moved to land themselves – they also carried a complement of troops, it seemed.
Over the crackle of the radio, they could hear panicked reports from various units across the city. This new development was affecting the whole of Belfast.
More than a few times, they heard panicked officers and NCOs talking about the new ships touching down…and with terrified tones that chilled the soul, they described aliens pouring out from the landed ships in droves.
The flotilla approaching the airport – eight troopships leading by another four gunships – drew ever closer. Rose wasted no time. He got on the radio at the observation post on the roof, keeping his voice as calm as could be expected.
"Be advised – new enemy forces appear to be landing craft. A ground invasion is incoming; repeat, ground invasion incoming!"
Fortunately, Rose's superiors at the airport had caught on. Units were organized, defensive positions manned.
"Get those launchers ready," Holmes ordered. "If we can hit the bastards before they land, that makes everybody's lives easier! Get to it!"
They wasted no time. Even as he and Geordie focused on getting their main weapon ready, Chris realised that he'd soon be seeing the aliens up close.
Not their ships – the actual aliens themselves. The same evil bastards who had pulled the triggers on those fire beams, who had burned and murdered so many.
He and his comrades would be fighting with them now: up close and personal, in the flesh.
Besides the overwhelming hatred and anger he saved for when that moment came, a single question came into this head.
What would an alien look like?
As the landing craft advanced on their airport, heading for a landing zone located near the foot of the runway, they were met with fierce opposition.
Flak shells exploded around them, surrounding the sturdy alien craft with clouds of smoke and shrapnel. Bright streams of tracer from roof-mounted auto-cannons clawed towards them, tearing into the armoured hulls. But even without their shields, it was clear these ships had much better protection than the swifter, more numerous Attackers.
Yet there were other weapons stationed in this area. Chris knew there was an American Patriot missile battery in Victoria Park, to the immediate south of the airport.
It was under camouflage, but the Yanks had been forced to hack down quite a few trees in the park to fit the Patriot battery in – something not all of the locals were happy about.
For his part, Chris wasn't complaining; not least when a Patriot missile roared over the airport buildings, striking one of the troop carriers.
The bottom rear section of the alien troopship – which looked like a single, downward-pointing fin – was neatly severed from the hull. In two separate sections, the troopship tumbled from the sky.
It crashed into one of the buildings in a nearby business district, close to the north-western end of the airport. A booming explosion, along with the sounds of shattering glass and masonry, echoed across Belfast City Airport.
Another troop carrier, under repeated pounding from the flak shells and auto-cannon tracer, brewed up in flames, dropping out of the approaching formation.
Even afire, Chris could see the ship was still trying to land its troops, powering towards the nearest solid ground as best it could. He even saw what looked to be the main ramp lower from the rear under-section, while the vessel was still in a deteriorating descent.
Sure enough, distant yet distinct figures emerged, rushing down the ramp. They were bipedal, with two arms and two legs like a human, but covered with…flailing tentacles of some kind.
So there they are. They were ugly fuckers, even from this distance.
Even as their burning vessel began to lose control, he saw the aliens jumping clean from the ramp in mid-air towards the ground below, hoping to survive a hard-drop into combat.
Having done that himself, Chris had to hand it to them; these aliens were determined.
Still, that didn't stop him from grinning when he saw that the alien soldiers jumping from that inferno were on fire themselves; living torches that twisted and turned in death throes as they fell from the sky.
The ship itself, now a blazing wreck, crashed into on one of the green spaces near the runway, sending up a fiery-orange mushroom cloud that sprouted above the local battlefield.
That did not stop the other ships. Within seconds, the four Gunships began their runs. Two turned to the positions in the retail and commercial districts on either side of the airport. The other two approached the airport buildings, spitting fire from their cannons.
The Gunships' weapons were a much more rapid-fire variety than those seen on the Attackers – they spat endless streams of plasma into the control tower and main terminal.
"DOWN!" Holmes yelled.
