Their Darkest Hour (20 page)

Losing Prince Harry was equally annoying.  Harry was King now that his father and brother were both dead.  Alan doubted that the population of Britain would rise in outrage at losing their King, but Harry could have made an excellent figurehead for a new Britain.  Or perhaps not.  He’d been a soldier and would probably have old-fashioned ideas about loyalty and honour and service to his country running through his veins.

Foolish
, Alan told himself, and smiled.  Loyalty and honour meant nothing these days – and they’d meant little before the aliens arrived.  All that mattered was what one did for one’s own self – and if it meant stamping on a few toes...well, you couldn't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

He lifted his glass – an expensive wine, but it had been easy to obtain in starving London – and drank a silent toast.  To power, he told himself...and to those bold enough to seize it.

Chapter Fifteen

North England

United Kingdom, Day 8

Haddon Hall was one of the original stately England manors, built before the English Civil War by a loyalist who had lost his life fighting for Good King Charles.  It was a regal building, although hopelessly impractical for military purposes, surrounded by gardens that regularly won awards in regional and national contests.  Some people would have found it a paradise, a chance to play at being an English aristocrat.  Gabriel Burley found it maddening.  It was a prison by any other name, a place where he could do anything – except leave.  The handful of security staff – really soldiers wearing civilian clothes – were polite and friendly, but they wouldn’t let him leave.  He was too important to risk falling into enemy hands.

The thought made him snort in disgust as he paced the massive library.  Two years ago, he’d been a junior MP with ideals, ideals that were being worn down by contact with real-life politics.  How could he hope to achieve anything without compromise – and by compromising, he was steadily turning into a true politician, a man who compromised everything for the sake of power and position.  A man like Alan Beresford.

He snorted again as he picked up a book, glanced at it and put it down again.  His host had given him the run of the house, and the use of an extensive collection of books, DVDs and even old-fashioned records, but it was still a prison.  He couldn’t concentrate on anything, apart from his feelings of hopelessness.  His position as Prime Minister was meaningless, save in name only.  The invasion that gripped the country proved that, whatever he told himself; he could hardly command the aliens to leave, could he?  Their forces held the entire country now, surrounding cities and trapping the civilian population within their homes.  God alone knew what they would do when the resistance went to work.  They’d certainly shown no sign of any scruples when dealing with unarmed civilians.

The television remained bland, with old movies and soaps being played regularly, rather than the BBC’s news programs.  Gabriel knew some of what was going on all over the world, but it didn’t help his mood.  The aliens were tightening their grip – Dear God, had it only been eight days since they’d revealed themselves and descended upon a shocked and paralysed Earth?  Gabriel almost wished that they would discover his hiding place and try to snatch him.  At least running away would be doing something.  Instead, all he could do was wait and hope that someone – somehow – found a way to hurt the aliens enough to make them leave.  The military hadn’t been too hopeful.  As long as the aliens dominated space above Earth, they could call down strikes against rebel towns and cities – or, if worst came to worst, exterminate the human race.  Gabriel remembered all the films he’d seen with asteroids crashing into the planet and shivered.  The aliens would have no trouble pushing an asteroid towards Earth and the human race wouldn’t be saved by a patriotic scriptwriter.  It even made him long for
Independence Day
.

There was a cough behind him and he jumped, one hand falling to the pistol he’d been told to carry at all times – and save the final bullet for himself, if the aliens caught up with him.  Brigadier Gavin Lightbridge-Stewart seemed rather amused – Gabriel hadn’t even realised that he’d entered the room – but Gabriel was pleased to see him.  He hadn’t been allowed an internet connection, not when the aliens might use it to track him down.  Outside news – accurate outside news – only came in fits and starts.

“Prime Minister,” Lightbridge-Stewart said, gravely.  “I trust that you are well?”

“I’ve told you to call me Gabriel,” Gabriel said, impatiently.  He didn’t know where Lightbridge-Stewart had made his headquarters or even any operational details at all.  What he didn’t know he couldn’t tell – and he had no illusions about his ability to hold out under torture.  Or perhaps the aliens had perfect lie detectors and truth drugs.  “What have you heard from the…outside?”

Lightbridge-Stewart smiled.  “Elements of the Royal Scots are preparing fall-back positions in the Highlands,” he said.  “The aliens may control the cities, but they’ll find extending their control into the Highlands a little harder than they’d prefer.  They may even decide to abandon the Highlands altogether.”

Gabriel nodded, half-wishing that he could go north and join the Scots.  There were plenty of areas in England where humans could hide out from the aliens, but Scotland had a smaller civilian population at risk.  But he knew that he could never take an active role in the fighting to come.  They couldn’t risk their Prime Minister, even if the position
was
meaningless.

“King Harry isn’t adjusting well,” Lightbridge-Stewart added.  “He wants to fight back, not hide out somewhere in Scotland.  But I’m afraid we don’t have much choice.”

“I can’t disagree,” Gabriel said.  He hadn’t even been in politics when there had been an almighty political struggle over deploying then-Prince Harry to Iraq and Afghanistan.  In the end, he’d been allowed to go – as long as it wasn't made public.  It was ironic, really; the British Monarchy had held mostly ceremonial roles, yet Harry hadn’t been allowed to be a public sign that the Monarchy was willing to fight too.  What made Harry any better than the hundreds of other soldiers who’d lost their lives in Iraq or Afghanistan?  There had been no good answer, save that the enemy would have made capturing him a priority.  His presence would have risked the lives of other soldiers.

