The Fall of Night

Chapter Forty-Nine: Consolidation

Near Dover, United Kingdom

Dover was burning.

General Aleksandr Borisovich Shalenko stood near the city and watched as the handful of British prisoners were rapidly searched, secured, and inspected by the FSB security detachments. Dover itself had been seriously damaged by the fighting, but the combat engineers were certain that they could repair the damage in a few weeks with enough labour, assuming that it could be found. There were thousands of dockworkers back in Europe who had taken money from the Russians; they could be shipped over as soon as a ship could be spared. For the moment, however, they had recovered enough of Folkestone to use it as a harbour and expand their control rapidly.

Another aircraft flew overhead, carrying supplies for the invasion force, as Shalenko turned to face the FSB commander, FSB Colonel Maliuta Vladimirovich Stepanov. His parents had been extreme Russian nationalists — both of them had worked for the KGB before it had converted itself into the FSB — and it showed in his name; Maliuta was a very rare name in Russia. His position within the FSB had been almost hereditary; he handled matters that were only spoken of in whispers, even by other FSB detachments.

Shalenko spoke first, unwilling to even suggest that they were equals. “Who is the senior surviving British officer?”

Stepanov bowed his head slightly. The FSB might be convinced that it was superior to the Russian Army, but a bad report from General Shalenko would have his career being rapidly reduced to a filing clerk somewhere in the Kremlin, if not being stripped of rank and sent in disgrace to Siberia. Some people had to run the labour camps, after all, and while there were plenty of brutes around, the hard work of administration needed talented — and disgraced — officers.

“That would be a Colonel Harris,” he said, inspecting the terminal he carried in his hand. “We did recover a living General officer, but he died of his wounds soon afterwards; Colonel Harris is the only reasonably intact senior officer.”

“Take me to him,” Shalenko ordered shortly. He would find out if the General had died of his wounds, or if he had been helped; he had given orders that no prisoners were to be killed unless there was no hope at all that they would survive. The intelligence network within Britain had been severely damaged by the war and then by the invasion; even the most blind of the useful fools might see that there was something not quite right going on. The active spies and agents wouldn’t have the type of access they needed to know what the British intended. “What condition is he in?”

“Battered, but unbowed,” Stepanov said. There was a dispassionate note to his voice that chilled even Shalenko, even though he understood the requirement; he would almost have preferred a brute. A lot of brutes ended up in the FSB; a supply of victims and permission to do whatever they liked to them worked wonders for loyalty. “He was unlucky; we managed to knock him out in a bombing run and snatched him up before he recovered.”

Colonel Harris was a massive black man; he was so black that Shalenko had trouble looking him in the face, his face scarred by the force of the impact that had knocked him out. Stepanov’s men had already gone to work; he sat naked in a chair, various instruments of torture already attached to different places on his body, although they hadn’t started serious work yet. There was the hope that he would be reasonable; an American-designed lie detector electrode had been attached to the side of his shaven skull. He would have been a terror as a Drill Sergeant, Shalenko realised; it was a pity that he was on the wrong side.

He looked up as they entered. “Who… the hell are you?”

“I am General Shalenko, Commanding Officer of this Invasion Force,” Shalenko said, without bothering with preamble, or justifications. They were both soldiers; only politicians would bother coming up with justifications for whatever they wanted to do anyway. “I require some information from you.”

He made a mental bet as to what Harris would say first and won it. “This treatment is illegal under the Geneva Convention,” he said, through gasps. There had to be some damage somewhere, even if Stepanov had thought he was unharmed; he looked as if he was going to be stubborn. “I am a legal combatant and…

“Well, perhaps,” Shalenko said. “But you and I… we are both soldiers. We both know that sometimes you have to do things that you don’t want to do, or that you know you will face the opinion of international talkers, or… things that your political leaders will disown you for, if they find it convenient to do so. Neither of us chose this war” — a half-truth at best — “and we do not want to fight it, but we have no choice. Having no choice… I will do whatever I can to ensure that my soldiers come through the fighting safe.”

He paused. “Will you answer my questions?”

“Fuck you,” Harris said. “I know the drill; it’s only name, rank and serial…”

One of the FSB goons punched him in the chest. “We have to remain confined to reality,” Shalenko said shortly, as Harris gasped for breath. “The blunt truth is that your countrymen are in no position to avenge whatever happens to you… and institutions like the International Criminal Court have been shut down permanently now that we have occupied Brussels. There is no power on Earth that will punish us for carrying out our duty.”

Harris glared up at him, sweat forming on his black face. “Don’t blame me when Russian soldiers start turning up with their balls cut off and stuffed in their mouths,” he sneered. “Bring on your hired goons and let’s see how far they can go.”