As the men on the roof all threw themselves down, Chris felt the building shake as the plasma struck, the booming retort of their hits deafening to hear. This was nothing compared to the sudden explosion of shattering glass and concrete that erupted just above him.
Glass shards went flying across the roof. When Chris raised his eyes again, he saw one of Rose's Paras clutching his throat, a glass shard embedded deep into his artery.
The man choked briefly – and then he went limp.
He could hear Geordie screaming.
"What the hell was that?!"
Shattered concrete dust and black smoke filled the air, choking everyone on the roof, causing them to cough like hags.
When the smoke and dust cleared somewhat and Chris looked up, he saw to his horror that the Control rotunda was no longer there.
All that was left was a blackened, burning stump – the glass in the framed housing lay shattered all around, or melted in its frame. That was their main link to local artillery and air support, along with several machine-gun emplacements – gone in a flash.
Chris then looked at the radio, still functioning in the OP on this damned roof. They were the ones who would be calling for the big guns now.
The control rotunda was not the only casualty of the bombardment. Chris looked to where two Warrior armoured vehicles, armed with auto-cannon turrets, had been guarding the building – and saw only burning heaps of molten slag. The crews were vaporized or…Chris tried to tell himself that the black pieces of debris he saw close the tanks weren't blackened skeletons.
With barked orders and rough encouragement, Rose and Holmes rallied the men on the roof to their feet. They had to be ready for what came.
Now they could see that the troop transports had landed right in the middle of the runway – they'd made full use of the distraction provided by the gunships.
Long ramps extended from their rear ends. What looked to be legions of aliens marched down these ramps, ready to take the fight to the ground.
Directly above them, Chris heard the whine of alien engines once more. One of the two gunships that had struck the airport had joined the other ships in landing troops. But the other was flying directly towards them.
Chris and the others braced themselves for another strafing run – but then the gunship passed over their heads.
It was headed for Victoria Park. The Yanks wouldn't stand a chance…
"It's going for the Patriot battery!" Chris yelled, hefting his Stinger. He and Geordie had already loaded it. "Stand clear mates!"
With that he pulled the trigger. The missile left the launcher with a loud cough, streaming a trail of smoke towards the alien gunships engines.
It detonated, setting those engines alight.
The scream of another launcher firing echoed across the roof – Chris saw it was one of the surviving IRA men launching an SA-7. The Soviet-made missile also struck the alien engines, sending the bastard into a plunging dive, crashing somewhere south of the airport.
Chris wondered if the Americans in Victoria would offer them a beer afterwards.
Right now, he had other things to worry about, as the smoke from the fired missiles washed over the airport roof.
"Jesus, Chris!" Geordie thundered as the SAS and their allies drew their rifles and took firing positions on the roof. "How about a warning next time!"
"I yelled out a fucking warning, you twat,"Chris muttered. How about a little credit for shooting that fat bastard down? He kept it quiet. This was no time for a row.
The aliens had landed on the runway, and were now advancing in units of company strength towards the airport control and terminal buildings.
They carried what could only be guns – they looked like blaster rifles or ray guns straight out of sci-fi – in their hands, but Chris also saw they had sharpened, thick-looking tentacles flailing about from their backs, behind an armoured clamshell-like head.
Chris really didn't want to find out what it would be like to go hand-to-hand with them. Better to keep them at a distance. Fortunately, the officers had the same idea. He could hear the soldiers from the OP communicating with mortar positions located further back, somewhere behind the building.
Sure enough, mortar rounds fell with tell-tale whistles, exploding in a deadly rain around the alien warriors. Some were blown to bits, fleshy tentacles and bony limbs splaying out in all directions in a gruesome fireworks display.
But only some of the aliens met this fate. The rest scattered, expertly tacking cover. Even under fire they kept perfect formation, avoiding the mortar rounds as a group like a school of fish avoiding darting predators.
