Gavin held up a hand. “Good thinking,” he said. “Let me know if there’s anything else we can do…”
Linux hesitated. “It might be possible for us to interfere with the network,” he said. “We might be capable of taking it down completely for short periods of time, cutting their small detachments off from higher authority. The result would be absolute chaos… but they’d know what we’d done. God alone knows how they’d react.”
“I see,” Gavin said. “I’ll have to give that some thought.”
He scowled. After the slaughter in London, they needed to find a way to hit back at the aliens, one that would convince them that slaughtering humans would draw a massive response. But how could they do that without revealing what few aces they had in their hand? And what if the aliens decided to destroy the entire human race in response?
“Panda Cola,” the logistics officer said. He tossed a can at Chris, who caught it neatly and scowled down at the label. “All kept nice and cool for our gallant fighting men.”
“Piss off,” Chris said. Panda Cola was included in the British Army’s Horror Bags — the packed lunches that were served to soldiers on duty. It was generally believed that it was produced by forcing a Panda to drink ordinary Coke, then bottling their urine and passing the cans to soldiers, who would then have to drink the foul liquid. Chris had heard during his training that the Ministry of Defence allocated 47p to procuring each can of Panda Cola, which raised the question of precisely what happened to the remaining 42p. “You’d think we could get better rations now we’re living off the land.”
He scowled around the resistance base. Calling it a base was really too much; they’d built shelters under the trees, trenches just in case the aliens stumbled over their position and a latrine some distance from the sleeping rolls. Some units, he’d heard, were living in civilian homes, but the aliens were getting better at running random patrols through seemingly-deserted hamlets. The base was safer, apart from the possibility of poisoning themselves by drinking army-issue Coke. He opened the can, braced himself and took a swallow. It tasted just as bad as he remembered.
“At least we’re eating rabbits,” one of the other soldiers pointed out. It was true; hunting skills they’d been taught were actually coming in handy. The woodland was full of small animals and vegetation that could be eaten, although they were being very careful with the mushrooms. If one of the soldiers managed to poison themselves, they wouldn’t be able to get them proper treatment. “We could be eating that foul muck they served us in Edinburgh.”
“I told you that you should have taken the pizza,” his friend pointed out. Chris felt a pang for the comrades he’d lost in London. They’d all been jammed together from various units that hadn’t made it out intact, but some of them had known each other beforehand. “When has the Army ever fed us well?”
Chris snorted. The Army Chefs — the Ration Assassins — had the hardest training course in the British Army. It had to be — no one had ever actually managed to pass, or so the soldiers joked amongst themselves. Now, he almost missed them, even though fresh rabbit stew was surprisingly tasty. Despite himself, he found himself wondering how they were going to cope when winter finally came along. It would be much harder to find food then — and the aliens, the crafty buggers, were being careful about what they doled out to the civilians. It would be easy to see if certain civilians were eating more than they should.
He pushed the thought aside, remembering the horror stories that had floated up from London. They’d have to make the aliens pay for that, but how? It had to be something spectacular… absently, he remembered the interior of the alien vehicles. Humans probably couldn’t drive them without major effort. But they did have collaborators driving their vehicles…
Slowly, a plan started to come together in his mind. It would be risky as hell, but they were used to that by now. And they might just have a chance to inflict major damage on an alien base. Perhaps they could even shatter the ring of steel around London.
Absently, he reached for a notepad and started jotting down ideas. The pad would have to be destroyed, of course, but by then he should have a solid concept. They’d have to link up with other units. They couldn’t do it alone. He smiled to himself. It would be good to know that they weren’t alone.
And the aliens were in for a very unpleasant surprise.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Command Base
United Kingdom, Day 27
By long tradition, each separate Land Forces Commander was expected to remain within his Area of Responsibility until relieved of command. The Command Triad, on the other hand, was supposed to remain on their starships, a legacy of the time when a primitive race managed to kill the Command Triad in charge of subduing their world and wreck havoc while their subordinates were still bickering over who was in command. No one seriously expected other powers to send starships to Earth, while humanity had no ability to reach the command starships in orbit. The Command Triad were therefore isolated from the dangers on Earth.
Ju’tro Oheghizh watched as the teleconference slowly came into being. Each of the Land Force Commanders would link into the conference from their bases on the ground, while the Command Triad would attend from orbit. Given what they’d uncovered about human computer systems, it seemed likely that the whole process would be improved in the next few years, once the human technology was understood and integrated into the State. The humans seemed largely unaware of the potential of their own technology, but no one could deny their skill. They would make a very useful client race in the coming decades, serving as soldiers, technicians and inventors. The State would grow far more powerful.
“It has been one local month since we established ourselves on Earth,” Tul’ma Jophuzu said. The Land Forces Commander had taken the lead, as was right and proper. His formations were the ones mainly engaged on Earth. “The humans have proved a more capable foe than we expected, but we have successfully taken and kept vast swaths of their territory.”
The display lit up on his command. There were enclaves on both sides of the American continent, smaller enslaves across Europe, Russia and Australia — and enslaves scattered over Britain. Oheghizh allowed himself an interior sneer. His command might be smaller than the enclaves in America or Europe, but it was far more promising in the long run. Besides, the American humans seemed to keep fighting even when the situation was hopeless. They even seemed to have two guns per adult human. The only other place that had put up such a fight was Switzerland and the mountainous country had been bombarded into submission after the first landings had been repulsed with heavy losses. It would be a long time before they recovered. If only because no one was interested in helping them.
“The plans for the final disposition of their military personnel are already under way,” the Land Forces Commander continued. “They will serve us on other worlds — and be kept separate from wild humans who could learn from their skills. However, our other plans to use Earth as a source of knowledge and technology have been crippled.”
Oheghizh kept his face blank and his body still, refusing to show any emotion. He’d hoped to push forward the schedule for assimilating human technology into the State, but his dreams had vanished when the human suicide bomber — a tactic that made little sense to him — had destroyed the technical college. There were others, of course, but now he had to divert resources to protect the human computer experts and their families — which risked allowing the humans a chance to deduce one of the State’s weaknesses. The humans had more experience in using their technology than the State. They had probably invented thousands of different ways to use computers as weapons.