Their Darkest Hour

by Christopher Nuttall

  The tanks swung their main guns around and started firing shells into the surrounding buildings. Mighty explosions sent human buildings toppling to the ground, hopefully trapping and killing human ambushers before they could escape. The’Stig had only a moment to register the fact that one of his helicopters had gone down before the second one came under heavy fire from a hidden machine gun and had to break off, trailing smoke as it limped back out of the city. The radio kept buzzing with scraps of isolated chatter, but all his attempts to raise the fighter jet bases outside the city failed. It didn't take much imagination to realise that the humans might have taken out the bases, or at least forced them to keep their jets under cover.

  “Start moving back,” he ordered the rear units, as the human fire started to slack off. There was no point in trying to push ahead, even though the hover-cushions could probably allow the tanks to get over the rubble. The humans might have anticipated that and set up a second ambush, firing straight into the tanks vulnerable undersides. “Move the troopers to cover the tanks as they head back.”

  He glanced down at the map. Without the command network, it was far harder to coordinate his operations, which gave the humans an advantage. There were other routes to London Base, but if they were also mined...they might walk right into a second trap. The humans had clearly set out to delay them and they’d succeeded admirably.

  But if he failed to get to London Base in time, the humans would inflict disastrous damage on the occupation force...

  ***

  “Ned, Eccles,” Chris’s radio snapped. “The pig is in the poke.”

  Chris nodded. The first alien attempt to relieve their base had been ambushed, but the aliens could presumably shoot their way out of the trap. They had enough firepower to break through, or fall back and try to get to London via a different route.

  “Start spraying,” he ordered. There hadn't really been time to pull any papers or documents out of the command base, but they’d certainly ensure that nothing was left for the aliens to recover. Each of the soldiers carried a flask containing an extremely flammable liquid. Sprayed over the aliens, it would ensure that very little was left – and conceal the fact that the resistance had taken a second high-ranking prisoner. “Everyone else, start falling back to the city.”

  He finished emptying his own flask, tossed a detonator into the centre of the alien command room, and then waved for Abdul to precede him back down the alien ramp and into the lower levels. The sound of firing in the distance was growing louder, although there was no sign of any alien aircraft. They’d based antiaircraft teams throughout the city on the assumption that anything flying would be hostile and they’d clearly forced the alien aircraft to keep their distance.

  “Not a bad day’s work,” Abdul said, as they made it outside. There were small fires burning throughout the remains of the alien base, with hundreds of dead alien bodies scattered around, waiting for the aliens to recover them. The human bodies had already been dragged away to where they would be buried. There would be time for a proper ceremony later. “I think we taught them a lesson.”

  Chris smiled, counting the men out as they left the remains of the alien building. Once everyone was confirmed as having left, he pushed down on the remote control, triggering the detonator he’d left behind in the alien control room. The flames would rapidly destroy the equipment and records as well as most of the DNA traces, making it almost impossible for the aliens to be certain of who’d been in the chamber when the fire started. They’d never know that they’d lost a high-ranking prisoner, not this time. And who knew what he could tell the human race?

  The main body of the base would survive – he doubted fire would melt the material they’d used to build it – but it would be a blackened shell. Humans all over the world would take new hope from the story, as they would from all the other stories. The global counteroffensive would have hurt the aliens badly. Maybe, just maybe, they’d hurt the aliens badly enough to convince them to retreat and leave Earth alone.

  He keyed his radio one final time, sending the signal to retreat, and then turned it off. It was time to make themselves scarce.

  “Impressive,” Abdul muttered.

  Chris followed his gaze. Great plumes of smoke were rising up over London, revealing where resistance fighters had mounted attacks on the police and the other collaborators, as well as a handful coming from alien bases outside the city. He'd only known snippets of the overall plan, but it was clear that they’d hammered the aliens hard. God alone knew how many Leathernecks had died in the last few hours.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s something they can take for granted. Humans don’t ever give up.”

  ***

  Battered bloody, the remains of The’Stig’s force finally broke through the human resistance and reached London Base. It was already too late. The base was a broken ruin, flames licking out through portholes that had been intended to allow the defenders to fire out at human opponents. There seemed to be no living thing left alive, not even the small collection of animals some of the command staff had kept as pets, despite edicts against it. Some humans – the Russians, in particular – were very good at using pets and other trained animals to take out tanks and other armoured vehicles.

  He dismounted from the command vehicle and stared at the devastation. The entire base would need to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch. He cursed the humans as he realised that they’d wiped out vast quantities of equipment, all of which would need to be replaced from the homeworld. With all the other demands on the homeworld’s resources, it was possible that they’d decide to slow Earth’s progress into becoming part of the State. The humans would have a chance to prepare themselves for the next round of fighting, and the next.

