Free Heaven's Fall by David S. Goyer, Michael Cassutt

of North America and South America were overlaid with a nasty yellow. So were much of Europe and parts of Africa.
    Only the far northern or southern regions seemed immune. China, India, and Australia were the only areas clear of this yellow.
    “We knew this,” Xavier said, “or we could guess it. But what does it mean? What’s happening there?
    “Well,” Taj said, “that’s a good question.”
    Rectangular video images appeared around the border of the giant map. As Taj spoke, he highlighted each one so that it filled half the screen for a moment. (The images had superimposed identification, which was helpful: Yahvi could recognize most major Earth landmarks and a lot of terrain, but only that.)
    What she saw:
    A field in Kansas . . . the blue bowl of the sky, golden wheat and a giant tractor-combine rolling past, a human farmer visible in the cab . . . with an angular Reiver “mantis” type riding outside the cab behind him.
    The canyons of downtown Manhattan, marvelously dressed people crossing sunny streets . . . with a cluster of Reiver “anteaters” in a crosswalk.
    A seaside café in San Francisco—Golden Gate Bridge to the left, seascape to the right—and another cluster of anteaters posing like tourists at a café!
    “If that’s alien domination,” Xavier said, “sign me up.” No one laughed—no one but Yahvi. She earned a sharp glance from her father; no response at all from her mother.
    Then the images changed.
    She saw a lake bottom in Minnesota, dying fish flopping in the mud, the only visible water a small puddle . . . and a strange-looking machine chewing up the shore, as if dredging a new course for a river.
    A refugee camp in Louisiana. It looked like refugee camps all through history, she imagined: emaciated people, eyes staring out of dirty faces.
    What should have been a beautiful mountain in Montana . . . its top sliced off by a machine that appeared to be a giant cousin of the mud dredger. An avalanche of slag was pouring down one side, spilling onto the landscape.
    Downtown Cleveland, leveled as if hit by a nuclear weapon.
    Then a factory in El Paso, Texas, row on row of some kind of vehicles. Yahvi realized there were hundreds, and they looked a bit like the military tanks she knew from history class, but bulging with nasty-looking weapons, not just a single cannon barrel. Their turrets were transparent on top and showed that each was driven by a Reiver.
    The last . . . a desert landscape, likely Arizona or Nevada . . . and a row of squat, newly built (well, they were shiny and a couple looked unfinished) towers stretching far into the distance, where a mound of some kind rested.
    “We have thousands of such images, of course,” Taj said. “These are merely samples.”
    “We’ve seen similar,” Rachel said. “But what is it like? This is the middle of the twenty-first century . . . with radio, TV, Internet, nations just can’t be . . . isolated.”
    “Of course they can!” Pav said. “When I was a kid, there was North Korea. Albania before that.”
    “But this is North America !” Rachel said.
    “And South America, too.” Xavier was indicating several videos they hadn’t gotten to yet.
    “Here is the situation,” Taj said. “On the surface, the Aggregate Nations look and act much as they did before.
    “Internet access to the Americas and much of Europe is firewalled. It sort of works—but you never know what’s not going through or coming out.”
    Pav was shaking his head. “How did this happen? Didn’t we fight ?”
    Taj shrugged. “Yes. There are still outbreaks, revolts against the Aggregates . . . and places where their control is far from absolute.
    “But you probably know their advantages better than I. They aren’t susceptible to most weapons—only to vast amounts of heat, electricity, or chemical-biological attack, which is incredibly difficult to field outside a laboratory or a small battlefield.
    “And their initial arrival, eighteen years ago,