Darkest Hour 1: Their Darkest Hour

by Christopher Nuttall

  A rock was thrown by one of the crowd, followed rapidly by a small volley of stones, bricks and bottles. Robin ducked for cover as objects began to bounce off the side of the vans, or strike policemen. They were wearing armour, but no body armour was totally perfect. Two of the policemen fell to the ground, bleeding. One of them was caught up by the advancing mob and stomped to death.

  Damn you, Robin thought. Don't you know what the aliens will do to you?

  He barked an order and the water cannons activated, spraying water over the advancing crowd. They staggered backwards, some of them choking for breath as the hose was played right over their faces. Some of them seemed to have the sense to run, but others seemed far too aware that the police vans could only carry a small amount of water. A few minutes and they’d run out completely. And then they’d be forced to use the gas...

  The engines roared to life and he barked orders. They’d have to leave the body of their fallen comrade behind, even though it tore at him to leave it. The only way to recover the body was to use gas – and he wasn't ready to use it unless they were in desperate straits. He watched as the remaining policemen scrambled for the vans, and then beat a hasty retreat. Absently, he wondered how the other teams were coping. The aliens had designated three hundred relatives of the suicide bomber and his friends for capture. Some of them would probably be arrested easily, but the others...? The Islamic community might hide them from the aliens.

  He let out a breath he hadn't realised he’d been holding as the vans lurched down the empty streets. They’d made it out without having to kill any of the civilians. But next time...

  Next time, he was sure, it would be a different story.

  ***

  “I strongly suggest that you don't go any further,” a man’s voice said. “You’re already in deep shit.”

  Fatima jumped. She’d been walking home from the bomb site, lost in her own thoughts – and yet surely someone should not have been able to surprise her. The streets of London weren't safe – hell, they hadn't been safe before the invasion. She had been asked to take up lodgings at one of the hospitals, but she’d declined. There was no way to explain it to her stepmother. Respectable girls lived in the family home until they married, whereupon they moved to their husband’s home and found themselves slaving for their mother-in-law.

  “Don’t worry,” the man said. “I’m on your side. Call me Abdul.”

  “Right,” Fatima said. She’d met men who thought that they were God’s gift to women before, brimming with unjustified confidence...but this man seemed to be more relaxed than confident. “What’s going on...?”

  She glanced around the corner and stopped, dead. There looked to be a small army of policemen outside her house, and a growing crowd of friends, relatives and neighbours surrounding the policemen. As she watched, her stepmother was hauled out by two of the policemen and dumped in the garden, her hands cuffed behind her backs. The rest of her extended family followed moments later. Fatima realised, in growing shock, that she would have been arrested herself if she’d been in the house.

  Abdul caught her arm. For once, she wasn't offended at a man touching her without an invitation. “Walk with me,” he hissed. She could feel his breath against her ear even though the scarf. “Pretend we’re a married couple and walk slowly. We don’t want to attract attention.”

  Behind her, Fatima heard the sound of angry shouting in three different languages and the sound of hosepipes. She felt her heart clench inside her as they walked away, nearly fainting when a row of police vans shot past them and down the road at terrifying speed. The district was normally crammed with cars inching their way through the streets, but now it was empty, allowing the police to move fast. And they were taking her family away...she wanted to scream after them, but what good would it have done?

  Abdul looked down at her. Oddly, she felt safe with him. “I’m afraid your...cousin managed to blow himself up earlier this morning,” he said. “The police – and the Leathernecks – identified him and marked your family down for retaliation. You’re a wanted woman now, I’m afraid. The moment you show that ID card of yours, they’ll snatch you up and put you in one of the camps.”

  Fatima stared at him. “How do you know that?” She demanded. Something else crossed her mind. “And who are you?”

  “My name is Abdul,” Abdul repeated. “And I’m part of the resistance. And now so are you.”

  They reached a small apartment block, one that catered to students at London’s universities. Some of the students, Fatima had heard, had managed to get permission from the aliens to return home, while others had found themselves trapped in London. It seemed an odd place to hide a resistance cell, but it did make a certain kind of sense. The landlords would be used to people coming and going at all hours of the day and they’d turn a blind eye to certain activities. They walked up two flights of stairs and entered a small suite of rooms, clearly ones that had been abandoned in a hurry. Somehow, she was sure that Abdul himself wasn't a student. He walked more like a mature and experienced man of the world. The kind of man her cousins had wanted to become.

  “But I can't,” she protested, finally. Her entire body was shaking. She had to be in shock, she realised. Her entire life had just fallen down around her. God alone knew what would happen to her family. “I can't just leave and...I’ve got patients to see!”

  “The moment you show yourself,” Abdul said, kindly, “they will arrest you. There’ll probably be a reward on your head before too long. You can't do anything for your patients now – the only thing you can do is get yourself arrested.”

