Christopher Nuttall - The Fall of Night

They didn’t look back.

The skies were supposed to be clear of British aircraft now, but Captain Anatoliy Maksimovich Veselchakov was nervous anyway; his bomber was an older craft and carried very little in the way of ECM. It also carried no defensive weapons; given the nature of the craft’s mission, it had probably been felt that Veselchakov didn’t need any weapons to shoot back at British aircraft. It might have annoyed them.

Veselchakov had been orbiting in his flight pattern, well out to sea, for nearly an hour before finally being given the call to action. He had spent most of the day admiring the apparently chaotic scenes on the sea and in the air, and admiring the talents of the flight controllers who kept the Russian Air Force under some kind of control. Veselchakov had never intended to join the air force; he had signed up to fly for one of the Russian commercial lines before being drafted for certain missions for the military. His attempts to protest had been futile; there were hundreds of thousands of Russians soldiers fighting in the war and a civilian like Veselchakov could not be expected to shirk his duty. Besides, as a semi-civilian, he had some rights that none of the fighter jocks or the bomber crews had, including the right to make comments about the food.

Still, he had been dreading the missions ever since he had been told what he would be doing, and had tried to look for a way out. The only way he had found to get out — apart from suicide — ran through Siberia; the labour camps could always use people who shirked their duty to the state and the glory of the Russian Federation. Veselchakov was old enough, and travelled enough, to know that the propaganda wasn't all it seemed, but in the end, it was true that Europe had treated Russia like an ill-mannered bumpkin. Russia’s culture had been dismissed as barbaric, Russia’s legitimate concerns dismissed as relics of the old Soviet Union, and Russia’s Army had been dismissed as a corrupt rusting war machine. The smile had been wiped off their faces now; Veselchakov knew enough about the FSB to know that certain politicians who had made political capital taking shots at Russia had probably been sent to Siberia by now.

“I am moving in now,” he said, as the aircraft tilted around him. It was another reason for using a civilian pilot; Veselchakov’s loss would not hurt the Russia Air Force one iota, although it might annoy them as one of them would have to take a second aircraft and try the same stunt themselves. He had done a few seasons of crop dusting, back when Russia had been experimenting with new ideas; the experience would serve him in good stead, even if the corn hadn’t fired back. “Clear the airspace…”

Smoke was rising all over the English mainland; he could see the shore as he came in lower and slower, racing to catch up with Dover. The British harbour was supposed to be captured intact, but the British had dug into the city… and his mission was to attempt to burn some of them out. The Russians on the ground had called upon the defenders to surrender; the only reply had been an instruction to do something biologically impossible. Veselchakov had never claimed to be a military expert, but he remembered the death toll from Groznyy and several other places in Central Asia; thousands of soldiers had been wounded, and hundreds had died. The planners wouldn’t want to do that again if they could avoid it.

He had been promised no ground fire; the British had fired off all of their missiles at the Russian Air Force, apparently getting in more than a few good hits as well. Veselchakov was as patriotic as the next man, but he found the thought of the Russian Air Force getting a bloody nose amusing; the fighter jocks had been so confident of their prowess and their success with the women of France. Their prowess had lasted as long as it had taken to come up against a prepared enemy… and Veselchakov knew that the ‘women of France’ were whores, paid for sleeping with the Russians. It was possible that there were some women who had slept with the Russians without financial inducements, but Veselchakov wouldn’t have bet on it; the fighter jocks ran out of charm very quickly…

And then the penal units had a new slave for a month.

The English city was already burning in places as he came in for his attack run. The location of most of the defenders was already known and he angled the aircraft for maximum exposure. It was the work of a few seconds to prepare the bomb bay… and then the spray of deadly flaming jelly began, raining down on the British below. The Americans had taken the original idea of napalm and improved on it; the Russians had copied the American idea and added a few refinements of their own. Anyone trying to breathe near the flames would be lucky to survive.

Veselchakov winced as a handful of bullets cracked through the aircraft, but breathed a sigh of relief as he escaped safely, heading back out to sea and safety back in France. The fighter jocks would be up there for hours yet; once he landed, unless they wanted him to repeat his stunt again, there were always the French prostitutes.

Behind him, Dover burned…

Langford hadn’t expected to actually hold the Russians, not once the attempt to seal the Russians off and destroy them had failed; all that mattered now was pulling as many units back as possible, and then digging in to the final defence line. The remaining units in Kent had to be pulled back before they were caught and destroyed; the Russians would have problems expanding out of Kent for at least a week. The British had gone over the entire country and destroyed as many bridges, blocked as many roads, and generally worked hard to give the Russians serious problems.

The burning of Dover hadn’t surprised him, but the sense that a city was steadily being literally burned off the face of the Earth worried him; the Russians might do the same to London, or Edinburgh, or any other city that had refused to surrender. They had used napalm before, in Europe, but…

Bad things were meant to happen elsewhere , he thought, laughing bitterly at himself. They weren't meant to happen in Europe…

He dismissed the thought. “Order a general pullback,” he ordered. Special Forces would do what they could to delay and harass the Russians — landing a good punch, then getting out before the Russians could react — but the regular military would be needed elsewhere. He couldn’t help, but thank God that the entire area had been evacuated; how many would have died if Dover had been left with its civilian population? “Tell all units to pull back to the secondary defence line.”

He wanted to go on the offensive, but he knew that that was impossible; he lacked both the mobile firepower and the air cover to mount any offensive. There was one chance, just one… and if he didn’t play his few cards exactly right, Britain would be lost along with the rest of Europe. It would have to work; he would do everything he could to make it work…

…Because the alternative was unthinkable. They had planned for a total defeat, but deep inside, he had never believed that it would be necessary, not until now. When had Britain come so close to defeat before? 1940? The humiliation of Suez had galvanised a stricken country, but that had been a political defeat, not a military one… and hardly fatal. The Falklands had been fought on a shoestring, but victory had come; defeat had seemed impossible. No nation had been able or willing to threaten Britain…

Until now…