Christopher Nuttall - Their Darkest Hour

“Get moving,” he yelled, again, pointing them towards the small cluster of large human buildings on the outskirts of a small town. The humans had hidden a small team there and if they moved quickly, they might manage to catch and kill the vermin before they escaped. Small human teams had hit the advancing force, inflicted some kills and then broken off, obviously trying to bleed the assault units without risking themselves unduly. “Kill the Karna -spawned devils before they kill you!”

A streak of lights fell to the ground some distance from their position, followed rapidly by a series of explosions that shook the world around him. The humans had made a stand — but in making a stand, they’d revealed their own location. At least they had no means to avoid bombardment from orbit, or the assault unit might have been chewed to ribbons before it finally broke through the human defences.

He led the charge at the human building, relying on speed to protect him from any human fire. Some of the infantry unit followed him, holding their own weapons at the ready, while others seemed stuck and unwilling to proceed further. The’Stig cursed their cowardice in the face of the humans, even as he tried to restrain some of the others from charging onwards. One of them ran through a doorway that seemed too large for mere humans, detonating a trap hidden within the building. His body was flung backwards and he landed on the ground, torn to bloody ribbons.

“You can’t trust anything human,” he snarled, angrily. A human vehicle seemed to be heading away from them, probably carrying the human soldiers who had stung his people so badly. He pointed his weapon at the vehicle and fired off a long stream of bullets, watching as they slashed through the human vehicle and killed its passengers. “Keep an eye on where you’re walking — and don’t relax, ever!”

The fighting seemed to be slacking off, but he knew that it was far from the end. They hadn’t beaten the humans at all, not really — they’d fallen back to new positions they’d prepared for the next engagement. He wanted to know what was happening with the other assault units, but there was no way to know — it wasn’t as if the Command Triad was going to bother to brief an ordinary infantry soldier. Rumour, however, suggested that there was fighting going on all over Earth. At least the humans would burn through their stockpiles of advanced weapons sooner rather than later. But of course they’d know that themselves…

He wanted to relax, but he didn’t dare, not when so many units had been mangled together. It crossed his mind that he had probably shown that he deserved promotion — not that anyone would have noticed. The commanders who should have been watching their troops for potential officers were either at the rear or had gotten themselves killed heroically. He wondered, absently, if the humans had the same problem. Maybe they weren’t so alien after all.

“Dirty murdering bastards,” Corporal Tommy O’Neill muttered to himself. From his vantage point, he could watch helplessly as an alien patrol stumbled over a group of human refugees — and murdered them in cold blood. The humans hadn’t even tried to fight, but it hadn’t mattered. They’d been shot down and their bodies left abandoned on the side of the road. “Dirty fucking filthy murdering bastards.”

He hadn’t known that the refugees were there either, until two of them had started to run. No doubt they’d thought that they were well-hidden, unaware that the war was about to break right over their hiding place. He cursed his own oversight as he prepared himself for the coming engagement, promising to make the aliens pay for what they’d done. Civilians tended to shy away from soldiers, at least in his experience, but it was his duty to protect them. And if he couldn’t protect them, he would at least avenge them.

It had taken several hours to lay the trap and it looked perfect, at least unless the aliens decided to start shooting human vehicles up at random. But even aliens from outer space had to have logistic needs; the briefing they’d received on the battle in London and other brief engagements between human and alien forces suggested that there was nothing magical about their weapons. They shot projectiles, just like human guns. Some of the troopers had wondered why the aliens — who could clearly cross space with ease — would limit themselves, but Tommy suspected that he knew the answer. Their weapons would be far simpler than directed energy ray guns right out of science-fiction. He smiled, feeling a moment of kinship with the aliens before it faded away. No doubt they’d had ‘wonder-weapons’ devised by boffins and tested in laboratories that hadn’t worked anything like so well in the field too.

He reached for the detonator as the aliens passed the single abandoned vehicle. Gambling that they wouldn’t know how to inspect the human-designed car, he’d stuffed it with explosives and laid a cord to the detonator, which he’d placed near his vantage point. Uncapping the safety, he waited until one of the alien tanks was right next to the car and jammed down on the button. The results surprised even him. A colossal explosion flipped the enemy tank right over and literally vaporised most of the alien infantry. The remainder looked stunned and disorientated. Tommy allowed himself a tight smile and picked up his rifle. A new alien patrol was advancing towards their stricken comrades, watching carefully for any more traps. Tommy took aim and opened fire. The lead alien staggered backwards, inhuman blood flowing from its forehead, while the remainder opened fire in Tommy’s general direction.

Poor shooting , he thought, as he moved to the next target. The aliens seemed to be learning quickly, although they seemed oddly reluctant to take cover. It took Tommy a moment to realise that they were scared of other booby traps, which was a crying shame — he hadn’t had time to set up any more. He fired a final shot and started to crawl backwards. He had already marked out an escape route back to the RV point and he intended to be gone before the aliens gave chase. And if they didn’t… well, that was good too.

“Go.”

Captain Danny Jackson knew that he was lucky to be alive. He and his wingman had been on exercises with the British Army when their base at Middle Wallop had been destroyed by the aliens. As far as he knew, the two Apache helicopters they were flying were the last in Britain — perhaps the last in the world. There had been some Apache helicopters in Afghanistan — although never enough — but the aliens had probably clobbered them too. Danny couldn’t do anything for his mates who were either dead or trying to fight their way out of a country that was probably swinging back under Taliban control, yet he could try to avenge them.

The two Apaches had been flown under cover of darkness to a location where they’d been hidden under camouflage netting, awaiting their chance to take the offensive. It seemed that they were about to get their chance; the aliens were shipping in more ground forces as they attempted to push their occupied zone further to the west. They were also shipping in armour — the direct feed from the orbiting UAV reported that there were at least fifty hover-tanks heading west — but the pilots had been given clear orders. Their principle targets were the alien troop carriers. If they were really lucky, they would kill a great many aliens who hadn’t realised that the safety offered by their vehicles was really nothing more than an illusion.

He took control of his aircraft and pulled her into the sky. There were no illusions about their chances of surviving the battle, but they were going to be operating right on top of the enemy forces. Surely, the aliens wouldn’t call in orbital strikes that would be dangerously close to their own forces. Or perhaps they would. Humans had done all kinds of horrible things to other humans in their long history and why shouldn’t the aliens do the same? What cause did humanity have to complain?