They didn't waste time in returning fire. Their plasma weapons had very impressive range, sending ringing volleys of shining green bolts towards the human defenders.
Another of the IRA men was struck in the face as he rose from cover to return fire. His fell back, his face a blackened, melted mess. Chris turned away, sickened.
He was glad when the aliens got into firing range. As one, the men on the roof opened up, sending bullets towards the advancing monsters. The machine-gun emplacements throughout the airport complex joined in, and soon the enemy was enveloped in a storm of defilade.
Now and then, the SAS men added grenade explosions, courtesy of their 203 grenade launchers slung beneath the barrels of their M-16 rifles. The IRA fighters did the same, firing off their remaining RPGs into the encroaching alien horde.
The Paras also had their own 203 grenade launchers her and there – as well as hand-thrown version. They added to the din of explosions.
The grenades and RPG had an effect – now and then an alien would lose a limb or was ripped apart in a gory mess as a result of them.
But they kept coming – further back, more troop transports brought in reinforcements. Soon enough, a great swarm of invaders was pushing towards the control tower and main terminal, outnumbering the defenders.
Furthermore, to Chris's shock, the bullets weren't working.
Well, technically they were – Chris could see the bullets tearing into alien flesh. Now and then, one would topple under concentrated heavy fire. But where a direct bullet hit would have killed or maimed a human, the alien warriors marched on, most of them completely unperturbed by the repeated hits.
Those clamshell bodies had to be bullet-proof. Right beside him, one of the soldiers from the OP took a green bolt to the chest. The man had stood to fire his weapon – he went limp and fell off the roof, into the carnage below.
Chris snarled. They should also have a bloody weak spot.
He peered through the scope on his M-16, fixing one of the alien soldiers in his sights.
It was firing away with its plasma gun, but it wasn't aiming for him – there were other soldiers fighting the aliens below them, from the lower windows of the building and outside.
So he got a chance to have a good look at it. That clamshell head definitely seemed tough – it was massive and crested, giving these creatures a commanding presence. But Chris also noted something odd. There was what looked like a long slit, running down the middle of the clamshell head, even straight through the grooved area which looked unmistakeably like the face of the thing.
What was that? Some sort of sensory organ? If so, it might be worth firing at.
Chris was no sniper – that was Geordie's job, really – but he'd gotten good accuracy scores in all the shooting exercises. Now he would put that to the test.
Aiming for the slit in the alien's face, he fired.
He grinned at the resulting sight. The bullet definitely punctured something soft – the round bore a fleshy hole in the face, spraying out purple blood. The creature toppled forward, its limbs going limp like a puppet with its strings snapped.
Chris called to the others.
"Aim for the face!"
As it turned out, he didn't need to. They'd noticed and were copying his tactic. Geordie even had his sniper rifle out – an L118A1 – and scored another kill with a heavy-calibre bullet right in his chosen alien's face-slit.
Geordie laughed.
"Bloody split down the middle!"
He was right – Chris saw the alien his mate had just killed toppling over, it's head split apart in two neat looking halves.
But he didn't have much time to wonder how that was possible – a cry of alarm from one of the OP guys brought him into the here and now.
The aliens had reach the foot of the building. Some of them were storming the entrance, spraying plasma bolts as they went. He could hear their bloodthirsty shrieks, as well as the screams of the men below.
One of the Paras clicked a white phosphorus grenade, dropping it into the now seemingly-endless tide of aliens that swarmed below. The grenade set the creature and several others near it alight, their twisted screams adding a macabre note to the already unbearable orchestra of war.
Several other Paras did the same; more screams of aliens burning to death by white phosphorus could be heard. But even that didn't stop them. They continued to swarm the building, determined to get at the foul vermin who were burning and killing their brethren.
Chris risked another look over the concrete edge of this roof – and immediately wished he hadn't. A number of the aliens were using their flexible limbs and tentacles to climb up the wall of the building - towards him and his mates.
Geordie also saw them.