  The human collaborator government had been totally destroyed. Somehow, the humans had sneaked explosives and insurgents into the building – perhaps through using some collaborators who hadn't really decided to collaborate. They searched the remains of the human building as best as they could, but found that almost all of the senior collaborators were dead. It was clear that they’d been shot down by the insurgents in cold blood. The destruction of most of the records would make it much harder to be sure of who was still alive, or of who could be trusted. Personally, he wouldn't have trusted any human. They were a shifty treacherous race. Even their collaborators had been treacherous.

  There was no sign of any living human. They’d done the smart thing and made themselves scarce. The’Stig couldn't blame them, not really. His troopers were in a murderous mood, intent on taking it out on the first group of humans that they encountered. Their city almost felt deserted, even though he knew that it was an illusion. The gunfire he could hear in the distance proved that some humans had been left alive.

  “I managed to get a link to the Command Triad,” his aide called. “The command network has been crippled, but they’ve managed to clear some functions.”

  The’Stig nodded and made his slow way back to the command vehicle. The Command Triad would not be pleased. Someone was likely to take the fall for everything that had happened to the Conquest Force. He wondered, mordantly, if they’d try to blame him. It was possible, although almost unthinkable, that he was the senior surviving officer in Britain.

  But that couldn't be true, could it?

  ***

  “I think they’ve probably got their network back up now,” Abdul said, as they gathered in the estate after the battle. “They’ve certainly been coordinating the forces they’ve been moving around the city more effectively.”

  Chris nodded. The Leathernecks hadn’t been shy about re-establishing order, even though their collaborators had been killed or forced to flee. It would take them weeks to calm London down, weeks before they started rebuilding the collaborator government. Assuming, of course, that they could find anyone willing to become collaborator-in-chief. The last one had been gunned down by a policeman who was supposed to be loyal to the new government.

  The repor
ts on the internet kept changing, but it certainly looked as if Operation Hammer had been a success. They’d hit the Leathernecks all over the world, despite problems with international communications; the Leathernecks had to be badly shocked by the experience. The PM and several other world leaders, hiding out, had already uploaded messages of congratulations to the fighting men. Some of the soldiers had been contemptuous of the PM remaining in hiding, but Chris had reminded them that the aliens wanted him dead – or alive, serving as a collaborator. They needed to keep the PM alive and free. Defeating the aliens was all that mattered. The Leathernecks wouldn't give up easily, but they had been hurt. They knew they’d been hit hard...

  And if they didn't know that they’d lost a senior officer...Chris smiled at the thought, before realising that getting the prisoner out of London would be difficult. The Leathernecks were searching lorries, they’d never be able to get him down the tunnels...maybe they could float him out on a boat. He had a brief mental vision of a submarine slipping up the Thames before realising that it was absurd. After the Americans had lost a submarine when it came too close to the surface what remained of the Royal Navy wouldn't take the risk. They’d need to find a boat to get the prisoner out.

  Standing up, he headed outside and walked down the stairs to the basement. The estate, like many others in East London, had once had a gang in effective control, before the resistance had moved in and taught the gangs what real organised violence was all about. Now, it was guarded by soldiers in plain clothes, watching against collaborators and alien spies. They had no hope of stopping the aliens destroying the base if they discovered its existence, but there would be time to destroy the computers and escape.

  The alien prisoner was held in the basement, guarded by three soldiers. Like the previous alien prisoner, he had been stripped of everything that might have carried a transponder, but his living quarters weren’t so good. They didn't have the equipment to make it as hot or humid as the alien would probably have preferred. Chris looked through the window set into the door and scowled. The alien looked thoroughly miserable. It was dangerous to ascribe human thoughts and feelings to the Leathernecks – they weren't even sure what an alien smile or frown looked like – but he was fairly sure of his ground. The alien looked very unhappy.

  Chris opened the door and stepped inside. The alien looked up at him, his dark eyes seemingly expressionless. Maybe the alien was hungry. All the experts claimed that the aliens could eat human foods – they wouldn't want Earth if they couldn’t – but he hadn't touched the food he’d been given. Perhaps he was trying to starve himself to death.

  “You do realise that they will come for me?” The alien said. He had to repeat himself twice before Chris understood. His English, spoken through an inhuman mouth, was mushy. “You won’t be allowed to keep me.”

  “They don’t know we have you,” Chris said. The aliens had certainly not demanded his return. But then, they’d said almost nothing to humanity since Operation Hammer. “And even if they did, there’s one thing about humanity that you folks need to understand.”

  The alien looked over at the wall. “What?”

  “We don’t give up,” Chris said. “We will keep fighting until we’re free.”

  The alien said nothing.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Deep Space

  Day 70

  “Don’t try to move,” a feminine voice said. “You’ve had a nasty shock.”

