“Understood,” the voice said. “Please stand by…”
The’Stig snorted again and started to issue orders to the rest of his unit. They’d scout around and secure the area, maybe pick up on the human trail before they had a chance to go to ground. And then maybe they could extract a little revenge. Maybe…
Because if losing convoys became a habit, they were going to start running short of supplies. And if they had to start using shuttles again, they would risk losing them…
And then their ultimate victory would be in doubt.
And that would risk bringing in other powers.
Chapter Twenty-One
London
United Kingdom, Day 21
“How many people are down there?”
“At least five thousand,” Gerald Rivers said. The Chief Constable looked uneasy. His policemen were out there, without any weapons more dangerous than water cannons and CS gas. The aliens had forbidden weapons even for those guarding their collaborators. “There will be more when people realise that the aliens aren’t going to do anything to stop them.”
Alan cursed. Down below, outside the security perimeter he’d had erected around his headquarters, thousands of protesters were gathering. The raids and arrests had galvanised large sections of London, bringing thousands of people out onto the streets. He couldn’t help, but remember how crowds had toppled a number of regimes across the Middle East — or how they’d pressured the British Government during the run-up to Iraq. And the crowd below transcended racial or religious borders. The first series of arrests might have been targeted on Islamic families, but the next series had been equal-opportunity repression.
But there was no choice, he told himself, desperately. The poorer parts of London were becoming hotbeds of resistance activity. Young men, men who had had little hope of rising out of poverty before the invasion, were actively targeting the police — and even the aliens themselves. A dozen had died only yesterday in the wake of a failed petrol bomb attack on an alien patrol. And London wasn’t even seeing the worst of the violence. Manchester had been consumed by a riot that had torn through Moss Side before the police had finally managed to restore order.
He shivered as the crowd’s chant grew louder. As an MP, he’d seen the reports from the security services on radical trouble-makers who enjoyed infiltrating protest marches and causing havoc. A number with ties to London’s criminal underworld were down there, arming the protesters with gas masks and even crude weapons. There might even be resistance fighters with the crowd, ready to take out a handful of collaborators. And what would the aliens do, he asked himself, if the crowd broke into his headquarters and lynched him? Perhaps they’d simply sit back and drop rocks on the crowd, thrashing the survivors into submission. Or… there were too many possibilities and none of them were pleasant.
“Give us back our children,” the crowd demanded. “Give us back our wives!”
The roar grew louder as the words spread. It was simple enough to understand; dozens of wives and children, apparently innocent, had been swept up by the raids. No one knew what had happened to them, at least no one outside the alien garrison where Ten Downing Street had once been. Alan knew that they’d been taken outside the city, but then…? The aliens had refused to tell him anything, which suggested that they might simply have been killed.
But that didn’t make sense either, he tried to tell himself. What was the point of punitive executions if they didn’t inform the country that they’d been carried out? But the aliens were aliens and something that made sense to them might appear strange to the human mindset… he looked down at the crowd again and shuddered. He’d wanted power, hadn’t he? And yet he was quailing at the thought of what he would have to do to keep hold of that power, to keep the population under control and the aliens happy…
He looked up at Rivers. “Disperse the crowd,” he ordered, sharply. “Get rid of them. Now.”
Robin felt sweat trickling down his back as the noise grew louder. The crowd had blurred into a single mass of humanity, screaming and shouting all along the barricades. Robin knew that if they decided to push forward, a lot of people were going to be hurt. Mobs lost all sense of proportion or civilisation; if they caught a policeman, he was likely to be trampled to death. And if individuals wanted to get away from the mob, they would find it very difficult, almost impossible. The mob mentality sucked in individuals and turned them into mindless automatons.
And yet, part of him wanted to throw away his uniform and join them. The mob was right — they had arrested hundreds of people without due cause. Sure, some of them had deserved arrest — one firebrand preacher deserved worse, but the pre-invasion government had been reluctant to take the political flak for arresting him — but others were innocent, their only crime being related to the suicide bomber and his friends. And some had been scooped up for no reason that he could see. They’d become worse than the Nazis in a far shorter space of time — and to think that the Met had once prided itself on its ethics. How far were they willing to go to collaborate.
He glanced behind him, seeing the same doubts written on the faces of his fellows. Some of them, at least, had been reluctant to follow orders and even join the police force blocking the way to the building housing the collaborating government. Others, on the other hand, seemed almost delighted at the prospect of violence, the ones who had learned to hate protest marches during the summers of rage, where it had been politically impossible to hand out the thrashing many of the protesters had deserved. They’d never done a day’s work in their life, they’d argued, and yet they deserved to be fed and clothed at taxpayer’s expense. Many policemen had little sympathy for protesters. If they put the energy they put into their protests into bettering themselves instead, they would actually find that there were other options than permanently living on the dole.
But they had their orders. The crowd had to be dispersed. Even now, other policemen would be setting up barriers, using them to push the crowd back and block off several lines of retreat. They’d be forced away from the building complex, pushed all the way back to where they’d come from — and any who tried to fight back would be arrested. Or at least that was the plan. Robin knew that many of the protesters would have come armed, intent on picking a fight — or merely intent on preventing a humiliating retreat. And the police had been denied firearms. The protest organisers might be better armed than themselves.
He braced himself as the loudspeaker crackled on. “ATTENTION,” the speaker said, loudly enough to be heard over the crowd. “THIS IS AN ILLEGAL GATHERING. YOU ARE ORDERED TO DISPERSE. YOU ARE ORDERED TO DISPERSE.”
The crowd started throwing objects towards the police lines. There had been no order, as far as Robin could see, merely a shared desire to hit back at the collaborators. Some of them were throwing rotten fruit and vegetables, others were throwing stones and empty bottles. Those made him wince, remembering the petrol bombs that had been thrown at the aliens had even some policemen. If they’d been filled with petrol and set alight… no flames enveloped the police lines and he allowed himself a moment of relief. A handful of policemen had been injured, but their comrades were already helping them back towards the emergency treatment centre they’d established in the corporate gym. Robin hadn’t been able to believe just how many amities they’d managed to fit inside their buildings. It was a wonder that they ever went home for the night.