Christopher Nuttall - Their Darkest Hour

The sound of helicopters in the distance underscored his words. Gabriel followed him down to the harbour and blinked in surprise when he saw the boat. It was an elderly sailing boat rather than a more modern design, but it did have an outboard motor at the stern. The owner, a man who looked old enough to be a granddad, nodded when he saw Gabriel and then started the motor.

“You’ll be heading north, right?” He said, as they motored out and into open water. Gabriel wondered if the shape he could see in the distance was Ireland, or if they were too far north to see the Emerald Isle. “I hope you’ve got somewhere safe to stay.”

“Yes,” Butcher said, shortly.

“I’ll get you there, safe and sound,” the sailor said. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

Gabriel half-turned, looking back at the receding shoreline. The green hills of England seemed to be illuminated as the sun beat down from high overhead, creating a marvellous picture. Despite himself, he wondered if he’d ever see them again. If they had to flee to Scotland, where would they go when the aliens came after them again?

“I’m not worried,” Butcher said, stiffly. “I just want to be away from here before our friends catch up with us.”

London

United Kingdom, Day 55

“We’re still on, then?”

“It looks that way,” Abdul said, from where he was studying the laptop. London’s internet connections were starting to collapse, although no one was quite sure if the aliens were doing it deliberately or if the wear and tear on the system was finally taking a toll. Probably both, Chris considered. The aliens had to know that the internet was being used to coordinate the resistance and they were recruiting computer experts. “We’re too far advanced with the planning to back out now. If some groups don’t get the message in time…”

Chris nodded. The alien attack on Haddon Hall — which had apparently been serving as a crucial resistance node — had scattered some of the resistance’s fighting men, but it hadn’t shattered the command network. Some people had suggested abandoning — or at least postponing — Operation Hammer, but too many people were already briefed and making preparations. Delaying the operation only increased the danger of the alien intelligence service figuring out what was coming before the operation was launched.

“Then” — he made a show of checking his watch — “we move from here in three hours and hit the aliens right where they live,” he said. Offhand, he couldn’t recall a bigger operation in recent history — let alone one mounted on such a shoestring. The cost of failure would be alarmingly high. “I take it that everyone is ready?”

There were nods from the small team. London was large enough to hide a couple of hundred fighting men — as well as the volunteers, gangsters and trouble-causers who were giving the collaborator government fits — in places close to their intended target. Thanks to Abdul’s careful preparation — he’d recruited louts to smash CCTV cameras all over the city — the aliens and their collaborators would have difficulty realising that the assault force was being prepared, although they had to know that they were going blind. Chris privately suspected that one of the reasons the aliens had started insisting that people worked for their food was to keep control over the population, rather than leave people to their own devices. They might start getting ideas about lashing out at the aliens.

“Good,” Chris said. He grinned to relieve the tension. “I feel like saying something terribly dramatic.”

Abdul chuckled. “Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more,” he said. “Consign their parts most private to a Rutland fence.”

Chris laughed. He’d missed laughing and joking with his comrades before an operation, or telling great lies about female conquests… anything, but taking about the coming battle. They’d prepared carefully and rehearsed as much as they could, yet the tension would continue to rise until they were actually moving out and heading towards contact. The only thing that would make it settle was actual engagement.

London wasn’t what he remembered any longer. Even Basra or Kabul at their worst didn’t match what the aliens had done to London. Chris would cheerfully have killed every last one of the aliens for what they’d done, both for the damage they’d inflicted upon London’s monuments and for the fear that pervaded the lives of ordinary citizens. There was no longer any faith in the law, or the police; the police served the aliens and the law was a joke, unable even to protect those who had spent their entire lives following it. Many people had been arrested by the aliens after being denounced by their neighbours out of spite, or because the neighbours wanted to pay back old grudges… no one trusted anyone any longer. Chris imagined that Moscow under Stalin or Berlin under Hitler would have had the same aura of fear, of mistrust and suspicion, that seemed to have settled over London like a shroud.

No amount of joking could convince him that things were normal, or that they would ever be normal again. One of the guys he’d met during the briefings had commented that the discovery of alien life alone had changed the world, and it would have done so even if the aliens had been friendly, or indifferent to poor struggling humanity. And if the latest intelligence on the internet was to be believed, there were at least six other alien star-faring races out there. Humanity was a very small fish in a very large pond.

He looked down at his SA80 and shook his head. He’d already checked, cleaned and rechecked it twice in the last two hours. They should be resting and preparing themselves, but he’d never been able to rest before an operation. Some of the others didn’t share that particular problem. They were sitting against the wall, snoring loudly. Their comrades would make sarcastic remarks later.

“Don’t worry,” Bongo said. “It’ll be alright on the night.”

One of the other soldiers managed to twist his voice into a shrill falsetto. “It’s all right, dear,” he said. “We’ll try again in a few minutes. Just take a look at some of these naughty pictures…”

Chris glanced at his watch, again. Would zero hour never come?

Robin had had some difficulties in altering his duty schedule to fit the operation’s requirements, but by calling in several favours he’d been able to have himself and four others assigned to the force guarding the collaborator government’s headquarters. It helped that Beresford was something of a micromanager, intent on keeping as much as possible of his government’s operations under his thumb. The old Civil Contingencies Centre had been destroyed during the alien invasion of London, but a new command centre had been set up under Beresford’s headquarters and outfitted with the latest in communications and surveillance equipment. Many of the officers who worked there had become more tainted by collaboration than anyone else.

There was no difficulty in getting through the security checkpoints outside the building, not with police uniforms and ID cards. Robin was almost disappointed. Part of him thought that he was being treacherous to men he’d known and worked beside for years, even though they were serving the aliens — and he’d been serving the aliens until recently. But there was a fine line between doing what they could to keep the public safe and actively helping the aliens achieve their goals and many of the operators had crossed that line. And if there was an element of hypocrisy, even self-hatred, in that thought, Robin no longer cared. It was time to put an end to it.