Christopher Nuttall: Their Darkest Hour

“I thought you were dating Kate,” she said, mockingly. Davidson’s love life was the stuff of legends. Fast-jet pilots never seemed to have any difficulty finding female companionship while they were off-base. “What happened to the poor girl?”

“One of those Para bastards got his hands on her while I was looking the other way,” Davidson admitted. His girls never stayed with him for long. “I think they were talking about getting hitched, last I heard.”

Alex snorted. “And who does Becky have good reason to be jealous of?”

Davidson affected a hurt tone. “I’m shocked that you could think that I might cheat on her,” he said. Alex snickered and made a one-fingered gesture towards his plane. “She’s jealous of my Typhoon, Alex. I get into her and I take her to Heaven twice a day.”

“I always knew that you were terrible in bed,” Alex said, fighting down the urge to burst into giggles. “That joke is older than the CO’s CO. And if you keep moving from woman to woman, you won’t live long enough to get promoted into a desk job.”

“You make it sound as if they’d kill me,” Davidson protested. “I think…”

“Charlie One, Charlie Two, this is Sector Control,” a new voice said. Alex straightened up at once, feeling ice shivering down the back of her neck. “We are picking up a single contact on intercept vector; I say again, we are picking up a single contact on intercept vector.”

Alex glanced at her radar screen as… something blinked into existence. Dead ahead of the Typhoons, it was advancing towards them at Mach Four. For a moment, she thought it was a radar glitch, the kind of glitch that had caused panic during the height of the Cold War, or the years after 9/11. The contact remained alarmingly stable, refusing to vanish. She ran through the situation in her mind and realised that they’d be in visual range within two minutes. What the hell could travel at that speed? There were rumours of a hypersonic drone being test-flown in America, but what would it be doing over Britain?

“Acknowledged, Sector Control,” she said. “Be advised that we will attempt to make visual contact; I say again, we will attempt to make visual contact.”

“It could be a ghost,” Davidson said. He sounded excited. Alex had flown a real-life interception mission before, back when the Russians had flown a pair of Blackjack bombers over the North Sea to remind NATO that they existed, but Davidson’s military experience was limited to dropping bombs over Afghanistan. “You think we could be the first to see one with our own eyes?”

Alex glanced at her radar screen, and then peered ahead into the lightening sky. If she saw the craft… it was possible that someone higher-up would order them to avoid contact or to forget what they’d seen, if it was someone’s secret test project. They should come into visual range in seconds…

Her threat receiver lit up like a Christmas tree. “What the hell…?”

A streak of light lanced out of nowhere and struck Davidson’s Typhoon before he had a chance to evade. The weapon, whatever it was, hit its target so hard that Davidson’s plane was blown into a fireball before he had a chance to realise that he was under attack. Alex yanked her plane into an evasive course just as a second streak of light — a very fast missile, according to her on-board displays — slashed through where she’d been. They were under attack! She almost froze in shock — only her training kept her moving. The radar was reporting dozens of new contacts now, appearing from nowhere over the North Sea and moving towards the British mainland. One finger uncovered her firing buttons as she tried desperately to call for reinforcements. The QRA aircraft should have been in the air the moment the radar controllers on the ground realised that something had gone badly wrong.

“Sector Control, this is Charlie One…”

Her radio screeched, loudly enough to force her to turn it down in a hurry. Someone was jamming her, preventing her from calling for help. The unknowns, whoever or whatever they were, were angling towards her, slowing as they came. Whatever they were flying seemed to outmatch her Typhoon effortlessly — who the hell were they? Alex gritted her teeth and activated her targeting systems. An enemy craft came into her sights and she launched a pair of missiles right towards it. The craft started to turn, but it was far too late. One of the missiles struck home and the enemy craft exploded in a shockingly powerful blast.

Another missile was screaming toward her. Acting on instinct, she corkscrewed her plane through the air, realising that she was utterly outmatched. But running could be as dangerous as trying to fight. A black shape appeared out of nowhere in front of her and she plunged the plane down, catching sight of an angular aircraft that reminded her of the F-117 Nighthawk, only several times as large. She took a shot at it anyway — it couldn’t possibly be friendly — but she couldn’t tell if she’d inflicted any damage. Whatever was screwing with her radio was screwing with her radar as well.

A brilliant flash of light caught her attention, from the west. Something had exploded on the ground, but what? The entire country couldn’t be under attack, could it? The RAF hadn’t had any reason to think that someone intended to attack Britain — or if they had, the senior officers had never bothered to tell the pilots. Her threat receiver screamed again, too late. The entire aircraft buckled around her…

Desperately, moving so quickly that she hadn’t quite realised what she was doing, she pulled the ejection lever and exploded out of the aircraft, into the suddenly-hostile sky.

The first of the French tanks were coming into view, a trio of AMX-56 Leclerc Main Battle Tanks. There were a handful of soldiers flanking them, watching for antitank teams that could target the heavier vehicles with Javelin missiles, but Gavin could tell that a number of Frenchmen were missing. The French hadn’t been engaged so far, which suggested that Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Luc Baptiste had a plan of his own. Who knew what those missing French soldiers would be doing while the British attempted to take out the main force?

A streak of light slammed down from high above and struck the lead French tank. It exploded in a colossal fireball, the turret actually being blown into the air. Gavin stared in utter disbelief. What the fuck ? Had someone in the Royal Artillery accidentally loaded live ammunition into the big guns? A second missile struck a tank, followed by a third that missed, almost toppling its target over through the colossal force of the explosion. Heedless of his personal safety, Gavin pulled himself back to his feet, his mind spinning with the sheer impossibility of the situation. They were under attack! They were in the heart of the British Army’s Training Area and they were under attack!

He glanced back towards where the Challengers were positioned, hoping that their crews had enough sense to bail out before they were targeted too. Their unknown opponent — once might have been a dreadful accident, but two or more suggested deliberate malice — had to have gained control of the air. They could presumably detect any moving tanks… but who were they? There had been no report that Russia was planning anything drastic and the only other nation that might have had the capability to attack Salisbury Plain and the garrisons surrounding it was the United States. The thought that they might be at war with America was absurd.

Something caught his eye and he glanced to the east, towards Tidsworth Garrison. A streak of fire was falling from the sky towards the Garrison. It dropped below the horizon, seconds before there was a brilliant flash of light, followed by a massive fireball. The sound of thunder reached his ears seconds later. It looked almost like a baby nuke! Other fireballs were rising too. It didn’t take his intimate knowledge of the training area to know that they were rising from the location of many of the other garrisons surrounding Salisbury Plain. He spared a brief thought for the men and equipment that had presumably been destroyed in the blasts, and then started to run for the command vehicle. The tactical command centre had been buried well behind the ambush point; it should — should — have escaped detection.