Outside Context Problem: Book 03 - The Slightest Hope of Victory

by Christopher Nuttall

  She looked back at the burning rubble and scowled. London’s fire brigade was already responding, but it looked as though they were having problems holding back the flames. Judging from the other pillars of smoke in the distance, Whitehall hadn't been the only place targeted either. Military bases, power plants, shipping on the river, the bridges ... in barely a few minutes, the aliens had done more concentrated damage than Adolf Hitler. And it was just the first day of war.

  “I think we have company,” the cameraman said, pointing to a pair of police cars that had driven up the road and screeched to a halt outside the building they were using as a vantage point. “You want to run?”

  Wendy shrugged, remembering hair-raising escapes from policemen in the Middle East. But it seemed far less important now.

  “Why not?” She said, finally. “What else can we do?”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Classified Joint Headquarters, Near London, United Kingdom

  Day 247

  The Prime Minister had taken a dislike to the Classified Joint Headquarters as soon as he had stepped inside it for the first time. It was a bunker, buried under an unmemorable warehouse on the very edge of London, but it was crude, as if the designers had never expected to actually need it. As it was, most of the other emergency bunkers couldn't be regarded as secure. The aliens might well have pulled information on British emergency procedures out of American databases after they’d overwhelmed Washington, months ago.

  And they could go after the bunkers too, he thought, bitterly. The aliens had smashed NORAD – and NORAD had been buried under a mountain, intended to stand off a direct nuclear strike. Nothing in the British Isles was anything like as heavily defended; the only real protection some of the bunkers had was being in the midst of the civilian population, using them as human shields. The Prime Minister had had his doubts that was a workable defence even before the aliens arrived to take the planet. None of Britain’s recent foes would have lost sleep over civilian casualties.

  He had to admit that it was unlikely that anyone would be able to locate the CJHQ from orbit. There was nothing on the surface, but a warehouse that apparently belonged to an electronic company before the economy had crashed. The district was being redeveloped and gentrified at the time, which had allowed the government a chance to use a few cover companies to establish a secret command and control base without anyone noticing. If something happened to Whitehall, the CJHQ would take over, according to the operational plans. As far as the Prime Minister knew, those plans had never covered alien invasion or military attacks on British soil. It had seemed so unthinkable in the wake of the cold war.

  The base was linked directly into the hardened military telecommunications network, which was still operational despite several alien attempts to take out its communications nodes. Most of the system was buried underground, with few betraying radio signals to lead the aliens to its their location; the handful of parts that had been dependent on the satellite network had been hastily replaced after the aliens had destroyed the American military satellite network. It wasn't as advanced as it had been, the Prime Minister thought sourly, but it still worked. And it wouldn't lead the aliens directly to his location.

  “Prime Minister,” General Brentwood said, once the communications link had been established and verified. It should have been impossible for someone to tap into it, but the Prime Minister was ruefully aware that the aliens had done the impossible before. “I'm afraid the news isn't good.”

  The Prime Minister nodded. Two days of near-constant fighting over British airspace was slowly wearing down the RAF, while the aliens were demonstrating their skill at distracting the defending aircraft and then sneaking raids through the network against targets on the ground. Several airbases had been knocked out completely, despite the improved ground-based air defence systems, forcing the RAF to start pressing civilian airports into service as emergency fields. But they in turn weren't designed to stand up to all-out attack ...

  “They're slowly pushing us out of the north entirely,” Brentwood said. “It’s difficult to be sure, but they seem to be focusing their attacks on airbases north of the border, as well as road and rail links we’d use to move troops northwards. They’ve also been targeting military bases, although that hasn't been as effective as they might have hoped. There was plenty of warning and most of the bases were evacuated before the attacks had even begun.”

  The Prime Minister looked over at the map someone had pinned on the wall. It wasn't an automatic display, responding to his touch, but somehow it seemed to work better when he wanted to visualise the situation. He was no military man, yet it looked as though the aliens intended to land in the north of Scotland and advance south.

  “That’s one possibility,” Brentwood agreed, when the Prime Minister said that out loud. “There are plenty of targets up north that they would want to secure – the nuclear dockyards, for example, or various other military bases. But it’s also possible that they’re planning an attack on London and they’re currently trying to draw our forces out of position by making us think they’re actually heading north.”

  He smiled, thinly. “Or they could be trying both,” he said, “and what they actually do depends on our reaction.”

  “Crap,” the Prime Minister said. He could see the man’s point. If the military moved north to confront an alien invasion, which would be difficult as the aliens were slowly taking command of the air, the aliens might land behind them, in London. But if the military stayed in the south, the aliens might land in Scotland and build up their positions before advancing southwards. “Can we stand off an invasion if they land?”

  “We wargamed it out, using the intelligence we drew from America,” Brentwood said. “It will be very hard to stop them from establishing a foothold, not given their mobility. Back in the Falklands, a couple of enemy regiments at the beaches would have given us a very hard time, but now the aliens could land on top of Ben Nevis if they wanted and march down from there. And if we spread out our forces to provide rapid reaction forces all over Scotland, we risk being defeated piecemeal.

