Their Darkest Hour (43 page)

He stared up at the alien’s dark eyes.  “We need to know,” he said, quietly.  “Where are our soldiers?”

“They have been taken off-world,” the alien said, finally.  His bulk seemed to quiver,  just for a second.  “They will serve the State on the disputed worlds.  As subjects of the State, it is their duty to serve as the State decrees.  They will fight for the State or die.”

Gavin blinked in surprise.  “You’re expecting them to fight for you?”

“Of course,” the alien said.  “Their world is in our claws.  We own your planet now and your people exist to serve the State.  Your military personnel will be expected to take the disputed world or lose the right to return to their homeworld.”

“I see,” Gavin said.  “And most of them will die in service to the State?”

“To die in the service of the State is a great thing,” the alien said.  Gavin stared down at the translator, convinced that there had to be an error.  How could the aliens have developed such a society – and at the same time, developed FTL drives that had allowed them to spread out into interstellar space?  For all he knew, someone had
given
the aliens FTL technology – or someone had landed on their homeworld and they’d captured their starship. 

But then, what would have happened if Hitler had won World War Two?  There would have been a fascist state, with children indoctrinated into believing Hitler’s warped racial theories from birth – theories that would have been ‘proven’ by the Nazi victory.  How long would it be before someone decided to question the fascist state’s nature?  And if they’d all been brought up to believe that genocide was acceptable in the name of the state, who among them would even question?

A few years ago, he’d read a book about the American South – and how slavery had been an integral part of society.  They’d
known
that blacks were inferior to whites, which had played a large part in keeping society ordered, rather than have the poorer whites realise just how badly they were being screwed by their social superiors.  And generations of children had been raised to believe that blacks were inferior...it had taken generations and a civil war to start the long task of changing their minds, and the scars were still present when the Leathernecks had invaded Earth.  How long would it be before some Leatherneck version of William Wilberforce raised his voice to challenge the ruling party?

“One final question,” he said, finally.  “How can we get you off our world?”

The alien seemed almost amused by the question.  “You can’t,” he said.  “Earth belongs to the State.”

***

“We have been bouncing questions off him for some hours,” the intelligence officer reported.  She was a slight woman, barely strong enough to get through the army’s basic training before being streamlined into intelligence.  “I’m afraid that most of what he told you, General, seems to fit in with what else we know about them.  They came, they saw and they conquered Earth.”

She tapped her laptop and the display changed.  “We now know more about how they’re organised,” she continued.  “At the time, there’s a Command Triad; three officers, one from the Land Forces, one from the Space Forces and one from their intelligence service.  Below them, there are Land Force Commanders who serve as the principle officers on the ground – we have one assigned to Britain, there are several assigned to the United States and at least three assigned to Europe.  Below
them
” – she tapped the laptop again – “there are a number of units assigned to the various Land Force Commanders.  Apparently, we’ve been bleeding them pretty hard and they’ve had to shift units around fairly regularly on fireman drills.”

Gavin smiled, despite his tiredness.  Earth might be tiny by interstellar standards, but she was still a pretty big planet and most of the regional theatres were separated by large bodies of water.  The aliens might have upwards of two million soldiers in their conquest force, yet it was nowhere enough to hold down the entire planet.  But they didn't really
need
to hold down the entire world.  The fighting in the Middle East, the chaos sweeping through Africa, the mass slaughters in the Balkans and Central Asia – the humans were still fighting each other, even when there was a more dangerous threat in orbit.  It might not have been that important – the aliens were perfectly capable of bombarding parts of the planet they didn't need into submission – but it would have been nice to think that humanity could unite against a common foe.

Linux looked up from where he’d been sitting.  “We’re fairly sure that we could take their command network down for some time,” he said.  Gavin nodded, remembering when it had been first proposed.  “But it would only work once.  After that, they would start isolating their systems and making it impossible to take them down again.”

Gavin snorted.  “I still don’t understand why they even offered us the chance to do it once.”

Linux smirked.  “How many people really know what happens inside a computer?”  He asked, clearly remembering his pre-military days.  “Every time a person’s identity is stolen by a hacker, it happens because someone was careless or ignorant and left the front door to their computer wide open.  People use the same passwords for different computers, even though they should know better.  Do you know how I broke into the Pentagon’s computers?”

His smile grew wider.  “One of their officers used the same password for accessing their computers as he did for buying stuff on Amazon,” he explained.  “I cracked one password and then I had access to all of his Pentagon files.  And that was someone who really should have known better.  I’d be surprised if the alien troopers know anything about what happens inside a computer.  They certainly don’t seem to be interested in telling them anything more than they need to know.”

“Maybe we should hold off for a few years and let them absorb our computer systems,” Gavin mused.  “And then we could take down their entire system at one fell swoop.”

“Unless they're complete idiots, they will take precautions,” Linux pointed out.  “I would – if I had human specialists working for me.”

Gavin shrugged.  “And so we go back to the old problem,” he said.  “The aliens are in a position to bombard us into submission.  Even if we take out their forces on the ground, we would still be knocked back down and forced to surrender.”

“Maybe we could find a way to contact their enemies,” Linux said.  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Gavin had been giving that some thought.  “I don’t see how,” he admitted, finally.  “Unless we can build an FTL communicator...”

