The Fall of Night

Chapter Thirty-Two: Backs to the Wall

London, United Kingdom

The map on the wall showed Britain’s death throes.

“Explain it to me again,” Langford said, as calmly as he could. He felt slightly better, even though he had reprimanded Erica for ordering Sara to slip him a sedative with his coffee; there might have been something that only he could deal with. “Why are we having problems?”

Rolf Lommerde flinched. He had problems with soldiers, particularly armed soldiers; he had reacted as through the soldiers who had guarded the small building were wolves, with him cast in the role of the sheep. He had been on the verge of ivory-tower status, but unlike many academics, he had real experience in handling problems; he had coordinated some of the relief efforts that had taken place in England following the flooding of 2020.

“It’s complicated,” he said. The government had never appointed a military supervisor to Lommerde’s headquarters during the flooding; he had been able to pretend that the soldiers working on the relief effort didn’t exist, or were just policemen in funny uniforms. “It would take a long time to explain…”

“I’m a smart guy and I have time until my staff decides that it’s time for me to be briefed,” Langford snapped. He knew how to delegate and he had a good staff who had actually prepared for country-wide emergencies, but there were just too many fires that needed to be put out. “Explain it to me in layman’s terms!”

Lommerde took a long breath. Langford wondered with a hint of uncharacteristic malice if he had ever been called upon to explain anything in anything but jargon and buzzwords before, or if he had just dazzled his listeners with babble. It wouldn’t have been difficult; the government the Russians had destroyed had been long on buzzwords and short on action. The bastards had left him with a terrible mess to sort out before the Russians started to attack Britain directly again.

“Think of a city as a black hole,” Lommerde said finally, his jaw working frantically. Langford smiled to himself he was probably wondering if Langford would have him shot for failure. He was perfectly safe from that fate, but there was no need to tell him that; he might break out more buzzwords. “It sucks in supplies and so on from the countryside, power stations, water stations and so on. Each city needs thousands upon thousands of tons of supplies to work properly; the newsagent on the corner must be replenished every few days, just to ensure that they maintain their business. Understand?”

Langford ignored the hint of derision in his tone and nodded.

“Good,” Lommerde said. “Now… the Russians hit us pretty badly, destroying several power plants and transformers; I dread to imagine what would have happened if they had targeted nuclear plants specifically, but they left those alone. This caused a lot of panic and disruption; the supplies in supermarkets and shops were often removed by desperate people, or at the very least sold out rapidly. Worse, they hit Europe and devastated the supply chain there.”

He took a breath. “As you know, sir, the European Union regulations stated that we had to purchase most of our food from Europe, as they purchased items from us,” he continued. “Those supply lines have been broken more or less completely, while we cannot get replacements quickly from other sources, such as America or South America. I have taken the liberty of sending purchasing agents to several possible sources with authority to buy food supplies, but that may come with a political price tag. In any case, we are dependent upon food sources in Britain itself, and those are rather short.”

Langford reminded himself that Lommerde did actually know what he was doing. “We had stockpiles of food supplies during some parts of the Cold War, and stockpiled more after the first bout of heavy flooding in 2007,” Lommerde said. “There are also the locations in the supply chain; food doesn’t appear magically, and for every box of cereal in the stores, there are several in the supply line. Some of them have been looted, but others have been abandoned and my people have been able to recover them. Non-perishable food sources, or at least items that last longer than a week, have been recovered in great quantities. The real problem lies in the stuff that is perishable; milk, unfrozen meat and so on. Matters are not helped by the disruption of supply lines; some of the cities had problems because they had run out of water supplies, and then out of things to drink. We’ve had examples of truly awful behaviour, such as people eating pet food, but we are likely to get most of the population through the first month, providing that we maintain control.”

Langford smiled. “I remember military cooking,” he said. “There were times when pet food would have been a vast improvement.”

“Ah… yes,” Lommerde said. His face was a study in contrasts. He wanted to believe Langford’s comment at face value, and yet he didn’t quite believe it; Langford wasn’t exactly joking. Food supplies had sometimes gotten very short indeed at Basra. “The real problem lies in the long-term survivability of the country.”

“I see,” Langford said. “Because we can’t get supplies from outside?”

“Among other things,” Lommerde said. “Some items, milk for example, can be obtained; most of that still came from British farms. Other supplies are going to be harder to replace, sir; we got a lot of our meat from Europe… and the farmers weren’t happy about it. The supermarkets pretty much exploited the farmers and… well, what they grew wasn't what we actually needed, as opposed to wanted.” He paused. “With me so far?”

Langford held up a hand. “Why can’t they just produce what we need?”

