According to a handful of collaborators who had maintained ties to the resistance, the aliens had two main detention camps and a number of buildings that served as their local headquarters. Several prisoners had been taken into those buildings and never seen again, although there was no clear explanation as to what had happened to them. The aliens, it seemed, maintained a human interrogation team who interrogated prisoners of particular interest to the aliens. At least one of the interrogators had been identified as a particularly unpleasant sadist and murderer who had been serving thirty years in jail when the aliens had arrived. Chris gritted his teeth at the thought of anyone he knew falling into their hands.
History hadn’t been a particular interest of his before the invasion, but he’d been reading about the French Resistance to Hitler. The French Resistance had been rather more low-key than it had claimed particularly after VE Day when the membership of the resistance skyrocketed, but it had had some successes. But it had also had problems with Frenchmen who threw themselves completely into serving the Nazis, as had the Russians and several other occupied countries. The locals had sometimes been worse than their foreign masters, having little or no regard for their own country. Some of the stories had been sickening. People had betrayed their fellows for food, drink, or merely some shelter in a world gone insane, but others had used it as a chance to play out their fantasies.
“Here we are,” Coates said, nervously. The three lorries had parked near one of the human buildings. “How long do you want me to wait here?”
“I suggest you get out to the gate once the shooting starts,” Chris said. Coates hadn’t realised it, but the moment the aliens realised that they were under attack, they’d blast every human vehicle moving near the base. The only thing preventing them from dropping KEWs on their heads would be the presence of hundreds of their own people. “You know where to go to link up with our people.”
He scrambled down from the cap and rapped on the back of the lorry. The first bunch of soldiers, wearing the brown uniforms that the aliens issued to their collaborators, opened the doors and jumped down, weapons in hand. If they were lucky, the aliens would start gunning down their collaborators, convinced that they had turned on them. And even if they didn’t, they’d be confused.
“Come on,” he said. The aliens didn’t allow their collaborators firearms. They’d know something was wrong the moment they saw the SA80s and antitank weapons. “Let’s go.”
The problem with trying to make a defiant impression as one was waiting to be shot, Alex decided with a flash of humour, was that it took time for the enemy to get around to actually shooting. Their collaborators were busy making speeches, cursing the bitter-enders who felt that they had to carry on the fight even though it was hopeless. After the first speech, a second had begun, followed rapidly by a third. The viewing public would be getting very bored by now, Alex told herself, wondering if there was something she could do to speed up the affair. It was growing colder and she was hardly dressed for the weather.
She caught sight of a group of aliens marching towards them, carrying their weapons at the ready. There was already one group of armed aliens with the collaborators, but perhaps the aliens had decided they needed two groups — or maybe three. What sort of threat did they think they were facing? They seemed almost laughably paranoid about their prisoners, even though they were tied and suffering the effects of torture.
“And so, it is with the deepest regret that we must execute those who feel that they must resist the new world order,” one of the collaborators finally droned. Alex straightened upright as the aliens levelled their weapons, pointing directly at her head. Their bullets were larger than human-designed bullets, she’d noted, perhaps a testament to the tough leathery skin that protected the aliens from outside threats. “Their deaths will serve as a warning to those who feel that they can resist with impunity…”
Alex closed her eyes, expecting the shot to come at any second. Instead, she heard alien grunts of alarm. She opened her eyes, just in time to see a small band of armed collaborators advancing on the aliens. Armed collaborators…? The aliens, caught in the open, swung around, too late. Alex threw herself to the ground as the newcomers opened fire, mowing down the aliens before they could take cover or return fire. A handful of collaborators were shot in the legs, knocking them to the ground. Alex glanced up as a figure bent down and sawed the plastic tie away from her wrists.
“What…?” She managed. It was suddenly very hard to speak. “What’s going on?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” The man demanded. “You’re being rescued!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Alien Detention Camp
United Kingdom, Day 41
Tra’tro Yak’shat had been studying his records when the attack began. The Detention Camp wasn’t officially part of the Land Forces, although they provided the troopers who guarded it from insurgent attack. Instead, it fell under the purview of the Sha’ra, the intelligence service that safeguarded the State from enemies both inside and outside its territory. There hadn’t been an intelligence network on Earth prior to the invasion — too great a chance of being discovered ahead of time, or so they’d said — and the intelligence officers were working overtime to build up networks they could use to hunt down human insurgents. It wasn’t going too well.
The Sha’ra had wide latitude when it came to intelligence gathering, and he’d been told that he had no need to know any of the gory details, but he’d heard enough to gather that they were using human rogues to torture their prisoners and extract confessions. Anything was permitted in the service of the State — and if the humans were unwilling to dispose of their own rogues, they had only themselves to blame — yet he found it hard to accept that such torture was permissible. The humans seemed to be their own worst enemies. Even the Sha’ra had been shocked at some of the rogues they’d allowed to live. Using them in the service of the State was…
He jumped up as he heard the first explosion. The Sha’ra had ordered the execution of some of the prisoners — even to the point of bringing in their own executioners — and he’d been told to keep him and his troopers away from the execution ground, but explosions suggested that the base was under attack. The alarms sounded a second later, summoning the troopers to grab their weapons and repel the human insurgents. He picked up his own sidearm and ran towards the hatch. If the humans intended to attack his base, they’d get a few unpleasant surprises. He’d been careful to keep half his garrison under cover at all times, in the hopes that any human watchers would believe that he only had half as many troopers as he had. They’d be deploying now…
Outside, the sound of gunfire was alarmingly close. The humans were already inside the fence… how was that even possible? And he could hear the sound of human mortars lobbing shells into the base. Explosions flared up from where they’d parked their helicopters and the shuttle that had brought the Sha’ra execution crew down from orbit. The entire base shook, seconds later, as the fuel dump exploded, blasting a colossal fireball into the air. Much of the base had been built to be fire resistant, but if the shuttle fuel had caught fire the prefabricated buildings would start to melt very quickly. Fire was already starting to spread over the grass the humans had used to mark out their runways. It wouldn’t be long before the entire base went up in smoke.