Shalenko had to smile. “Do you know,” he asked, “who these men are? Some of them are people who learned suffering from the Chechens, or others from Central Asia; some of them are actually Kazakhs who were more than willing to lend their services to the FSB. I think they were sick of western hypocrisy, myself; some of them even brushed into British forces in Afghanistan. Now, you can be as stubborn, and heroic, and storoic and many more words ending in oic that I can’t be bothered to think of right now, but… eventually you will break and tell me everything you know.”

He leaned closer. “Talk now and I promise you that I will spare you and your men,” he said. “I have the authority to let them live, and even to spare them Siberia; all you have to do is talk now and spare yourself some pain.”

“You’ll have to get it out of me,” Harris hissed. “Bring it on.”

Shalenko stepped out of the tent as Stepanov’s men started their grizzly work, some of them enjoying it, some of them as dispassionate as Stepanov himself about their task. He would have preferred to have dumped them all into a penal unit and sent them clearing minefields until they died, but that wasn't an option; they were unfortunate, but necessary. Torture worked, given enough time; it had saved too many lives to allow it to be thrown away.

“General,” Anna said. Shalenko lit the cigarette she offered him and watched the smoke gusting away into the night air. They were in enemy territory, the one country in Europe that had had the time to get into position to give them a fight, and the loss rate showed that; thousands of Russians had died in a day of hard fighting. “I have the final figures.”

Shalenko listened as she went through them, detailing deaths, units lost, some of them lost on transports before they had ever had the chance to get into battle, others scattered along the shoreline and slaughtered by British soldiers before they had a chance to collect themselves. The Russian Air Force had been hurt badly; over a hundred fighters had been lost, along with seventy bombers and transports. Civilian airliners would have to be pressed into service again to speed the process of consolidation; they had to build up again before the British gathered themselves and counterattacked.

He held up a hand at one point. “Colonel Aliyev ordered his men to serve as light infantry?”

“Yes, General,” Anna said. “They did good work, too, in rooting out a British nest. They’re going to slow us up for at least a week, sir; they’re using the German tactic of jeeps and antitank rockets, or sometimes a machine gun. The scouts have pressed forward as far as Hastings to Tunbridge Wells; intelligence believes that we will begin to encounter major enemy civilian populations once we reach Brighton.”

Shalenko scowled. “Have we found any civilians here?”

“A handful, mainly a handful of looters,” Anna said. “We interrogated them all; they were ordered to head for refugee camps in the south-west, decided that there would be good pickings in the abandoned houses, and ran into us instead.”

“Good,” Shalenko said. “And the enemy military?”

“The Air Force believes that it has wiped out the RAF, although seeing that they have said that several times before, I think we should be careful about accepting it on trust,” Anna said. “The enemy has been digging in to small towns surrounding London, with a large force gathered up near Dorking, and smaller units gathering in London’s suburbs.”

Shalenko asked for a map and examined it. “Interesting,” he said finally. “I wonder why Dorking; what do they have there?”

“Intelligence believes that they are massing there for a counter-attack,” Anna said. “Our standard tactic is to surround cities before going into one and attacking London directly would be a nightmare; they may even be hoping that we would do so, which would allow their remaining forces to hit our flanks and pocket us. There are smaller British formations near Portsmouth, including Royal Marines; they may intend to keep building defences and inviting us to attack them.”

“Then we have to move on Dorking,” Shalenko said. It wasn’t a hard choice at all; modern warfare was all about destroying the enemy’s army… particularly if you didn’t care about the civilians caught up in the meat-grinder. Inform the planners that I want operational plans within the hour, and we move as soon as possible; the air force can have a slight rest and prepare itself for the final battle. Once the British Army is destroyed, London is finished.”

Stepanov appeared silently behind him; Shalenko sensed his presence and turned to face him. “Well?”

“He broke, finally,” Stepanov informed him. A bloody carcass was being dragged out of the tent; Harris would be lucky to survive for another hour. “As far as he knew, all mobile units and ones that could get out of our clutches were to retire on Dorking and the other places along the London Defence Line; past that, he has no idea what the British command is planning.”

“Tactical nukes, perhaps,” Shalenko said. It was a wild card; they didn’t know if the British military government had the nukes, or if they would use them in their own country. The President had warned the British that if nukes were used, they would start destroying British cities; Shalenko knew that the President wasn't bluffing. Did the British know that? Did they have any nukes to use? “See to it that he gets whatever medical care he needs; his men can be secured for transport back to the continent.”

He paused. “And in a few days,” he said, “we move on Dorking.”

“And then we win,” Anna said.