  Gavin opened his eyes. He saw a young woman, wearing a shapeless tunic, bending over him. It was so unexpected that he was almost convinced that he was in heaven. And then he remembered...the aliens had attacked, they’d run...and something had knocked him over and out. He was a prisoner. There was no other explanation.

  “Lie still,” the woman said. “It takes a moment for your body to adapt to the change in the environment. You’ll be on your feet in no time.”

  She pushed something to his neck before he could object. He felt a brief stab of pain, almost as if he’d been pricked with a needle, and guessed that he’d been injected with something. A truth drug? Something to make him pliable? If the Leathernecks knew who he was, they’d want to interrogate him – and he knew what they did to make people talk. He just hoped he could hold out long enough for his men to scatter, assuming they knew that he'd been captured. The chaos as they’d retreated from Haddon Hall meant that they might not realise that the aliens had taken him alive. Not even the Leathernecks could get answers out of a dead man.

  He tried to sit up, only to feel his head spinning. There was something subtly wrong about the environment. The young woman put a hand around his shoulder and helped him to stand upright. He had it a moment later, even though he’d never experienced anything like it in his entire life. The gravity in the compartment was barely two-thirds of Earth’s gravity. Some of the scientists had speculated that the Leathernecks came from a world that had a significantly lower gravitational field than Earth, he recalled, but he had dismissed it at the time. The Leathernecks were so much stronger than the average human that he suspected it was the other way around.

  “Who...” His throat hurt. He had to swallow hard before he could finish the sentence. “Who are you?”

  “Sharon Cordova, United States Marine Corps,” she said, briskly. “I was a medic before the invasion, which is why they put me in here.” She shrugged. “You seem to have come through the suspension process unharmed. Some guys swear blind that they remained aware even though they were floating in a stasis field.”

  Gavin stared at her, confused. She smiled at him. “If you’re feeling better, I have someone you need to meet.”

  “One moment,” Gavin said. The gravity wasn’t the only odd thing about their environment. He could feel a faint queasiness in the back of his mind, hear a constant thrumming just loud enough to be on the edge of perception. “Are we prisoners?”

  Sharon grinned. “Not exactly,” she said, as she helped him towards the door. It opened as they approached, revealing a compartment large enough for a small party of Leathernecks. “Like I said, I have someone you need to meet.”

  Gavin walked through the door and stopped dead, unable to believe his eyes. The Leathernecks were humanoid, if not human. Some of the scientists had speculated that humanoid was evolution’s default form, suggesting that all the old TV shows with humanoid aliens might have had a point after all. But...the alien in front of him was anything, but humanoid. A great mass of orange-gold tentacles, constantly spinning around the central egg-shaped mass...his mind almost refused to grasp its existence. The body – he assumed it was the alien’s body – seemed featureless. There were no eyes, no mouth...no way of deducing how the alien collected data about its environment. Merely looking at it made him dizzy. It seemed to be incapable of remaining motionless.

  “This is Protector Hank,” Sharon said. She had the grace to look embarrassed. “They don’t have names, not like us – we had to call him something.”

  “I am very pleased to meet you,” Hank said. It’s voice seemed to come from a small device hanging below the central body. The alien certainly sounded a great deal more natural than anything the Leathernecks had ever produced. “We have a great deal to talk about.”

  “I think I need to sit down,” Gavin said. “And perhaps something to eat.”

  “Certainly,” Hank said. The alien didn't need to turn; it just started wobbling its way down the corridor. Gavin wondered if the alien had had its back to him, before realising that ‘front’ and ‘back’ probably meant little to the aliens. They could head in any direction they liked without turning, leaving him wondering how they saw. Some form of mental vision? A sense of perception? Or maybe they saw through their tentacles. “We have become accustomed to feeding humans over the last few weeks.”

  ***

  “They captured me in Missouri,” Sharon explained, twenty minutes later. They were seated around a table that had clearly been designed for humans, rather than Leathernecks...or Hank’s race. �
�We had a base camp for wounded there – somehow, they discovered our location and raided us, rather than dropping a hammer on our heads. They took us off-world, loaded us into suspension pods...and the next thing we knew, the Leatherneck ship had been captured by our new friends. I think they’d been lurking around Earth for the past few months, waiting for a chance to stick a spanner in the works.”

  “That is correct,” Hank said. “We took advantage of the remoteness of your planet to cause one of their ships to go missing. They will not understand what has happened until it is far too late.”

  Gavin stared at the alien. “You mean to say you did nothing while they invaded our world?”

  “You misunderstand the nature of interstellar travel and communications,” Hank informed him. “It can take months to travel between stars. By the time we discovered that the Leathernecks had found you, it was already too late to intervene – they had already dispatched the Conquest Force. There was nothing we could do, but watch and wait for an opportunity to act.”