He smiled as he reached for the detonator. The aliens had killed millions of humans, without remorse; they probably didn’t know that they’d killed Carol Lamb, wife of David, or their son Thomas. But David knew. He’d been wanting to fight ever since he’d discovered that his family had been caught up in the invasion and cut down in the crossfire. The resistance had trained him and given him a vital role in the counterattack. He had no intention of fucking up and failing to kill as many aliens as he could before they finally killed him. The alien tanks slowed as they spotted the plates they’d left on the road — they looked like mines, if someone was feeling paranoid — and started to move around them. David pushed down on the detonator and braced himself.
The entire world seemed to explode. They’d placed explosive under the road, in two parked cars and in buildings facing the alien position. The blast was terrifyingly loud and the building he was using as a lookout point rocked alarmingly. To the aliens, caught up in the blast, it had to look like a foretaste of the hell awaiting them when they died. He couldn’t hear anything through the ringing in his ears as he pulled himself up and staggered towards the fire escape, knowing that the aliens were likely to be ready to murder any human they encountered — assuming that some of the aliens had survived the blast. Someone had definitely survived. He saw a flash of tracer pouring up into the air, but there was no way of telling if humans or aliens had fired the shot.
He saw something moving out of the corner of his eye and turned to see a pair of alien helicopters, moving rapidly towards the billowing cloud of smoke. They were shooting down towards the ground, aiming at resistance fighters — or maybe civilians who had been caught up in the battle. A missile rose up from the ground and slammed into one of the helicopters, sending it spinning over and down into the ground, where it vanished in a colossal explosion. The second helicopter climbed higher, all the while firing rockets down towards where the missile had come from. David took one final look, knowing that the aliens would never feel safe again in a human city, and then hurried down the stairs to safety. He’d been warned not to linger.
The shock of the explosion was so powerful that it nearly destroyed the command vehicle, despite the heavy armour that should have protected it from harm. The’Stig cursed as the vehicle spun around on its hover-cushion, almost crashing into one of the other vehicles in the convoy. Judging from what little he’d seen, the blast had almost certainly taken out four tanks, the vehicles he’d placed at the front to deter any humans from ambushing his force. He’d put them out there to be slaughtered.
There was no time to curse his own mistake. The humans were firing down at the convoy from all directions. Bullets were pinging off the command vehicle’s armour, while the troopers in the troop transports had to dismount to seek cover before their vehicles were ripped apart by the human assault. Hundreds of mortar shells seemed to be crashing around them, trapping them in a killing zone. The air cover he’d ordered should be able to deal with the mortars, if the humans hadn’t brought antiaircraft missiles along to the ambush. They’d probably anticipated that he’d bring his helicopters with him.
“Order the tanks to return fire indiscriminately,” he ordered. He’d set out to relieve London Base before it fell, but it looked as if he was going to have to cut his way out of the ambush first. The rear of the convoy was in chaos. One of the tanks had ploughed into a troop transport and ground to a halt. The surviving troopers had managed to dismount and start providing cover for the tanker as he tried to get his vehicle back into operation. “Tell them to clear the streets.”
The tanks swung their main guns around and started firing shells into the surrounding buildings. Mighty explosions sent human buildings toppling to the ground, hopefully trapping and killing human ambushers before they could escape. The’Stig had only a moment to register the fact that one of his helicopters had gone down before the second one came under heavy fire from a hidden machine gun and had to break off, trailing smoke as it limped back out of the city. The radio kept buzzing with scraps of isolated chatter, but all his attempts to raise the fighter jet bases outside the city failed. It didn’t take much imagination to realise that the humans might have taken out the bases, or at least forced them to keep their jets under cover.
“Start moving back,” he ordered the rear units, as the human fire started to slack off. There was no point in trying to push ahead, even though the hover-cushions could probably allow the tanks to get over the rubble. The humans might have anticipated that and set up a second ambush, firing straight into the tanks vulnerable undersides. “Move the troopers to cover the tanks as they head back.”
He glanced down at the map. Without the command network, it was far harder to coordinate his operations, which gave the humans an advantage. There were other routes to London Base, but if they were also mined… they might walk right into a second trap. The humans had clearly set out to delay them and they’d succeeded admirably.
But if he failed to get to London Base in time, the humans would inflict disastrous damage on the occupation force…
“Ned, Eccles,” Chris’s radio snapped. “The pig is in the poke.”
Chris nodded. The first alien attempt to relieve their base had been ambushed, but the aliens could presumably shoot their way out of the trap. They had enough firepower to break through, or fall back and try to get to London via a different route.
“Start spraying,” he ordered. There hadn’t really been time to pull any papers or documents out of the command base, but they’d certainly ensure that nothing was left for the aliens to recover. Each of the soldiers carried a flask containing an extremely flammable liquid. Sprayed over the aliens, it would ensure that very little was left — and conceal the fact that the resistance had taken a second high-ranking prisoner. “Everyone else, start falling back to the city.”
He finished emptying his own flask, tossed a detonator into the centre of the alien command room, and then waved for Abdul to precede him back down the alien ramp and into the lower levels. The sound of firing in the distance was growing louder, although there was no sign of any alien aircraft. They’d based antiaircraft teams throughout the city on the assumption that anything flying would be hostile and they’d clearly forced the alien aircraft to keep their distance.
“Not a bad day’s work,” Abdul said, as they made it outside. There were small fires burning throughout the remains of the alien base, with hundreds of dead alien bodies scattered around, waiting for the aliens to recover them. The human bodies had already been dragged away to where they would be buried. There would be time for a proper ceremony later. “I think we taught them a lesson.”
Chris smiled, counting the men out as they left the remains of the alien building. Once everyone was confirmed as having left, he pushed down on the remote control, triggering the detonator he’d left behind in the alien control room. The flames would rapidly destroy the equipment and records as well as most of the DNA traces, making it almost impossible for the aliens to be certain of who’d been in the chamber when the fire started. They’d never know that they’d lost a high-ranking prisoner, not this time. And who knew what he could tell the human race?