The Fall of Night

by Christopher Nuttall

  They didn’t look back.

  ***

  The skies were supposed to be clear of British aircraft now, but Captain Anatoliy Maksimovich Veselchakov was nervous anyway; his bomber was an older craft and carried very little in the way of ECM. It also carried no defensive weapons; given the nature of the craft’s mission, it had probably been felt that Veselchakov didn’t need any weapons to shoot back at British aircraft. It might have annoyed them.

  Veselchakov had been orbiting in his flight pattern, well out to sea, for nearly an hour before finally being given the call to action. He had spent most of the day admiring the apparently chaotic scenes on the sea and in the air, and admiring the talents of the flight controllers who kept the Russian Air Force under some kind of control. Veselchakov had never intended to join the air force; he had signed up to fly for one of the Russian commercial lines before being drafted for certain missions for the military. His attempts to protest had been futile; there were hundreds of thousands of Russians soldiers fighting in the war and a civilian like Veselchakov could not be expected to shirk his duty. Besides, as a semi-civilian, he had some rights that none of the fighter jocks or the bomber crews had, including the right to make comments about the food.

  Still, he had been dreading the missions ever since he had been told what he would be doing, and had tried to look for a way out. The only way he had found to get out – apart from suicide – ran through Siberia; the labour camps could always use people who shirked their duty to the state and the glory of the Russian Federation. Veselchakov was old enough, and travelled enough, to know that the propaganda wasn't all it seemed, but in the end, it was true that Europe had treated Russia like an ill-mannered bumpkin. Russia’s culture had been dismissed as barbaric, Russia’s legitimate concerns dismissed as relics of the old Soviet Union, and Russia’s Army had been dismissed as a corrupt rusting war machine. The smile had been wiped off their faces now; Veselchakov knew enough about the FSB to know that certain politicians who had made political capital taking shots at Russia had probably been sent to Siberia by now.

  “I am moving in now,” he said, as the aircraft tilted around him. It was another reason for using a civilian pilot; Veselchakov’s loss would not hurt the Russia Air Force one iota, although it might annoy them as one of them would have to take a second aircraft and try the same stunt themselves. He had done a few seasons of crop dusting, back when Russia had been experimenting with new ideas; the experience would serve him in good stead, even if the corn hadn’t fired back. “Clear the airspace…”

  Smoke was rising all over the English mainland; he could see the shore as he came in lower and slower, racing to catch up with Dover. The British harbour was supposed to be captured intact, but the British had dug into the city…and his mission was to attempt to burn some of them out. The Russians on the ground had called upon the defenders to surrender; the only reply had been an instruction to do something biologically impossible. Veselchakov had never claimed to be a military expert, but he remembered the death toll from Groznyy and several other places in Central Asia; thousands of soldiers had been wounded, and hundreds had died. The planners wouldn’t want to do that again if they could avoid it.

  He had been promised no ground fire; the British had fired off all of their missiles at the Russian Air Force, apparently getting in more than a few good hits as well. Veselchakov was as patriotic as the next man, but he found the thought of the Russian Air Force getting a bloody nose amusing; the fighter jocks had been so confident of their prowess and their success with the women of France. Their prowess had lasted as long as it had taken to come up against a prepared enemy…and Veselchakov knew that the ‘women of France’ were whores, paid for sleeping with the Russians. It was possible that there were some women who had slept with the Russians without financial inducements, but Veselchakov wouldn’t have bet on it; the fighter jocks ran out of charm very quickly…

  And then the penal units had a new slave for a month.

  The English city was already burning in places as he came in for his attack run. The location of most of the defenders was already known and he angled the aircraft for maximum exposure. It was the work of a few seconds to prepare the bomb bay…and then the spray of deadly flaming jelly began, raining down on the British below. The Americans had taken the original idea of napalm and improved on it; the Russians had copied the American idea and added a few refinements of their own. Anyone trying to breathe near the flames would be lucky to survive.

  Veselchakov winced as a handful of bullets cracked through the aircraft, but breathed a sigh of relief as he escaped safely, heading back out to sea and safety back in France. The fighter jocks would be up there for hours yet; once he landed, unless they wanted him to repeat his stunt again, there were always the French prostitutes.

  Behind him, Dover burned…

  ***

  Langford hadn’t expected to actually hold the Russians, not once the attempt to seal the Russians off and destroy them had failed; all that mattered now was pulling as many units back as possible, and then digging in to the final defence line. The remaining units in Kent had to be pulled back before they were caught and destroyed; the Russians would have problems expanding out of Kent for at least a week. The British had gone over the entire country and destroyed as many bridges, blocked as many roads, and generally worked hard to give the Russians serious problems.