“Two separate reasons,” Lommerde said. “The first problem is that they will need to sow fields that were allowed to lay fallow… and growing will take time, months even under the best of conditions. The second reason… I don’t know if you noticed, but the economy has collapsed. Much of our trade was with Europe and, at the moment, we’re getting almost nothing from the continent, and so businesses start to take losses. We didn’t see much of this in the first few days, because most people were keeping their heads down, but I expect that pretty soon the unemployment level will rise sharply. The trade wars with America did plenty of damage and the sudden loss of Europe will only make the damage worse; sir, this is uncharted territory for us, for any First World economy.”

Langford rubbed his head. “We did it in the Second World War,” he said. “Why can’t we do it again?”

Lommerde scowled. “Several reasons,” he said. “We had time to prepare for the Second World War, most of our trade was with the Empire and the Americans, and the Americans were willing to extend us credit. They basically screwed us after the war, economically speaking, but they allowed us to survive in wartime. Now… there’s no preparation, the sea-lanes are even less safe than they were in 1940, and a lot of people are thinking that money’s worthless. I’ve had reports of farmers using shotguns to try to defend their fields against mobs and farms being eaten out, all within a few days. Farmers… just don’t want money any longer.”

Langford steepled his fingers. “All right,” he said. “What do we do about it?”

“We have to ration food, and quickly,” Lommerde said. “If we can ensure a proper system of food distribution, we can at least put a lid on the panic for a few weeks and win us time. The NHS has actually been working much better in the last two days; your orders to forget the red tape has worked a small miracle, aided by the thousands of medical workers who came back to help the injured from the attacks. Given time, we can restore much of the country to normal, but…”

His voice tailed off. Langford lifted an eyebrow. “But what?”

“In the long term, General, we may be looking at a long depression at best, and depressions breed desperation,” Lommerde said. “You may expect to see real trouble on the streets before too long, much larger than you have already seen and even handled, in most places. The mass of unemployed and unemployable was a serious problem for the government even before the war began, when they were fed from the welfare teat… but now, we can’t maintain the welfare teat at all. The best we can do is give them rationed food, but…”

Langford had been wondering about that. “We might have to conscript them,” he said, seriously. Many people on the dole would have worked if they could have worked, others were lazy teenagers who had never got into the habit of actually working. The Army had been forbidden to recruit in many areas; that would have taken its own toll on the unemployed. If only they had been able to pay soldiers more… he shook his head; it was a dead issue now. “There are no arms, but muscle alone would be useful; could you help with that?”

“I don’t like it, but… I guess there’s no choice,” Lommerde said. “The Social Service and the Job Centres can help finding people; we can always tell them that their rations depend on them, at least the young males, making themselves available for service. We don’t have the resources to track them down, however, if they refuse to take service…”

“Do what you can,” Langford said. “I may have to use the soldiers somewhere else, however; the emergency services may have to use their labour if the soldiers are needed to actually fight. Hamburg has fallen, and with that, the Russians are in a position to expand their control along the North Sea coastline.”

Lommerde’s eyes went wide. He was far from stupid, after all. “General… do you think that they could reach Britain?”

Langford hesitated. “It would be a formidable undertaking,” he said, soft-pedalling it as best as he could. The Russians would have to secure all of France before they even thought of trying to leap across the Channel, but with the French distracted in the North, they might well manage to secure France within a month. It all depended on just how much control they thought they needed; would they want every last problem terminated, or would they settle for holding the vital points and waiting? “I don’t think that we need to worry about that for a while.”

“But this is Britain,” Lommerde protested. “Such things don’t happen here…”

Langford thought about that as the helicopter carried him back towards London. No one had understood that the Russians were planning an invasion of Europe, even if there had been hints and signs of possible trouble. Europe had known about the capabilities of the Russian forces, Europe had known about Russian plans for the Cold War invasion that everyone had feared, but Europe hadn’t put all the tiny bits of information together. They had pushed at Russia, in the Ukraine, in Serbia, in even North Africa, without a thought as to the possibility of a violent Russian response. The FCO had considered that the Russians were just pontificating from time to time, and if their views were taken into consideration, they wouldn’t cause trouble.

He scowled. The American data made it clear what the Russians had been planning… and why they had even made friendly overtures of their own. The EUROFOR unit from Sweden, in the Ukraine, had been attacked brutally, just like the EUROFOR forces in Poland, and had been crushed without mercy. The survivors, he was sure, would have been shipped into a prison camp somewhere. The Irish unit had been luckier; they had scattered into the countryside, but how long could they survive without supplies? The Russians had plenty of allies in the Ukraine; already, they were handing over security duties to them and moving more units towards the west.