"Aw shit…Sarge, we've got company!"
Holmes didn't need to bark an order. All the men on the roof began unloading onto the climbing aliens - but they just kept coming.
One of them pulled itself over the edge and onto the roof…right in front of Chris.
Shit scared, he unloaded his rifle into it – but it was too quick. A whip-like tentacle struck him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. He toppled backwards onto the concrete, with a perfect view of the creature as it loomed over him, bringing itself over the edge of the roof…
With a raw-throated yell Trooper Duncan Baxter, rushed forward, with a fire axe in hand. Chris had no clue where he'd gotten it from – there must have been one in a glass box somewhere on this miserable roof.
The Scotsman stuck the bite of the axe straight into the thing's face-slit, before slashing it downward. The whip-like tentacles lashed out in defence, forcing Baxter to pull out the axe, duck and throw himself back - but the damage had been done.
To everyone's shock, the head neatly split open just it had with the alien Geordie killed. For the first time, all of the SAS men understood why.
The two halves of the great armoured head were spread apart like an open zip-up jacket. Within that jacket, there was something else.
To his shock and disgust, Chris saw what it was. A much smaller creature lay within the open jacket, like a newborn baby in a mother's belly, or a slimy parasite in a man's chest. It peered out of its split armour, regarding the humans with large, black almond eyes.
Like the outer shell it had a large, crested head, but the skin was much smoother, softer and coloured green and purple. Chris could see it had quite thin skin – veins and blood vessels were almost exposed, especially along the head.
The whole thing – this little creature using another body like a tapeworm would a human – was sickening to look at. It reeked of ammonia and God knew what else.
But it was those eyes that got to Chris. Though the alien was much smaller than him, they reminded him of the dark, empty eyes of a shark as they looked directly at him, with murderous intent.
It had the cold stare of a predator. He was the prey.
It was then that Chris felt a sudden pain in his head – like someone was hammering into it with a chisel, like red ants were swarming in his skull and eating his brain from inside. He clutched at his head and screamed…
…and then it stopped. Geordie had fired his sniper rifle at point black range into the little alien's fleshy skull. Reduced to a bloody mess, the creature went limp. With a furious kick from Duncan, the living suit of armour toppled backward, back over the edge of the roof and into the mass of aliens below.
With a helping hand from Geordie, Chris got up. The pain in his head had gone – but he had no clue what had just happened.
He didn't have much time to think about it. Other aliens were climbing onto the roof.
"Off the bloody roof, NOW!"
That was Sergeant Holmes. Fucking déjà vu, Chris thought groggily.
What remained of the rag-tag group quickly got their arses moving down the stairs and into the building.
Just as he turned to leave, Chris caught the sight of one of the IRA guys getting grabbed by an alien tentacle. The man was then thrown straight off the roof onto the tarmac below, screaming in terror.
Seconds later, he heard a loud meaty smack from somewhere on the ground.
Then the man's screams ended.
That wasn't the end of it. As Chris and Geordie followed the others into the down stairs exit, they saw Trooper Duncan Baxter for the last time.
The tall, broad, heavy-set man from Glasgow had his fire axe drawn, his rifle cast aside by alien tentacles. He looked almost like one of Captain Nemo's men from 20,000 leagues under the Sea, facing off against a swarm of Giant Squid.
Baxter caught sight of the last two of his comrades to leave.
"Get the fuck out of here, both of you!" He yelled. "I'll hold them off!"
Chris was about to yell at him not be so fucking stupid – then he saw that the Scotsman's leg was badly scarred, most likely by a plasma bolt. He wouldn't be going anywhere on that.
Still, they both tried to bring him back – but then another of the aliens appeared just to the right of them. It sprayed a stream of plasma from its rifle.
Chris and Geordie were forced to take cover into the stairwell that lead downstairs, the bolts pinging on the door around them. They knew they had no choice but to join the others, rushing furiously into the lower levels of the building.
