Christopher Nuttall: The Fall of Night

The tanks moved back desperately, leaving three of their number burning in the streets, and a fourth disabled beyond the point where it could move. The crew of the damaged tank refused to leave; given one chance, they could still hurt the others. Ryan saluted them as the tanks pulled back; he knew he would never see them again.

“They’re attacking with what ?”

“Tanks,” Anna said, precisely. “At least nine tanks, attacking our forces under cover of the crazy air force.”

General Shalenko ground his teeth. Victory was close; he could feel it. He wouldn’t let a handful of tanks stand in the way. “Orders to the MLRS commander,” he said. He couldn’t remember the man’s name; the British had killed the first three officers to hold that role through accurate counter-battery fire. “He is to sweep that entire area.”

“Yes, sir,” Anna said. “Intelligence believes that it has located the enemy HQ.”

Shalenko glanced down at the image from the orbiting satellite. Some of the satellites hadn’t been responding quite right; he wasn’t sure if that was because of overuse, or because the Americans were trying to disrupt their operations somehow. The Americans had shared some of their tricks with their British cousins; all they had had to do to make life much harder had been to send supplies. They had… and also opened a whole new can of worms.

“Order Colonel Aliyev to seize that place at once,” he ordered. It was vulnerable; if they could take the British commander alive, it would be the end of the fighting. “I want…”

“Colonel Aliyev is dead, sir,” Anna said. Shalenko winced; yet another good man, left behind to die in the British countryside, so close to London and the end of the war. “I can send a fresh unit…”

“Do so,” Shalenko ordered. Victory was growing closer. The rumble of guns and rockets grew louder. I want this over before we all go mad.”

The Russians had carefully pre-positioned thirteen MLRS launchers in a region near Reigate, a British town that had been reduced to rubble by a brief hand-to-hand fight and then a bombardment by napalm-armed planes. On command, they now opened fire, spilling thousands of tank-killing rockets over the general area they knew the British tanks to be operating. Guided by tiny sensors, the rockets homed in on their targets; no one ever found a trace of Major Ryan, or the remains of his unit.

“You and the others are to leave,” Langford said, as the Russians closed in on their final location. The defeat of the tanks had ended whatever hopes he had had of winning the war; he had thrown his last dice and lost. “For what it’s worth, you all performed brilliantly in the final battle, and one day I hope that you will return to Britain.”

He sat back and watched as the small staff ran from the HQ, heading towards the jeep that had been placed there for a hasty retreat, hoping that they would make it to the ships before the Russians reached Liverpool or one of the other coastal ports in the west. Civilian resistance would be almost non-existent, but the Russians themselves had damaged the transport network; it would be weeks before some parts of the country saw a Russian, or were fully reconciled to Russian occupation.

Not all of the remaining soldiers would leave, of course. Some would choose to remain with their families, hiding as civilians, others had determined that they would carry on the war underground, forming a resistance movement that would violently oppose the Russians. There had been some seeds planted, some preparations made, but in the end, supplies had been too limited to arm a proper resistance movement. In the years to come, Langford was certain that there would be victories, but he knew that few of them would matter; the Russians were too strong.

They would grow lax, of course; they would even be influenced by British and European culture. It always happened; the barbarians at the gate would invade, thousands of people would get hurt, but in the long run, civilisation would spread further than it had before. Who knew what would happen in the future? Langford only knew his own future… and that had grown short indeed. He had planned for everything…

There were voices outside, speaking in harsh Russian; the tent flap was pushed aside and three armed Russians stepped into the tent, weapons pointing everywhere; they homed in on Langford as if he were wearing a tracer. He smiled at them.

“Hands high,” one of them barked, as more Russians filtered into the tent. “You will come with us as well.”

“No,” Langford said flatly, and pushed the detonator in his hand. “Goodbye.”

The explosion vaporised the tent and everyone in it.

United Kingdom

The Russian Army entered London two days after the Battle of Dorking.

Inspector David Briggs, created Lord Mayor of London — the previous Lord Mayor having vanished somewhere on the first terrible day — by Langford, waited for them outside Buckingham Palace. He hadn’t been able to decide if Langford had appointed him Mayor as a perverted joke, an attempt to give him the authority clawed back by several lord mayors since Ken Livingstone had won the role in clear defiance of the then Prime Minister, or if it had been an attempt to give him some form of protection. The Russians were arresting and detaining police officers all over Europe, but some politicians were being left in place; it was just possible that they would leave him alone, or at least in Britain. Maybe…

He wasn’t sure why he had stayed. The once-proud Metropolitan Police force had been reduced sharply to just over a thousand men in the last fortnight, as officers strove to vanish into the teeming mass of the civilian population, or attempted to get on one of the evacuation ships as the remains of the British Army embarked for Canada and the British dominions in the Caribbean. They were terrified of their fate under Russian rule; Briggs himself could have fled with them, but he had stayed. He had written a final letter to his wife, if he didn’t return home within the week; he wished, now, that he had spent more time with her before the war. It all seemed like a dream now…

The city had been on the verge of panic as the remains of the military pulled out. Briggs — as Langford and he had already discussed — had declared London an open city, in the hopes that it would preserve what remained of the city from a house-to-house fight to rival Stalingrad. The Russians, oddly enough, had honoured the declaration; it had been two days before their forces had finally begun to probe into London, a city that hadn’t been attacked for hundreds of years. Londoners had had to relearn much their grandfathers had forgotten; they had faced air raids, terrorist attacks… and now a Russian occupation. They had tried hard to calm the city, but Briggs feared for the future; who knew what would happen once the Russians had the entire city in their power?