Haddon Hall’s rear gardens blurred into the forest surrounding the estate. In his first week at the hall, Gabriel had enjoyed walking through the woodlands and watching the animals scuttling around, untouched by the war marring Britain’s soil. Now, there was no time to sightsee. He relaxed slightly as the trees and branches closed in around them, providing a limited amount of cover. The aliens might lose them within the gloom. He found himself praying as they stopped, briefly, near a cache of supplies Butcher had hidden in the forest, including a small change of clothes. They could pass for poachers trying to supplement their rations if the aliens caught up with them, although they had no ID cards. If the aliens demanded that they produce the cards… what could they do, but fight?
The sound of helicopters grew louder. Gabriel glanced up and saw dark shapes moving over the forest, heading towards the hall. He cringed back, only to be pulled back into a run by Butcher. The aliens might come down right on top of them if they lingered. Behind him, he could hear the sound of gunfire. Someone in the hall was giving the aliens a hot reception.
“We’ll head to the coast and grab a boat,” Butcher said, as they headed further away from the hall. The SAS man didn’t even have the decency to pretend he was winded. Gabriel knew that he was the one who would slow them down, if they encountered the enemy. He’d once asked Butcher if they would put a bullet in his head if capture was certain. Butcher had ducked the question. “And then we can head north to somewhere a little safer.”
Gabriel nodded, breathing hard. He’d had more exercise at the hall than he’d had in his entire life — with three SAS men as instructors — but he still felt winded. But there was no choice. They had to keep moving or the aliens might catch up with them. And then… Gabriel had no illusions about what they’d do to him. They’d force him to betray his country on television and then take him outside and put a bullet through his brains. They didn’t need the old Prime Minister when they had a collaborator willing and able to do everything they asked.
Behind them, the sound of gunfire grew louder.
The aliens appeared with terrifying speed, their attack helicopters swooping low over the forest, followed by a pair of heavy-lift helicopters loosely comparable to Chinooks. Gavin watched them come closer, knowing that the bigger helicopters were the dangerous ones. The aliens, if they wanted prisoners, couldn’t simply hose down the hall with bullets and rockets; they’d have to put boots on the ground. And the only way to do that quickly was through landing them from the air. They had their own version of the HALO parachute tactic, according to the internet. They’d used it while assaulting a French position in the south of France.
He keyed his radio. The aliens would be monitoring their traffic, but they shouldn’t be able to get real-time decryptions — at least if the intelligence on their computer software was accurate. British forces in Afghanistan had been able to monitor their enemies transmissions and use it against their foes, sometimes as targeting information. It was a risk, but one Gavin felt was worth taking. The same considerations about wanting prisoners ensured that the aliens couldn’t simply drop a rock on the transmitter from orbit.
“Fire,” he ordered.
The forest seemed to erupt as the concealed GPMGs opened fire on the larger helicopters, while a single Stinger — the only one at the hall — roared upwards towards one of the attack helicopters. It struck the helicopter on its armour-plated underside, sending the helicopter staggering off in search of a good place to put down, smoke billowing out from its lower regions. The aliens had clearly been armouring up their helicopters, Gavin noted, as the other attack helicopters turned and started to fire back towards the soldiers in the forest. They stopped firing and started to run, but some weren’t quick enough to escape. Gavin saw them die, just before one of the larger helicopters heeled over and fell towards the ground. It came down with a terrifying crash, but didn’t explode. A moment later, he saw alien troopers emerging from the wreck, shooting to force the humans to keep their heads down. It would have been admirable if it hadn’t been aimed at his troops.
He cursed as the attack helicopters made a second run over the hall, firing down with heavy machine guns towards the British positions. His men had had plenty of time to prepare defences, but building something to stand off a helicopter without being noticed by alien orbital satellites would have been difficult. The aliens knocked two of the positions out — he forced himself not to think about the men inside — before their second transport helicopter started dropping aliens down towards the ground. From his point of view, it looked as if they were dropping out on bungee cords. The moment they touched the ground, the cords broke, releasing them before they could be yanked back up into the air. Gavin’s soldiers, positioned at the windows around the hall, opened fire on them; the alien attack helicopters, sighting the firing positions, hurled a deadly storm of lead towards the windows. Their heavy fire smashed chips off the stone walls and blasted through the windows. Below, two alien assault teams ran forwards carrying what looked like an antitank weapon. They launched it into the main doors and shattered them backwards, smashing through the interior walls like paper.
Gavin clicked his radio twice — the signal to the outside teams to break contact and retreat to the RV points — and then abandoned the radio on the ground, kicking it under a bush. It would be too dangerous to use it now that the aliens controlled most of the ground. He could see a fireball rising up in the distance from where one of the larger IEDs had detonated, but he had no illusions about their ability to prevent the aliens from taking the hall. His close-protection detail spread out around him as he started to walk away from the hall. The remaining soldiers inside the building should be running for the exits, where they would link up with their fellows and start walking east. Gavin was the only one who knew that the PM and his team had headed west; the eastbound soldiers should provide some cover for his escape.
Another flight of alien helicopters swooped overhead, lowering a pair of light armoured vehicles to the ground. Gavin had seen the reports on their use against civilian rioters, but there hadn’t been any report of them being used against resistance fighters before. They weren’t as heavily armoured as Viking or Jackal vehicles, which should make them easy prey for antitank missiles or IEDs. On the other hand, they carried heavy machine guns and what intelligence claimed was a portable mortar launcher. It gave the aliens a surprisingly heavy punch for such light vehicles.
The ground shook as the first explosive charge inside the hall detonated. It had taken some specialist work by the defenders to position a fuel-air explosive in the basement, intended to send the entire hall up in flames. The aliens, picking their way into the building, were caught by a sheet of flame that seemed to roar up and out of nowhere. Gavin had been told that the main structure of the hall might survive — they’d known how to build tough buildings in those days — but anything the aliens might have been able to use to track the resistance to their next base would be destroyed. They’d never know for sure how close they’d come to decapitating the resistance, or bagging the PM. The Prime Minister’s ability to broadcast to the country, using the internet, had helped keep the resistance going. Gavin said a silent prayer for his safety as they continued to head into the countryside. The aliens would be putting up roadblocks and cordoning off the area, intending to trap them before they could escape. They had to move quickly before time ran out.