  He placed one hand on her shoulder. “We have this flat for the next fortnight, at least,” he added. “Get a shower, have a long rest – and I’ll see you tonight. You’re a doctor – the resistance could make use of you. Certainly better use than the aliens could...”

  Fatima found her voice. “But what will happen to my family?”

  Abdul looked, just for a second, uncharacteristically guilty. “I don’t know,” he admitted, “but I don’t think it will be anything good. It’s rather more likely that they will execute them – to encourage the others, as they say. The only thing you can do now is help us to avenge them.”

  Fatima watched him go, her mind spinning. Her world had turned upside down...and she couldn't even cry. What could she do now?

  Chapter Twenty

  Near Gayhurst

  United Kingdom, Day 20

  “I just got the buzz,�� Private Cole muttered. “The Leathernecks are on their way.”

  “How unlucky for the Leathernecks,” Chris Drake muttered back. The aliens were certainly predicable, all right. It seemed odd that they made mistakes that human armies had learned to avoid, but from what he could tell, they might have good reason to believe that this particular alien routine wasn't dangerous. There were reports suggesting that, two days ago, several men armed with hunting rifles and shotguns had tried to take on an alien convoy. They’d been killed without harming a single alien. “How long do we have?”

  “Fifteen minutes, at most,” Cole warned. “Maybe less. They do seem to speed up from time to time.”

  Chris shrugged. The alien hover-tanks moved at speeds that Challenger tanks would have found flatly impossible. Even the smaller armoured vehicles in the British Army – or the barely-armoured Snatch Land Rover – would have had trouble matching their speed. But human trucks and lorries were slower and the aliens, it seemed, were willing to press human drivers into service to help their logistics. It stood to reason that they’d prefer to use human labour where possible, but it didn't seem to have occurred to their commanders that this meant that their convoys were slower than they might have preferred. Or perhaps their commanders simply didn't care. Chris had encountered a couple of senior officers who issued orders that forced the soldiers on the ground to do more with less – and mistook the map for the terrain. And given that the aliens seemed alarmingly inflexible, they probably didn't give their troops on
the ground any latitude at all.

  Of course, we had to learn, didn't we? He thought to himself. I wonder if we’ll be the lucky ones who run into an alien junior officer with the guts – or family connections – to do his own thing...?

  The M1 motorway was one of the longest motorways in Britain, connecting London to Leeds. It had also been one of the busiest, at least until the aliens had arrived and managed to do what years of protest and campaigning by environmental freaks hadn’t. Now, the motorways were almost deserted, used only by the aliens and their collaborators. Indeed, a handful of shot-up cars signified the dangers of using the motorways in a world where armed men were intent on waging war against the occupiers. Most families were conserving what little petrol they had left for emergencies.

  From his vantage point in Gayhurst Wood, he could see the eerily deserted motorway stretching away into the distance. The aliens seemed to be running regular convoys up and down Britain’s motorway network, supplying their bases around British cities. In fact, Chris knew that a number of other attacks had been planned over the coming few days, although he hadn't been given any specifics. It was strange to feel as if they were both isolated and connected to the resistance underground, but there was little choice. The aliens would presumably have no qualms about using torture to get information out of prisoners.

  But we still don’t know what they do to military prisoners, he thought, grimly. The resistance had attempted to trace the prisoners, using assets within the police forces that were serving the aliens, but they’d been unable to come up with any answers. All military personnel had been handed over to the aliens and taken away to an unknown destination. Given that the aliens ruled the entire world, it was quite possible that they’d been taken overseas, perhaps to the Middle East. Or maybe to Antarctica.

  He pushed the thought aside as the sensor beside him started to bleep. They might not have any active radars any more, but they could tell when the aliens were using radar – and when one of their drones was heading towards their position. The aliens used drones to provide an outer layer of security for their convoys, a trick that probably explained why they’d picked off the civilian insurgents before they’d had a chance to spring their ambush. This time, however, things were going to be different.

  “Get ready,” he muttered. The moment they revealed themselves, the aliens would try to cut them down, perhaps by using something like a drone-mounted Hellfire missile. It was astonishing how advanced UAVs had become in the years since 9/11. Even the Taliban hadn't been up to evading their unblinking gaze. “Engage as soon as they come into range.”

  ***

  Nr’ta Silick studied the live feed from the constantly orbiting drone and relaxed, slightly. The humans were determined opponents, far tougher than anyone else they’d encountered at a comparable technological level, but they clearly didn't realise how easily their movements could be monitored by the Land Forces. A handful of convoys had been hit by concealed explosives and snipers, yet they’d never managed to take on a whole convoy – and never would. Their failure to develop space like any sane race left a gaping hole in their capabilities, one that a truly advanced race could use against them.

  He snorted at the thought. The troopers who’d led the first landings on Earth had warned the reinforcement units that humans were sneaky, but he hadn't seen any evidence of human sneakiness in the four days since he’d landed on Earth. Sure, they’d managed to use treachery to kill many troopers, yet they’d also killed thousands of their own kind. No race, even one as strange as humanity, would carry one like that – their own kind would turn against them. And the humans who drove the trucks were properly loyal. They knew their place – and they also knew that any sign of disloyalty would result in their families being executed.

