“You lived out here, safe on your farm,” Smith pointed out, with some amusement. It was clear that he and Simpson were old friends. “I think the people in the Blitz probably felt a little different.”
“I have no doubt of it,” Simpson said. He looked up at Alex. “After the meeting in the Town Hall, let me know if you decide to stick around. I have some items you may be interested in using.”
The announcement and discussion in the Church was just as bad as Alex had feared. Nearly two hundred people had crammed themselves into the building and they all wanted to talk. The children had picked up on their parents’ emotions and looked fearful, apart from the ones too young to know that something was wrong. Alex found herself targeted by irate people who wanted to know what had happened to the RAF, or why the invasion had been allowed to take place. After trying to point out twice that she had been taken completely by surprise, she did her best to ignore the louder protesters. It wasn’t as if there was anything else she could do.
“We can survive this if we all pull together,” Leigh said, once the general panic had calmed down slightly. The sheer unreality of the situation helped, although the BBC had clearly managed to cause panic in some quarters. One report claimed that London and Manchester had been occupied by giant elephants. Alex couldn’t help, but feel that little gray aliens would have been more traditional. “We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we will get through it all.”
The crowd didn’t ask for specifics, luckily. Alex allowed herself a moment of relief that it seemed to be quietening down, even though she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do now. Where did she go to report in? RAF Coningsby was almost certainly destroyed — or occupied by alien forces. The RAF had been taken completely by surprise.
She stepped outside and looked up at the darkening sky. An entire day had gone by and she’d barely noticed. High overhead, the stars were coming out — and there were a handful of trails burning their way down towards Earth. The remains of humanity’s pathetic space program, she assumed. Some of the other lights would be alien starships…
In the distance, she heard the sound of thunder and shuddered.
The night no longer felt safe.
Chapter Eight
Salisbury Plain
United Kingdom, Day 1
“Prime Minister?”
Gabriel shook himself awake, surprised that he’d managed to fall asleep. After they’d left London, they’d followed the Thames upstream, with only minor delays caused by bridges that the aliens had targeted from orbit. A couple of hours later, they’d left the boat and transferred themselves to a Land Rover Butcher had recovered from somewhere. Reading between the lines, Gabriel guessed that the vehicle had been stolen, but he had found it difficult to care. Exhaustion had overwhelmed him soon afterwards.
They had parked in the midst of woodland, with the vehicle half-hidden under the trees. A small group of armed soldiers wearing camouflage uniforms had surrounded the vehicle, glancing around nervously as they waited for the Prime Minister to disembark. Gabriel knew very little about the military, but he could tell that the soldiers were worried. No matter how he looked at the situation, there seemed little cause for optimism. A day ago, he’d been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Now… his position as Prime Minister seemed almost meaningless. No Prime Minister had ever had to flee London for fear that enemy troops would capture or kill him. Even Charles I had managed a reasonably dignified departure from his former capital.
Butcher led him into the woods, down towards a small concrete building marked PRIVATE, KEEP OUT. The soldier opened the door, revealing a ladder leading down into the depths of the Earth. Unwilling to show fear in front of the soldiers, Gabriel followed him down and realised to his relief that the lower levels of the bunker were properly lit. A uniformed soldier was waiting for him. The man looked deeply worried, but relieved when he saw the Prime Minister.
“Prime Minister,” the soldier said. “I’m Brigadier Gavin Lightbridge-Stewart. Welcome to the bunker.”
Gabriel followed the Brigadier as he led the way through a hatch into a large concrete room. It seemed primitive compared to some of the other emergency facilities he’d seen over the years, clearly not a facility that had been intended to return to active service. A number of maps had been scattered on the table, with red lines drawn on them by a handful of military personnel. Several more officers were working what looked like an older set of radios, trying to get back in touch with the rest of the world. Oddly, Gabriel felt a pang of relief as he took in the scene. The situation was bad — disastrous — but experienced personnel were trying to come to grips with it. They might not be so outmatched after all.
“Please, be seated,” the Brigadier said. “I have a military brief for you, but you might prefer a shower and a change of clothes — and a hot meal. The situation is unlikely to change in the next few hours.”
Gabriel hesitated. In truth, he wanted the shower, and some food, and a few more hours of sleep. But he needed to know what was going on before he could come to grips with the situation. Perhaps they could find out what the aliens actually wanted — assuming they wanted anything. If invasion and settlement was their goal, surely they’d have some kind of plan to deal with the human governments. He remembered the report that alien craft were heading towards London — the craft they’d seen as they headed upriver — and shuddered. The aliens had made at least one of their goals quite clear.
“I’d like the briefing first,” he said, finally. The Brigadier nodded, as if he understood perfectly. Neither of them could do much to influence the situation, but they couldn’t just rest while the entire country was in danger. “How much do we actually know about what’s going on out there?”
The Brigadier tapped one finger on the maps. “Most of our military communications network has been badly hammered,” he said. “We never anticipated the physical destruction of the network nodes or the satellite network orbiting the planet, although most of the hardwired connections — the land lines — are undamaged. Our intelligence is therefore very limited and changes frequently, but I’ve had several intelligence and signals units working on what we do have and trying to put together a comprehensive picture.”
His expression darkened. “The aliens — whoever they are, whatever they want — have clearly not limited their attentions to us,” he added. “We have intermittent contact with the Americans and they confirm that Washington has been invaded; we also picked up a brief report from a French military unit that implied that Paris had also been hit. I’m afraid that we have been unable to make contact with American or French government officials — the outlook, Prime Minister, isn’t good.”
Gabriel nodded, bitterly. He’d hoped that they would be able to call on NATO for support, but it was clear that NATO had fragmented, with the national military forces on the run — fighting their own hopeless battles. The American President was a friend and he’d managed to make some progress in talking to the French President… what had happened to them after the aliens landed? America was so powerful that he assumed that the aliens had devoted much of their attention to smashing them flat. It was quite possible that the President and everyone else in their line of succession was dead.
“We have been attempting to make contact with personnel in Europe — we have officers at NATO Headquarters and a British Army base in Germany — but so far attempts have proven fruitless,” the Brigadier said. “I think we have to assume the worst; the units have been destroyed or scattered. Parts of the internet are still working and we may be able to establish contact, but…”