Christopher Nuttall - Their Darkest Hour

The crowd didn’t ask for specifics, luckily. Alex allowed herself a moment of relief that it seemed to be quietening down, even though she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do now. Where did she go to report in? RAF Coningsby was almost certainly destroyed — or occupied by alien forces. The RAF had been taken completely by surprise.

She stepped outside and looked up at the darkening sky. An entire day had gone by and she’d barely noticed. High overhead, the stars were coming out — and there were a handful of trails burning their way down towards Earth. The remains of humanity’s pathetic space program, she assumed. Some of the other lights would be alien starships…

In the distance, she heard the sound of thunder and shuddered.

The night no longer felt safe.

Salisbury Plain

United Kingdom, Day 1

“Prime Minister?”

Gabriel shook himself awake, surprised that he’d managed to fall asleep. After they’d left London, they’d followed the Thames upstream, with only minor delays caused by bridges that the aliens had targeted from orbit. A couple of hours later, they’d left the boat and transferred themselves to a Land Rover Butcher had recovered from somewhere. Reading between the lines, Gabriel guessed that the vehicle had been stolen, but he had found it difficult to care. Exhaustion had overwhelmed him soon afterwards.

They had parked in the midst of woodland, with the vehicle half-hidden under the trees. A small group of armed soldiers wearing camouflage uniforms had surrounded the vehicle, glancing around nervously as they waited for the Prime Minister to disembark. Gabriel knew very little about the military, but he could tell that the soldiers were worried. No matter how he looked at the situation, there seemed little cause for optimism. A day ago, he’d been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Now… his position as Prime Minister seemed almost meaningless. No Prime Minister had ever had to flee London for fear that enemy troops would capture or kill him. Even Charles I had managed a reasonably dignified departure from his former capital.

Butcher led him into the woods, down towards a small concrete building marked PRIVATE, KEEP OUT. The soldier opened the door, revealing a ladder leading down into the depths of the Earth. Unwilling to show fear in front of the soldiers, Gabriel followed him down and realised to his relief that the lower levels of the bunker were properly lit. A uniformed soldier was waiting for him. The man looked deeply worried, but relieved when he saw the Prime Minister.

“Prime Minister,” the soldier said. “I’m Brigadier Gavin Lightbridge-Stewart. Welcome to the bunker.”

Gabriel followed the Brigadier as he led the way through a hatch into a large concrete room. It seemed primitive compared to some of the other emergency facilities he’d seen over the years, clearly not a facility that had been intended to return to active service. A number of maps had been scattered on the table, with red lines drawn on them by a handful of military personnel. Several more officers were working what looked like an older set of radios, trying to get back in touch with the rest of the world. Oddly, Gabriel felt a pang of relief as he took in the scene. The situation was bad — disastrous — but experienced personnel were trying to come to grips with it. They might not be so outmatched after all.

“Please, be seated,” the Brigadier said. “I have a military brief for you, but you might prefer a shower and a change of clothes — and a hot meal. The situation is unlikely to change in the next few hours.”

Gabriel hesitated. In truth, he wanted the shower, and some food, and a few more hours of sleep. But he needed to know what was going on before he could come to grips with the situation. Perhaps they could find out what the aliens actually wanted — assuming they wanted anything. If invasion and settlement was their goal, surely they’d have some kind of plan to deal with the human governments. He remembered the report that alien craft were heading towards London — the craft they’d seen as they headed upriver — and shuddered. The aliens had made at least one of their goals quite clear.

“I’d like the briefing first,” he said, finally. The Brigadier nodded, as if he understood perfectly. Neither of them could do much to influence the situation, but they couldn’t just rest while the entire country was in danger. “How much do we actually know about what’s going on out there?”

The Brigadier tapped one finger on the maps. “Most of our military communications network has been badly hammered,” he said. “We never anticipated the physical destruction of the network nodes or the satellite network orbiting the planet, although most of the hardwired connections — the land lines — are undamaged. Our intelligence is therefore very limited and changes frequently, but I’ve had several intelligence and signals units working on what we do have and trying to put together a comprehensive picture.”

His expression darkened. “The aliens — whoever they are, whatever they want — have clearly not limited their attentions to us,” he added. “We have intermittent contact with the Americans and they confirm that Washington has been invaded; we also picked up a brief report from a French military unit that implied that Paris had also been hit. I’m afraid that we have been unable to make contact with American or French government officials — the outlook, Prime Minister, isn’t good.”

Gabriel nodded, bitterly. He’d hoped that they would be able to call on NATO for support, but it was clear that NATO had fragmented, with the national military forces on the run — fighting their own hopeless battles. The American President was a friend and he’d managed to make some progress in talking to the French President… what had happened to them after the aliens landed? America was so powerful that he assumed that the aliens had devoted much of their attention to smashing them flat. It was quite possible that the President and everyone else in their line of succession was dead.

“We have been attempting to make contact with personnel in Europe — we have officers at NATO Headquarters and a British Army base in Germany — but so far attempts have proven fruitless,” the Brigadier said. “I think we have to assume the worst; the units have been destroyed or scattered. Parts of the internet are still working and we may be able to establish contact, but…”

He shook his head. “Overall, Prime Minister, the news is about as bad as it can get,” he continued. “From what reports we have received, the Royal Navy has been effectively destroyed from orbit. We’ve picked up witness reports of warships being hit by missiles or kinetic energy weapons, leaving them ablaze and sinking. There are reports that suggest that many large container ships have also been sunk. We assume that the other major naval forces have also been destroyed, but we’ve heard nothing apart from a brief internet message from Toulon reporting a sinking carrier.”

“My God,” Gabriel said. How many sailors had died before they’d even known that they were under attack? “What about the air force?”

“The RAF has lost most of its bases to orbital strikes,” the Brigadier said. “The aliens have been dropping in on some of the bases and converting them — I suspect — to bridgeheads. I’ve issued orders for material to be removed from the remaining bases before the aliens arrive and take possession — the RAF Regiment has orders to briefly engage them and then withdraw before they can be destroyed by superior firepower. A handful of aircraft survived the first strikes and attempted to hit back at the aliens, but results were… not optimum. The aliens have also been landing on civilian airports and deploying their forces to take up positions on the ground. Our ability to impede them is very limited.”