“They don’t have one,” Linux said.

The door burst open as one of the operators ran into the room.  “Sir,” he said, “there’s an important broadcast on the BBC.  You have to see it!”

Gavin followed him back upstairs, leaving a pair of soldiers behind to keep an eye on the alien.  The broadcast was already repeating when he reached the dining room, where two of the staff had been monitoring the BBC.  He was mildly surprised that the aliens hadn't bothered to put out their own version of the attack on the detention camp, but their propaganda efforts seemed feeble, almost uninspired.  Their collaborators weren’t quite working as hard as they should.

Alan Beresford’s face appeared on the screen as the message started again.  “I have been informed that the bitter-enders have taken one of our alien friends captive,” he said.  The collaborator-in-chief sounded as if he sincerely believed every word he said, although that was a necessary skill for a politician.  “They have informed me that they no longer intend to allow the bitter-enders to frustrate Earth’s admission to the galactic state.  Therefore, if this captive is not released, a large number of humans will die.”

He leaned forward.  “I understand that change always worries those who do not want to see any change in how the world is run, but I appeal to those who are still fighting the aliens,” he added.  “They are not bluffing.  Unless the captive is released within two days, they will take punitive measures against a city on the British mainland.  Please, for the love of God, release the captive before millions die.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

London

United Kingdom, Day 45

The entire city had gone crazy.

“Damn it,” Robin yelled, as he ducked to avoid a hail of rubbish being thrown at them from the flats.  “Where the hell is our backup?”

“Caught up in their own riot,” Sergeant Wiggin shouted back.  They’d entered the East London housing estate looking for a suspected resistance organiser.  And then the entire estate seemed to have exploded around them.  The alien threats against a human city had triggered off a whole series of riots.  “They’re stuck for the moment!”

Robin gritted his teeth.  The housing estates had been slowly decaying into criminality for years, despite programs designed to give the inhabitants pride in their community.  They were notoriously unfriendly to the police, even before the invasion.  Their police car had been tipped on its side and they’d had to flee into an alley in the hopes of escaping the crowd.  It was apparently worse along the outside of London, with humans desperate to escape the city clashing with police and alien guards equally intent on keeping people in.  The internet had named a hundred different cities that might be targeted and they’d all gone crazy. 

Outside, there were over five hundred youths, probably all members of the same gang.  The gangs had been defending their territory ever since the invasion, even though they were drawing food and drink from the aliens.  If they were waiting before giving chase to the policemen, it suggested that they were expecting others to arrive and fall into the same trap.  Or maybe they were just biding their time.  Robin wished, once again, that the aliens had allowed them to carry firearms.  The crowd outside was better armed than the police.

He looked around and saw a drainpipe leading up to a window.  Quickly, before he could think better of it, he ran over to the pipe and scrambled up it.  It was a harder climb that he’d expected, but the crowd outside the alley was a powerful motivator.  He managed to push the window open and fall face-first into the flat, gasping for breath as the stench of death reached his nostrils.  Someone had been using the flat to smoke drugs, but had overdosed – or perhaps it had been a murder.  Judging from the condition of the body, it had been at least a fortnight since death had taken place.  He leaned back out of the window and waved frantically to Wiggin.  Wiggin was older and fatter than Robin, but with a little help he made it into the flat.

“Jesus,” he muttered, as he tried to avoid breathing.  “What the fuck happened here?”

“No idea,” Robin said, shortly.  He glanced around the flat as they came out of the bedroom and up to a bolted door.  Someone had attached no less than five bolts to the door, making it much harder for anyone to enter without breaking down the door.  Drug dealers tended to be paranoid, not without reason.  Their list of enemies didn't stop at the police.  “I bet you that the back door outside is blocked off too.”

“That’s a fire hazard,” Wiggin said.  They shared a droll look as they opened the door.  It didn't smell much better outside.  An overpowering stench of urine almost sent them staggering backwards.  Robin had never been able to understand how anyone could willingly live in such a dump, although he had to admit that most of them never stood a chance.  The gangs were simply too powerful for ordinary people to overcome.  Who would bother cleaning the stairwell if they knew it would simply be vandalised again within the week?

Robin glanced outside through a broken window and saw that the mob was getting stronger.  There was little hope of anyone coming to help on the ground, unless they were armed and willing to cut down enough of the gang members to convince the others to flee.  It wouldn't be long before they decided to go after the two trapped policemen – and it wouldn't take their leaders long to guess where Robin and Wiggin had fled.  He glanced down at the crowd again before heading up the stairs.  There should be a way to get onto the roof from the stairwell.

The stench seemed to grow stronger as they raced up the stairs.  Robin had made arrests in places like the estate before and knew that the closed doors hid all sorts of crimes – and people living their lives of quiet desperation.  A drug dealer, a prostitute and her pimp, terrorists, racists...all hidden behind closed doors.  The BBC might prattle on about the benefits that alien rule would bring to the country, but he doubted that any benefit could help those trapped on poor estates.  Very few people born and bred on such an estate ever managed to climb out and build a proper life for themselves.  The pressure just to sink into criminality was overpowering.  There were some girls who were grandmothers at thirty, assuming they lived so long.