The Fall of Night

Interlude Five: Nightmare

It was happening all over Europe.

The Russians had known, of course, about the depth of leftist sentiment in Europe, the feeling that protesters had the right to protest about whatever they liked, without any thought as to the consequences of their actions, or even possible punishment in the future. They had counted on it, flattered it, encouraged it… and ensured that many of the leaders of the ‘left’ were either brought under their control or disappeared before they could organise pacifist resistance. Many of them were realists and accepted the new world order; many more believed what they said, and had to be removed before they could cause trouble.

The Russians also knew the key to a successful campaign of civil disobedience.

It could be summed up as ‘choose your opponent carefully;’ the theorists of the left had never grasped that point. Looking for overall examples of people power — India, Mexico, even the Moscow Coup Attempt of 1991 — they had missed the specifics; the people had moved against opponents who had consciences. The British had not mown down the Great Salt March, nor had the Russian soldiers in Moscow fired on Yeltsin and his people; they had cared about their people, or about public opinion. The Russians did not care about either, particularly people who were useless; the students and young adults who thronged the streets of Europe were useless to them.

The wave of violence started and ended quickly. In Warsaw, a sit-down protest ended with the tanks ignoring the bodies in their path and driving onwards over them; seventy died and twelve more were injured and died soon afterwards. In Berlin, students who tried to retake the remains of the centre of government found themselves fired upon, clubbed, and hauled off to detention camps. In France, protesters who had found their way to one of the Arab detention camps and protested at the detention found themselves shoved into the camp; for the young women, they had been tossed into hell. Resistance was futile…

As the weeks passed, the Russians worked hard to bring Europe back to a state of normality, offering incentives to civil servants and engineers to return to work. Aided by vast numbers of Russians, the civil servants found themselves serving as Russian agents, registering each and every member of the European population from the Ukraine to the Spanish border, excepting only the neutral Swiss. Trained workers found themselves working on rebuilding the shattered transportation infrastructure; farmers found themselves ordered to forget EU regulations and produce as much as they could, paid in Russian money. The Eurobank had been seized; Russian money had become the only legitimate form of tender and only the Russians used it, paying those who worked for them, who in turn used it to pay their own people.

Other factories were reopened and offered contacts with Russian firms. Europe had a high-tech infrastructure second only to America’s… and on a fair level of equality with Japan, and a vast amount of technical workers. They found themselves working for the Russians, paid well to improve the Russian technical base and rearm the Russians for a future war. As more and more factories came back online, stripped of the red tape and European regulations, business even began to pick up; the Russians only had small taxes on business. All over Europe, workers were asking the same question; was it really so bad under the Russians?

The unfortunates in the various detention camps might have given them an answer. The Russians had put nearly two million people in the camps, from soldiers and policemen to insurgents and protesters. They now worked through them again, ensuring that they had the prisoners all registered, before organising their final disposition. The protesters were informed that for their crimes against the new authority, they would be sentenced to a year of hard labour, helping to clear up the wreckage from the fighting. With new ID cards and uniforms, they found themselves attached to labour gangs and forced to work for a living in their home cities. They were the lucky ones; the remains of the male insurgents, beaten and cowed, were shackled and put to work clearing up the damage they had caused, including burying bodies and removing explosives; the death rate rose rapidly. The female insurgents were sent to Russian brothels; their fate would be worse than that of their menfolk. As a final slap in the face, their food rations included pork; many starved, others broke Islamic Law and ate it to survive.

But they were not the most unfortunate. The soldiers and policemen, those who had survived, had remained shackled in their camps under heavy guard. Day after day, the helpless captives would see new faces as the soldiers who had returned to their families instead of fighting were rounded up and added to the camps; night after night, bursts of gunfire split the air as attempted escape attempts were foiled with deadly force. Fed only on gruel and water, the prisoners lost their strength rapidly; they wondered if the Russians intended to simply kill them all without shooting them. One day, however, everything changed; bound and secured, the prisoners found themselves loaded onboard trains that headed east, directly to Siberia. As the weather grew colder, they wondered if they would ever see their homelands again…

Time passed. In the west, Russian forces gathered and a massive logistical effort began, focusing on the final stage in Operation Stalin. Europeans living nearby were removed from their homes and sent elsewhere, clearing the ports for Russian use alone; forced labour was used to clear up the damage from the fighting, preparing the ports to support the largest amphibious invasion in the 21^st Century…

The Invasion of Britain…