Their Darkest Hour

by Christopher Nuttall

  The remaining three were less guilty, but they’d definitely been involved. Chris shot all three of them and then stepped back to allow the cameras to film their dead bodies. The video would be uploaded to the internet tonight and then the entire world would see what had been done for the aliens – and what had happened to those who had done it. Maybe the next set of collaborators would be less willing to torture their captives...

  Shaking his head, he walked away from the chamber, leaving the bodies behind. They’d be buried when night came, left to rot in an unmarked grave. And that, he hoped, would be the end of it. He didn't want to have to do it again.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  North England

  United Kingdom, Day 44

  The alien had been placed in a large holding cell, with foodstuffs that had been liberated from one of the alien bases by a collaborator who had ties to the resistance. It – no, Gavin reminded himself, he – had been well-treated, with the intelligence crew’s best guess at the kind of environment the aliens would find comfortable. Given the temperature of their buildings, they seemed to prefer a sauna rather than the open air. The alien certainly didn't look uncomfortable, although there was no way to know for sure. He didn't seem to speak English properly without his voder, but there was no way they could risk bringing it to their hiding place. The aliens might have been able to track it down.

  “I doubt that we will ever be able to talk their language properly,” Linux reported. They were standing together in front of the monitor, watching the alien and two of the intelligence team experimenting with a prototype translator. “Their mouths and ours are just too different. We’d have better luck trying to speak fluent pig.”

  “I’ve known a few intelligence operatives who claimed that they spoke fluent donkey,” Gavin said, wryly. “Can we ask him questions?”

  “Once the techs have finished, I think so,” Linux said. “We copied their translation programs onto a pair of laptops and started working away at it. I think there will probably be quite a few glitches, but on the whole we have something that should work fairly well.”

  Gavin nodded, looking down at the reports from the pair of doctors who had examined the living alien. Most of what they said tied in with the reports from the handful of aliens who had been dissected around the world, but there were some interesting additions. The alien seemed to have undergone some form of surgery at some time, yet it seemed cruder than anything humanity had devised for itself. Their best guess was that the aliens actually seemed to be able to take more punishment than humanity, but any serious injuries healed slower than comparable damage to a human. It didn't make much sense to Gavin, yet the doctors seemed convinced that it fitted in with what they’d observed about alien behaviour.

  Added to the files they’d pulled from the alien computer network, they’d also been able to identify different ranks, at least for alien soldiers. Their military appeared to be strictly top-down, without any of the special arrangements human forces made for their Special Forces, although their intelligence service – which appeared to be completely separate from the military – had no formal rank structure. Gavin suspected that they were missing something, if only because that little datum didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the alien structure. But their intelligence service might not keep its files on the general system, if only because they would fear hackers from Earth.

  The two technicians finished working with the alien and left the chamber, leaving the alien alone in the heat. He seemed to prefer bright light, even at night; the technicians had shown him knobs that he could twist to adjust the light and heat to whatever he considered natural. Some of the researchers had wondered if the alien homeworld was permanently illuminated – they'd come up with all kinds of models to demonstrate how a habitable world could float at the gravitational point between two stars – but Gavin suspected that the alien simply didn't want to be in darkness. He was alone, miles from any of his own kind – and light years from home. If humans could get uneasy being only a short distance from their own kind, how would an alien feel when the distance to his homeworld was something unimaginable?

  He stepped into the chamber, one hand half-covering his eyes against the glare. He’d had to leave his Browning outside the chamber, leaving him feeling oddly naked. The alien’s heaving mass was stronger than him, although he could move quicker if he had to dodge the alien’s grasp. One of the laptops had been left on the bench, proofed against damage caused by the humidity. He picked it up and sat down facing the alien. Dark eyes looked back at him. The alien seemed to be taking his captivity well, all things considered. Humans would probably have been bouncing off the wall by now, demanding release.

  There was a note on the screen waiting for him. The alien’s name is Maz’Bak. Gavin read it quickly and then looked up at the alien, Maz’Bak. No one really understood how the alien names went together – if there was a forename and a surname, or if there was some other way they constructed their names – but it was an issue that would hopefully be addressed once the war came to an end. Who knew? Perhaps they could force the aliens to accept something less than total conquest of Earth. And the key to unlocking many mysteries was right in front of him, breathing heavily. Up close, there was a faintly musty smell around the alien. It wasn't entirely pleasant to the nose.

  He tapped the laptop, bringing up the translation program. “My name is Gavin,” he said. The translation program produced a number of grunts, followed by his name. It was clearly smart enough to recognise that there was no direct translation of Gavin. “I am here to ask you some questions.”