Two days passed as both sides worked desperately to prepare for the final battle. Russian forces probed north-west into England, slowly clearing out traps and dug-in infantry and TA soldiers, fighting to the last to preserve their country. In some places, morale collapsed completely and soldiers deserted, heading out back to their homes, or deserting to the enemy; they were rapidly secured, interrogated, and dumped in massive prison compounds to await their fate at a later date. In other places, furious fighting broke out as British soldiers fought tooth and nail to hold a town or village, but the Russians had vast superiority in weapons and total ruthlessness; resistance was swiftly crushed by overwhelming force.

Russian soldiers brushed up against the main defence line, exchanged shots, and fell back, expanding their area of control around London. Both sides knew that it was only a matter of time before the fighting flared up again in earnest, and prepared hard for that day. As the air lanes over London were closed by Russian aircraft, the citizens began to panic; some of them demanding peace at any price. The overworked police, volunteers all to a man or woman, did what they could to keep the lid on; they knew what would happen if the Russians won.

The remainder of the country waited nervously to see who would win the coming battle. Planners on both sides calculated and recalculated the odds, comparing details like air control to precise knowledge of the terrain; everyone knew what happened when the armies finally met in open battle would be decisive. The army that the British had raised would be the last; if it lost, the war would be all over, bar the shouting. All over the country, some civilians remained where they were, watching events on CNN and a dozen other American media programs, cursing the limited details. The White House had invoked PATRIOT III, causing a storm of controversy; the legal wrangling over the question of how much of the British preparations they could show wouldn’t end until after the battle was decided, one way or the other. Wearing British uniforms that fooled no one, a handful of Americans joined the British armed forces; their planes, technically non-combatants, would be a vital part of the RAF’s last throw of the dice.

All around the country, people waited; rumours spread rapidly. Prince Harry had returned to his unit in its hour of need, some said; others remembered how the Prince had never been permitted to serve in Iraq and dismissed the rumour, adding others. The Royal Family had fled, rats leaving a sinking ship; the remains of Britain’s noble families had joined them. The Russians were going to slaughter all the Muslims; the Russians were going to slaughter all the Jews; the Russians were going to rape every man, woman and child they encountered…

Escape seemed an impossible dream; there was nothing left to do, but wait…

And listen to rumours.

Major-General Charles Langford saluted as the group of soldiers paraded in front of them, before they marched off to the front line. They were young, many of them barely out of their teens; a handful in the strange grey-area of age where technically they should never have been recruited into the Army, but the Army had been so desperate for new recruits that they had been accepted… and for many of them it had been the making of them. They wore their uniforms with pride, some of them wearing unit insignia that had been lost long ago, under one government or another. The politicians hadn’t understood; when they amalgamated regiments such as the Highlanders, or the Black Watch, they were killing something important. Men might think of fighting for their country, but instead… the factor that would keep them in the front lines was loyalty to their fellows, or a reluctance to run in front of them. They were the finest that Britain could produce…

He had lied to them, of course, and he had hated himself for it. He had told them that they had a chance, and that many of them would survive the coming battle; the latter, at least, was a lie. The SAS and other intelligence agencies had worked hard to slip operatives into Occupied Europe, where they had reported on the registrations, the employment, the rations, the brutal crushing of protests, peaceful or otherwise… there was very little hope for them all. The warning had been simple; if you are a soldier, or a policeman… you have to hide and remain hidden, or you vanished. The Americans had sent images of the camps in Occupied Europe, and the work camps in the depths of Russia; that was the fate that awaited them all if they lost and were captured. There was no hope…

They’d consulted with the Americans, at length, looking for another solution. There wasn't one; even if the Americans could spare the forces to help Britain, there was no way that those forces could arrive in time. Even if they did, the fighting would devastate Britain from end to end… with no guarantee of victory. The Battle of the Mediterranean had warned the Americans of the dangers of relying on their own fleet defences; it was just possible that an American carrier battle group would suffer the same fate as Admiral Bellemare Vadenboncoeur. They would be looking at a war that would make the Second World War look like a tea party, fought against the one thing America hadn’t faced since 1945 — a fairly equal opponent. There was no political support for the war; President Kirkpatrick might have cost herself the chance at winning a second term, just for supporting Britain as much as she had…

And how had it all happened? In hindsight, it had been perfectly clear; they had known much about what the Russians could do, and what their capabilities actually were… they just hadn’t put everything together. The Russians had boosted their military forces before and there had been panic, but every time, they had merely been shaking their fist, until the day they came rolling over the border. Europe had believed that they had moved past the days when conflicts were settled by armed force; they had been deluding themselves. They had had the choice between the American security umbrella, at its political price, or building EUROFOR up into a respectable force… and they had chosen, instead, to stick their heads in the sand. The cost…

Langford stared down at his hands. They all would pay the cost of neglecting the defences. One way or another, matters would be settled soon…

It wouldn’t be long now.