Christopher Nuttall - Their Darkest Hour

The final vehicle — an alien troop transport — had been tipped on its side. Most of the aliens inside were clearly dead, but one was alive — if badly wounded. A human wounded so badly would need immediate hospital treatment — he flashed back to waiting on Afghanistan’s plains for a medical chopper, knowing that the Taliban would shoot if down if they could — yet he had no idea if the alien could be saved. He met dark expressionless eyes and shivered, studying the alien’s wounds as dispassionately as he could. Inky dark blood was leaking out of gashes in the leathery skin and spilling onto the ground. It didn’t seem to be congealing like human blood.

“I’m sorry,” he told the alien, as he pointed his Browning at the alien’s face. It seemed to sigh and bow it’s head, an oddly-human motion that tore at his heart. He pulled the trigger once, putting a bullet right through the alien’s brains. Oddly, the alien skull seemed to take the shot better than a human skull. He hesitated for a moment, and then scrambled out back onto the motorway. The sound of approaching helicopters could be heard in the distance.

He glanced back at where they’d hidden the IED. There was now a colossal hole in the motorway, leaving a major problem for the aliens to solve if they wanted to continue sending trucks to London. Their own hover-vehicles wouldn’t have any problems navigating if they just shoved a small pile of earth into the hole, but any human-designed vehicle would have to be very careful. He scrambled up the embankment, hearing the sound of helicopters approaching from the west growing louder. The enemy tank that had withdrawn from combat — although the statements on the internet would say that it had fled — had clearly summoned reinforcements. He smiled as he saw the two helicopters finally come into view. They were moving slowly, dancing about as if they expected to run right into a trap of their own. Maybe they’d managed to spook an alien commander…

“Time to go,” he said. Most of the unit had already bugged out, leaving only his platoon behind. He did have a pair of soldiers with Stingers to cover their retreat if the aliens decided to forget caution and come after them with everything they had. Hopefully it wouldn’t be necessary. They had fewer Stingers than he would have liked. “We did good work today.”

Tra’tro The’Stig dismounted from the transport and ran towards what remained of the convoy, hunting for survivors. At first glance, it seemed that there would be none, but orders from his superiors insisted that the effort be made. It didn’t take a genius to realise that someone higher up was starting to wonder if there had been too many casualties on Earth, even though it had only been a handful of days since they’d landed. Given a few months or years, long before the first reports reached the State, they’d have pounded the humans into submission.

Or at least forced them to expend their advanced weapons , he thought, ruefully. This part of the world didn’t seem to be as heavily armed as some others. The Russian humans seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of weapons, while the American humans seemed to have scattered weapons everywhere. Some parts of America had been crushed without the need for further fighting, but other parts were too far from the population centres to be brought under their control. At least Britain was small enough that the bases could support each other — although that meant less than it seemed. A planet was big .

His radio buzzed. “Report,” an insistent voice demanded. The’Stig snorted, quietly enough not to be heard. No doubt it was someone senior enough not to be out on the front lines. “How many survivors have there been?”

“None,” he reported, after a moment. There was a long pause, allowing him a chance to spy a couple of human bodies amid the wreckage. He tried to tell himself that they were human insurgents, but it seemed more likely that they were collaborators. The human insurgents seemed determined not to leave their bodies behind. “I cannot find any bodies.”

“Understood,” the voice said. “Please stand by…”

The’Stig snorted again and started to issue orders to the rest of his unit. They’d scout around and secure the area, maybe pick up on the human trail before they had a chance to go to ground. And then maybe they could extract a little revenge. Maybe…

Because if losing convoys became a habit, they were going to start running short of supplies. And if they had to start using shuttles again, they would risk losing them…

And then their ultimate victory would be in doubt.

And that would risk bringing in other powers.

London

United Kingdom, Day 21

“How many people are down there?”

“At least five thousand,” Gerald Rivers said. The Chief Constable looked uneasy. His policemen were out there, without any weapons more dangerous than water cannons and CS gas. The aliens had forbidden weapons even for those guarding their collaborators. “There will be more when people realise that the aliens aren’t going to do anything to stop them.”

Alan cursed. Down below, outside the security perimeter he’d had erected around his headquarters, thousands of protesters were gathering. The raids and arrests had galvanised large sections of London, bringing thousands of people out onto the streets. He couldn’t help, but remember how crowds had toppled a number of regimes across the Middle East — or how they’d pressured the British Government during the run-up to Iraq. And the crowd below transcended racial or religious borders. The first series of arrests might have been targeted on Islamic families, but the next series had been equal-opportunity repression.

But there was no choice , he told himself, desperately. The poorer parts of London were becoming hotbeds of resistance activity. Young men, men who had had little hope of rising out of poverty before the invasion, were actively targeting the police — and even the aliens themselves. A dozen had died only yesterday in the wake of a failed petrol bomb attack on an alien patrol. And London wasn’t even seeing the worst of the violence. Manchester had been consumed by a riot that had torn through Moss Side before the police had finally managed to restore order.

He shivered as the crowd’s chant grew louder. As an MP, he’d seen the reports from the security services on radical trouble-makers who enjoyed infiltrating protest marches and causing havoc. A number with ties to London’s criminal underworld were down there, arming the protesters with gas masks and even crude weapons. There might even be resistance fighters with the crowd, ready to take out a handful of collaborators. And what would the aliens do, he asked himself, if the crowd broke into his headquarters and lynched him? Perhaps they’d simply sit back and drop rocks on the crowd, thrashing the survivors into submission. Or… there were too many possibilities and none of them were pleasant.

“Give us back our children,” the crowd demanded. “Give us back our wives!”

The roar grew louder as the words spread. It was simple enough to understand; dozens of wives and children, apparently innocent, had been swept up by the raids. No one knew what had happened to them, at least no one outside the alien garrison where Ten Downing Street had once been. Alan knew that they’d been taken outside the city, but then…? The aliens had refused to tell him anything, which suggested that they might simply have been killed.

But that didn’t make sense either, he tried to tell himself. What was the point of punitive executions if they didn’t inform the country that they’d been carried out? But the aliens were aliens and something that made sense to them might appear strange to the human mindset… he looked down at the crowd again and shuddered. He’d wanted power, hadn’t he? And yet he was quailing at the thought of what he would have to do to keep hold of that power, to keep the population under control and the aliens happy…