“You were in London?” The MP said asked, clearly impressed. “We’ve got orders to forward all survivors from London to the RV point. It seems that some of our superiors will want to talk to you.”
Chris hesitated. There was a defence line being constructed that should slow the aliens down — he doubted that a force with air supremacy could be stopped — and part of him wanted to join it, to get stuck into the aliens who had killed so many of his friends and comrades. The rest of him knew that it was his duty to brief his superiors, to tell them what had happened at London and to ensure that the Household Division’s last stand went down in the history books. But would the people writing the history books be human — or alien?
“They’re going to be waiting to hear from you,” the MP said, a moment later. “I suggest you brief them quickly. They’re going to hit us soon.”
Chris nodded and gunned the engine. He knew the area around Salisbury Plain fairly well — a legacy of the time spent boozing after exercises in the Live Firing Training Area — and it shook him to see so many deserted houses. The civilians would have been warned to leave the area as quickly as possible, whatever the aliens might have had to say about it. They probably wouldn’t care if human civilians were caught in the crossfire. Everything they’d done suggested a certain lack of concern for human life. The sight of refugees heading north or south tore at his heart. Britain hadn’t seen such deprivation since the Civil War — and that, by European standards of the time, had been remarkably civilised. He caught sight of a tank hidden under camouflage netting and waved to the man standing beside it, clearly planning an ambush. They should get in at least one good shot before the aliens started dropping killer crowbars from orbit.
Two miles further on, he ran into a second group of military policemen who ordered him to abandon the Range Rover and proceed on foot. The woodlands seemed crammed with human soldiers, including Royal Marines and RAF Regiment personnel, all forced together by circumstances. Chris had fought beside the Royal Marines in Afghanistan and while he thought — naturally — that the soldiers had the advantage, he had to admit that the Royal Marines were tough, professional fighters. The military policemen were sorting them out, sending some further away from Salisbury Plain while holding others to join the defence line. It looked as if someone was in command, thankfully. Perhaps everything he’d seen in London would be useful after all.
But the aliens controlled the high orbitals over Earth. They could bombard the planet into submission, or hammer any human military force foolish enough to show itself openly. How could an insurgency hope to win against such an enemy? God alone knew if they could do more than sting the enemy…
“Down here,” a military policeman said. There was a hatch hidden in the woods, seemingly leading down to nowhere. Given how many other bunkers, bases and supply dumps were scattered around Salisbury Plain, it made sense to think that there was a government bunker hidden there too. “They’ll meet you at the bottom.”
Chris nodded and began to descend down the ladder.
“Are you decent, Prime Minister?”
Gabriel snorted at Butcher’s mock-falsetto tone. He’d slept for several hours and awoke feeling as if he hadn’t slept very long at all, but his watch told a different story. Butcher — who had apparently been assigned as his permanent bodyguard — had pointed him at the shower and told him to take his time. Someone had brought in a spare set of clothes, allowing him to lose the suit and tie he’d worn during the mad rush from London. The military seemed to have maintained its sense of efficiency, he told himself, and wondered how long that would last.
“I think so,” he said, finally. He hadn’t been able to shave and his cheeks felt rough with stubble. “Have we been discovered?”
“I don’t think so,” Butcher said. “But there have apparently been developments. I’ll leave it to the Brigadier to brief you.”
They walked down the concrete corridor and into the conference room. Most of the operators he remembered from last night were missing, their stations shut down and marked for destruction. In fact, the entire bunker complex seemed emptier than he recalled — even though he could hear the sound of people talking in low voices down the corridor. He assumed that they hadn’t been detected — they would have fled the bunker if they had even suspected that the aliens knew where they were — but it was clear that something had changed. The Brigadier, when he made his appearance a moment later followed by a young soldier, looked deeply worried.
“Prime Minister,” he said. “I’m afraid that there have been developments.”
Gabriel listened carefully as the story of the Battle of London came pouring out of the young soldier. Two companies of British soldiers had fought and held the aliens for nearly an hour, before the aliens finally pushed through by brute force. London itself had been damaged in the crossfire, with at least one alien transport crash-landing in Central London. The thought was impossible to grasp — it just wasn’t supposed to happen in Britain. Even the suicide bombers who’d killed far too many civilians on 7/7 hadn’t even dreamed of causing so much pain.
“It gets worse,” the Brigadier added. “I’m afraid that the aliens have found themselves a Petain.”
He tapped a console and the recorded radio message played out, twice. Gabriel found himself listening with growing anger as Alan Beresford — an MP who had been implicated in a dozen scandals, yet nothing quite seemed to stick — recited the alien message to the British population. God alone knew what the public would make of it. They’d be frightened, isolated from the rest of the world, unsure of their place… far too many would simply grasp the straw Beresford was offering them. And the aliens themselves…
If Beresford was to be believed, their social development had not matched their technological development. But then, a case could be made that humanity’s development hadn’t matched its technology either. The aliens… they’d come, they’d seen and they’d conquered, with as little regard for the rights of mankind as Julius Caesar had shown to the barbarians he’d crushed beneath the heels of his legions. It was tempting to believe that Beresford was a liar — Gabriel wouldn’t have believed that the sky was blue if Beresford had said it — but so far everything the aliens had done matched what he’d said. But then… if Nazi Germany had won World War Two, everyone would have been raised to believe that Nazism was right.
“My God,” he said, finally. “What do we do about it?”
The Brigadier scowled. “The last reports have the aliens massing forces here, here and here,” he said, tapping locations on the map. “I believe that they intend to advance westwards within the next few hours and scatter our forces before we can regroup and take the offensive. I’m afraid that we’re going to have to put our emergency plan into operation before too long.”
Gabriel nodded. “What do we have to do?”
“You’re going to a secure location in the north — an old estate that belongs to a family that has been linked with the British Government for centuries,” the Brigadier said. “It was always envisaged as the final resort — and so there haven’t been any mentions of it on our computers or anywhere else. Butcher and his team will escort you there and then take care of you, once you’ve recorded a message for the civilians. You have to tell them that there’s a government still out there fighting…”
“But won’t that encourage them to fight themselves?” Gabriel asked. “Won’t we just be prolonging the agony?”