After their return, the aliens spent a lot more time exploring outside their Domes. The result was a lot more conflict, including the first and only confirmed alien casualty of the whole invasion.
A couple of weeks after the second landings, a sniper dinged an alien wandering above ground in Central Park, which must have damaged some sensors because as it headed for cover it ran over one of our mines, which slowed it down, then made a left where it should have made a right and apparently was totally disoriented. We damaged it some more to where it was running in circles at a mere 70 kilometers an hour, exceeding the Park speed limit by not much more than cars used to, and then we pounded it with a salvo of heavier artillery. When the pieces finally stopped moving they were at the bottom of a seven-meter-deep crater. We got a few of them out before the alien rescue team showed up and took the rest back, for a hero’s cremation or a loser’s burial or whatever they did with their people who got splatted.
All I’ll say about those who died there is that, like everyone who fought the aliens, they were heroes, and that these gave their lives to particularly good effect. Those few chunks of alien we got out of that pit were invaluable. Not only have they told us a lot over the years about the Romeo-10’s hexapod moiety, and thus about exobiology and (by comparison) Earth biology, but our Korex Armor was developed from the pieces’ battered armor.
Just about as soon as they got back, the aliens became a lot nastier and a lot scarier. They launched raiding parties into the closest inhabited areas, aggressively hunting down large gatherings of people. And it was for some crazy reason about scalping! They scalped dozens or hundreds alive, killing only those who resisted too much or who futilely tried to prevent them from scalping others. They were strategic about finding target-rich environments; there were attacks on hospitals, stadiums, music venues, and the like, even a couple of relocation centers. The vids showing hordes of people screaming for pain relief and later lining up to get regenerative therapy—and the reports of a number who died—led to several large rallies calling for the military to do something about the attacks. The cry for nukes was coming from civilians now.
For a while it was just too crazy to believe. In the third week we tried doing a few decoy events with realistic androids, to see if we could get a successful ambush, but the aliens either blew away the surrounding artillery before trying to scalp the ’droids—and then blowing them away, too—or as with most real gatherings, just didn’t show up.
Then it stopped as mysteriously as it started—one day scalping, the next nothing until the aliens apparently switched crazy pills and they started going after sheep!
Instead of large gatherings of people, it was now herds of sheep that were at risk. “Raping cows, killing women, or vice versa” … it was just … too … alien!
It was truly frightening at first for the whole world. Instead of doing whatever they were doing near their Domes, they started searching further and further, visiting smaller and smaller cities. What had been a mean-spirited spectator sport—watching the aliens trash Shanghai, Tokyo, and New York City—now became a participator sport for places such as Los Angeles, Jakarta, and Moscow. There was a huge panic. Then the aliens hit Edinburgh, Melbourne, and Sydney and the raiding quickly ended, apparently because near these the aliens found sheep.
Just … too … alien!
But about a week after the switch, we decided that only one crazy-pill had been involved.
Several days before the switch, there had been a curious occurrence at one of the Alt-Hab relocation camps in the extreme south of New Zealand, on Stewart Island. It had been built next to the 20-bunk Mason Bay Hut, a remote camping site at the edge of the temperate rainforest on a long abandoned sheep farm now being restored. A day or two after the aliens returned from the Belter Fleet–Moon battle, people sighted a single bipedal Romeo-10 wandering the forest line. At first it was dismissed as a wild rumor. But soon the lone alien’s presence near the village was confirmed. It watched people from what in a human would be a respectful distance, scuttled away if anyone came near, intentionally or otherwise, but then came back.
The former New Yorkers settling there were apprehensive, and then more apprehensive when a few shots were taken at it, but even then, the alien did not retaliate. Nevertheless, they held a town meeting and put up a “No Alien Hunting—Yes, We ARE Serious!” sign on the road in, with a silhouette and the rather large amount of the fine they’d settled on.
A few days later, after the pot-shots stopped, the alien added a larger, looser multi-colored covering, half a meter wide and a bit under two meters high, over its close-fitting silvery armor. At first the townsfolk were not sure what to make of this. Some people said it looked like a zombie tottering around, others, like a life-size Muppet, only not as fuzzy. Finally somebody joked, “He’s disguising himself as a human!” and everybody realized it was true. So they started treating it like a dull but friendly human.
The vids are hilarious even now. In the first few the alien just lumbers through the village with its misshapen body and puppet-like walk, and various people of the village give greetings, including a “HEL-lo, sweetheart!” with a kiss blown, a “Good morning, sir or madam as the case may be,” and even a bit of “G’day, mate” that these city folk were picking up from the native suppliers bringing supplies from Halfmoon Bay.
Then Russell Morris, one of those locals, happened to bring a truckload of sheep into town to restart the sheep farm while the alien was tottering around. The alien saw his sheep truck and grabbed one. Russell shouted and grabbed it back. Why he didn’t right then lose his head, literally, no one knows. But instead the alien dropped a vial of pale blue liquid on the ground and continued to haul off the sheep to parts unknown, and that was the last seen of either. The farmer kept his head and the vial.
Some time later Russell found an assayer who confirmed that he had acquired a few grams of Catalyst 74,597, alias Hurricanase. In the meantime, just a day or two later, the crazy switch to sheep hunting had taken place.
When the reports of this strange interlude finally trickled up the line, about six people I knew of had the same “ah-hah!” moment: Scalps … Sheep … Hair!