  The burning of Dover hadn’t surprised him, but the sense that a city was steadily being literally burned off the face of the Earth worried him; the Russians might do the same to London, or Edinburgh, or any other city that had refused to surrender. They had used napalm before, in Europe, but…

  Bad things were meant to happen elsewhere, he thought, laughing bitterly at himself. They weren't meant to happen in Europe…

  He dismissed the thought. “Order a general pullback,” he ordered. Special Forces would do what they could to delay and harass the Russians – landing a good punch, then getting out before the Russians could react – but the regular military would be needed elsewhere. He couldn’t help, but thank God that the entire area had been evacuated; how many would have died if Dover had been left with its civilian population? “Tell all units to pull back to the secondary defence line.”

  He wanted to go on the offensive, but he knew that that was impossible; he lacked both the mobile firepower and the air cover to mount any offensive. There was one chance, just one…and if he didn’t play his few cards exactly right, Britain would be lost along with the rest of Europe. It would have to work; he would do everything he could to make it work…

  …Because the alternative was unthinkable. They had planned for a total defeat, but deep inside, he had never believed that it would be necessary, not until now. When had Britain come so close to defeat before? 1940? The humiliation of Suez had galvanised a stricken country, but that had been a political defeat, not a military one…and hardly fatal. The Falklands had been fought on a shoestring, but victory had come; defeat had seemed impossible. No nation had been able or willing to threaten Britain…

  Until now…

  Chapter Forty-Nine: Consolidation

  Many people who would otherwise object to torture would permit it in the so-called "Ticking Bomb Scenario." This is, though few seem to realize it, an admission that, given a means of immediate feedback, torture works.

  Tom Kratman

  Near Dover, United Kingdom

  Dover was burning.

  General Aleksandr Borisovich Shalenko stood near the city and watched as the handful of British prisoners were rapidly searched, secured, and inspected by the FSB security detachments. Dover itself had been seriously damaged by the fighting, but the combat engineers were certain that they could repair the damage in a few weeks with enough labour, assuming that it could be found. There were thousands of dockworkers back in Europe who had taken money from the Russians; they could be shipped over as soon as a ship could be spared. For the moment, however, they had recovered enough of
Folkestone to use it as a harbour and expand their control rapidly.

  Another aircraft flew overhead, carrying supplies for the invasion force, as Shalenko turned to face the FSB commander, FSB Colonel Maliuta Vladimirovich Stepanov. His parents had been extreme Russian nationalists – both of them had worked for the KGB before it had converted itself into the FSB – and it showed in his name; Maliuta was a very rare name in Russia. His position within the FSB had been almost hereditary; he handled matters that were only spoken of in whispers, even by other FSB detachments.

  Shalenko spoke first, unwilling to even suggest that they were equals. “Who is the senior surviving British officer?”

  Stepanov bowed his head slightly. The FSB might be convinced that it was superior to the Russian Army, but a bad report from General Shalenko would have his career being rapidly reduced to a filing clerk somewhere in the Kremlin, if not being stripped of rank and sent in disgrace to Siberia. Some people had to run the labour camps, after all, and while there were plenty of brutes around, the hard work of administration needed talented – and disgraced – officers.

  “That would be a Colonel Harris,” he said, inspecting the terminal he carried in his hand. “We did recover a living General officer, but he died of his wounds soon afterwards; Colonel Harris is the only reasonably intact senior officer.”

  “Take me to him,” Shalenko ordered shortly. He would find out if the General had died of his wounds, or if he had been helped; he had given orders that no prisoners were to be killed unless there was no hope at all that they would survive. The intelligence network within Britain had been severely damaged by the war and then by the invasion; even the most blind of the useful fools might see that there was something not quite right going on. The active spies and agents wouldn’t have the type of access they needed to know what the British intended. “What condition is he in?”

  “Battered, but unbowed,” Stepanov said. There was a dispassionate note to his voice that chilled even Shalenko, even though he understood the requirement; he would almost have preferred a brute. A lot of brutes ended up in the FSB; a supply of victims and permission to do whatever they liked to them worked wonders for loyalty. “He was unlucky; we managed to knock him out in a bombing run and snatched him up before he recovered.”

  Colonel Harris was a massive black man; he was so black that Shalenko had trouble looking him in the face, his face scarred by the force of the impact that had knocked him out. Stepanov’s men had already gone to work; he sat naked in a chair, various instruments of torture already attached to different places on his body, although they hadn’t started serious work yet. There was the hope that he would be reasonable; an American-designed lie detector electrode had been attached to the side of his shaven skull. He would have been a terror as a Drill Sergeant, Shalenko realised; it was a pity that he was on the wrong side.

  He looked up as they entered. “Who…the hell are you?”

  “I am General Shalenko, Commanding Officer of this Invasion Force,” Shalenko said, without bothering with preamble, or justifications. They were both soldiers; only politicians would bother coming up with justifications for whatever they wanted to do anyway. “I require some information from you.”