  The alien made an odd motion with one hand. It seemed almost a shrug.

  “Start with the easy question,” Gavin said, dryly. “Why are you here?”

  There was a pause, and then the alien grunted back. “I was captured by some of your men and transported away from my people,” the laptop said. Gavin had to smile. “They brought me here and put me into the care of your doctors.”

  “That isn't what I meant,” Gavin admitted. There was something almost simplistic about the alien’s reply. He had to remind himself sharply that the translation program would be simplifying things as much as possible, perhaps editing out some or all of the meaning in the process. A Star Trek-style universal translator would have been very useful. “Why have your people invaded Earth?”

  The alien grunted, several times. Gavin listened carefully, but as far as he could tell it was just grunts. The subtle points were impossible for humans to hear. “This world is in an important location for us,” the laptop said. “We chose to claim it to forestall others from claiming it.”

  “Interesting,” Gavin observed. “So you have enemies? Races on the same level as yourselves?”

  The alien said nothing.

  Gavin looked up at the dark eyes. “We have videos of what your human allies were doing to your prisoners,” he said. “We could attempt to force the information from you.”

  “And then the State will extract its revenge,” the alien said, through the laptop. Gavin had to admit that the alien had a point. The aliens were in a position to extract revenge, simply by bombing human population centres. “Your world is ours because we were strong enough to take it from you. We do not understand why you did not climb into space and secure yourself from races like us. And yet there is much about you that can be added to the State. Your race is a wealth of knowledge for your superiors.”

  Gavin glanced at the laptop, suspiciously. He’d tried primitive translation programs before in Afghanistan and they’d never really impressed him. If the alien was speaking truthfully – and the translator was working perfectly – the aliens had taken Earth because they could, rather than any desperate need for real estate...unless their mysterious enemies had wanted to take Earth and the Leathernecks had wanted to get there first. It struck him as oddly primitive, but it tied in with other statements the aliens had made since the invasion had begun. They didn't bother coming up with elaborate justi
fications for their actions. They just did what they thought needed to be done.

  “You’ve been rounding up military personnel and computer specialists,” he said. “What happens to them?”

  The alien seemed to rock forward, slightly. “We intend to use your knowledge to enrich ourselves,” he said, finally. “Your computer specialists will assist us in creating the next generation of warship computers, giving us an edge over the...”

  Gavin frowned. The laptop had declined to translate the final grunt. If that was the name of their enemy...it did make a certain kind of sense. They had an enemy out among the stars, maybe more than one. And human computers were generally better than alien designs...of course they would want to add human technology to their warships. It would be an unpleasant surprise for their enemies when they restarted the war.

  In fact, he could think of several other things the aliens might want. Ever since HG Wells had written a story about invaders from Mars, humans had been writing vast science-fiction epics that explored all kinds of fictional technology. But the aliens didn't find it fictional – they already had some kind of FTL drive, even if their computers weren't up to human standards. What if they started to implement ideas humans had devised into their warships, or their tactics, or...? There were thousands of possibilities. Maybe tactics from Star Wars could be used, or Babylon 5, or even Doctor Who.

  “So you’re taking the specialists away from Earth,” he said, slowly. There were thousands of reports of people just taken away by the collaborators, leaving friends and families behind. They would never know what had happened to their missing relatives, not unless the aliens deigned to tell them – and it seemed unlikely that they would even understand the human need for closure. “What are you doing with the military personnel?”

  The alien said nothing.

  “Oh, don’t give me that,” Gavin snapped, angrily. “We know that you have captured thousands of British and American military personnel – and we assume you’ve done the same everywhere you’ve landed. What are you doing with them?”

  He stared up at the alien’s dark eyes. “We need to know,” he said, quietly. “Where are our soldiers?”

  “They have been taken off-world,” the alien said, finally. His bulk seemed to quiver, just for a second. “They will serve the State on the disputed worlds. As subjects of the State, it is their duty to serve as the State decrees. They will fight for the State or die.”

  Gavin blinked in surprise. “You’re expecting them to fight for you?”

  “Of course,” the alien said. “Their world is in our claws. We own your planet now and your people exist to serve the State. Your military personnel will be expected to take the disputed world or lose the right to return to their homeworld.”

  “I see,” Gavin said. “And most of them will die in service to the State?”

  “To die in the service of the State is a great thing,” the alien said. Gavin stared down at the translator, convinced that there had to be an error. How could the aliens have developed such a society – and at the same time, developed FTL drives that had allowed them to spread out into interstellar space? For all he knew, someone had given the aliens FTL technology – or someone had landed on their homeworld and they’d captured their starship.

