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  “That’s what’s weird,” Airman Omid replied. “I have it descending through 15,000 meters altitude, and the contact is going almost 3,500 kilometers an hour. It is faster than any plane I know. It will be here in just over a minute--before our aircraft can be airborne.”

  “Three thousand kilometers an hour?” Basir asked. “And it just showed up at 15,000 meters? That’s no aircraft! That’s the aliens returning! Sound the alarm--we’re under attack!” Launch all aircraft!”

  * * *

  “Good evening, Imam Jomeh Turhani, General Pahlavi, city council, and staff,” Colonel Kuru Shirazi greeted the assembled rulers and administrators of the region. The general had commandeered the Venus Hotel as his headquarters, and the meeting was being held in the second floor dining room overlooking the Gulf of Oman. The hotel was close to Chabahar’s port and had easy access to all the major roads out of town, which made it excellent for command and control. It also had a great view of the ocean, which would have been appreciated…at any other time.

  “Here is the current status,” Shirazi said, bring up the first slide with a mental grimace. “As you can see, we currently hold an area which is almost a perfect square of approximately 100 kilometers a side, or about 10,000 square kilometers. It goes from Konarak on the other side of Chabahar Bay east to the Pakistani border, and then north for just over 100 kilometers to the town of Pishin. Any travel further north exposes you to high level radiation—”

  “Sir!” a junior soldier yelled, running into the room.

  “What is it, Corporal?” Shirazi asked. He didn’t know if he was the ‘sir’ in question, but he was embarrassed one of his troops had interrupted the meeting. His tone indicated that very well.

  “Sir!” the trooper exclaimed again, but he was now focused on Shirazi. “The aliens are attacking!”

  “Who’s attacking?” Shirazi asked. “The Pakistanis?” The general had been correct— the Pakistanis were trying to take advantage of their weakness.

  “No sir! It’s the aliens!”

  “Who? The Americans?” Shirazi wouldn’t put it past the Great Satan to attack them while they were trying to put the country back together.

  “No, sir, it’s the aliens. From outer space. Two spaceships just landed! One landed downtown and the other at the airfield! The aliens that bombed us have invaded and are destroying the city! The militia is already responding!”

  “The Basiji are attacking the aliens? Without waiting for orders from me?”

  “One of the alien spaceships landed near their headquarters. They didn’t ask permission; they immediately attacked to drive the infidels off our soil!”

  Shirazi shook his head. That figured. The Basij commander was headstrong, and Shirazi had already had words with him once. If he had already attacked, a coordinated response was out of the question, but at least he could organize the regular army units into a cohesive fighting force.

  He had two battalions of Revolutionary Guards’ mechanized infantry and two battalions of Revolutionary Guards’ tanks under his command, although many of them were stationed at the Pakistani border or conducting search and rescue operations up north. His one company of special forces was up north, too. Nothing could be done about it now—no one had foreseen the aliens landing in downtown Chabahar, nor had they ever planned for something similar. They’d have to make it up as they went along.

  “Excuse me, Imam, General,” Shirazi said as he headed for the door. “Time to go show those aliens how we Iranians fight when they are on our soil.”

  * * *

  Basij Captain Aabir Ghazali glanced around the corner of the building. Four of the large blue and black aliens were coming up the street toward them, but had stopped 100 meters away to inspect a truck that had crashed into a storefront. It was Suleiman’s truck. His lieutenant had promised to run the aliens over; he had obviously never made it. He was supposed to wait while the forces were preparing their assault, but he had always been a bit gung-ho about proving himself.

  As Ghazali watched, he realized the aliens’ chitin was blue; the black appeared to be some sort of armor they were wearing. It had a vaguely robotic appearance; could it be some sort of powered armor? He had heard they were trying to work out some sort of powered armor in Tehran, but had never had any success with it. Apparently, the aliens had. They also had some sort of weird alien rifle. It looked plastic—almost like a child’s toy—and didn’t have any visible magazine that projected from it like the older model AK-47s his troops used. It couldn’t hold many shots then. Excellent.

