Christopher Nuttall - The Fall of Night

The sound of high explosives was getting closer as the first of the Russians appeared, moving carefully forward and looking for traps. By now, they all knew how to spot a penal soldier from the slumped shoulders, the absence of weapons or rank insignia, and the suicidal actions. The Russian was crawling forward, completely unarmed; Robinson felt a moment of sympathy before hardening his heart and muttering a command for the sniper to take the Russian down. The Russian twitched once and lay still; the heat of the air seemed to suppress any noise he might have made, or perhaps it was the noise of the battle in the far distance that was concealing his cries. Other Russians appeared, crawling forwards; they were armed and fired as they slipped from cover to cover, hunting for the British sniper who had killed their former colleague.

They don’t know we’re all here , Robinson realised. The Russians clearly thought that they were dealing with a lone SAS sniper, like the one who had killed a Russian General two nights ago when the idiot had gone driving through barely-secured territory; their tactics were designed to beat the sniper out of hiding, not assault a dug-in infantry force. He muttered commands to Inglehart, who passed them along the line; hold your fire and wait.

The Russians came closer and closer, their bullets cracking through the air well above the heads of his men, the universe shrinking to the point where it held only the Russian company and the British company, men who were about to kill and be killed. Robinson felt deadly calm as he took aim, considering his targets carefully; a green-clad Russian officer, waving his men on with one hand, seemed the best possible choice. He used hand signals himself, issuing orders to the mortar crews; those weapons, at least, they had plenty of rounds to fire at the Russians. Time ticked by…

“Fire,” he shouted, and fired down at the Russian. He had no business in the line of fire himself, but he was damned if he was abandoning his men now, and it was a chance to hit back for all Hazel had suffered since he had gone off to war. It seemed a dream now; the universe replaced by endless war as Russians were caught in the stream of bullets, or threw themselves to the ground as British firepower poured onto their locations. The dull thumping of mortars could be heard as the soldiers fired the antipersonnel rounds into the Russian positions, slaughtering hundreds of Russians; the remainder scattered back and returned fire as best as they could. The British mowed them down mercilessly.

Robinson threw his head back. “Plaza-toro,” he shouted, words that would hopefully mean nothing to the Russians. “Plaza-toro!”

All along the line, most of the soldiers scooped up their weapons and hauled them away, heading towards the second set of trenches. A handful remained, brave volunteers; Robinson would have liked nothing better than to stay with them, but he knew his duty. He ran from the trenches as something changed in the air pressure… and then a mighty series of explosions blew him to his knees. The Russians had fired heavy guns, aiming them directly onto their positions; shrapnel and cluster bombs, even small mines, flew everywhere. Robinson kept his head down and watched his feet carefully; here and there, a soldier screamed as a tiny mine detonated, blowing off their legs and crippling them for life. It was easy to see why people had wanted such weapons to be banned, but in the end… the Russians had cared nothing for the ban.

A British MLRS rapid-fired a stream of rockets in reply, arcing over his head as the soldiers stumbled and crawled to the second set of trenches. It seemed like a nightmare, or something out of the First World War; the looming presence of a Russian tank, trying to flank them, underlined the strange nature of war in the new world. Inglehart blasted it with a Knife before the Russian could do more than fire a long burst of machine gun bullets at the fleeing soldiers; the Russian tank exploded into fire and died rapidly. Russian gunners were trying to target the MLRS; Robinson prayed that the crew had managed to move their vehicle before it was too late. The sound of shouts in Russian could only mean one thing; the Russians were in hot pursuit.

“Get into position, you worthless bastards,” Inglehart was shouting, as the soldiers scrambled to obey. A handful of wounded were being carted away by medics, trying to get them to one of the evacuation ships before the Russians caught them; several more were refusing to leave and were preparing to join the final stand. “I want you to kill every god-damned Russian who pokes his dick over that crest, got that?”

The sky seemed to be lit up with rockets and aircraft, hunting for targets. Robinson looked for signs that someone else was mounting a defence, fighting the Russians in the air, but there was no sign of any British aircraft at all. The noise was strange; he could hear sonic booms and the thunder of bombs, and then there would be moments when it was almost quiet and peaceful. The shape of a Russian tank lumbered into view and they braced themselves as an infantryman took arm with an RPG, striking the Russian tank and destroying its treads. A second shot sent tankers boiling out of it; the British mowed them down before the flames consumed the tank and detonated its ammunition.

“There,” Inglehart muttered. Robinson saw them briefly; a line of Russian infantrymen, preparing themselves to move forward. “I think that’s our cue…”

The Russian shells landed.

“Hit,” someone was shouting, as explosions raged through the British trench lines. Colonel Boris Akhmedovich Aliyev wasn't so sure; the shells had actually fallen short, digging themselves into the mud and probably alarming the British, but not killing many of them. “We killed them all!”

“Onwards,” Aliyev shouted, as he hefted his own assault rifle. The British would be stunned and that wouldn’t last long; the British had held out stubbornly long enough to convince him that it would be the greatest fight of his career. He was almost relieved to be a mere infantryman again; no choices, no serious responsibility… just the urge to kill the enemy until they were all dead. It had been his reward; a soldier who accomplished much in the Russian Army would be forgiven much… and no one would complain about him wanting to enter the fight. The paratroops had been badly mauled by the fighting near Dover; Aliyev would have one last major battle before he was sent back to Russia to start the long hard task of rebuilding the paratroopers into a new force. “Advance against the British!”

The remainder of his paratroops moved forward with blinding speed, running up towards the British positions and preparing for the final lunge. The shells had disrupted the British; only a handful fired back as the paratroopers assaulted the position, moving from covering positions to wild desperate charges as they threw grenades and faced the British in close-quarter combat for the final time. The entire scene was beautifully chaotic; he loved it as the position disintegrated into a hundred tiny battles, even hand-to-hand combat between soldiers. He couldn’t have been happier…

A British officer slammed into him and they went down, fighting a desperate struggle to kill each other before it was too late; Aliyev went for the neck and felt his tormenter’s struggles die before he pulled himself out from under the body… and saw a rifle pointed at him from very near range. His hand lanced down to the fragmentation grenades at his belt; he just managed to pull the pin before the British soldier fired once, sending Aliyev howling into a nightmare of fire and death.

Robinson saw the Captain, a young studious officer who had handled his unit well, if without inspiration, go down on top of a Russian officer and screamed in outrage. The Russian broke the Captain’s neck with a single quick moment and slipped out; Robinson knew that he was too dangerous a fighter to risk a hand-to-hand fight, no matter how much he wanted one; he lifted his assault rifle and fired in one quick motion.