Their Darkest Hour

by Christopher Nuttall

  She pulled herself out of bed and scowled at her face in the mirror. Dark eyes set in a dark face stared back at her, leaving her with an almost waif-like expression. The uniform she donned rapidly belonged to the nearest hospital, where she worked ever since graduating as a medical doctor. It would be years before she could pay off her debts and go into private practice and until then the NHS owned her, body and soul. She washed her face and headed downstairs, to where her stepmother was banging pots and pans together. It wasn't as if she was doing anything useful either. Fatima had to get her own coffee and cereal before heading out of the house.

  “They’ll give you the sack and then where will you be?” Her stepmother demanded. Fatima ignored her as best as she could. Her father was already on his way to work, after visiting the mosque for morning prayers. “Who’ll want you if you lose your job?”

  “The boys you seem to think are suitable for me have no jobs,” Fatima replied, as calmly as she could. It was true; her stepmother’s family had been pressing her to convince Fatima to marry a boy from Pakistan, who could then be brought to Britain. The fact that Fatima herself didn’t want to marry a stranger didn’t mean anything to them. They’d all had arranged marriages and they’d turned out fine…well, publicly, at least. Fatima knew that at least one of her stepmother’s relatives beat his wife. “And I still have an hour to get to the hospital before I start scrubbing up.”

  Her stepmother started to bleat again, but Fatima tuned her out with the ease of long practice. There were times when she cursed her decision to study medicine, even though it provided an independence many of her friends would envy. The screaming kids in the waiting room, the injuries inflicted by chance or deliberate malice, watching men and women dying slowly in front of her…there were days when she just wanted to walk away from it. But that wasn't an option, not when she still had to pay off her debts. The NHS was dreadful when it came to arranging life-saving medical treatments, yet somehow it was very good at tracking down students and demanding that they repay the loans they’d taken out to study…

  She shook her head as she finished her coffee and headed for the door. She’d just have to endure until the day she could leave the NHS behind. And then perhaps she could set up in private practice, or maybe even leave the country. There were high-paying jobs for medical staff in America, she’d been told. Maybe she’d emigrate and leave her stepmother behind. The thought made her smile, even as she saw the dawn rising over the horizon. Another day was about to begin.

  ***

  He couldn’t sleep.

  Prime Minister Gabriel Burley stood in Ten Downing Street and peered through the bullet-proof glass at the protesters at the end of the streets. It seemed that there wasn't a day when the protesters weren’t there, screaming and shouting as if they blamed Gabriel personally for the economic malaise that had gripped Britain over the last ten years. The country didn’t seem to be able to hold together a government for more than a year either, not after the latest round of parliamentary scandals. Gabriel, two years ago, had been nothing more than an up-and-coming MP, a safe pair of hands for a Parliamentary seat that was solidly Conservative. He’d never dreamed of becoming Prime Minister, certainly not after his predecessor’s career had been blown out of the water in the latest expenses scandal. His opponents had remarked that the only reason Gabriel had avoided being implicated in the scandal had been because he didn’t have the imagination to fiddle his expenses, let alone do anything more interesting. There were times when Gabriel feared that they were right. Nothing he did seemed to please everyone, or even anyone.

  He looked down at his desk and shook his head, bitterly. It was covered in folders, each one a wordy report from the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence or the Security Services. He was supposed to read them all, but reading them was a chore. Didn’t anyone use plain English these days? He’d once spent an hour reading a briefing paper on recent developments in Iraq only to discover that it could have been condensed down into five or six sentences. At least he’d been able to make his feelings clear on that point. It was a shame that the Civil Service took so long to adapt. The next Prime Minister would probably not see any improvement.

  One of the walls of his office held a large painting, commissioned by his immediate predecessor. It showed all of the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, from Pitt the Elder to Gabriel himself. He’d been surprised to receive it, only to be told that it had taken so long to produce that the Prime Minister who’d ordered it had left office by the time it had arrived. The Prime Ministers seemed to be gazing disapprovingly at him, as if they felt that he was letting the side down. They were probably right. When Gabriel compared himself to Pitt, or Churchill, or Thatcher, he always found himself lacking. But then, they’d never had to worry about an economic crash that was slowly bringing the country to its knees…

  “Lucky bastards,” he muttered, as he returned to his desk. The files sat in front of him, mocking him by their silent presence. His secure palmtop buzzed, reminding him that he had the daily security briefing in an hour, followed by several meetings with MPs before his speech in Parliament in the afternoon. The speechwriter had promised him a good speech, one he could read out before the assembled MPs, but it wouldn’t go down very well. It never did, not when all he could deliver was bad news. There were times when he felt that the only reason the Opposition hadn’t pushed for a no-confidence vote was because they didn’t want to be saddled with commanding the sinking ship. They found it more congenial to snipe and shout abuse.

