Christopher Nuttall - Their Darkest Hour

The grenades shook the ground as they scrambled away, keeping their heads down. Outside the detention camp, they’d had a chance to scope out possible ways to retreat, including two that led through villages the aliens had ordered abandoned by their human residents. There was plenty of cover for resistance traps and they’d set up several IEDs, enough to keep the aliens carefully sweeping for more while the fighters made their escape. Several men had volunteered to make a last stand in the houses, but Chris had vetoed the idea. They needed every man they could get and futile stands would only cost them lives for nothing. The aliens could simply fall back and hammer the houses from orbit.

He heard the sound of alien aircraft overhead and instinctively sought cover. The ground shook a moment later, a colossal explosion that sent a fireball roaring into the air. God alone knew who or what the aliens had seen, but they’d certainly killed it. He kept moving, knowing that there was no longer any point in trying to fight. They’d split up into smaller groups and meet up again at the RV point.

There was a brief burst of firing, not too far away, followed by silence. Chris wondered briefly what had happened, but it hardly mattered. Assuming that the aliens believed that their men were still in danger, they would have gone to liberate the camp first and then give chase to the resistance fighters. Or perhaps they would simply drop rocks from orbit on the deserted villages, hoping to trap some of the resistance fighters in the blasts. It struck Chris as excessive, but the aliens probably regarded it as efficient. But then, they’d never know for sure how many they’d killed.

Shaking his head, he kept moving. There was a long way to go before he could relax and start heading towards the base. He’d have to be careful that he wasn’t followed, either. The aliens might be holding back deliberately, hoping that he would lead them to a base. That was the last thing the resistance needed.

U’tra The’Stig knew that he wasn’t supposed to lead relief missions in person, but many of his subordinates were either inexperienced in fighting humans or too low-ranking to be given overall command responsibilities. With the new access his promotion had granted him, it was alarmingly easy to see just how badly the humans had mauled the Land Forces — and caused them to bring in reinforcements earlier than the planners had expected. The humans might not be the most advanced race the State had ever encountered, but they were certainly the most stubborn. A sensible race would have started seeing what niche it could carve out for itself in the State by now.

The detention camp had been devastated. They’d blown through the gate, despite the blast walls that were supposed to prevent anyone from getting in without permission, and somehow secured much of the base long enough to cut through the cages and release the prisoners. Most of them would have been in no state for running, but they wouldn’t have been given much of a choice. Even so, he could see a number of dead humans who clearly weren’t insurgents, unless the insurgents had decided to fight while naked. The prisoners had been shot down in the crossfire, probably by their guards.

He watched as the remains of the base’s garrison stumbled out of their barracks. At least they’d managed to hold out — although he had a feeling that they’d been left alive deliberately, if only to prevent higher authority from cutting their losses and dropping rocks on what remained of the base. The superior officer, an intelligence officer, came over and glared at The’Stig, before snarling orders for him to track down and kill the human insurgents. The’Stig tapped his badge, a droll reminder that he actually outranked the intelligence officer, and waited for him to calm down.

“They’ve destroyed all our work,” the intelligence officer said, finally. “We were using humans to track down other humans and they’ve destroyed our work!”

“They do that,” The’Stig agreed. The intelligence officers had a reputation for arrogance, but they did produce results. “I’m deploying my unit to hunt for the humans. I expect you and your unit to stay out of my way.”

Ignoring the intelligence officer’s splutters, he ordered his mobile command post set up in one corner of the ruined base. They were already deploying drones and attack aircraft to support the Assault Units on the ground. If the humans had managed to go to ground, they might be able to smoke them out before the operation was called off. Given the recent events in America that had forced the redeployment of several Assault Units and Security Units, it was quite possible that the humans would manage to hide. But they’d certainly do their best to rattle the humans as they fled.

“What the hell do we do with this guy?”

Chris looked over at their single alien prisoner. The alien didn’t seem to be doing anything deliberately to slow them down, but there was no denying that his bulk made it harder for them to hide from the advancing alien patrols. Chris had climbed a tree and seen several aliens advancing in their general direction, hunting for human fighters. There was an IED nearby, hidden in their path, but the aliens had become much better at spotting and neutralising them over the past few weeks.

“Cut off his clothes and leave them here,” he ordered, finally. It was possible that the aliens had hidden tracers in their clothing. Chris would have, if he’d been in their shoes. “And then we get him to the safe house and hope that they haven’t tracked us.”

It was the first time he’d seen one of the aliens naked and he had to admit that he was curious. Their captive’s leathery grey skin seemed to shift unpleasantly over his bones, almost as if the alien had lost a great deal of weight recently. There was no sign of any sexual organs, between the alien’s stumpy legs, but judging from what looked like coiled muscle under the skin the sexual organs had actually retracted into the body. Human penises did tend to shrink if the human was nervous, yet it looked as if the aliens didn’t deploy their penises unless they were aroused. He found himself trying to envisage how they would mate before deciding that it hardly mattered. They could answer that question once they were safely away from the aliens chasing them.

“Come on,” he ordered. “Let’s go.”

Fifteen minutes later, they seemed to have broken contact with the main body of the aliens, but Chris still felt uneasy. The skies seemed to be crowded with alien aircraft, some clearly hunting for the escaping insurgents, others flying down towards the base. One of them was blown out of the sky by a missile, but its comrades launched rockets towards the missile’s point of origin. Chris hoped that whoever had fired the missile had abandoned the launcher and run the moment the missile had been launched, yet he suspected otherwise. The aliens had reacted with alarming speed.

The sound of alien aircraft slowly tailed away, leaving only the occasional sound of helicopter chopping their way through the skies. Chris kept glancing upwards anyway, wondering if they were being watched by a drone. No one knew for sure how good alien sensors were, but the Americans had performed miracles. The aliens might be just as good, or they might have stolen American technology — or perhaps they’d pressed Americans into service as collaborators. Many of the reports they had from across the Atlantic were confusing, or contradictory. People had welcomed the aliens, some said, while others claimed that the entire country was at war. But America had far more land surface to hide resistance fighters. Maintaining a resistance in Britain was growing harder by the day.