Their Darkest Hour

Chapter Ten

Near Salisbury Plain

United Kingdom, Day 2

“You know,” Chris Drake said, “I never thought I would be pleased to see a redcap.”

The Military Policeman smiled, a little weakly. “It’s been one of those days,” he agreed. “Name, rank and unit?”

Chris smiled. He’d allowed the Thames to push him out of London before climbing out and finding a convenient place to dry himself. There had been a small charity shop nearby where he’d picked up enough clothes to keep himself warm as he walked the long way around London and up towards Salisbury Plain. He’d been lucky enough to find a civilian Range Rover, which he’d borrowed to complete the rest of the journey, but he’d been forced to stay off the main roads. The aliens, according to the radio transmissions he’d picked up, liked roads. They would, he assumed, have shot him or captured him the moment they saw him.

He’d relaxed a little as he headed westwards, until he’d run into the military police unit. He wasn’t the only soldier who’d been separated from his unit and forced to travel alone to the rendezvous point, although as far as he knew he was the only soldier who’d escaped the Battle of London. The others had been supposed to link up in a disused warehouse and consider either making it out by foot or carrying on the fight against the invaders — God alone knew what had happened to them. He’d trained beside them, fought beside them — and now he was alone. Unless he was very lucky, he’d be pushed into a new unit to make up the manpower shortfall.

“You were in London?” The MP said asked, clearly impressed. “We’ve got orders to forward all survivors from London to the RV point. It seems that some of our superiors will want to talk to you.”

Chris hesitated. There was a defence line being constructed that should slow the aliens down — he doubted that a force with air supremacy could be stopped — and part of him wanted to join it, to get stuck into the aliens who had killed so many of his friends and comrades. The rest of him knew that it was his duty to brief his superiors, to tell them what had happened at London and to ensure that the Household Division’s last stand went down in the history books. But would the people writing the history books be human — or alien?

“They’re going to be waiting to hear from you,” the MP said, a moment later. “I suggest you brief them quickly. They’re going to hit us soon.”

Chris nodded and gunned the engine. He knew the area around Salisbury Plain fairly well — a legacy of the time spent boozing after exercises in the Live Firing Training Area — and it shook him to see so many deserted houses. The civilians would have been warned to leave the area as quickly as possible, whatever the aliens might have had to say about it. They probably wouldn’t care if human civilians were caught in the crossfire. Everything they’d done suggested a certain lack of concern for human life. The sight of refugees heading north or south tore at his heart. Britain hadn’t seen such deprivation since the Civil War — and that, by European standards of the time, had been remarkably civilised. He caught sight of a tank hidden under camouflage netting and waved to the man standing beside it, clearly planning an ambush. They should get in at least one good shot before the aliens started dropping killer crowbars from orbit.

Two miles further on, he ran into a second group of military policemen who ordered him to abandon the Range Rover and proceed on foot. The woodlands seemed crammed with human soldiers, including Royal Marines and RAF Regiment personnel, all forced together by circumstances. Chris had fought beside the Royal Marines in Afghanistan and while he thought — naturally — that the soldiers had the advantage, he had to admit that the Royal Marines were tough, professional fighters. The military policemen were sorting them out, sending some further away from Salisbury Plain while holding others to join the defence line. It looked as if someone was in command, thankfully. Perhaps everything he’d seen in London would be useful after all.

But the aliens controlled the high orbitals over Earth. They could bombard the planet into submission, or hammer any human military force foolish enough to show itself openly. How could an insurgency hope to win against such an enemy? God alone knew if they could do more than sting the enemy…

“Down here,” a military policeman said. There was a hatch hidden in the woods, seemingly leading down to nowhere. Given how many other bunkers, bases and supply dumps were scattered around Salisbury Plain, it made sense to think that there was a government bunker hidden there too. “They’ll meet you at the bottom.”

Chris nodded and began to descend down the ladder.

“Are you decent, Prime Minister?”

Gabriel snorted at Butcher’s mock-falsetto tone. He’d slept for several hours and awoke feeling as if he hadn’t slept very long at all, but his watch told a different story. Butcher — who had apparently been assigned as his permanent bodyguard — had pointed him at the shower and told him to take his time. Someone had brought in a spare set of clothes, allowing him to lose the suit and tie he’d worn during the mad rush from London. The military seemed to have maintained its sense of efficiency, he told himself, and wondered how long that would last.

“I think so,” he said, finally. He hadn’t been able to shave and his cheeks felt rough with stubble. “Have we been discovered?”

“I don’t think so,” Butcher said. “But there have apparently been developments. I’ll leave it to the Brigadier to brief you.”