  Ghazali turned and held up four fingers to the technical truck idling behind him. Based on the Somali model, a Russian KShKM 12.7 mm machine gun was mounted to the back of the Toyota pickup truck. The gunner and driver both nodded their understanding. He didn’t give the attack sign yet, though; they were waiting for the other two trucks so they could mount a coordinated assault.

  The Captain snuck another glance around the corner. One of the aliens was pulling something from the passenger side of the crashed truck. The sunlight glinted off the circular object—one of the compact disks Suleiman was so proud of. Another of the aliens smashed in the driver’s window and began pulling Suleiman’s body from the truck.

  The militiaman struggled in the alien’s grasp—he wasn’t dead! “No!” Captain Ghazali shouted. He couldn’t allow it. He wouldn’t allow it! “Adhhab!” he yelled to the gun crew. “Go! Go! Go!”

  The driver over-revved the engine, and the truck fishtailed out and around the corner. As soon as the driver got the truck back under control, the gunner began firing at the aliens on full automatic, playing the stream of bullets back and forth across the truck and aliens. Suleiman was struck several times, and he spasmed and fell from the alien’s hands. Claws? Ghazali couldn’t tell.

  Bullets whined and ricocheted off the truck and the enemy soldiers, sparking brightly as they hit metal. The alien closest to Ghazali fell, followed by one of the ones on the other side of the truck. The gunner started yelling, “Allahu akbar!” as he continued firing his weapon, and the driver accelerated toward the alien troops.

  As soon as the bullet stream left the vicinity of the downed MinSha, the one behind the truck popped back up again, and the one in the street rolled to its belly. Both pointed their rifles at the truck, and a few flashes of light could be seen from them. The gunner screamed once as he fell over backward out of the truck to bounce once on the asphalt. He didn’t move again.

  The truck careened out of control, and the alien trooper threw itself nimbly out of the way as the truck went past him to slam into Suleiman’s truck. “Saeidni,” the driver yelled, asking for help. He appeared pinned in the cab of the truck. “Saeidni!” One of the aliens skittered over to the truck and put its rifle into the window. The screaming stopped.

  “No!” Ghazali yelled. He came around the corner and aimed his AK-47 at one of the aliens and pulled the trigger. He saw several flashes as his rounds sparked off the alien’s armor, and then another one from the alien’s rifle, which was pointed directly at him.

  * * *

  The airfield’s sirens began sounding, and men began scrambling to their aircraft. As the majority of the fighters were in underground bays, not everything was initially visible to the people in the tower, but the pulsing shriek of the alarm was unmistakable, especially after the alien assault three days prior. Only four of the aircraft from Chabahar had been able to launch in time to participate in the defense of the country; none of them had returned from the nuclear nightmare.

  After the attack, the decision had been made to keep two aircraft in a permanent alert status, and those two began rolling toward the runway within seconds of hearing the siren’s banshee-like wail.

  “The target just split!” Airmid Omid exclaimed. “There are now two targets inbound and both appear to be slowing! One appears to be heading for us; the other is heading for Chabahar!”

  The fighters reached the runway and began to roll, afterburners blazing as
they tried to claw their way to the sky.

  “Look!” Omid screamed, standing and pointing to the south.

  An enormous shadow passed over the tower. As the ship came into sight on the other side, Basir drew an involuntarily breath. The black tube was easily twice as long and twice as wide as one of the field’s fighters—no, it was bigger—and had a number of tubes sticking out from under its chin and on its sides. Underneath, there were at least six and maybe eight turbofans providing lift as it slowed. What the tubes were became more readily apparent as the tail of the craft went past the tower. There were two more of the tubes mounted on the back ramp, with aliens—the same praying mantis-looking aliens that had nuked his country—working them. The ends of the tubes flashed, and facilities around the airfield began exploding.