  He made a mental bet as to what Harris would say first and won it. “This treatment is illegal under the Geneva Convention,” he said, through gasps. There had to be some damage somewhere, even if Stepanov had thought he was unharmed; he looked as if he was going to be stubborn. “I am a legal combatant and…

  “Well, perhaps,” Shalenko said. “But you and I…we are both soldiers. We both know that sometimes you have to do things that you don’t want to do, or that you know you will face the opinion of international talkers, or…things that your political leaders will disown you for, if they find it convenient to do so. Neither of us chose this war” – a half-truth at best – “and we do not want to fight it, but we have no choice. Having no choice…I will do whatever I can to ensure that my soldiers come through the fighting safe.”

  He paused. “Will you answer my questions?”

  “Fuck you,” Harris said. “I know the drill; it’s only name, rank and serial…”

  One of the FSB goons punched him in the chest. “We have to remain confined to reality,” Shalenko said shortly, as Harris gasped for breath. “The blunt truth is that your countrymen are in no position to avenge whatever happens to you…and institutions like the International Criminal Court have been shut down permanently now that we have occupied Brussels. There is no power on Earth that will punish us for carrying out our duty.”

  Harris glared up at him, sweat forming on his black face. “Don’t blame me when Russian soldiers start turning up with their balls cut off and stuffed in their mouths,” he sneered. “Bring on your hired goons and let’s see how far they can go.”

  Shalenko had to smile. “Do you know,” he asked, “who these men are? Some of them are people who learned suffering from the Chechens, or others from Central Asia; some of them are actually Kazakhs who were more than willing to lend their services to the FSB. I think they were sick of western hypocrisy, myself; some of them even brushed into British forces in Afghanistan. Now, you can be as stubborn, and heroic, and storoic and many more words ending in oic that I can’t be bothered to think of right now, but…eventually you will break and tell me everything you know.”

  He leaned closer. “Talk now and I promise you that I will spare you and your men,” he said. “I have the authority to let them live, and even to spare them Siberia; all you have to do is talk now and spare yourself some pain.”

  “You’ll have to get it out of me,” Harris hissed. “Bring it on.”

  Shalenko stepped out of the tent as Stepanov’s men started their grizzly work, some of them enjoying it, some of them as dispassionate as Stepanov himself about their task. He would have preferred to have dumped them all into a penal unit and sent them clearing minefields until they died, but that wasn't an option; they were unfortunate, but necessary. Torture worked, given enough time; it had saved too many lives to allow it to be thrown away.

  “General,” Anna said. Shalenko lit the cigarette she offered him and watched the smoke gusting away into the night air. They were in enemy territory, the one country in Europe that had had the time to get into position to give them a fight, and the loss rate showed that; thousands of Russians had died in a day of hard fighting. “I have the final figures.”

  Shalenko listened as she went through them, detailing deaths, units lost, some of them lost on transports before they had ever had the chance to get into battle, others scattered along the shoreline and slaughtered by British soldiers before they had a chance to collect themselves. The Russian Air Force had been hurt badly; over a hundred fighters had been lost, along with seventy bombers and transports. Civilian airliners would have to be pressed into service again to speed the process of consolidation; they had to build up again before the British gathered themselves and counterattacked.

  He held up a hand at one point. “Colonel Aliyev ordered his men to serve as light infantry?”

  “Yes, General,” Anna said. “They did good work, too, in rooting out a British nest. They’re going to slow us up for at least a week, sir; they’re using the German tactic of jeeps and antitank rockets, or sometimes a machine gun. The scouts have pressed forward as far as Hastings to Tunbridge Wells; intelligence believes that we will begin to encounter major enemy civilian populations once we reach Brighton.”

  Shalenko scowled. “Have we found any civilians here?”

  “A handful, mainly a handful of looters,” Anna said. “We interrogated them all; they were ordered to head for refugee camps in the south-west, decided that there would be good pickings in the abandoned houses, and ran into us instead.”

  “Good,” Shalenko said. “And the enemy military?”

  “The Air Force believes that it has wiped out the RAF, although seeing that they have said that several times before, I think we should be careful about
accepting it on trust,” Anna said. “The enemy has been digging in to small towns surrounding London, with a large force gathered up near Dorking, and smaller units gathering in London’s suburbs.”

  Shalenko asked for a map and examined it. “Interesting,” he said finally. “I wonder why Dorking; what do they have there?”

  “Intelligence believes that they are massing there for a counter-attack,” Anna said. “Our standard tactic is to surround cities before going into one and attacking London directly would be a nightmare; they may even be hoping that we would do so, which would allow their remaining forces to hit our flanks and pocket us. There are smaller British formations near Portsmouth, including Royal Marines; they may intend to keep building defences and inviting us to attack them.”

  “Then we have to move on Dorking,” Shalenko said. It wasn’t a hard choice at all; modern warfare was all about destroying the enemy’s army…particularly if you didn’t care about the civilians caught up in the meat-grinder. Inform the planners that I want operational plans within the hour, and we move as soon as possible; the air force can have a slight rest and prepare itself for the final battle. Once the British Army is destroyed, London is finished.”