Thus Trooper Duncan Baxter continued to fight. He embedded the fire axe into the armour-slit of another alien warrior, this time much deeper so that it split the skull of the being inside. The creature toppled backward, dead.
Drawing his combat knife, Baxter continued to slash at the aliens as they swarmed around him – before they gleefully dismembered him with their claws and tentacles.
Belfast City Airport was lost, and was now being overrun. More of the armoured vehicles and weapon emplacements at the terminal complex had been destroyed in yet another attack run by the remaining alien gunship.
This craft continued to rain fire on the humans retreating from the airport, mowing down any who were caught in open ground. It was soon joined by another of its brethren, fresh from laying waste to the positions north-west of the airport.
Chris knew many good men had died today.
The SAS troopers, Paras, IRA men and others ran for their lives across the southern part of the airport, under covering fire from a few remaining Scorpion and Scimitar tanks, and anti-air batteries stationed in Sydenham, another parish directly south of the airport. Together with other soldiers of different units, nations and groups joining them from the now overrun main terminal, they fell back to another rally point at the airport's south-eastern edge.
Yet all of them knew they'd made the aliens pay a heavy price.
Chris could now see the great burning wreck of the gunship he'd shot down, as they finally arrived at a large car park on the south-eastern tip of the airport. It lay partly submerged in Conn's Water, an inlet just near Victoria Park.
A small victory. Chris was about to witness another.
The Patriot missile battery in Victoria Park let loose another missile. The Gunship that had been pursuing them since they had fled the control building was rewarded for its efforts – with a missile straight into its face.
The craft crashed down onto the southern end of the runway in a blazing wreck. The other gunship turned away, erring on the side of caution.
It didn't change the fact that they were losing.
As the surviving ranking officer present in this part of the airport, Lieutenant Rose had assembled the large rag-tag group of about fifty men who'd fled the control tower and terminal into a roughly organised group, and they had taken up defensive positions in the south-eastern car park. Cars and trucks were turned into impromptu pillboxes, as they prepared for the next alien assault.
Fortunately, that would be delayed. Rose had used the radio – salvaged from the control tower observation post – to call in a mass artillery barrage on the overrun terminal and control buildings. The aliens occupying that area were now being hammered with high explosive. They would be delayed – just long enough for the survivors to reorganize themselves.
From his own spot that he shared with Geordie, Chris could hear the booms of the distant guns and the thunder of shells as they rained down on nearly the whole of the airport which was now in alien hands. There was no sound of war more awe-inspiring than the thunder of artillery.
All across the city, the sound of gunfire – both the familiar sounds of human weaponry and the shriek of other-worldly plasma – was omnipresent. Alien warriors had landed elsewhere throughout Belfast, targeting many key locations besides Belfast City Airport. Going by the reports and information the survivors had been able to get on the battered radio, the situation was not good.
Bitter fire-fights between human and alien were raging throughout Belfast. The battle had deteriorated into the kind of classic urban combat that guaranteed heavy casualties, as streets, roads, buildings and even rooms within buildings became contested kill zones.
The IRA and other active militant groups had been useful allies in this stage of the battle – they'd help to lure swarms of the alien warriors into traps, using improvised roadside bombs and ambushes in the tight alleys of Belfast. But still the aliens persisted.
The death toll continued to rise. Many units in the city were by now under-strength. Yet the invaders had paid a high price as well. More troop transporters continued to land more alien soldiers – as well as looked to be accompanying combat drones and bizarre walking vehicles – but they had not managed to overrun the whole city.
Not that it would matter - Chris knew they wanted to burn Belfast to the ground, not occupy it. He looked up to see the massive City Destroyer, which by now blotted out of the sun above them, casting the city in a grim darkness. He supposed that was only right.
He hadn't been able to pay attention to the Destroyer – the cause of all this – during the worst of the fighting at the airport. Now he could see the giant ship had been badly scarred by the repeated air attacks – fires burned along its hull. The Belfast air attack had used greater firepower than many others across the world – many air forces had depleted air and ordnance strength.