  The chin tubes flashed, and the lead MiG-29 racing down the runway exploded in a ball of fire as its starboard motor detonated. The second fighter was shredded by the shrapnel of the first, and its pilot pulled back on the throttles, trying to stop the suddenly unflyable aircraft. Smoke pouring from the port motor, it went off the end of the runway and slammed into a sand dune. The chin tubes on the alien craft flashed again, and the second MiG joined its section-mate as an expanding ball of fire.

  The giant alien craft set down on the ramp area and began disgorging its load of praying mantis-like beings. One of the aliens looked up as it skittered toward them and saw the men in the tower looking back down at it, their mouths agape. Without breaking stride, it pointed its rifle at them and fired.

  “Down!” Basir yelled as he dove for the floor; Omid was half a second behind him as he hit the floor. When nothing else happened, Basir looked up—several 2.5 centimeter holes had been melted through the tower’s windows.

  “By the seventh level of hell,” Basir swore. “That was close.” When Omid didn’t reply, he rolled back to look at the airman. A 2.5 centimeter hole went through his forehead and out the back of his head.

  Basir looked around the tower. Everyone else had left their positions to cower under their stations. Even though Basir realized that was probably the wisest choice, he had to know what was going on, so he crawled to the wall and peeked out the window.

  Everything was burning. In addition to the two MiG-29 fighters, it looked like several more aircraft had ventured out of their subterranean lairs, only to meet and be destroyed by the aliens before they could even get clear of their hangars.

  Light flashed from the right—more of a sustained blast that came from the sky rather than the troopship—and Basir turned to find someone had started the H-47 Chinook helicopter on the maintenance pad. The light from above had cut the helicopter in half, and it fell apart as its rotors pulled it in two different directions. The pieces fell over, and the blades impacted the tarmac, showering the area in shrapnel. Its fuel poured out onto the pad, and another conflagration blossomed as it ignited, covering both pieces in flames. Another H-47 helicopter burned silently nearby, although Basir couldn’t tell what had set it ablaze.

  “Yes!” he exclaimed as the first of the airfield’s tanks rolled from behind the easternmost hangar.

  “What?” asked one of the troopers from under his console.

  “The tanks have arrived!” Basir shouted over the scream of the siren. “They will take care of the infidels!”

  Several of the air traffic controlmen slid from under their equipment and belly-crawled to the window to watch, but it was over before they got there. As the first tank cleared the corner of the building, smoke erupted from its gun barrel as it fired.

  With a loud clang, the round hit the alien ship and ricocheted off. Before the tank could fire again, one of the aliens on the back ramp spun and fired at the tank, and the weapon on the side of the alien ship began flashing, too. Holes appeared in the tank, and then one of the enemy weapons hit something explosive inside the vehicle, and it detonated. The tank’s turret was blown off by the force of the explosion and landed next to the fiercely-burning tank.

  The tanks that followed were all destroyed before they could fire a shot.

  “What are they doing?” one of the technicians asked from the safety of his console.

  “I don’t know,” Basir admitted. “They’re all carrying things back to their ship. It looks like…it looks like the videos they show from America where people are looting after they don’t get their way about something. These aliens are nothing more than petty criminals!”

  “What are our forces doing?” the same technician asked.

  “Dying mostly,” Basir replied.

  The looting continued for another 30 minutes until, at some unheard signal, the aliens returned to their ship. They loaded back aboard, and it flew up into the air, guns winking. Basir couldn’t see anyone firing back at them; the aliens appeared to be committing acts of wanton destruction, just for the fun of it.

  The ship started to move off, but then it turned back to point at the tower. Basir saw movement, and he watched in horror as a cover retracted on a large box mounted underneath the ship, revealing eight large caliber holes. Missiles leapt from three of them, obliterating the tower.

  * * * * *

  Asbaran Solutions - 3

  Colonel Shirazi could tell he was headed in the right direction—everyone was fleeing toward him, with cars jostling each other and coming into his lane in their haste to escape. As he regained control of the vehicle after his third trip onto the sidewalk to avoid a head-on collision, the traffic cleared, and he began seeing his forces.