They walked down the concrete corridor and into the conference room. Most of the operators he remembered from last night were missing, their stations shut down and marked for destruction. In fact, the entire bunker complex seemed emptier than he recalled — even though he could hear the sound of people talking in low voices down the corridor. He assumed that they hadn’t been detected — they would have fled the bunker if they had even suspected that the aliens knew where they were — but it was clear that something had changed. The Brigadier, when he made his appearance a moment later followed by a young soldier, looked deeply worried.

“Prime Minister,” he said. “I’m afraid that there have been developments.”

Gabriel listened carefully as the story of the Battle of London came pouring out of the young soldier. Two companies of British soldiers had fought and held the aliens for nearly an hour, before the aliens finally pushed through by brute force. London itself had been damaged in the crossfire, with at least one alien transport crash-landing in Central London. The thought was impossible to grasp — it just wasn’t supposed to happen in Britain. Even the suicide bombers who’d killed far too many civilians on 7/7 hadn’t even dreamed of causing so much pain.

“It gets worse,” the Brigadier added. “I’m afraid that the aliens have found themselves a Petain.”

He tapped a console and the recorded radio message played out, twice. Gabriel found himself listening with growing anger as Alan Beresford — an MP who had been implicated in a dozen scandals, yet nothing quite seemed to stick — recited the alien message to the British population. God alone knew what the public would make of it. They’d be frightened, isolated from the rest of the world, unsure of their place… far too many would simply grasp the straw Beresford was offering them. And the aliens themselves…

If Beresford was to be believed, their social development had not matched their technological development. But then, a case could be made that humanity’s development hadn’t matched its technology either. The aliens… they’d come, they’d seen and they’d conquered, with as little regard for the rights of mankind as Julius Caesar had shown to the barbarians he’d crushed beneath the heels of his legions. It was tempting to believe that Beresford was a liar — Gabriel wouldn’t have believed that the sky was blue if Beresford had said it — but so far everything the aliens had done matched what he’d said. But then… if Nazi Germany had won World War Two, everyone would have been raised to believe that Nazism was right.

“My God,” he said, finally. “What do we do about it?”

The Brigadier scowled. “The last reports have the aliens massing forces here, here and here,” he said, tapping locations on the map. “I believe that they intend to advance westwards within the next few hours and scatter our forces before we can regroup and take the offensive. I’m afraid that we’re going to have to put our emergency plan into operation before too long.”

Gabriel nodded. “What do we have to do?”

“You’re going to a secure location in the north — an old estate that belongs to a family that has been linked with the British Government for centuries,” the Brigadier said. “It was always envisaged as the final resort — and so there haven’t been any mentions of it on our computers or anywhere else. Butcher and his team will escort you there and then take care of you, once you’ve recorded a message for the civilians. You have to tell them that there’s a government still out there fighting…”

“But won’t that encourage them to fight themselves?” Gabriel asked. “Won’t we just be prolonging the agony?”

“I wish I knew,” the Brigadier admitted. “Back when I did a stint at Northwood, I saw some of the contingency plans and scenarios dreamed up by civil servants. They all tended to change depending upon the underlying assumptions, but I think we have to assume that the majority of the civilian population will not resist the invaders. But there’s a fine line between not resisting and outright collaboration and… if they believe that there is a government left out there, fewer people will collaborate. I think that the aliens have to have limits on their manpower. Whatever their FTL drive, shipping millions of troops across interstellar distances cannot be cost-effective.”

“And the fewer collaborators they have, the harder it will be for them to rule Earth,” Gabriel said. The Brigadier nodded. “But what do they want?”

“If we take that traitorous bastard at his word, they think they have the right to rule everyone too weak to stand up to them,” the Brigadier said. “Or maybe they have some other goal in being here that they’re keeping to themselves — perhaps because they fear we could spite them in some way. Overall… we don’t know what they want.

“The good news is that we managed to make contact with two of our missile boats,” he added. “The aliens hit our submarine bases pretty hard, but we had three of the four boats at sea and two of them have been appraised of the situation. Using them may be tricky with the aliens controlling space, yet we do feel that there are possibilities. We’ve also managed to pull most of the tactical nukes from their storage bunkers and I’ve given orders to conceal them…”

“They are not to be used without my express permission,” Gabriel said, sharply. The thought of nuclear war on British soil was horrifying. “I want you to make that clear to your officers.”

“They know to keep them in reserve,” the Brigadier said, flatly. “Overall, most of our deployed submarines — the attack submarines as well — seem to have survived. They may be usable in the future, but for the moment we have no firm plans.”

He stood up. “We’ll make a stand when they come west and give them a bloody nose, then fall back to prepared positions,” he concluded. “And then most of the lads will go underground and carry on the fight. The aliens have ordered all military and police personnel to surrender themselves — they’ve clearly started putting the police to work, but no one thinks they intend to make use of the soldiers! It seems that they’re already establishing detention camps near the cities. Most of the lads would sooner die than go into one of them.”