  But then, what would have happened if Hitler had won World War Two? There would have been a fascist state, with children indoctrinated into believing Hitler’s warped racial theories from birth – theories that would have been ‘proven’ by the Nazi victory. How long would it be before someone decided to question the fascist state’s nature? And if they’d all been brought up to believe that genocide was acceptable in the name of the state, who among them would even question?

  A few years ago, he’d read a book about the American South – and how slavery had been an integral part of society. They’d known that blacks were inferior to whites, which had played a large part in keeping society ordered, rather than have the poorer whites realise just how badly they were being screwed by their social superiors. And generations of children had been raised to believe that blacks were inferior...it had taken generations and a civil war to start the long task of changing their minds, and the scars were still present when the Leathernecks had invaded Earth. How long would it be before some Leatherneck version of William Wilberforce raised his voice to challenge the ruling party?

  “One final question,” he said, finally. “How can we get you off our world?”

  The alien seemed almost amused by the question. “You can’t,” he said. “Earth belongs to the State.”

  ***

  “We have been bouncing questions off him for some hours,” the intelligence officer reported. She was a slight woman, barely strong enough to get through the army’s basic training before being streamlined into intelligence. “I’m afraid that most of what he told you, General, seems to fit in with what else we know about them. They came, they saw and they conquered Earth.”

  She tapped her laptop and the display changed. “We now know more about how they’re organised,” she continued. “At the time, there’s a Command Triad; three officers, one from the Land Forces, one from the Space Forces and one from their intelligence service. Below them, there are Land Force Commanders who serve as the principle officers on the ground – we have one assigned to Britain, there are several assigned to the United States and at least three assigned to Europe. Below them” – she tapped the laptop again – “there are a number of units assigned to the various Land Force Commanders. Apparently, we’ve been bleeding them pretty hard and they’ve had to shift units around fairly regularly on fireman drills.”

  Gavin smiled, despite his tiredness. Earth might be tiny by interstellar standards, but she was still a pretty big planet and most of the regional theatres were separated by large bodies of water. The aliens might have upwards of two million soldiers in their conquest force, yet it was nowhere enough to hold down the entire planet. But they didn't really need to hold down the entire world. The fighting in the Middle East, the chaos sweeping through Africa, the mass slaughters in the Balkans and Central Asia – the humans were still fighting each other, even when there was a more dangerous threat in orbit. It might not have been that important – the aliens were perfectly capable of bombarding parts of the planet they didn't need into submission – but it would have been nice to think that humanity could unite against a common foe.

  Linux looked up from where he’d been sitting. “We’re fairly sure that we could take their command network down for some time,” he said. Gavin nodded, remembering when it had been first proposed. “But it would only work once. After that, they would start isolating their systems and making it impossible to take them down again.”

  Gavin snorted. “I still don’t understand why they even offered us the chance to do it once.”

  Linux smirked. “How many people really know what happens inside a computer?” He asked, clearly remembering his pre-military days. “Every time a person’s identity is stolen by a hacker, it happens because someone was careless or ignorant and left the front door to their computer wide open. People use the same passwords for different computers, even though they should know better. Do you know how I broke into the Pentagon’s computers?”

  His smile grew wider. “One of their officers used the same password for accessing their computers as he did for buying stuff on Amazon,” he explained. “I cracked one password and then I had access to all of his Pentagon files. And that was someone who really should have known better. I’d be surprised if the alien troopers know anything about what happens inside a computer. They certainly don’t seem to be interested in telling them anything more than they need to know.”

  “Maybe we should hold off for a few years and let them absorb our computer systems,” Gavin mused. “And then we could take down their entire system at one fell swoop.”

  “Unless they're complete idiots, they will take precautions,” Linux pointed out. “I would – if I had human specialists working for me
.”

  Gavin shrugged. “And so we go back to the old problem,” he said. “The aliens are in a position to bombard us into submission. Even if we take out their forces on the ground, we would still be knocked back down and forced to surrender.”

  “Maybe we could find a way to contact their enemies,” Linux said. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  Gavin had been giving that some thought. “I don’t see how,” he admitted, finally. “Unless we can build an FTL communicator...”

  “They don’t have one,” Linux said.

  The door burst open as one of the operators ran into the room. “Sir,” he said, “there’s an important broadcast on the BBC. You have to see it!”

  Gavin followed him back upstairs, leaving a pair of soldiers behind to keep an eye on the alien. The broadcast was already repeating when he reached the dining room, where two of the staff had been monitoring the BBC. He was mildly surprised that the aliens hadn't bothered to put out their own version of the attack on the detention camp, but their propaganda efforts seemed feeble, almost uninspired. Their collaborators weren’t quite working as hard as they should.