  “Right now, we have the Scots Guard positioned to move in Scotland, as well as several of the new conscript regiments. Those lads are trained as best as we can, but they don’t have any real experience yet ...”

  The Prime Minister held up a hand. “I will assume that you know what you are doing,” he said, tiredly. Military matters were not his area of expertise. “I think, however, that we will need to safeguard London first. The aliens may well come for the city if they think we’ve weakened her.”

  “That may be several more days,” Brentwood warned. “So far, we’ve managed to keep a fairly secure line over England, apart from a handful of raids. But they’re steadily chipping away at it. Did the French have anything useful to say?”

  The Prime Minister snorted, remembering the brief conversation he’d had with the new French President. “They’ll cut loose the rest of their air force to support us in exchange for future political considerations,” he said. “But they’re short on weapons and fuel ...”

  “So are we,” Brentwood said. “And I think they know that too.”

  The Prime Minister gritted his teeth. No one really understood how rapidly military forces could burn through their stockpiles of ammunition until they actually saw it – and by then it was far too late. The MOD had noted that the Americans had run short of ammunition during the Iraq War, but the bureaucrats had stalled when the time came to allocate money to build up British stockpiles. Right now, the exact number of air-to-air missiles ready for deployment was highly classified, yet it didn't take a genius to realise that they could be fired off much quicker than they could be replaced.

  Particularly now that we can't ask the Americans for emergency supplies, he thought, coldly. What the USAF didn't fire off the aliens confiscated and destroyed when they landed.

  Brentwood was right, the Prime Minister suspected. All the aliens had to do was maintain t
he same tempo for a week or two and the RAF would literally run out of weapons, along with fuel. The stockpile of fuel that had been amassed at great expense was already running low. Sooner or later, they would have to start cutting back on operations, which would allow the aliens a chance to punch through the defences and catch planes on the ground. They’d already figured out that going after the RAF’s small force of tankers was a neat way to cripple the RAF without risking too many of their craft.

  And if they were willing to come blazing in, throwing caution to the winds, they might have beaten us by now, he thought. Thank God for the Dalek System.

  “The Dalek shouldn't be dependent on fuel,” he said, slowly. “And they seem to fear it ...”

  “Yes, they do,” Brentwood said. “But they’ve also realised that it has weaknesses too. We lost one near RAF Waddington when the plasma conduits overloaded in the midst of battle and exploded, killing ten men. And they’ve also discovered that flying very low allows them to sneak up on us and get some blows in before we can react. I’m afraid that they’re adapting just as quickly as we are.”

  He shook his head. “Overall, Prime Minister, we are being ground down,” he concluded. “We may have to bring Operation Hammer forward.”

  The Prime Minister nodded. It was a risk, particularly if the American resistance wasn't ready to act – to say nothing of the alien rebels – but they were running short of options. Once Britain fell, the aliens could deal with Russia ... and then there would be nothing left to stop them. He’d seen the images of the alien children from the United States. There would be no normal children left in a few generations if the aliens won.

  He closed his eyes for a long moment, trying to meditate. Had Churchill ever worried so badly when the Nazis had been trying to bomb Britain into submission? But Churchill had known that the Nazis couldn't have invaded Britain, even though it had seemed otherwise at the time; he’d known that things could get worse, but the game couldn't be lost. German stormtroopers weren't going to march through London and end British independence once and for all.

  But the aliens could land in Britain – and they could land anywhere in Britain. Hitler’s forces had been badly limited; the only halfway plausible point for landing was near Dover, the closest part of Britain to occupied France. The British defenders had massed their forces there to compensate, ready to intercept when the Germans landed. But the aliens could land anywhere. There was no reason why they couldn't land in Cornwall, or Southampton, or even Cardiff. Or London itself.

  “Start making preparations,” he ordered, finally. He would have to talk to the President and plan to bring the joint operation forward. “General Jones?”

  General Dawlish didn't look happy – but then, the Prime Minister had never seen him show anything apart from a dour frown. He’d been in command of the conscript program, then moved to home defence when it became apparent that the aliens were about to engage. He also had overall authority over martial law, although police superintendents handled as much of law enforcement as possible. There just wasn't the military manpower to go around.

  “Most of the country is quiet, Prime Minister,” he said, bluntly. “We issued plenty of warnings, so people had a chance to stock up on water, rations and other emergency supplies. The BBC did manage to broadcast some live footage from the first attack on London, but thankfully that did encourage people to take the whole matter seriously rather than just riot like they did after Washington fell. I guess the devastation in London brought home the fact that our country is no longer inviolable.”

  The Prime Minister nodded, tartly. It would seem an odd war to the civilians; those living near military bases or other alien targets would see evidence of alien attacks, while others wouldn't really see or hear anything more than distant thunder. He’d even seen a report, after the fall of Washington, that had suggested that part of the population didn't even believe in the aliens and thought that the government had created a facade for sinister reasons of its own. The Prime Minister would have found it amusing if he hadn't known that the government simply wasn't competent enough to create such a facade and then hold it in place indefinitely.