  Unfortunately, they were running past him at nearly the same rate the civilians had.

  “Where are you going?” he asked as a group of soldiers ran past. They were unarmed and didn’t stop to talk.

  Shirazi went another block and saw the reason why the traffic had cleared—a massive accident completely blocked all four lanes of travel. To make matters worse, it looked like a platoon of tanks had subsequently run over the cars; the intersection wouldn’t be passable without a fleet of heavy-duty tow trucks.

  Abandoning his car, he continued west. It rapidly became apparent that he needed to spend more time exercising and less time making presentations—he was winded within three blocks.

  The sound of diesel engines reached him after another block, and he rounded a corner to find a platoon of T-72 tanks. The commander’s hatch was open on all four tanks, and four men stood in front of the lead tank. Based on the gesturing, they appeared to be arguing.

  “What are you doing?” Shirazi asked as he jogged up.

  The men turned on him, and one of them, a sergeant, started to yell at Shirazi, but then several of them recognized their regimental commander at the same time.

  “Atten-hut!” a sergeant called, and they all came to attention.

  “Who’s in charge here?” Shirazi asked, looking at each of them. One staff sergeant and three sergeants.

  “I am,” said the staff sergeant.

  “What is going on?”

  “Well, we got the word that we were being invaded, so we manned the tanks the best we could. Both the lieutenant and the sergeant first class were unavailable, so I led the tanks here,” the staff sergeant explained, “however, when we got here, we couldn’t find anyone to tell us what to do, and we don’t have radio communications with base.”

  “He was afraid,” the sergeant who had called ‘attention’ said. “We wanted to advance and engage the enemy, but he stopped us here.”

  Shirazi’s eyes went back to the staff sergeant, and he raised an eyebrow. “Is that true? The town is under attack, and you stopped because you were afraid?”

  “Absolutely not,” the staff sergeant replied. “I will kill him for saying so.”

  “Later,” Shirazi replied. “Let’s deal with the aliens before we start killing each other. If you weren’t afraid, why did you stop?”

  “I stopped because I didn’t have communications with headquarters, nor did I have infantry support. I judged that to charge blindly into battle with no informati
on on the enemy and no support was unwise, so I stopped here to get communications with headquarters and organize a combined assault.”

  Shirazi narrowed his eyes, but the man didn’t flinch. Caution, probably, rather than cowardice. Maybe. “What do you hear from headquarters?”

  “Nothing, sir. You’re the first officer I’ve been able to find since we left the base. We had some infantry run past earlier, but they wouldn’t stop.”

  “Okay,” Shirazi said, “here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to move up until we make contact with the enemy. At that time, we will set up blocking positions while we try to get infantry support for an assault. If we can’t find any support, or it looks like the enemy is going to break out, we will attack.”

  “Yes, sir!” the men chorused, happy to have some direction.

  “Get back to your tanks, men, and let’s move out!” Shirazi followed the staff sergeant back to his tank.

  “Did you want to take command of the tank?” the staff sergeant asked as the colonel climbed onboard.

  “No, the tank is yours,” Shirazi replied. “I am going to ride with you until we get there.”

  The man nodded and climbed into the commander’s hatch. Reaching in, he pulled out a headset. “Sorry, the cord won’t reach, but you’ll want this to protect your hearing.”

  Shirazi saw he was right—even at idle, the tanks made a phenomenal amount of noise; he’d just been in too much of a hurry before to notice. They were a peripheral distraction until he put on the headset and noticed how loud they really were.

  And then the motors powered up, the tanks rolled forward, and they got really loud. Shirazi stood on the top deck of the tank behind the turret and leaned up against it, hanging onto the mount for the machine gun.

  He put his head next to the ear of the commander’s helmet. “Do you have comms with headquarters or anyone else yet?” he yelled.