Christopher Nuttall - The Fall of Night

He muttered a curse under his breath, directed equally at the British and his superiors alike. They had insisted on limiting the amount of damage the Russian forces did — a tall order under any circumstances, and rather at odds with the ruin that Russian forces had reduced Dover to, before the fighting there had mercifully come to a halt. Several of his tankers had fired on buildings which had looked suspicious; he found it hard to reprimand them, although he had no choice, but to tell them off. They wouldn’t face the penal units for such actions, but it wouldn’t be good for winning hearts and minds… not that there were any civilians around to impress with Russian restraint.

Coming to think of it, the only British civilians he had seen had been a set of looters, who had been forced to face the jeers of the Russian soldiers before being set to work moving equipment for the Russians as part of a long sentence for looting. Their protests hadn’t bothered the Russians at all; it was better than being dumped into a penal unit, assuming that the FSB didn’t just shoot them on sight. One of them had refused, unable to believe what was happening to them; he had been shot down like a dog. Onishenko hadn’t cared; discipline had to be maintained, whatever the price…

“Colonel, we may have aircraft in your general area,” a controller called, from one of the Mainstays orbiting far behind the lines. Onishenko cursed again; the Mainstays had been having problems all day with sensor ghosts, sending out air raid warnings at the drop of several hats and ordering armed fighters to intercept phantom targets. It would be much easier if a handful of fighters were on permanent CAP, but some bureaucrat in the Russian Air Force had insisted on fighters maintaining a distance to avoid them being shot down by ground-fire; the losses in the first day of the invasion had stunned them. “Please be alert for air traffic…”

Onishenko cursed again. The Russians had hundreds of bombers, criss-crossing the sky and waiting for targets; his men, spooked, would be likely to fire on them or call for fighter support for cover against their own people, let alone the dangers of Russian aircraft seeing what they thought was hostile units and opening fire at ‘danger close.’ All he had to do was cut through the British lines and sow panic in their rear; at the moment, he was wondering if they even had a rear. They could have been halfway to London by now if the higher-ups hadn’t insisted on playing it carefully…

He heard the noise of an aircraft, then several aircraft, and then plenty of aircraft. He turned his head to the north, wondering why the noise sounded funny, and saw them making their way towards him. The sight made his mouth drop open for a long moment; he had expected to see combat jets and assault helicopters, not… he wasn’t sure what they were, but he was sure that they were British. Many of them looked older than anything he’d seen in the Russian Army, others looked as if they could barely fly; he wondered if somehow they had blundered into an air show…

And then they started to drop bombs…

There were over three hundred older aircraft in Britain, some of them lovingly protected at various museums and air shows, others pushed into service by pilots who had volunteered for their dangerous mission, many of them without any means of hurting the enemy. Other aircraft belonged to display teams; the entire Red Arrow reserve squadron — the main pilots had been recalled to the RAF during the Second Battle of Britain — had volunteered to a man to fly their Hawks in one final glorious mission. A Spitfire, a Lightning, dozens of civilian aircraft… all flew towards a Russian force that could not believe its eyes. The American EW tech had provided just enough of a break; for a moment, the Russians couldn’t hope to react in time…

Even as ZSU units swung around to fire missiles and CIWS shells at the incredible force, the Hawks of the Red Arrows swooped in low, just above the ground. They flew in formation every week of every year; they performed the craziest of manoeuvres, just for the benefit of gawking spectators. Now, they dropped makeshift bombs on the Russian forces, catching them before they could reprioritise their targeting and separate the dangerous aircraft out from the diversion. It would be bare minutes before Russian fighters emerged to challenge them and knock them from the sky; in that time, a single pass could do a lot of damage…

Onishenko found his voice as the first Hawk screamed overhead, dropping precision bombs on the Russian tanks, homing in on their turrets. “Open fire,” he screamed, shouting for the ZSU units and the tanks armed with antiaircraft weapons to put them to use. A hail of fire, not all of it coordinated or radar-guided, shot up into the sky; priceless aircraft fell out of the sky, or in some cases were guided by their pilots down onto Russian tanks and vehicles just before they crashed. “Take them down!”

It was impossible! He ducked as a biplane, a vehicle he could have outrun in his tank on open ground, passed overhead, low enough for his hair to feel its presence. A Hawk made a second pass, only to be blown out of the air and crash onto the road; the British houses nearby started to burn as more aircraft crashed into them, or started to make their escape. The sonic booms from Russian fighters echoed across the land… and then one of his tanks blew up. Onishenko whirled, to see a sight he had never expected to see; a British tank was moving directly towards his position.

He opened his mouth to shout orders and the British tank slammed an armour-penetrating shell into his tank, blowing it apart before he could react.

The aircraft had worked better than Major Ryan had dared hope; the Russians had been caught in a state of almost-complete shock. His force advanced carefully, moving as quickly as they dared and firing at every half-intact Russian tank they saw; there was no time to work out which were dangerous, and which could be safely ignored. There would be Russian aircraft overhead within moments if the news got out; the American jamming equipment might be better than the Russian equipment, but it could hardly fail to alert the Russians that something was going on…

A Russian BMP was moving slightly, turning as if it intended to escape; he barked orders and one of his tanks hit it with a high-explosive shell, sending it up in a shower of sparks… which rapidly became a huge explosion. Russian infantry scattered, some of them firing desperately at the Challengers with their rifles, others engaged in the more practical act of running away from their tormentors. Just for a moment, Ryan could allow himself to hope that they would have a chance, before the Russians counter-attacked. More tanks appeared and a brief exchange of fire left tanks on both sides flaming wrecks…

“Fall back,” he ordered, as the American data revealed that there were no more Russian tanks close enough to be used as cover. He had soldiers with handheld SAM missiles scattered around, but he knew better than to think that they could provide the perfect air cover he needed; the Russians would be on them soon with heavy bombers, perhaps even MLRS launchers if they had any brought up in time. “We don’t want them hitting us while there are no Russians left to use for cover…”

It had been an Iraqi trick, then an Iranian one, and finally the Palestinians had adopted it, although after the disaster that Israel had suffered, the Israelis had given up caring about such things as global public opinion. They had been close enough to the Russian positions to make any attempt to bomb the crap out of them an exercise in fratricide; the Russians were unlikely to condone any attempts to kill their own people when it was so much more sporting to let the British do it. Now, the Russians were gone; it was possible that the Russians would strike them as hard as they could.