Christopher Nuttall: The Trafalgar Gambit

He’d seen pictures, of course, broadcast over the datanet by reporters eager to claim the first scoops from the devastated zone. There were images of horror, of dead bodies piled up as the tidal waves receded or looters making their way into the devastated areas to loot, yet those images hadn’t seemed quite real. Devastation on such a scale was far beyond his imagination, even though he’d been a serving naval officer for what felt like an eternity. And yet, now, he knew he wasn’t even looking at the worst of it. Far too many countries had lost millions of lives in the wake of the alien attack on Earth. And entire complexes in space had been destroyed with all hands.

Down below, he knew, there were thousands of refugee camps for survivors, policed by the military. There had been nothing like it in Britain since the Troubles — and even the Troubles, at their worst, had been on a much smaller scale. The social fabric that made up the British nation had been badly damaged, perhaps shattered. He’d accessed news sites as the shuttle made its way towards Earth, only to discover a non-stop liturgy of horror. Food riots, protests against refugees… outright defiance of the government’s authority. No matter how he tried to be optimistic, part of him couldn’t help wondering if he was looking at the final days of mankind.

The devastation faded slightly as the shuttle picked up speed, heading towards London, but it wasn’t normal . Floods covered large tracts of land, a small army convoy made its way through devastated fields and a large refugee camp covered what had once been a farm. If the Troubles hadn’t taught the government the wisdom of making sure Britain could feed itself, Ted knew, it would have been a great deal worse. But it was already bad enough…

He sighed as London came into view, then winced in horror as he saw the flooding. London had always been vulnerable to floods, but the safety precautions seemed to have failed in the wake of the alien attack. Or perhaps it was the rain, part of his mind noted. London was on the wrong side of the country to have a tidal wave marching up the river, smashing everything in its path. One of the datanet interviews had been with a scientist who had claimed the aliens had deliberately set out to melt the icecaps. Ted couldn’t help wondering why the aliens would have bothered.

But they live below the waves , he thought, as the shuttle slowed to a hover over London, then dropped down towards Heathrow Spaceport. They might see advantage in drowning the human race, then taking our world .

Raindrops splashed off the shuttle’s portholes as it touched down, sending shivers running down Ted’s spine. He’d travelled in space, even flying cloudscoop missiles through Jupiter’s atmosphere as a young man, but he’d never been comfortable flying through the rain. He knew it was safe, yet part of him had always been scared. It was funny how he’d never had any problems in space…

He rose, then looked towards his travelling companion. “Lieutenant?”

Lieutenants Janelle Lopez looked up at him, her eyes dead and cold. Ted felt a flicker of pity, despite the certain knowledge there were people outside the shuttle who were far worse off. Janelle had blighted her career through pressing for assignment to Ark Royal , the Royal Navy’s outdated space carrier, when assignment to Ark Royal was normally reserved for officers and crew the Royal Navy couldn’t be bothered to discharge. She might not even have been promoted if Ark Royal hadn’t proved to be the only ship capable of standing up to the aliens in open battle. And yet she’d proved herself under fire…

But it isn’t her service that brings her to London now , Ted thought, as he helped her to her feet. The fire had gone out of her when she’d discovered her lover was dead — and who he’d really been. And I wouldn’t have brought her here at all, if it had been up to me .

“Come on,” he said, gently. “It’s time to face the music.”

The hatch opened, revealing puddles of water gathering around the shuttle. Ted hesitated, then let out a sigh of relief as a pair of armed soldiers appeared, one of them carrying a spare umbrella. Ted took it, then used it to cover both himself and Janelle. The soldiers looked thoroughly wet and miserable as they beckoned Ted to follow them towards the terminal buildings. He couldn’t help noticing that the spaceport was largely disused, despite the urgent need to bring supplies into the city. Two of the terminals seemed to have been converted into makeshift refugee camps.

“There’s a VIP transport for you, sir,” one of the soldiers said, once they’d checked IDs against a central database. He pointed to a large black car, waiting just outside the terminal, with an armed escort on either side. “You’ll be taken directly to Downing Street.”

Ted swallowed as he saw the soldiers. “Is it really that bad out there?”

“It’s worse,” the soldier said. His voice was dead, as if he had been pushed to the limits of his endurance and there was nothing left, but duty. “If the flood levels keep rising, we’re going to have to move millions more people out of London to higher ground. Damned if we know how we’re going to do that, sir. We had a riot in Soho yesterday that saw several thousand people dead. We had to stack the stiffs in a pile and use lasers to burn the bodies to ash.”

Ted nodded, unsurprised. There was no way that millions of dead bodies could be stored for later identification, not now. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people would never be accounted for, their fates utterly unknown. The prospect of never knowing what had happened to his family gnawed at him, yet he knew there was no choice. Thousands of decomposing bodies would spread disease at horrifying speed.

He climbed into the rear of the car, then settled down and watched as the driver started the engine and followed the soldiers out into the streets. London was awash with water, even on streets he would have thought immune to flooding. It had been years since he’d driven in London, but he was fairly sure the driver was taking the long way round. But then, if some streets were impassable he would have no choice.

“My God,” Janelle said. It was the first thing she’d said since boarding the shuttle. “ Look at it!”

Ted followed her gaze. It had once been a park, he was sure, a place for young children to play while their parents watched. Now, it was a muddy refugee camp, with prefabricated buildings providing limited shelter against the rain. The refugees themselves were largely older citizens, young women or children. The young men, Ted knew, would have been drafted to help with the floods. Many of the refugees had torn clothing, nothing more than whatever they’d been wearing when the attack began.

“We’ve been having some problems feeding them all,” the driver said, as he drove past the camp and down towards Downing Street. “I believe there are plans to move them all to Scotland, but no one really knows if it will ever happen.”

Ted shuddered, remembering some of the disaster management plans he’d seen during his stint at the Admiralty, after his promotion. None of them had made encouraging reading — and, judging from the scene before him, they’d simply been swept away by the pressure of events. Some of the plans had even talked about triage, about allowing the elderly to die while lavishing what resources were left on the young men and women who would be required to rebuild the world. He couldn’t help wondering if the system was no longer capable of even separating out the younger men and women and sending them out of danger.

But there is nowhere safe these days , he thought, morbidly. The aliens could return at any moment to finish the job .