Christopher Nuttall - Their Darkest Hour

“And so, it is with the deepest regret that we must execute those who feel that they must resist the new world order,” one of the collaborators finally droned. Alex straightened upright as the aliens levelled their weapons, pointing directly at her head. Their bullets were larger than human-designed bullets, she’d noted, perhaps a testament to the tough leathery skin that protected the aliens from outside threats. “Their deaths will serve as a warning to those who feel that they can resist with impunity…”

Alex closed her eyes, expecting the shot to come at any second. Instead, she heard alien grunts of alarm. She opened her eyes, just in time to see a small band of armed collaborators advancing on the aliens. Armed collaborators…? The aliens, caught in the open, swung around, too late. Alex threw herself to the ground as the newcomers opened fire, mowing down the aliens before they could take cover or return fire. A handful of collaborators were shot in the legs, knocking them to the ground. Alex glanced up as a figure bent down and sawed the plastic tie away from her wrists.

“What…?” She managed. It was suddenly very hard to speak. “What’s going on?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” The man demanded. “You’re being rescued!”

Alien Detention Camp

United Kingdom, Day 41

Tra’tro Yak’shat had been studying his records when the attack began. The Detention Camp wasn’t officially part of the Land Forces, although they provided the troopers who guarded it from insurgent attack. Instead, it fell under the purview of the Sha’ra, the intelligence service that safeguarded the State from enemies both inside and outside its territory. There hadn’t been an intelligence network on Earth prior to the invasion — too great a chance of being discovered ahead of time, or so they’d said — and the intelligence officers were working overtime to build up networks they could use to hunt down human insurgents. It wasn’t going too well.

The Sha’ra had wide latitude when it came to intelligence gathering, and he’d been told that he had no need to know any of the gory details, but he’d heard enough to gather that they were using human rogues to torture their prisoners and extract confessions. Anything was permitted in the service of the State — and if the humans were unwilling to dispose of their own rogues, they had only themselves to blame — yet he found it hard to accept that such torture was permissible. The humans seemed to be their own worst enemies. Even the Sha’ra had been shocked at some of the rogues they’d allowed to live. Using them in the service of the State was…

He jumped up as he heard the first explosion. The Sha’ra had ordered the execution of some of the prisoners — even to the point of bringing in their own executioners — and he’d been told to keep him and his troopers away from the execution ground, but explosions suggested that the base was under attack. The alarms sounded a second later, summoning the troopers to grab their weapons and repel the human insurgents. He picked up his own sidearm and ran towards the hatch. If the humans intended to attack his base, they’d get a few unpleasant surprises. He’d been careful to keep half his garrison under cover at all times, in the hopes that any human watchers would believe that he only had half as many troopers as he had. They’d be deploying now…

Outside, the sound of gunfire was alarmingly close. The humans were already inside the fence… how was that even possible? And he could hear the sound of human mortars lobbing shells into the base. Explosions flared up from where they’d parked their helicopters and the shuttle that had brought the Sha’ra execution crew down from orbit. The entire base shook, seconds later, as the fuel dump exploded, blasting a colossal fireball into the air. Much of the base had been built to be fire resistant, but if the shuttle fuel had caught fire the prefabricated buildings would start to melt very quickly. Fire was already starting to spread over the grass the humans had used to mark out their runways. It wouldn’t be long before the entire base went up in smoke.

He lifted his weapon, too late, as he saw a pair of humans running towards him. The weapons in their hands flashed fire… and he felt a brief moment of pain, before he fell down into darkness.

Chris saw antitank rockets smash into the guardpost, destroying the firing position before the aliens could bring their machine guns to bear on either side of the fence. The assault force outside had already taken out the other posts, allowing them to get close and start taking down the fence and push the blast walls aside. It would have been simpler to knock down the fence in a dozen places, but combat reports from America suggested that the aliens scattered mines between the two fences and they didn’t have time to clear a path. Besides, it might be easier to get people out over the road.

“Get the prisoners moving,” he bellowed. Sergeant Haywood heard him and started pushing the prisoners towards the gates. A second team headed towards the cages holding the remainder of the prisoners. Some of them prisoners looked as if they’d been beaten half to death, but they were all moving, if poorly. He’d have to assign people to help them get out of the base if they ran out of other options. “Get a team over and concentrated on the alien barracks!”

The aliens seemed to have had a number of troopers hiding in a large building that had clearly been designed to serve as a fortress. Chris watched as they fired from portholes, forcing his men to stay back. Whoever had designed the building knew what he was doing, he admitted to himself; the aliens could cover all of the possible angles of approach, except directly above their building. He detailed two platoons of Royal Marines to keep the aliens pinned down, while rounding up a platoon to follow him towards the human-designed buildings. If their intelligence was correct, the humans the aliens had been using as interrogators would be based there.

A small group of aliens had gone to ground behind a blast wall and were firing down towards the detention camp. Chris nodded to two of his men, who threw grenades over the blast wall and ducked for cover. Two shattering explosions tore through the aliens, sending bloody chunks of flesh flying everywhere. The alien body armour was good , he noted, with a flicker of envy. Several of the alien bodies were intact, even though they’d been stunned or killed by the grenades. They put a bullet in each of the alien heads, just to be sure, as they reached the hanger. Inside, there was a small alien helicopter and a pair of aliens who had to be techs. They reached for weapons hanging by their sides, only to be shot down before they could draw them and open fire. Chris watched them fall and then glanced at the alien helicopter, wondering if they could fly it out of the base. A quick check revealed that it had been designed for beings with very different proportions than humans and it would be very difficult for a human to fly. Maybe two humans, with proper training… he pushed the thought aside as they ran towards the stairs. There was an entire underground complex underneath the hanger, one built back when the base had been preparing for war against the Russians. The aliens would probably have found it uncomfortable claustrophobic…

“Incoming,” one of the sergeants yelled. Chris glanced up to see an alien helicopter swooping over the base, firing down towards the humans on the ground. A Stinger leapt up and slammed right into the alien craft, sending it heeling out of the sky and down to the ground, where it exploded in a massive fireball. “Sir…”