Christopher Nuttall: Their Darkest Hour

There was no sign of any living human. They’d done the smart thing and made themselves scarce. The’Stig couldn’t blame them, not really. His troopers were in a murderous mood, intent on taking it out on the first group of humans that they encountered. Their city almost felt deserted, even though he knew that it was an illusion. The gunfire he could hear in the distance proved that some humans had been left alive.

“I managed to get a link to the Command Triad,” his aide called. “The command network has been crippled, but they’ve managed to clear some functions.”

The’Stig nodded and made his slow way back to the command vehicle. The Command Triad would not be pleased. Someone was likely to take the fall for everything that had happened to the Conquest Force. He wondered, mordantly, if they’d try to blame him. It was possible, although almost unthinkable, that he was the senior surviving officer in Britain.

But that couldn’t be true, could it?

“I think they’ve probably got their network back up now,” Abdul said, as they gathered in the estate after the battle. “They’ve certainly been coordinating the forces they’ve been moving around the city more effectively.”

Chris nodded. The Leathernecks hadn’t been shy about re-establishing order, even though their collaborators had been killed or forced to flee. It would take them weeks to calm London down, weeks before they started rebuilding the collaborator government. Assuming, of course, that they could find anyone willing to become collaborator-in-chief. The last one had been gunned down by a policeman who was supposed to be loyal to the new government.

The reports on the internet kept changing, but it certainly looked as if Operation Hammer had been a success. They’d hit the Leathernecks all over the world, despite problems with international communications; the Leathernecks had to be badly shocked by the experience. The PM and several other world leaders, hiding out, had already uploaded messages of congratulations to the fighting men. Some of the soldiers had been contemptuous of the PM remaining in hiding, but Chris had reminded them that the aliens wanted him dead — or alive, serving as a collaborator. They needed to keep the PM alive and free. Defeating the aliens was all that mattered. The Leathernecks wouldn’t give up easily, but they had been hurt. They knew they’d been hit hard…

And if they didn’t know that they’d lost a senior officer… Chris smiled at the thought, before realising that getting the prisoner out of London would be difficult. The Leathernecks were searching lorries, they’d never be able to get him down the tunnels… maybe they could float him out on a boat. He had a brief mental vision of a submarine slipping up the Thames before realising that it was absurd. After the Americans had lost a submarine when it came too close to the surface what remained of the Royal Navy wouldn’t take the risk. They’d need to find a boat to get the prisoner out.

Standing up, he headed outside and walked down the stairs to the basement. The estate, like many others in East London, had once had a gang in effective control, before the resistance had moved in and taught the gangs what real organised violence was all about. Now, it was guarded by soldiers in plain clothes, watching against collaborators and alien spies. They had no hope of stopping the aliens destroying the base if they discovered its existence, but there would be time to destroy the computers and escape.

The alien prisoner was held in the basement, guarded by three soldiers. Like the previous alien prisoner, he had been stripped of everything that might have carried a transponder, but his living quarters weren’t so good. They didn’t have the equipment to make it as hot or humid as the alien would probably have preferred. Chris looked through the window set into the door and scowled. The alien looked thoroughly miserable. It was dangerous to ascribe human thoughts and feelings to the Leathernecks — they weren’t even sure what an alien smile or frown looked like — but he was fairly sure of his ground. The alien looked very unhappy.

Chris opened the door and stepped inside. The alien looked up at him, his dark eyes seemingly expressionless. Maybe the alien was hungry. All the experts claimed that the aliens could eat human foods — they wouldn’t want Earth if they couldn’t — but he hadn’t touched the food he’d been given. Perhaps he was trying to starve himself to death.

“You do realise that they will come for me?” The alien said. He had to repeat himself twice before Chris understood. His English, spoken through an inhuman mouth, was mushy. “You won’t be allowed to keep me.”

“They don’t know we have you,” Chris said. The aliens had certainly not demanded his return. But then, they’d said almost nothing to humanity since Operation Hammer. “And even if they did, there’s one thing about humanity that you folks need to understand.”

The alien looked over at the wall. “What?”

“We don’t give up,” Chris said. “We will keep fighting until we’re free.”

The alien said nothing.

Deep Space

Day 70

“Don’t try to move,” a feminine voice said. “You’ve had a nasty shock.”

Gavin opened his eyes. He saw a young woman, wearing a shapeless tunic, bending over him. It was so unexpected that he was almost convinced that he was in heaven. And then he remembered… the aliens had attacked, they’d run… and something had knocked him over and out. He was a prisoner. There was no other explanation.

“Lie still,” the woman said. “It takes a moment for your body to adapt to the change in the environment. You’ll be on your feet in no time.”

She pushed something to his neck before he could object. He felt a brief stab of pain, almost as if he’d been pricked with a needle, and guessed that he’d been injected with something. A truth drug? Something to make him pliable? If the Leathernecks knew who he was, they’d want to interrogate him — and he knew what they did to make people talk. He just hoped he could hold out long enough for his men to scatter, assuming they knew that he’d been captured. The chaos as they’d retreated from Haddon Hall meant that they might not realise that the aliens had taken him alive. Not even the Leathernecks could get answers out of a dead man.

He tried to sit up, only to feel his head spinning. There was something subtly wrong about the environment. The young woman put a hand around his shoulder and helped him to stand upright. He had it a moment later, even though he’d never experienced anything like it in his entire life. The gravity in the compartment was barely two-thirds of Earth’s gravity. Some of the scientists had speculated that the Leathernecks came from a world that had a significantly lower gravitational field than Earth, he recalled, but he had dismissed it at the time. The Leathernecks were so much stronger than the average human that he suspected it was the other way around.

“Who…” His throat hurt. He had to swallow hard before he could finish the sentence. “Who are you?”

“Sharon Cordova, United States Marine Corps,” she said, briskly. “I was a medic before the invasion, which is why they put me in here.” She shrugged. “You seem to have come through the suspension process unharmed. Some guys swear blind that they remained aware even though they were floating in a stasis field.”

Gavin stared at her, confused. She smiled at him. “If you’re feeling better, I have someone you need to meet.”

“One moment,” Gavin said. The gravity wasn’t the only odd thing about their environment. He could feel a faint queasiness in the back of his mind, hear a constant thrumming just loud enough to be on the edge of perception. “Are we prisoners?”