  “However, there are a number of riots in various areas, including London,” Dawlish continued. “The police managed to quash or seal off most of the rioters, but if it gets worse we might have to deploy troops to help the police. And if that happens we will be drawing them away from their positions in case the aliens try to land. I’d prefer to take quick and decisive action right now ...”

  “I see your point,” the Prime Minister said. “Can we contain the riots indefinitely?”

  Just after the Fall of Washington, he’d had to act fast to quash a number of riots. Now, there were thousands of young men in detention camps, held indefinitely under martial law. In the long run, there was no way to know what to do with them. The illegal immigrants from Pakistan no longer had a homeland to go back to, while India was unlikely to welcome its share. Most of them had been put to work on various projects that required brute labour, but there was no longer any manpower to supervise them. They had been abandoned in the camps.

  “I believe so,” Dawlish said. “Riots do tend to burn themselves out, once they run out of food, drink and drugs. However, that won’t help anyone caught up inside the area they control. They may well end up dead – or worse.”

  The Prime Minister rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. How the hell had his predecessors allowed the country to get into such a mess?

  Because they believed themselves secure, he thought, and shuddered. How could they have made such a mistake? Because they didn't think that there might be a threat from outside our atmosphere ...

  What would Churchill have done? What would Thatcher have done?

  Smash the riots – risk having the troops out of place. Leave the riots alone to burn themselves out – abandon the people caught up in the middle of the fighting.

  “Smash the riots,” he ordered, finally. He couldn't abandon the population. “If you have to deploy troops, take the gloves off completely. The rioters are to be rounded up and imprisoned.”

  “It is quite likely that many of them will end up dead,” Dawlish said, tonelessly.

  “Then let them die,” the Prime Minister snapped.

  He shook his head. “Admiral?”

  “The Royal Navy is taking a beating too,” Admiral Vancouver admitted. Perhaps he too was glad of the change in subject. “The aliens have sunk ships indiscriminately wherever they found them; thankfully, mounting one of the Daleks on a handful of destroyers and frigates forced them to keep their distance. However, they’ve mastered the art of low-level attacks now, so we think that losses are going to keep rising. We’ve actually had to ground an air defence frigate at Portsmouth to keep her from sinking after the aliens caught her in the harbour. At least we can still use her guns and missiles against the aliens when they come back.

  “They’ve pushed us completely out of Scottish waters,” he added. “As far as we can tell, they sunk everything; there was a tramp freighter from Brazil making its way through the area when the aliens pounced and sank her, according to the distress call. They’ve also shot down SAR aircraft in Scotland, although they generally ignore them elsewhere. I think we have to assume that the aliens intend to land in Scotland.”

  That was a nasty twist, the Prime Minister thought. According to his briefers, even the Japanese fliers during World War Two had hesitated to shoot at men bailing out of stricken aircraft and parachuting towards the ground. The aliens had seemed to ignore them too, as well as SAR helicopters that didn't carry weapons or pose a threat. But if that was changing ...

  They don’t let us take prisoners, he thought, coldly, and now they’re preventing us from recovering our own people. But only in Scotland. Why? What does it mean?

  “We have to assume the worst,” the Admiral concluded. “They’re planning to start their landings in Scotland.”

  The Prime Minister found himself
caught in the agony of indecision, again. Sending troops north might weaken the defences elsewhere ... the mocking refrain ran through his mind, time and time again. But not sending troops north might allow the aliens to gain a foothold in Scotland, allowing them to advance south. There was just no easy solution ...

  “See what reinforcements you can scrape up without denuding the southern defences,” he ordered, finally. “I need to talk to the President.”

  ***

  “I wish I could offer better advice,” the President said, over the intercom. There was a direct link from Guthrie Castle to the CJHQ. “All I can really say, based on my military experience, is that Scotland looks like the most likely landing target for the bastards.”

  The Prime Minister nodded. “But they could land anywhere,” he pointed out, grimly. “I’m surprised they haven’t tried to take out the London bunker network yet. We know they can blow them right out of the ground.”

  “Bad idea to kill the people who can surrender,” the President said. “It’s possible that they learned that lesson after Washington. They were certainly careful to take the Saudi King and his merry men alive.”

  “And they went on the airwaves and told their men to surrender, which most of them did,” the Prime Minister said. He hadn't been surprised. No one had expected much from the Saudi military if it was ever involved in a major war. Iran had put up a much better fight against the aliens. “I take your point.”

  He rubbed his forehead, again. “We need to move ahead with Operation Hammer.”

  “I feared as much,” the President said. His face twisted, bitterly. “But it will still take a few days to get ready.”

  “The sooner the better,” the Prime Minister said. He remembered Churchill’s famous speech and smiled, wryly. “We’re about to start fighting the bastards on the beaches.”

  Chapter Forty-Two