  He opened the first file and looked down at it. It was just as he feared; a short summery, and then twenty pages he’d have to read, just in case some bastard with press credentials hurled a question at him. They’d have a field day with an ignorant Prime Minister. Cursing under his breath, he tapped the intercom and called for coffee. He’d read through one of the files, he promised himself, and then he’d have some time to relax. And then he’d attend the briefing.

  And then all the alarms went off at once.

  Chapter Two

  Over Norwich/Salisbury Plain/London

  United Kingdom, Day 1

  “You know,” Davidson remarked, “Becky has been quite jealous recently.”

  Alex rolled her eyes. The two Eurofighters were heading south-east, high over Norwich. It was definitely shaping up into a routine patrol, which was part of the reason they were bantering together as they flew onwards. It helped them remain alert and remind them that they weren't alone, even if they were flying single-seat aircraft. Fliers could forget about everything else while boring through the sky at just under supersonic speed.

  “I thought you were dating Kate,” she said, mockingly. Davidson’s love life was the stuff of legends. Fast-jet pilots never seemed to have any difficulty finding female companionship while they were off-base. “What happened to the poor girl?”

  “One of those Para bastards got his hands on her while I was looking the other way,” Davidson admitted. His girls never stayed with him for long. “I think they were talking about getting hitched, last I heard.”

  Alex snorted. “And who does Becky have good reason to be jealous of?”

  Davidson affected a hurt tone. “I'm shocked that you could think that I might cheat on her,” he said. Alex snickered and made a one-fingered gesture towards his plane. “She’s jealous of my Typhoon, Alex. I get into her and I take her to Heaven twice a day.”

  “I always knew that you were terrible in bed,” Alex said, fighting down the urge to burst into giggles. “That joke is older than the CO’s CO. And if you keep moving from woman to woman, you won’t live long enough to get promoted into a desk job.”

  “You make it sound as if they’d kill me,” Davidson protested. “I think...”

  “Charlie One, Charlie Two, this is Sector Control,” a new voice said. Alex straightened up at once, feeling ice shivering down the back of her neck. “We are picking up a single contact on intercept vector; I say again, we are picking up a single
contact on intercept vector.”

  Alex glanced at her radar screen as...something blinked into existence. Dead ahead of the Typhoons, it was advancing towards them at Mach Four. For a moment, she thought it was a radar glitch, the kind of glitch that had caused panic during the height of the Cold War, or the years after 9/11. The contact remained alarmingly stable, refusing to vanish. She ran through the situation in her mind and realised that they’d be in visual range within two minutes. What the hell could travel at that speed? There were rumours of a hypersonic drone being test-flown in America, but what would it be doing over Britain?

  “Acknowledged, Sector Control,” she said. “Be advised that we will attempt to make visual contact; I say again, we will attempt to make visual contact.”

  “It could be a ghost,” Davidson said. He sounded excited. Alex had flown a real-life interception mission before, back when the Russians had flown a pair of Blackjack bombers over the North Sea to remind NATO that they existed, but Davidson’s military experience was limited to dropping bombs over Afghanistan. “You think we could be the first to see one with our own eyes?”

  Alex glanced at her radar screen, and then peered ahead into the lightening sky. If she saw the craft...it was possible that someone higher-up would order them to avoid contact or to forget what they’d seen, if it was someone’s secret test project. They should come into visual range in seconds...

  Her threat receiver lit up like a Christmas tree. “What the hell...?”

  A streak of light lanced out of nowhere and struck Davidson’s Typhoon before he had a chance to evade. The weapon, whatever it was, hit its target so hard that Davidson’s plane was blown into a fireball before he had a chance to realise that he was under attack. Alex yanked her plane into an evasive course just as a second streak of light – a very fast missile, according to her on-board displays – slashed through where she’d been. They were under attack! She almost froze in shock – only her training kept her moving. The radar was reporting dozens of new contacts now, appearing from nowhere over the North Sea and moving towards the British mainland. One finger uncovered her firing buttons as she tried desperately to call for reinforcements. The QRA aircraft should have been in the air the moment the radar controllers on the ground realised that something had gone badly wrong.

  “Sector Control, this is Charlie One...”

  Her radio screeched, loudly enough to force her to turn it down in a hurry. Someone was jamming her, preventing her from calling for help. The unknowns, whoever or whatever they were, were angling towards her, slowing as they came. Whatever they were flying seemed to outmatch her Typhoon effortlessly – who the hell were they? Alex gritted her teeth and activated her targeting systems. An enemy craft came into her sights and she launched a pair of missiles right towards it. The craft started to turn, but it was far too late. One of the missiles struck home and the enemy craft exploded in a shockingly powerful blast.

  Another missile was screaming toward her. Acting on instinct, she corkscrewed her plane through the air, realising that she was utterly outmatched. But running could be as dangerous as trying to fight. A black shape appeared out of nowhere in front of her and she plunged the plane down, catching sight of an angular aircraft that reminded her of the F-117 Nighthawk, only several times as large. She took a shot at it anyway – it couldn't possibly be friendly – but she couldn't tell if she’d inflicted any damage. Whatever was screwing with her radio was screwing with her radar as well.