  Earth itself was an odd world. It’s climate was rarely perfect, often being too hot or too dry. The rainstorms they’d had just after landing had been refreshing, but they’d really been too cool for proper enjoyment. It wasn't too surprising that the local weather patterns had been screwed up – the Land Forces had bombarded human bases and centres of resistance with KEWs, while the Chinese humans had been insane enough to use nuclear warheads against their own cities – and the weather experts promised that it would get better soon. Indeed, they’d even pointed out that accelerating the greenhouse effect would make the planet warmer, melt the ice caps and generally make it more habitable. He couldn't understand why so many humans seemed concerned about global warming. Didn’t they want a warmer world?

  But the human opinion didn't matter, not now that their world had been absorbed into the State. They would learn to live on the reshaped world or die, while many of their fellows were shipped away to serve the State. And then...

  He glanced down at the drone’s feed as it shrilled a warning. It was in danger! Someone was using a seeker head to target it...he hesitated, convinced it had to be a malfunction, and then a flash of light in the sky marked the end of drone coverage. And then the world blew up in his face.

  ***

  It had been surprisingly easy to gain access to the maintenance tunnels running under the motorway. Indeed, none of the soldiers could think why anyone would want the tunnels, but they’d come in handy. They’d loaded enough explosive into the tunnels to blow up half the motorway, while lurking in ambush and waiting for the aliens to respond. The destruction of their drone had been the only risky part of the ambush Chris had planned; if the aliens had realised that they were driving right into a trap, they might have deployed or simply turned back and called for reinforcements. But everything had worked perfectly...

  He watched in delight as the lead alien vehicle – a tank, he suspected – literally vanished within the blast. Several human-built lorries were blown to atoms, their cargo picked up and scattered across the motorway. He heard the sound of brakes as the other vehicles struggled to come to a stop, but it was far too late. They crashed into the broken vehicles and caught fire themselves. Two alien vehicles crammed with their soldiers managed to skim to one side and up the embankment, a display of initiative he wouldn’t have expected from the Leathernecks. Not that it was going to help them. He’d planned on the assumption that they wouldn't catch any of their escorts with the oversized IED.

  “Go,” he bellowed. Two Milan antitank missiles leapt towards their targets. One slammed into an alien vehicle before the aliens had a chance to dismount, blowing the vehicle and its passengers into bloody chunks. The other vehicle was luckier, or perhaps its commander had already issued the order to dismount before the aliens realised that they hadn’t escaped the trap completely. Half of its passengers were already out when it was hit and sent careering into the motorway. “Hit the bastards!”

  He smiled as the two GPMGs opened fire with savage intensity, sweeping the alien positions down below. An alien tank, bringing up the rear, skimmed around and opened fire, although it seemed that they were reluctant to risk coming any closer. Chris couldn't blame them. A Challenger II had been hit with a Milan and hundreds of RPGs in Iraq and survived, but few tankers would have been happy about driving straight up and charging into the teeth of antitank missiles. The alien tank’s main gun fired twice, tossing high-explosive shells into the wood. Chris had to admit that it was an effective tactic, assuming that the aliens didn't have any way to localise their enemies. But why weren't they shooting back at the machine guns...

  The alien infantry had responded with impressive speed. Most of the survivors had taken cover and were firing back, trying to force the insurgents to keep back from the remains of the convoy. A pair of human bodies on the ground suggested that they’d killed their collaborators, perhaps assuming that one of them had betrayed them to their enemies. Or perhaps they’d been shocked and hadn't realised that the collaborators were their allies. Chris waited long enough to be sure that all the aliens were out and fighting, and then he barked a second order. The three L16 81mm mortars fired as one, tossing high explosive shells down into the teeth of the enemy p
osition. Their cover was effective against bullets, but the mortar shells landed behind their cover, tearing their positions apart. The aliens appeared to be tougher than humans – they certainly had tougher skin – yet they couldn't stand up to mortar shells landing far too close to them. Fire spread through the remaining vehicles as the second round of mortars was fired, just before the mortar teams started breaking down the weapons. They’d been reluctant to leave ahead of the rest when the plan had been drawn up, but Chris had been insistent. Moving a single mortar without a vehicle was difficult – artillerymen were strong – and they'd slow the rest of the unit down if they attempted to leave together.

  He cursed as the alien tank reversed course and fled, denying him the satisfaction of a complete victory. Seeing it run puzzled him; whatever else one could say about the Leathernecks, they weren't cowards. Perhaps the tank commander had thought better of remaining close to antitank weapons, or perhaps his superiors had decided that it wasn't a good idea to risk losing another tank. It took far too long to produce a human-designed Main Battle Tank. God alone knew how long it took the aliens.