Christopher Nuttall - Their Darkest Hour

The shock of the explosion was so powerful that it nearly destroyed the command vehicle, despite the heavy armour that should have protected it from harm. The’Stig cursed as the vehicle spun around on its hover-cushion, almost crashing into one of the other vehicles in the convoy. Judging from what little he’d seen, the blast had almost certainly taken out four tanks, the vehicles he’d placed at the front to deter any humans from ambushing his force. He’d put them out there to be slaughtered.

There was no time to curse his own mistake. The humans were firing down at the convoy from all directions. Bullets were pinging off the command vehicle’s armour, while the troopers in the troop transports had to dismount to seek cover before their vehicles were ripped apart by the human assault. Hundreds of mortar shells seemed to be crashing around them, trapping them in a killing zone. The air cover he’d ordered should be able to deal with the mortars, if the humans hadn’t brought antiaircraft missiles along to the ambush. They’d probably anticipated that he’d bring his helicopters with him.

“Order the tanks to return fire indiscriminately,” he ordered. He’d set out to relieve London Base before it fell, but it looked as if he was going to have to cut his way out of the ambush first. The rear of the convoy was in chaos. One of the tanks had ploughed into a troop transport and ground to a halt. The surviving troopers had managed to dismount and start providing cover for the tanker as he tried to get his vehicle back into operation. “Tell them to clear the streets.”

The tanks swung their main guns around and started firing shells into the surrounding buildings. Mighty explosions sent human buildings toppling to the ground, hopefully trapping and killing human ambushers before they could escape. The’Stig had only a moment to register the fact that one of his helicopters had gone down before the second one came under heavy fire from a hidden machine gun and had to break off, trailing smoke as it limped back out of the city. The radio kept buzzing with scraps of isolated chatter, but all his attempts to raise the fighter jet bases outside the city failed. It didn’t take much imagination to realise that the humans might have taken out the bases, or at least forced them to keep their jets under cover.

“Start moving back,” he ordered the rear units, as the human fire started to slack off. There was no point in trying to push ahead, even though the hover-cushions could probably allow the tanks to get over the rubble. The humans might have anticipated that and set up a second ambush, firing straight into the tanks vulnerable undersides. “Move the troopers to cover the tanks as they head back.”

He glanced down at the map. Without the command network, it was far harder to coordinate his operations, which gave the humans an advantage. There were other routes to London Base, but if they were also mined… they might walk right into a second trap. The humans had clearly set out to delay them and they’d succeeded admirably.

But if he failed to get to London Base in time, the humans would inflict disastrous damage on the occupation force…

“Ned, Eccles,” Chris’s radio snapped. “The pig is in the poke.”

Chris nodded. The first alien attempt to relieve their base had been ambushed, but the aliens could presumably shoot their way out of the trap. They had enough firepower to break through, or fall back and try to get to London via a different route.

“Start spraying,” he ordered. There hadn’t really been time to pull any papers or documents out of the command base, but they’d certainly ensure that nothing was left for the aliens to recover. Each of the soldiers carried a flask containing an extremely flammable liquid. Sprayed over the aliens, it would ensure that very little was left — and conceal the fact that the resistance had taken a second high-ranking prisoner. “Everyone else, start falling back to the city.”

He finished emptying his own flask, tossed a detonator into the centre of the alien command room, and then waved for Abdul to precede him back down the alien ramp and into the lower levels. The sound of firing in the distance was growing louder, although there was no sign of any alien aircraft. They’d based antiaircraft teams throughout the city on the assumption that anything flying would be hostile and they’d clearly forced the alien aircraft to keep their distance.

“Not a bad day’s work,” Abdul said, as they made it outside. There were small fires burning throughout the remains of the alien base, with hundreds of dead alien bodies scattered around, waiting for the aliens to recover them. The human bodies had already been dragged away to where they would be buried. There would be time for a proper ceremony later. “I think we taught them a lesson.”

Chris smiled, counting the men out as they left the remains of the alien building. Once everyone was confirmed as having left, he pushed down on the remote control, triggering the detonator he’d left behind in the alien control room. The flames would rapidly destroy the equipment and records as well as most of the DNA traces, making it almost impossible for the aliens to be certain of who’d been in the chamber when the fire started. They’d never know that they’d lost a high-ranking prisoner, not this time. And who knew what he could tell the human race?

The main body of the base would survive — he doubted fire would melt the material they’d used to build it — but it would be a blackened shell. Humans all over the world would take new hope from the story, as they would from all the other stories. The global counteroffensive would have hurt the aliens badly. Maybe, just maybe, they’d hurt the aliens badly enough to convince them to retreat and leave Earth alone.

He keyed his radio one final time, sending the signal to retreat, and then turned it off. It was time to make themselves scarce.

“Impressive,” Abdul muttered.

Chris followed his gaze. Great plumes of smoke were rising up over London, revealing where resistance fighters had mounted attacks on the police and the other collaborators, as well as a handful coming from alien bases outside the city. He’d only known snippets of the overall plan, but it was clear that they’d hammered the aliens hard. God alone knew how many Leathernecks had died in the last few hours.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s something they can take for granted. Humans don’t ever give up.”

Battered bloody, the remains of The’Stig’s force finally broke through the human resistance and reached London Base. It was already too late. The base was a broken ruin, flames licking out through portholes that had been intended to allow the defenders to fire out at human opponents. There seemed to be no living thing left alive, not even the small collection of animals some of the command staff had kept as pets, despite edicts against it. Some humans — the Russians, in particular — were very good at using pets and other trained animals to take out tanks and other armoured vehicles.

He dismounted from the command vehicle and stared at the devastation. The entire base would need to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch. He cursed the humans as he realised that they’d wiped out vast quantities of equipment, all of which would need to be replaced from the homeworld. With all the other demands on the homeworld’s resources, it was possible that they’d decide to slow Earth’s progress into becoming part of the State. The humans would have a chance to prepare themselves for the next round of fighting, and the next.

The human collaborator government had been totally destroyed. Somehow, the humans had sneaked explosives and insurgents into the building — perhaps through using some collaborators who hadn’t really decided to collaborate. They searched the remains of the human building as best as they could, but found that almost all of the senior collaborators were dead. It was clear that they’d been shot down by the insurgents in cold blood. The destruction of most of the records would make it much harder to be sure of who was still alive, or of who could be trusted. Personally, he wouldn’t have trusted any human. They were a shifty treacherous race. Even their collaborators had been treacherous.