The damage on the Destroyer by the bombers, especially around the control tower, had been bad enough for the ship to slow down, even temporarily stop. That was why it hadn't already unleashed its main cannon on Belfast.
Perhaps that was some sort of damage control measure, Chris reckoned. Still, none of it had been enough to bring the ship down. All it had done, it seemed, was delay the inevitable.
So all of this; this whole well-planned trap and subsequent bloody battle, was for nothing.
Chris felt the depression, an intense and hopeless despair, wash over him like a heavy tide, drowning out the breath of hope he'd tasted. Within minutes, it would all be over. He'd join his parents and Lisa, his sister.
Maybe that wouldn't be so bad.
Geordie noticed his mood.
"It won't matter soon, you know? All we did back there. Shooting 'em down, giving it to the bastards back at the airport. Give it a bit," he pointed up at the Destroyer, "and that thing will burn it all."
Chris shrugged.
"At least we gave a good fight," he sighed. "Took a few of them down with us."
Geordie let out a small smile.
"Aye," he nodded. "I can die happy with that." Then he put his head in his hands. "We need a bloody miracle."
The Navigator began the final adjustments for the firing position. The native air attacks had been intense – they had come too close to the control centre to comfort.
Only the fact that the Navigator's chamber was hidden deep inside the control fin, at the very rear of the base where it joined the indentation in the hull, had protected it from harm. But many vital systems had been damaged – even the propulsion system had needed repairs.
None of that warranted much more than a moment's delay, however. The Destroyer only had to slow down and briefly stop, in order to repair the most serious damage.
This vessel would not fall. The natives had failed – their attacks continued, but still they had nothing that could remove the hiveship from their sky. Soon, this world would fall to the Swarm – assimilated for their growth and survival, like many others before it.
This Destroyer had arrived at its target late, while many others were already in the middle of the firing process. The Navigator had intended to arrive over the target far more quickly.
But it mattered not. During the firing process, it was best for all systems to be at acceptable function. The Navigator had been right to pause for brief repairs before continuing.
The Navigator was about to ready the main plasma beam for firing – it had full control over that process from its chamber – when something new appeared in the gestalt of the Hive Mind.
Pain. Fear. Greater than anything felt before.
Without warning, one of the other Destroyers fell silent. Then another, and another after that. The Navigator hissed, sending a general signal demanding to know what was going on. But that proved impossible – the chaos caused by the native signal disruption still persisted.
So instead, the Navigator immersed itself into the gestalt of the Hive Mind. What it discovered…it had to be impossible…
Destroyers were burning, falling. Their broods and swarms, as well as their Navigators, screamed in pain as they burned to death. One after the other, they were consumed by fire.
The Navigator sifted through this psychic chaos in the Hive Mind, which was now inflamed in pain. It could not grasp how the Hive Fleet was being destroyed so quickly – the natives had failed so far to bring the Destroyers down.
Then it came. A great wail of despair from the main hiveship above – a great psychic cry of pain so great, so powerful that the Navigator shrieked in raw, unbearable pain upon receiving it. Its mouth let out a screech greater than any it had ever let free.
It felt like a blast of unparalleled proportions, spreading devastation throughout the wounded Hive Mind, which shuddered and screamed, shaken by an unstoppable earthquake of mental power.
The Navigator continued to howl in pain. Several nearby systems exploded in great showers of sparks. Many of the Destroyer's drones and warriors were killed instantly, their minds boiled in the colossal psychic backlash.
Nothing like this had been felt in this Hive Fleet, not since…the death of the Queen, at the hands of the great enemy.
As quickly as it came, the cry was gone; the ones that made it were no more.
The Navigator could not grasp this. Even as it recovered from the psychic backlash, it searched the great gestalt of the Hive Mind for its Master in orbit. It had to be there…
It was not.
