Christopher Nuttall - Their Darkest Hour

Slowly, a plan started to come together in his mind. It would be risky as hell, but they were used to that by now. And they might just have a chance to inflict major damage on an alien base. Perhaps they could even shatter the ring of steel around London.

Absently, he reached for a notepad and started jotting down ideas. The pad would have to be destroyed, of course, but by then he should have a solid concept. They’d have to link up with other units. They couldn’t do it alone. He smiled to himself. It would be good to know that they weren’t alone.

And the aliens were in for a very unpleasant surprise.

Command Base

United Kingdom, Day 27

By long tradition, each separate Land Forces Commander was expected to remain within his Area of Responsibility until relieved of command. The Command Triad, on the other hand, was supposed to remain on their starships, a legacy of the time when a primitive race managed to kill the Command Triad in charge of subduing their world and wreck havoc while their subordinates were still bickering over who was in command. No one seriously expected other powers to send starships to Earth, while humanity had no ability to reach the command starships in orbit. The Command Triad were therefore isolated from the dangers on Earth.

Ju’tro Oheghizh watched as the teleconference slowly came into being. Each of the Land Force Commanders would link into the conference from their bases on the ground, while the Command Triad would attend from orbit. Given what they’d uncovered about human computer systems, it seemed likely that the whole process would be improved in the next few years, once the human technology was understood and integrated into the State. The humans seemed largely unaware of the potential of their own technology, but no one could deny their skill. They would make a very useful client race in the coming decades, serving as soldiers, technicians and inventors. The State would grow far more powerful.

“It has been one local month since we established ourselves on Earth,” Tul’ma Jophuzu said. The Land Forces Commander had taken the lead, as was right and proper. His formations were the ones mainly engaged on Earth. “The humans have proved a more capable foe than we expected, but we have successfully taken and kept vast swaths of their territory.”

The display lit up on his command. There were enclaves on both sides of the American continent, smaller enslaves across Europe, Russia and Australia — and enslaves scattered over Britain. Oheghizh allowed himself an interior sneer. His command might be smaller than the enclaves in America or Europe, but it was far more promising in the long run. Besides, the American humans seemed to keep fighting even when the situation was hopeless. They even seemed to have two guns per adult human. The only other place that had put up such a fight was Switzerland and the mountainous country had been bombarded into submission after the first landings had been repulsed with heavy losses. It would be a long time before they recovered. If only because no one was interested in helping them.

“The plans for the final disposition of their military personnel are already under way,” the Land Forces Commander continued. “They will serve us on other worlds — and be kept separate from wild humans who could learn from their skills. However, our other plans to use Earth as a source of knowledge and technology have been crippled.”

Oheghizh kept his face blank and his body still, refusing to show any emotion. He’d hoped to push forward the schedule for assimilating human technology into the State, but his dreams had vanished when the human suicide bomber — a tactic that made little sense to him — had destroyed the technical college. There were others, of course, but now he had to divert resources to protect the human computer experts and their families — which risked allowing the humans a chance to deduce one of the State’s weaknesses. The humans had more experience in using their technology than the State. They had probably invented thousands of different ways to use computers as weapons.

Va’tro Nak’tak spoke from his position. “We may have misunderstood human social psychology,” he said. “Humans are a contradictory bunch. Some humans will see us as terrifying and will submit to us without hesitation. Their fear, however, will make them less useful than we might have hoped. Some humans will refuse to allow us to cow them and will continue the fight, at least until they are killed in combat. We cannot expect any form of submission from them — and we couldn’t trust it if we got it. Some humans will just try to live their lives as if we didn’t exist, doing whatever it took to survive. We have been unable to put together any explanation for their psychology.

“Unfortunately, it seems that humans are often contemptuous of those who see sense and choose to submit to superior force. The humans who agree to work with us, of their own free will, are hated by their fellow humans and often targeted by them. We have seen collaborators attacked in many different countries, suggesting that the disdain for submission is a common human trait. They seem far more understanding of those we force into collaboration — by holding their families hostage — but there are fine lines that we do not understand. Rather than work towards securing themselves positions within the State, humans will continually lash out at the State.

“Worse, a number of the collaborators are considered… deviant by human standards. Some of them have sexual tastes for young humans who have not yet reached sexual maturity, tastes which we have allowed them to indulge. The vast majority of humans, however, regard the protection of children as a duty and recoil in horror at what we have permitted to occur. This horror has certainly fuelled many attacks on us.”

Oheghizh snorted, along with many others. The idea of a race that seemed to be permanently in mating season wasn’t new, but the humans took it to extremes. It wasn’t too surprising that they’d drawn up sexual customs that looked strange to alien eyes, or that those who defied those customs were hated by their peers. But they made little sense. Among the Eridian, a female who entered mating season would be considered sexually mature — and outside mating season, there would be no sexual contact between males and females. The children of the mating, assuming that one took place, would be raised by the females. There were few permanent sexual bonds between male and female — but they certainly existed among the humans. Many of the humans who had launched suicidal attacks had claimed to be acting in the name of a dead mate.

“In the long term, we expect that the humans will eventually be ground under and reshaped into proper servants of the State,” Va’tro Nak’tak said. “However, we may always have to make allowances for their alien natures. The State may have to devise new rules for them.”

There was a pause. “The human sexual nature rears its head whenever male and female humans are put together. It even appears when some humans have a sexual attraction to their own sex, something unknown among us, but very common to the Paklet. Indeed, some human sects appear to consider females useless for anything other than breeding more humans, even though it is clearly inaccurate. The Paklet, however, do not have intelligent males. Their emotional connections are forged with other females.

“For humanity, we will need to create new rules. We have already started segregating humans in our detention camps by sex. It is quite likely that we will have to rein in our collaborators, if only to prevent us being tarred by the same brush — as the humans would put it…”