  A brilliant flash of light caught her attention, from the west. Something had exploded on the ground, but what? The entire country couldn't be under attack, could it? The RAF hadn't had any reason to think that someone intended to attack Britain – or if they had, the senior officers had never bothered to tell the pilots. Her threat receiver screamed again, too late. The entire aircraft buckled around her...

  Desperately, moving so quickly that she hadn't quite realised what she was doing, she pulled the ejection lever and exploded out of the aircraft, into the suddenly-hostile sky.

  ***

  The first of the French tanks were coming into view, a trio of AMX-56 Leclerc Main Battle Tanks. There were a handful of soldiers flanking them, watching for antitank teams that could target the heavier vehicles with Javelin missiles, but Gavin could tell that a number of Frenchmen were missing. The French hadn't been engaged so far, which suggested that Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Luc Baptiste had a plan of his own. Who knew what those missing French soldiers would be doing while the British attempted to take out the main force?

  A streak of light slammed down from high above and struck the lead French tank. It exploded in a colossal fireball, the turret actually being blown into the air. Gavin stared in utter disbelief. What the fuck? Had someone in the Royal Artillery accidentally loaded live ammunition into the big guns? A second missile struck a tank, followed by a third that missed, almost toppling its target over through the colossal force of the explosion. Heedless of his personal safety, Gavin pulled himself back to his feet, his mind spinning with the sheer impossibility of the situation. They were under attack! They were in the heart of the British Army’s Training Area and they were under attack!

  He glanced back towards where the Challengers were positioned, hoping that their crews had enough sense to bail out before they were targeted too. Their unknown opponent – once might have been a dreadful accident, but two or more suggested deliberate malice – had to have gained control of the air. They could presumably detect any moving tanks...but who were they? There had been no report that Russia was planning anything drastic and the only other nation that might have had the capability to attack Salisbury Plain and the garrisons surrounding it was the United States. The thought that they might be at war with America was absurd.

  Something caught his eye and he glanced to the east, towards Tidsworth Garrison. A streak of fire was falling from the sky towards the Garrison. It dropped below the horizon, seconds before there was a brilliant flash of light, followed by a massive fireball. The sound of thunder reached his ears seconds later. It looked almost like a baby nuke! Other fireballs were rising too. It didn't take his intimate knowledge of the training area to know that they were rising from the location of many of the other garrisons surrounding Salisbury Plain. He spared a brief thought for the men and equipment that had presumably been destroyed in the blasts, and then started to run for the command vehicle. The tactical command centre had been buried well behind the ambush point; it should – should – have escaped detection.

  He waved a hand at Sergeant Gibbon as the Fijian soldier appeared from the concealed tanks. “Get a crew down to check out the French and get them under cover,” he barked, trusting the Sergeant to deal with the situation. A number of young soldiers looked badly shocked, holding their personal weapons as if they were unsure what to do with them. He silently blessed his own insistence on issuing loaded weapons to the men, even on training exercises. It had been intended to ensure that the tankers were used to carrying them, but he had a feeling that they might be needing them to fight. “And then send a runner to each of the garrisons. I need to know what we have left in the fight.”

  The tactical command vehicle was half-buried under a small mountain of earth. Gavin pulled at the hatch and it opened, revealing a cramped compartment with the latest in communications and coordinating gear. He hadn't been too impressed with the entire concept when he’d first heard of it – the command vehicle wasn’t even as well-protected as the wretched Snatch land rover – but it might have proved itself useful today. A pair of operators, both looking as if they were on the verge of panic, glanced up at him in relief.

  “Report,” he barked. “Who the hell hit us?”

  “Sir, I don't know, sir,” the lead operator said. He looked far too young and nerdy to serve with the army, but his skills at pulling information out of the ether were remarkable. “All of our communications links have gone down!”

  Gavin swore. They had a laser link to the British-owned satellit
e communications network and various NATO systems. If they were all gone, it meant that their unknown opponent had somehow taken them all out seconds before launching the attack on Salisbury Plain. It was simply impossible to jam a laser signal, or even detect it. He keyed the radio and cursed when a wash of static blasted from the speakers. They were being jammed. His unit – and every survivor from the garrisons – had been cut off from higher authority. They were on their own, unable to coordinate with PJHQ or the MOD in fighting off the attack on British soil. But who were they fighting?

  There was another screech of static, followed by a sudden shift into the BBC. “...Receiving reports of massive explosions in London,” a voice said. “We have been unable to reach...”

  The signal washed out of existence. For a moment, Gavin was sure that he could hear voices hidden in the static, but he couldn't make out what they were saying. The BBC had been unable to reach whom? The Government? He’d met the Prime Minister during a meeting at PJHQ and he hadn't been too impressed, but he was legal authority. And if they were at war...Dear God, just who the hell were they fighting?