Their Darkest Hour

Chapter Thirty-Five

London

United Kingdom, Day 47

“Maz’Bak’s debriefing has been completed,” the intelligence officer informed Oheghizh. “The humans treated him fairly well by their standards. They did, however, interrogate him quite extensively.”

“And as an intelligence officer he had a great deal to tell them,” Oheghizh said. Curiosity was not encouraged by the State, but intelligence officers were an exception to that rule. Indeed, rather than stamping on excessively curious youths, the intelligence service preferred to recruit them. Their curiosity could be put to work on behalf of the State. “What did he tell them, precisely.”

“It’s all in the report,” the intelligence officer said. “They know a great deal more about us than they knew before they raided the detention centre.”

Oheghizh skimmed through the report, barely keeping himself from swearing out loud. The humans weren’t supposed to know anything about any of the other races out among the stars — but now they did, along with far too much information on the galactic geopolitics that had led the State to Earth. And they knew how the command network on Earth was organised, the location and identities of the Command Triad… anywhere else, the information would have had a disastrous impact. If the humans had climbed into space, like any halfway sane race, it would have given them a decisive advantage. Instead, they were still trapped on the bottom of Earth’s gravity well.

The Command Triad was not going to be pleased. Nor was the State, when superior authority heard about it. Earth had already soaked up more resources and combat power than anyone had anticipated, which meant that reinforcements had to be diverted from other planets. The human military personnel they’d taken off-planet and sent to disputed worlds might redress the balance, but how could they be trusted completely? They weren’t even mercenaries; they’d been pressed into service. And they’d know it.

“On the other hand, we did manage to trace the humans back to their lair,” the intelligence officer added. “They must have a fairly major command post of their own hidden in the general area. If we wait a couple of days, and then attack… we might be able to cripple the human resistance.”

Oheghizh nodded, sourly. In truth, he wasn’t sure that it would do more than hamper the human resistance organisation. The American command and control structure had been shattered by the opening blows of the invasion, but they were somehow still managing to mount a creditable challenge to the State. Intelligence was fairly sure that there was no overall commanding authority, which raised worrying questions about how far the Americans took the concept of leaderless resistance. It was an idea alien to the State.

“Prepare an assault force,” he ordered, finally. “And have the former captive shipped to orbit for a more extensive debriefing. I want to know everything he told his captors — and I’m sure that the Command Triad will too.”

He watched the intelligence officer scuttle out of his office, and then he turned to look out over London. The riots that had threatened their grip on the city had died away after the BBC had reported that the alien captive was safe and well, back with his own people, but they’d come alarmingly close to overwhelming their ability to govern the city. Part of him was tempted to just pull out and leave the humans to slaughter each other, yet he knew they needed as much of the local economy functioning as possible. The registry was already being used to earmark humans for clean-up efforts — and if they refused to work, they would starve.

And if they did manage to cripple the human resistance, perhaps they could bring the whole campaign to a successful conclusion.

Robin lay on his bed, staring up at nothing. It wasn’t his bed, not really. The flat had been abandoned in the opening days of the invasion and the police, needing living space for policemen who had been forced out of their homes, had commandeered it. Robin had no idea who had owned the flat before he’d moved in, but they had had excellent taste in wine. He’d downed no less than six bottles over the last two days and was seriously considering finishing off the rest. It could hardly have made his life any worse.

Back before the invasion, he’d been a loyal policeman, upholding the law even when he’d wanted to forgot proper procedure and just kick some young thug’s head in, or turn water cannons on protestors who had no idea how lucky they were. And then the aliens had invaded and he’d told himself that he had to go to work for them, just to keep the public safe. His own justifications rang hollow in his ears, mocking him; how safe was the public in a world at war? Outside, parts of the city had been torn apart by rioting, dead bodies lay everywhere and what remained of the police force was working for the aliens. And they weren’t the only ones. Some of the special constables the aliens had recruited weren’t policemen, or even soldiers. They just wanted to get their kicks by pushing around helpless civilians.

He reached for the bottle and cursed when his trembling hand knocked it down onto the floor. Somehow, he managed to roll over, just in time to see the red wine draining out of the bottle and soaking the carpet. It would probably drip down to the flat underneath, giving the inhabitant a scare. He pulled himself upright and rubbed at his head. Maybe a few more drinks would make him drunk and then he could forget the world for a while. If he could go home, if he could see his wife… but she didn’t want anything to do with him now, not after the chaos in London. The entire world hated the policemen, those who had joined up to serve the aliens. If he’d known…

…Perhaps he would have gone underground too.

