Christopher Nuttall - Their Darkest Hour

She recorded a brief interview with Gus, where she explained what had happened to her and how she’d been rescued from the firing squad. Gus proved to be a surprisingly good interviewer, although as an army intelligence officer he’d probably been trained to talk someone into revealing more than they intended. He replayed it for her and she was struck by the sense of hopelessness she saw in her eyes. The video would be put out on the internet and the entire world would see her. She’d never wanted to be a film star, but it was worth it if it turned hearts and minds against the aliens.

“So,” she said, finally. “What happens to me now?”

“You recover,” Gus said. He paused, just for a moment. “Did you hear about the Area Commanders the aliens have been creating?”

Alex shook her head. After she’d been arrested and sent to the detention camp, she hadn’t heard anything new from the outside world. The last she’d heard was that the aliens were handing out seeds and expecting the farmers to plant them and raise crops before the onset of winter. Maybe they could, but Smith hadn’t been too confident of it.

The thought reminded her of her friends. “What happened to the others from the camp?”

“The ones we got out are scattered over the country,” Gus said. “Most of them will go into action units once they’ve recovered from their ordeal. I’m afraid we don’t keep records here…”

“For fear the aliens will capture them,” Alex said. Al Qaida had been notoriously good at keeping records, too good. Documents uncovered by raids on their hideouts had often led to more hideouts. “Who are the Area Commanders?”

“Senior collaborators,” Gus said. He picked up a folder and placed it in front of her. “From what one of our sources says, they’re going to be responsible for integrating Britain’s economy with the alien empire. We believe that the aliens are doing something similar in America and France, but we don’t have any confirmation. I was wondering if you recognised any of them.”

Alex opened the folder and skimmed through the photographs. None were familiar, apart from one she vaguely remembered as having been an MP during the Expenses Scandal. A note beside the photograph claimed that he’d volunteered for alien service, rather than being press-ganged into unwilling collaboration by the aliens. She put the photo to one side and glanced down at the next — and swore.

“That’s Rupert Leigh,” she said, in shock. He’d been one of the few who’d known who she was, and what she had been before the invasion. And he’d known about the resistance movement she’d led even though he hadn’t been an active member. “He…”

It clicked in her mind. “He betrayed me!”

“Almost certainly,” Gus agreed. “From what we have been given to understand, Leigh was offered a chance to rule the entire county — in exchange for his service to the aliens. He probably was the one who betrayed you, along with several others. He’s marked down for death if we ever get a clear shot at him.”

“I want to go after him,” Alex said, sharply. “You cannot deny that I have the right to kill him…”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean that you should,” Gus said. He held up a hand before she could say anything. “The doctor said that you should rest — so rest. There will be time to kill the traitor afterwards.”

The underground chamber was cold, illuminated only by a single overhead light. Chris strode into the chamber and stopped in front of the five chairs positioned in the centre of the room. The men sitting on the chairs had been cuffed to render them immobile and hooded to make sure that they saw nothing, just in case they managed to escape and run back to the aliens. Besides, being blind was disorientating and demoralising. Chris hadn’t enjoyed it during his training and he doubted that any of the collaborators would have enjoyed it either.

He reached for the first hood and pulled it off, revealing one of the alien torturers. The man stared up at him desperately, but the ball someone had stuffed in his mouth prevented him from speaking. Chris removed each of the hoods in turn, revealing the remaining torturers and collaborators. They had all featured in the videos they’d recovered from the alien detention camp. There was no doubt whatsoever about their guilt. Chris had watched the videos himself, just to prepare himself for the task ahead.

Quickly, he pulled his own facemask on and looked up at the cameras. “Start filming,” he ordered. The set of cameras within the chamber came to life, recording the five faces — and Chris, standing behind them. They wouldn’t see his face behind the mask. “Each of you has been found guilty of collaborating with the alien occupiers and of torturing your fellow humans for your masters. The evidence has been placed on the internet, there for all to see. For your crimes, there can only be one penalty. The sentence is death.”

He lifted his Browning and put it to the head of the first torturer. The stench of shit arose as the man fouled himself, suddenly realising that the game was truly up. Chris felt nothing as he pulled the trigger, putting a bullet through the man’s brains. The torturer had deserved far worse than a quick death. He moved to the second torturer, remembering the videos he’d seen that were now firmly burned into his mind. The man had gloried in watching helpless people screaming in pain. He pulled the trigger a second time and watched as the man died, bound and as helpless as his victims.

The remaining three were less guilty, but they’d definitely been involved. Chris shot all three of them and then stepped back to allow the cameras to film their dead bodies. The video would be uploaded to the internet tonight and then the entire world would see what had been done for the aliens — and what had happened to those who had done it. Maybe the next set of collaborators would be less willing to torture their captives…

Shaking his head, he walked away from the chamber, leaving the bodies behind. They’d be buried when night came, left to rot in an unmarked grave. And that, he hoped, would be the end of it. He didn’t want to have to do it again.

North England

United Kingdom, Day 44

The alien had been placed in a large holding cell, with foodstuffs that had been liberated from one of the alien bases by a collaborator who had ties to the resistance. It — no, Gavin reminded himself, he — had been well-treated, with the intelligence crew’s best guess at the kind of environment the aliens would find comfortable. Given the temperature of their buildings, they seemed to prefer a sauna rather than the open air. The alien certainly didn’t look uncomfortable, although there was no way to know for sure. He didn’t seem to speak English properly without his voder, but there was no way they could risk bringing it to their hiding place. The aliens might have been able to track it down.

“I doubt that we will ever be able to talk their language properly,” Linux reported. They were standing together in front of the monitor, watching the alien and two of the intelligence team experimenting with a prototype translator. “Their mouths and ours are just too different. We’d have better luck trying to speak fluent pig.”

“I’ve known a few intelligence operatives who claimed that they spoke fluent donkey,” Gavin said, wryly. “Can we ask him questions?”

“Once the techs have finished, I think so,” Linux said. “We copied their translation programs onto a pair of laptops and started working away at it. I think there will probably be quite a few glitches, but on the whole we have something that should work fairly well.”