Lightbridge-Stewart shrugged.  “There’s some good news,” he said.  “And some bad news as well, I’m afraid.  We managed to recover a dead alien body in the retreat from Salisbury Plain and get it to a…well, a covert military medical research establishment.  The doctors there took some time to dissect the body and draw a number of conclusions.  I brought copies of their reports, but the interesting detail is that they’re really not that different from us.”

“They look like leathery dinosaurs,” Gabriel observed.  It still pained him that he hadn’t seen any of the aliens at first-hand, but his minders had been clear.  He couldn’t risk being recognised.  “And yet they’re not that different from us?”

“Compared to what we were expecting, yes,” Lightbridge-Stewart said.  “Which isn’t really good news in the long run.  They can make use of our planet and presumably eat our crops – although I don’t know if they’ll actually
like
them.  However, the doctors believe that they cannot catch our diseases – which rather puts the leash on any
War of the Worlds
scenarios we might have been hoping for.”

Gabriel frowned.  “And can we catch
their
diseases?”

“They don’t think so,” Lightbridge-Stewart said.  “But they don’t really have any samples of alien diseases to study.”

“No,” Gabriel agreed.  “They wouldn’t.”

He’d studied history, back when he’d thought about becoming a historian.  Back when Europe had discovered America, they’d brought their diseases with them – diseases that the Native Americans had had no resistance to.  Smallpox alone had killed millions, leaving a void for the Europeans to expand into and eventually control.  The empires built on native labour had collapsed; the empires based on settlers had survived and prospered.  And if an alien disease got loose on Earth...

It might not even have to be natural, he realised.  He’d certainly had enough briefings about the dangers of biological warfare, up to and including genetically-modified diseases that were resistant to every known vaccine.  The aliens didn't have to reshape one of their own diseases to produce a monster that would exterminate humanity.  They could simply rely on a simple human disease, with a little modification.  Britain had no – official – stocks of Smallpox, but if the aliens had captured the stores in Russia, or America...

He pushed the thought aside.  There was no point in worrying about it.  They were at the mercy of the aliens and would be for years to come. 

“The analysts think that the aliens will probably start growing their own crops on Earth sooner rather than later,” Lightbridge-Stewart said.  “Unless they’ve somehow managed to produce stable wormholes that reach from planet to planet, their logistics have to be rather touchy.  Growing their own food will allow them to send more weapons and military supplies instead...”

“And there’s nothing we can do about it,” Gabriel said.  “I don’t suppose that anyone else has come up with a possible solution?  Maybe hacking into their computers and shutting down their weapons...?”

“This is the real world, unfortunately,” Lightbridge-Stewart said.  He frowned, suddenly.  “What I can tell you is that there is a certain...crude nature to most of their technology.  We’ve captured samples of their weapons and taken them apart to study – in many ways, their weapons are actually less advanced than our own.  That could be just them being practical – the more complex a piece of kit, the greater the chance it will break in the field – or their overall technology level could be less advanced than we’ve assumed.  And for that matter...”

He hesitated.  “It’s hard to be sure, but their tactical doctrine sucks,” he added.  “If they didn't have those starships in orbit, we would have beaten them – and so would almost every other First World nation on the planet.  Hell, even the Saudis would have given them a very hard time.  I don't know who they’re used to fighting, but they clearly haven't learned much from the experience.  The analysts have studied the problem, yet they can't see any clear solution.  It’s possible that someone else gave them their technology...”

Gabriel stared at him.  “Someone else
sold
them their technology...?  Who?”

“There’s no way to know,” Lightbridge-Stewart admitted.  “Another alien race, we presume – or maybe they captured technology from another alien race and somehow discovered how to duplicate it for themselves.  We certainly didn't hesitate to sell tanks and guns to the Middle East, even though there was a strong chance that they would wind up being pointed back at us.  For all we know, they stole the starships they have in orbit – and the weapons they’re using against us on the ground may be their own designs.”

“But there’s no way to know,” Gabriel said.  He shook his head slowly.  “Is there any good news?”

“Well, I’ve had a team of signals experts – very bright boffins, these lads – studying the alien communications system,” Lightbridge-Stewart said.  “It really isn’t as advanced as our own – but then, we don't really understand their language yet so we may have problems unlocking some of their secrets.”  He smiled, briefly.  “But we do have some idea of how their command-and-control network functions.  It seems that their junior officers don’t have much independence of action.  They may not even have the ability to call in strikes from orbit without permission from higher authority.”

He looked down at the floor, shaking his head.  “God knows we had enough problems with calling in strikes while we were in Afghanistan,” he said.  “It may account for odd delays in their response times – we managed to get troops out of positions we knew would be bombarded before the hammer finally fell.  Or we may be making a dreadful mistake because their system
looks
familiar to us.  They’re aliens and their idea of logic may not make sense to human minds.”

“They’ve been taking prisoners and registering the entire population,” Gabriel said.  “Doesn't that make sense from a human point of view?”

“I’m very much afraid so,” Lightbridge-Stewart agreed.  “We have – had – political considerations in how we treated civilians caught up in occupied zones.  It was never politically possible to impose our control with an iron hand – and that cost us badly.  The aliens, on the other hand, seem to be registering our people with an eye to keeping them under firm control – and weeding out those who might be able to resist.  Luckily we managed to get most of the TA and reservists called up and out of the cities before the aliens started arresting military personnel.  God alone knows what they’re doing with them.”