The thought was a bitter one. There were policemen, unmarried policemen, who had deserted their comrades and gone off to join the resistance. But they were the ones who had no hostages to fortune — or to the aliens. The married men knew that their wives and children were known to the aliens, and that they would be killed if their husbands or fathers showed any signs of disloyalty. Perhaps his wife could have evaded them if he’d vanished in the early hours of the invasion, when so many had gone missing, presumed dead, but it was now far too late. He reached for another bottle, struggled with the cork, and then took a long swig. Who cared about going on duty now? Maybe they’d just kill him and that would be an end to it.

How long had it been, he asked himself, since he’d walked his first beat? Not long at all, really; he’d known that he didn’t want to go anywhere else. The endless red tape that strangled real policing, the politically-correct rules invented and enforced by politicians that made it impossible to nick real villains or monitor terrorists… despite all the trials and tribulations of modern policing, he’d loved his job. And now he was nothing more than a filthy quisling. They didn’t need to drag up examples from France or Norway any longer, not when there were thousands of collaborators in the United Kingdom. They’d be calling them Robins in the future, no doubt.

His hands started to shake and he put the bottle down, quickly. He should get up and shower before donning his uniform, but he really didn’t care any longer. The weapons they’d stashed away… maybe he should go to the stash, pull out one of the pistols, and put a bullet through his own brains. What else could he do? Resistance was futile. He was halfway to his feet before realising that suicide would probably mean doom for his wife, if the aliens decided to view his suicide as a kind of desertion. Did they even have suicide as a concept? There was no way to know, although given their tough bodies, killing themselves probably required poison. Or maybe they just jumped out of their starships and burned up in the atmosphere below. The thought made him giggle, a sure sign that he was drunker than he realised.

“You know,” a voice remarked, “there’s little sillier than a drunken policeman.”

Robin’s eyes snapped open. He’d been alone. Unlike some of the other policemen, he had no intention of bringing a whore back to his flat. He still loved his wife, despite everything — and besides, at least some of the whores had murdered their policemen and vanished into the underground. No one loved the police these days. Through his rather hazy vision, he saw a young Asian man standing by the door, wearing a policeman’s uniform. Robin didn’t recognise him — and there was something about the way he wore his uniform that suggested that he wasn’t a policeman at all. But someone wearing a policeman’s uniform could walk around the complex without being questioned…

“Don’t worry,” the man said. “I’m not here to kill you.”

“Right,” Robin growled. His head felt as if someone had smashed it with a brick, repeatedly. Mixing the different kinds of alcohol had probably been a mistake. It was hard to form words in his mind, let alone say them out loud. “What do you want then?”

“My name is… well, they’ve been calling me Abdul,” the man said. Despite his light, almost flippant tone, his brown eyes never left Robin’s face. “You may have heard of me. I believe the reward on my head is currently enough luxury food to keep someone eating for the next few months.”

The name seemed to shock Robin out of his drunken haze. Of course he’d heard of Abdul — he was supposed to be one of the ringleaders behind the resistance, linking together groups as disparate as National Front racists and Islamic Fundamentalists. The name had been mentioned by captured insurgents during their interrogation, but none of them had known where Abdul based himself. Some policemen had thought that the name was a joke, yet the aliens had taken it seriously. The reward on Abdul’s head was massive.

“Don’t worry, they don’t know I’m here,” Abdul assured him. One hand rubbed the uniform, mockingly. “It’s amazing how many people spy the uniform and don’t look past it to the face.”

“We don’t know what you look like,” Robin managed. Up close, Abdul was almost unmemorable. He had no beard, but otherwise he could simply have faded into the crowd and vanished. Bearded Asian men had often been targeted by the aliens, purely on suspicion. One of Robin’s fellow policemen had joked that the aliens found beards intimidating because they couldn’t grow them themselves. “And now… why are you here?”

“I was told that you might know where some weapons are stashed,” Abdul said, lightly. “I think that it is time we talked, don’t you?”

Robin staggered to his feet and stumbled over to the shower. The water in London was often turned off and then on again by the aliens, purely to remind Londoners who was in charge, but there was never any problem with the water in police complexes. He turned the knob and blasted cold water over his head, shocking himself awake. Part of him wanted to sound the alert and call for help, but the rest of him… if Abdul knew that Robin had been involved in hiding weapons, what else did he know? It wouldn’t take much to alert the aliens to his betrayal — and they’d definitely see it as a betrayal. All weapons were supposed to have been surrendered to them.

“Fuck,” he said, as his mind finally caught up with him. “Who told you?”

“Does it matter?” Abdul asked. “All that really matters is that we need to talk.”

