Christopher Nuttall - Their Darkest Hour

Alan nodded, trying to remain dignified. It wasn’t easy. “Where are we going?”

“The only place we can,” Rivers said. “One of the alien garrisons outside the city. And pray to God that they’re not feeling trigger-happy today.”

Outside, on the roof, a gust of wind almost sent Alan to his knees. The entire building was shaking, as if it was on the verge of being blown over. Somehow, with help from Rivers and one of his men, he managed to climb into the helicopter and close his eyes. His entire body was shaking with fear. The sound of the engines grew louder and then he felt the helicopter lurch into life. It seemed to hop into the air, falling back for a heart-stopping moment before settling out and heading away from the building. Alan opened his eyes and stared down at the crowd below.

It struck him, suddenly, that the resistance might have hidden an antiaircraft team nearby, that they might have staged the entire protest to catch him when he was vulnerable. He opened his mouth to insist that they landed at once, before realising that the pilot wouldn’t be able to hear him over the noise of the engines. Instead, he stared out at London, feeling the old fear crawling through his heart. If they were shot down, there would be no hope of survival…

London was burning. He could see plumes of smoke from where rioters were looting shops in the richer part of town, while the crowd of savage humanity seemed to have no end. It was easy to imagine what was going on down there, the frenzy of the lower classes as they worked out their class anger on defenceless targets. And then they would become savages, looting, raping and burning their way through London. He felt anger pushing away his fear as the helicopter banked away and headed westwards, up towards the alien positions around the city. How dare they lift a hand against him?

Tra’tro The’Stig had to fight down his fear as he dismounted, alarmingly close to the mob of humanity thronging through the area. There were thousands of the creatures, yelling and screaming as they raged against their leaders, against the few who had been smart enough to realise that they were beaten. The whole idea of a protest march was alien to those who served the State — surely, even the humans could not be so foolish as to allow protests from their juniors to shape policy. The’Stig, still in command of the mixed remains of several units, felt nothing, but contempt. Didn’t these humans have the wit to know when they were beaten? Didn’t they know that further resistance would only result in a great many deaths for absolutely nothing?

Behind him, more troop transports and tanks had arrived, bringing a large and powerful force right to the heart of the collaborator government. From what they’d heard through the grapevine — officially, they were only told what they needed to know, as determined by their superior officers — the rioting humans were tearing through the offices owned and operated by the collaborator government. The’Stig wasn’t sure what they hoped to achieve. The computer records that detailed all of the registered humans weren’t stored with the human government, but outside the cities at the Land Force Base. Even if they burned down the entire area, they would achieve nothing more than irritating the Command Triad. And they weren’t even going to get that far.

He hefted his weapon and took aim into the mass of humanity. They seemed to become aware of him at the same moment, changing to lunge towards the troopers and their armoured vehicles. It was absurd. What possible harm could they do to armoured vehicles? Sure, some human antitank weapons could inflict harm on the tanks, but they had none. The only weapons they had were sticks and stones, which might harm the troopers on the ground, yet they wouldn’t be enough to win. If they were smart, they would have realised that they were beaten and surrendered.

The machine guns mounted on the tanks opened fire, directly into the mob. Bright red blood seemed to splash everywhere as the bullets, designed to punch through thicker skin than humanity’s, tore through the mass of humanity. He saw human bodies disintegrate under the assault, coming apart and falling in a sickening pile of flesh. It wasn’t war, but a bloody slaughter. In seconds, hundreds of humans had been killed. The few survivors were screaming in pain, abandoned by the few who were able to run for their lives. The’Stig winced as the orders to advance came in through his headpiece, sending him forward. His feet seemed to slip on the blood-stained pavement, blood splashing everywhere. The handful of wounded humans were too badly injured to help, even if the Land Force had been inclined to assist humans too stupid to know not to charge tanks with sticks and stones.

Bit by bit, they cleared the human mob away. Panic was settling in, with thousands of humans running for their lives, abandoning others to the tender mercy of the advancing forces. He saw a handful of policemen, wearing the uniforms they’d been told to respect, staring at the troopers, their faces pale with horror. Hadn’t they realised what was going to happen? The’Stig slipped on another patch of blood and stared down at the young human who had lost his upper body. A life had been wasted when he’d chosen to join a futile and pointless protest march.

He snorted in disdain. And it had all been so futile. Didn’t the humans have the sense to know when they were beaten? He couldn’t feel proud of what they’d done. They hadn’t fired on the deadly humans, the ones who had been ambushing convoys and sniping at Land Force Bases. Instead, they’d killed thousands of humans who might have been useful, if they’d had some sense knocked into their heads instead of simply being slaughtered. The State would understand what they’d done, but would others? Even he didn’t want to go through it again.

His radio buzzed. “Clear the plaza,” the order came from above. “We’re bringing in prisoners to clear away the bodies. Others will dig a pit outside the city where they can be dumped.”

The’Stig snorted, again. Higher authority seemed stunned too. Who knew? Perhaps they would be so stunned that they’d change their tactics. Stranger things had happened.

North England

United Kingdom, Day 25

“We can’t go on like this!”

Gabriel couldn’t face the television set. For the last four days, the BBC had been broadcasting images from the riot in London — and its bloody end. Alien tanks firing directly into the crowd, alien soldiers crushing human skulls under their armoured feet, hundreds of orange-suited prisoners clearing away the bodies and piling them into trucks, the bodies being dumped into massive pits outside the city… the images were firmly burned into his mind. Nothing in Britain’s history, at least that he could recall, matched the sheer horror the aliens had unleashed. God alone knew how many humans had been killed in the riot. The BBC claimed that no aliens had been killed, or even injured.

The news had shocked the country. From what few reports Gabriel believed from the BBC, there had been other riots in Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Birmingham. The aliens, however, had managed to cow most of the rioters; their soldiers had quelled the other riots by their mere presence. Most of the insurgency had slipped back to IEDs and attacks on collaborators and alien patrols, although much of it seemed to be random violence. It helped that almost all human communities had a common enemy in the Leathernecks. Violent groups that ran the political spectrum from neo-Nazis to Islamic fundamentalists and ecological pressure groups were actually working together to bleed the aliens.