It was the same story in the Balkans. Serbian units had attacked the EUROFOR forces in the Balkans, and then moved on into Kosovo, where they had promptly started to remind the natives of why they had been chased out in the first place. The Balkans had been caught up in the war; aided by Russian aircraft, the remaining EUROFOR units fought a desperate battle to survive, some of them even surrendering to the Russians, rather than face the Serbs. Years of humiliation demanded blood; there were even reports that Turkish forces were considering a move into Greece. Thousands attempted to flee to Italy, only to discover that the Italians had their own problems; the Libyan forces that attempted to attack Italy discovered that the Italian military reputation was nonsense. The fighting raged on…

“Welcome back, General,” Sara said. Her eyes were lowered; she had to know that he hadn’t been happy about being sedated. “Was your trip successful?”

“Yes, and no,” Langford said shortly. He didn’t want to discuss it. “Are they in the briefing room?”

Sara nodded and led him to the room he was starting to slowly, but very surely detest. The CJHQ had never been designed for long-term occupancy and it showed; the work on establishing a proper seat of government was going slowly, even though it was obvious that something would be needed, if only to give the Russians something to shoot at. If they found the CJHQ, they would launch a missile at it… and the CJHQ was not designed to take a bombing. A single JDAM would put it out of use permanently.

“General,” Erica said. She looked tired; she hadn’t taken a sedative herself. Langford made a mental note to order her to take one after the meeting; she didn’t look as if she could remain on her feet for much longer. “I have the latest report from both Britain and Europe.”

Langford lifted an eyebrow. Had they at last managed to make contact with someone in authority? “The good news is that we managed to make contact with a French General, in the south of France, and warned him about the dangers of the Russian offensive,” she said. “The bad news is that he cannot disengage from the war against the Algerians; they’re not that competent, compared to the French forces, but there are a lot of them and Russian aircraft are providing a lot of support. The entire south of France is going to be devastated; the same, more or less, goes for Spain and Portugal. We had an emergency transmission up-linked from Gibraltar; the Governor doesn’t believe that they can hold out for much longer under the shelling. Everyone on the Rock is stuck.”

Langford could see it now; the Russians would let the Algerians and the Moroccans serve as cannon fodder while they finished off the Germans, and then turned on their allies. The Russians had no time for radical Islam; the Algerians would discover that the Russians had stuck a knife in their backs. A handful of Russian submarines could close their shipping lanes permanently… and the Algerians would never know who was really responsible.

“It gets worse,” Erica admitted. “The Russians have turned the German flank and have captured Hamburg; that suggests that they could push down into the Netherlands, and once they do that, we won’t be able to extract any more forces from Europe. I think we have to redouble our efforts to call them all out and extract as many Europeans as we can as well.”

She paused. “We have managed to make contact with our surviving units and ordered them to pull out,” she said. “Most of them will try to bring their allies along with them, others will have issues with abandoning their people, but I feel that we will be able to pull out around a thousand British servicemen and around twice that many Germans and Frenchmen. The main problem would be the equipment; it would be tricky to pull that out unless we get a secure harbour.”

“Dunkirk again,” Langford said. “Can we secure a harbour?”

“I believe that we could secure several places in Belgium,” Erica said. “The Russians will still need several days, perhaps even as long as a fortnight, before they reach the Belgium coast. Once we get some Royal Marines into the ports, some of which have been badly damaged, we should be able to start taking people out.” She paused. “There is a case that doing that is like declaring war on Belgium.”

“Ridiculous,” Langford snapped. The thought actually made him laugh dryly. “Do we have any contact with anyone in Belgium?”

“No one whom we recognise,” Erica said. “There are still thousands of garbled messages, but from the panic, there are no traces of the civil government at all. The real danger is that we might have to take thousands of refugees as well… hell, we should try and take as many as we can if we can use them to fight.”

Langford looked up at the map. “Can we spare the resources?”

“We won’t be committing anything more than a large Marine force,” Erica said. “Seven hundred men won’t make much difference to the situation inside Britain, which may have taken on a darker tone.” She scowled. “Sergeant Roach found a large cache of weapons in London, during the clear-out operation. The interesting thing is that none of the survivors from the area knew that it was there.”

The implications were obvious. “We have Russians underground somewhere,” Langford concluded. “Do we have any idea as to who?”

“We knew that they had commandos on our soil,” Erica said. “The point is… there were enough weapons there to make taking and holding a medium-sized city possible, for a while. The question is… how many more of them are there out there?”