Drying up the water dripping from his hair gave Robin a moment to think. He hadn’t been the only copper involved in hiding weapons, and two of the ones who had had deserted after the first riots. One or both of them could have found Abdul and shared confidences with him, naming Robin as someone who had hoped that he would be in the position to do something about the aliens one day. But that day had never come…

“Very well,” he said. “What do we have to talk about?”

“You know that the aliens won’t ever leave on their own,” Abdul said. “Do you really believe that that collaborator asshole they have speaking for them can influence them in any way?”

“No,” Robin said. He’d never trusted Alan Beresford, even when he’d been MP for Haltemprice rather than a collaborator claiming to be Prime Minister. The man smiled too much, among his many other failings. There had been rumours of shady dealings, but nothing had ever been proven. And now it was too late. “Do you believe that fighting them will make them give up and go away?”

“It’s all we have left,” Abdul commented. “You do know that the Vietnamese drove the Americans away after years of inconclusive warfare?”

“Years,” Robin grated. It felt almost as if the aliens had always been on Earth. Had it really been less than two months? “Do you think that we can keep fighting them until they give up and leave us in peace? Or simply drop a massive rock on our heads and slaughter the remaining humans on Earth?”

“There’s little other choice,” Abdul said. He leaned forwards, warningly. “We need your help to hit them, policeman. Think about your people and join us.”

Robin hesitated. “My wife…”

“We can get her out of their reach,” Abdul assured him. “We’ll fake her death and hide her in one of our bases. All it needs is for you to decide which side you’re on. Do you support your fellow humans, or ugly aliens intent on turning us all into slaves?”

Robin looked down at his hands. How much blood was on them? How many had died, at least in part, because of him and his fellow collaborators? The aliens had slaughtered humans when protest marches had gotten out of hand, to say nothing of threatening mass slaughter to get one of their captives back. And they’d succeeded. The resistance had surrendered their captive, despite endless complaints on the internet that one city was a worthwhile trade for an alien who might finally provide real answers.

“My fellow humans,” he said, finally. He reached for his uniform, feeling a flicker of the old pride he’d felt when he’d first donned it as a fully-fledged policeman. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

Abdul smiled and told him.

“Write a letter to your wife,” he said, afterwards. “We’ll make sure it gets delivered.”

I should be part of the attack force, Alex thought sourly, as she parked the car outside the house. It was situated in one of London’s surrounding towns, a nice place to live if you could afford the rent. I want to hit back at the bastards, not play secret agent…

Most of her wounds were healing, thankfully, but the medics had been insistent that she should avoid actual fighting for at least another month or two. Alex had pointed out that they could hardly send someone back home to recuperate when the aliens had occupied the entire country, yet they’d been insistent. She’d been tortured, raped and abused and she really needed time to recover. They seemed to expect her to break down at any moment, rather than being determined to get back out there and keep righting the Leathernecks. The doctor had strongly urged her to go to the Highlands of Scotland or one of the other long-term resistance bases and had been surprised when she’d refused.

She climbed out of the car, ignoring the handful of sharp glances from pedestrians as she locked the door behind her. Only collaborators had fuel for cars these days; the aliens hadn’t touched this part of Britain as much as they’d touched London, but their presence was keenly felt. They had a base only a few miles away, part of the ring of steel surrounding London proper. She touched the Browning she’d stuffed into her coat pocket — just in case, even though she had papers that should have fooled the aliens — and walked up to the house. There was the faint sound of music coming from inside.

Calmly, she pushed the button. There was no sign that the neighbours had realised that the house’s lone occupant was married to a collaborator, but if they ever found out… some wives and children of collaborators had been bullied, or isolated, or even murdered by their former friends and neighbours. The door opened a crack and a lady with Italian features peered out.

“I have a letter for you,” Alex said. “I suggest you read it now and then come with me.”

Helene Harrison skimmed through the letter, her eyes going wide. “I am to come with you?”

“Yes,” Alex said. There was no time to argue. “Don’t worry — you’ve nothing to worry about. Just come with me for your own safety.”

There was a pause as Helene picked up a bag she’d positioned at the doorway and then came outside. Alex felt an odd flicker of jealousy as she realised just how beautiful Helene was, before seeing the fear in her eyes. She hadn’t seen her husband for over a month and yet her neighbours would condemn her, if they ever realised that he was a collaborator. But he could have died when the aliens hit Scotland Yard… Alex glanced at Helene and realised that she pitied the girl. The Helene Harrison’s of the country were whom the RAF had existed to defend.

She climbed into the car, checked the Helene was buckled in, and started the engine. They had a long journey before they reached the safe house — and they’d have to abandon the car along the route. Who knew how closely the aliens monitored human vehicles?