The main Hiveship – the heart of the Hive Fleet – was destroyed. Already the tell-tale side effects were appearing.
The Destroyer was losing power – already there was no longer enough energy to power the main cannon. The Navigator swiftly acted, shutting down all non-essential systems, just to keep its vessel aloft.
Others were not so fortunate. The Attacker swarms lost power almost instantly, dropping to the city below or into the surrounding sea like clouds of dead flies. The warrior broods still fighting on the ground lost power to their transports and gunships, which also crashed to the surface.
Many of the warriors were themselves left badly disorientated by the Hive Fleet's sundering. They could no longer co-ordinate their efforts effectively.
The Hive Fleet – what remained of the Hive Fleet – was falling apart. The Navigator might even be the last of its kind…
No. A few Destroyers still remained, their Navigators with them. One of them had even landed, having begun initial drilling to the core.
The other Destroyers were continuing the assault on their selected targets. The Navigator paused. As it tried to process communications still available to it, it understood.
The natives had struck at the main cannon – the feedback, in turn, had brought down the other Destroyers. How the Hiveship had been destroyed was not clear.
It mattered not. The Navigator formed a new plan. The Navigator caste could think for themselves when required; especially when it served in ensuring the continuation of the Swarm.
It would not make itself vulnerable by trying to use the main cannon. Instead it would splinter off from the others in the wake of the destruction, just as the now destroyed Hive Fleet had splintered from the Queen's Fleet, following her death.
The protocols and instincts for forming a new splinter fleet were well established. That was why the Swarm was always undefeated.
The Navigator would retreat this Destroyer, along with what remained of its broods, from this world. It would find any resources on the other planets and moons in-system that it could extract on its own, before leaving this star system and making for deep space.
It would then rebuild its broods, and grow new ships and forces. With time a new, less well-defended prey world would be found – one that would make for an easier harvest.
When the Swarm lost a battle, only a single hiveship needed to escape to form a new Hive Fleet. That was why the Swarm was not so easily crushed; even a humble Destroyer could form the seed of a new Hive Fleet, given enough time.
The Navigator let out a rasped breath, cycling its tendrils through the ship's systems as it regained its confidence, its sense of control. It had to.
Now, it would be the master of a new Hive Fleet. It would not fail.
All of Belfast had expected to burn. Chris' eyes never left the central dome on the City Destroyer. He would look the bastards in the face when they unleashed their fire beam.
No one expected the lights on the great ship to suddenly flicker and darken. Nobody expected the clouds of alien Attackers to suddenly fall from the sky like a rain of dead animals coughed up by a Hurricane. Nor did they expect the alien warriors to suddenly lose morale and retreat to their grounded troopships.
Certainly no-one expected the City Destroyer to suddenly pull away from the city of Belfast, after coming so close to destroying it.
Only when the City Destroyer ascended high in the sky, heading towards the stratosphere, did it become clear.
The aliens were retreating. All of their single ships were falling dead, bereft of power and crashing uselessly across the city, across the Lough, while the City Destroyer was beating a retreat. Belfast had weathered the storm.
Chris couldn't believe it. Even as someone switched on the radio – God only knew how the BBC was still broadcasting – he couldn't believe it.
He couldn't believe that nearly all the other City Destroyers across the world had been brought down. He couldn't believe that the Mothership had been destroyed in orbit.
He definitely couldn't believe that he was alive. That everyone here, the survivors of the human race, were all alive.
Yet as the soldiers all around him and across the city cheered and fired off their rifles into the sky, as Geordie hugged him, laughing and screaming like a madman, as he shed raw tears for Doug, for Duncan, for all those who didn't make it…he knew it was true.
Britain's City Destroyer hadn't been shot down, Chris knew. But it didn't matter. Belfast had survived. That was their victory – the city still lived.
All who still lived, across the United Kingdom, now had a chance to survive. Humanity, united as one people, would survive.
They were all alive.
He was alive.
They'd won.