Christopher Nuttall - Their Darkest Hour

There was a cough behind him and he jumped, one hand falling to the pistol he’d been told to carry at all times — and save the final bullet for himself, if the aliens caught up with him. Brigadier Gavin Lightbridge-Stewart seemed rather amused — Gabriel hadn’t even realised that he’d entered the room — but Gabriel was pleased to see him. He hadn’t been allowed an internet connection, not when the aliens might use it to track him down. Outside news — accurate outside news — only came in fits and starts.

“Prime Minister,” Lightbridge-Stewart said, gravely. “I trust that you are well?”

“I’ve told you to call me Gabriel,” Gabriel said, impatiently. He didn’t know where Lightbridge-Stewart had made his headquarters or even any operational details at all. What he didn’t know he couldn’t tell — and he had no illusions about his ability to hold out under torture. Or perhaps the aliens had perfect lie detectors and truth drugs. “What have you heard from the… outside?”

Lightbridge-Stewart smiled. “Elements of the Royal Scots are preparing fall-back positions in the Highlands,” he said. “The aliens may control the cities, but they’ll find extending their control into the Highlands a little harder than they’d prefer. They may even decide to abandon the Highlands altogether.”

Gabriel nodded, half-wishing that he could go north and join the Scots. There were plenty of areas in England where humans could hide out from the aliens, but Scotland had a smaller civilian population at risk. But he knew that he could never take an active role in the fighting to come. They couldn’t risk their Prime Minister, even if the position was meaningless.

“King Harry isn’t adjusting well,” Lightbridge-Stewart added. “He wants to fight back, not hide out somewhere in Scotland. But I’m afraid we don’t have much choice.”

“I can’t disagree,” Gabriel said. He hadn’t even been in politics when there had been an almighty political struggle over deploying then-Prince Harry to Iraq and Afghanistan. In the end, he’d been allowed to go — as long as it wasn’t made public. It was ironic, really; the British Monarchy had held mostly ceremonial roles, yet Harry hadn’t been allowed to be a public sign that the Monarchy was willing to fight too. What made Harry any better than the hundreds of other soldiers who’d lost their lives in Iraq or Afghanistan? There had been no good answer, save that the enemy would have made capturing him a priority. His presence would have risked the lives of other soldiers.

Lightbridge-Stewart shrugged. “There’s some good news,” he said. “And some bad news as well, I’m afraid. We managed to recover a dead alien body in the retreat from Salisbury Plain and get it to a… well, a covert military medical research establishment. The doctors there took some time to dissect the body and draw a number of conclusions. I brought copies of their reports, but the interesting detail is that they’re really not that different from us.”

“They look like leathery dinosaurs,” Gabriel observed. It still pained him that he hadn’t seen any of the aliens at first-hand, but his minders had been clear. He couldn’t risk being recognised. “And yet they’re not that different from us?”

“Compared to what we were expecting, yes,” Lightbridge-Stewart said. “Which isn’t really good news in the long run. They can make use of our planet and presumably eat our crops — although I don’t know if they’ll actually like them. However, the doctors believe that they cannot catch our diseases — which rather puts the leash on any War of the Worlds scenarios we might have been hoping for.”

Gabriel frowned. “And can we catch their diseases?”

“They don’t think so,” Lightbridge-Stewart said. “But they don’t really have any samples of alien diseases to study.”

“No,” Gabriel agreed. “They wouldn’t.”

He’d studied history, back when he’d thought about becoming a historian. Back when Europe had discovered America, they’d brought their diseases with them — diseases that the Native Americans had had no resistance to. Smallpox alone had killed millions, leaving a void for the Europeans to expand into and eventually control. The empires built on native labour had collapsed; the empires based on settlers had survived and prospered. And if an alien disease got loose on Earth…

It might not even have to be natural, he realised. He’d certainly had enough briefings about the dangers of biological warfare, up to and including genetically-modified diseases that were resistant to every known vaccine. The aliens didn’t have to reshape one of their own diseases to produce a monster that would exterminate humanity. They could simply rely on a simple human disease, with a little modification. Britain had no — official — stocks of Smallpox, but if the aliens had captured the stores in Russia, or America…

He pushed the thought aside. There was no point in worrying about it. They were at the mercy of the aliens and would be for years to come.

“The analysts think that the aliens will probably start growing their own crops on Earth sooner rather than later,” Lightbridge-Stewart said. “Unless they’ve somehow managed to produce stable wormholes that reach from planet to planet, their logistics have to be rather touchy. Growing their own food will allow them to send more weapons and military supplies instead…”

“And there’s nothing we can do about it,” Gabriel said. “I don’t suppose that anyone else has come up with a possible solution? Maybe hacking into their computers and shutting down their weapons…?”

“This is the real world, unfortunately,” Lightbridge-Stewart said. He frowned, suddenly. “What I can tell you is that there is a certain… crude nature to most of their technology. We’ve captured samples of their weapons and taken them apart to study — in many ways, their weapons are actually less advanced than our own. That could be just them being practical — the more complex a piece of kit, the greater the chance it will break in the field — or their overall technology level could be less advanced than we’ve assumed. And for that matter…”

He hesitated. “It’s hard to be sure, but their tactical doctrine sucks,” he added. “If they didn’t have those starships in orbit, we would have beaten them — and so would almost every other First World nation on the planet. Hell, even the Saudis would have given them a very hard time. I don’t know who they’re used to fighting, but they clearly haven’t learned much from the experience. The analysts have studied the problem, yet they can’t see any clear solution. It’s possible that someone else gave them their technology…”

Gabriel stared at him. “Someone else sold them their technology…? Who?”

“There’s no way to know,” Lightbridge-Stewart admitted. “Another alien race, we presume — or maybe they captured technology from another alien race and somehow discovered how to duplicate it for themselves. We certainly didn’t hesitate to sell tanks and guns to the Middle East, even though there was a strong chance that they would wind up being pointed back at us. For all we know, they stole the starships they have in orbit — and the weapons they’re using against us on the ground may be their own designs.”

“But there’s no way to know,” Gabriel said. He shook his head slowly. “Is there any good news?”

“Well, I’ve had a team of signals experts — very bright boffins, these lads — studying the alien communications system,” Lightbridge-Stewart said. “It really isn’t as advanced as our own — but then, we don’t really understand their language yet so we may have problems unlocking some of their secrets.” He smiled, briefly. “But we do have some idea of how their command-and-control network functions. It seems that their junior officers don’t have much independence of action. They may not even have the ability to call in strikes from orbit without permission from higher authority.”