“People of Britain,” Gabriel said, twenty minutes later. It didn’t sound good. Normally, back in Ten Downing Street, he would have had a speechwriter, a make-up artist and a careful briefing on who was expected to be in the media crowd and what questions they might ask. He’d spent so much time preparing for speeches that it had often struck him that he’d done little else in his brief time as Prime Minister. And now… half the population would probably curse him as a man who’d fled, leaving them to face the aliens. “Our nation has been invaded.”

He took a breath. “I won’t lie to you,” he continued. He’d wanted to be honest in his speeches, but the crowd of advisers had warned that too much blunt speaking could backfire. The public seemed to believe that politicians were always liars, yet they elected men who made them feel good about themselves — instead of telling them the truth. At least now he could go with his instincts. “The situation is dire. Many of our cities have been invaded directly; others have lost power and water supplies. Anarchy is threatening to grip our streets.

“Many of you will be frightened. Many of you will wonder if we can resist the aliens, or even if we should resist the aliens. Others will seek to take advantage of the chaos for their own benefit. I know that many of you will be looking to safeguard your families and friends, rather than thinking about the welfare of the country. I cannot blame you for worrying about your own lives, or those of your friends and families. The entire country has suffered a devastating blow. Our world has been turned upside down.

“But Britain has a long and proud history of resisting tyranny. It was us who stood alone against Nazi Germany, though we were bombed and half-starved and suffered defeat after defeat. We played a full part in the containment of Communist Russia, preventing general war from engulfing Europe for the third time. We stood firm against Napoleon when he threatened to invade our shores. The situation is dire, but it is not hopeless. We can fight back against the latest invaders.

“The British Government has survived and it will carry on the fight as long as possible,” he concluded. “I will not order you to resist — I want you to decide for yourselves. If you wish to stand up and fight for Britain, for the freedom of our island nation, join us in resisting the enemy. Take care of yourselves, plan carefully — and hit them as hard as you can. There will be many dark days ahead, days where we can assume nothing, but blood, toil, tears and sweat, but there will come a day when we live freely in our own land once again.”

He tapped the switch, ending the recording. “Very good, Prime Minister,” Linux said. “I’ll have it online tonight, once this bunker has been evacuated. The entire world will hear your speech…”

Gabriel frowned. “But the aliens will try to wipe it from the internet,” he pointed out. Their jamming had certainly prevented any attempt to reclaim the airwaves. “How can we stop them purging it before it reaches its intended audience?”

“Leave that to me,” Linux said. “There are thousands of people on the internet who devised all kinds of programs to share files — despite the best that governments and big corporations could do to stop it. We’ll get your message to the world — after that, it’s all up to them.”

“Thank you,” Gabriel said. He wanted to ask what would happen to the young soldier, but the words wouldn’t form in his mouth. How could he ask anyone to fight for Britain when he was going to run away and hide?

Butcher cleared his throat. “Prime Minister?” He said. “It’s time to go.”

“Understood,” Gabriel said. He hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. “Let’s go.”

The climb back up into the open air made him feel oddly claustrophobic. It was a relief when they finally reached the surface and emerged in the midst of a small group of armed soldiers. Butcher spoke to them briefly, and then led the way northwards through the woods. Gabriel could hear the sound of birds chirping in the distance, ignoring the presence of human soldiers in their habitats. Their lives would go on regardless of who ruled the planet. He looked up into the bright blue sky and shivered. There was something impossibly surreal about the whole scene.

“The scouts reported refugees gathering to the north,” Butcher said, as they reached a civilian car that had obviously been commandeered by the military. “We’ll try to give them a wide berth. The aliens don’t seem to care about civilian vehicles, but I think that will change once they realise that we’ve been using them to ship men around under their noses.”

Gabriel opened his mouth to ask why they were using a civilian car, before realising that there was no other choice. He couldn’t have made it to the north on foot. The SAS men were used to walking for miles in a single day, but he’d just slow them down. They had to rely on the car and hope that the aliens didn’t start blasting vehicles at random.

He glanced over towards the east. No plumes of smoke marred the sky, but he knew that the aliens were present — and planning their offensive. He wondered how many people still didn’t realise what had happened, or what was going on — there had to be entire communities that hadn’t had any contact with the aliens. No matter how advanced they were, he couldn’t see how they intended to occupy every last town and village on the planet. If he was in their shoes, how would he do it? Target America, Europe, Russia and China… and let the rest of the world collapse into chaos?

And how long could Gabriel accept his people suffering while he hid from their new masters?