Their Darkest Hour by Christopher Nuttall Page B

offered, as they shook hands.  “I didn't mean to land on your farm...”
     
    “Don’t worry about it,” the farmer said.  He frowned, for a long moment.  “I don’t suppose you know what those flashes I saw in the distance were?”
     
    Alex filled him in on what little she knew as they walked down towards the farmhouse.  It was a neat little building, surrounded by a field of sheep and cows, almost like something from a bygone era.  She would have been charmed if she hadn't been so worried about the situation – and the smell from the fields.  The people who suggested that humanity should abandon technology and go back to the land had never smelled the countryside.  She was happy with air conditioning and filtering.
     
    Inside, she allowed the farmer’s wife to give her a cup of tea while she tried to call the base.  The telephone line buzzed and clicked alarmingly, and then went dead, without even a dial tone.  At Smith’s suggestion, she tried the internet and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the farmhouse had broadband.  Smith explained, when she asked, that the farmhouse often played host to young people and they all demanded internet access.
     
    “And the wife likes watching streaming video from London,” he added with a wink.  “I know better than to get in her way.”
     
    Alex smiled as she tried to access MILNET through the internet connection.  It should have accepted her password and allowed her access, but the link seemed to keep dropping out, as if some of the network nodes were malfunctioning.  The unknown enemy had launched their attack without being detected, at least until it was far too late.  There was no reason why they couldn't have launched a cyber-attack as well and taken out most of the military’s secure network.  The pilots had briefed that that was supposed to be impossible, but the unknowns had done far too much that should also have been impossible.
     
    Finally, the system blinked up a warning; enemy troops in London and several other cities.  Alex stared at the screen, not quite believing her eyes.  How could anyone have simply landed in London?  Where the hell was the rest of the RAF?  The thought – the thought that she had been trying to avoid – floated back to the surface of her mind.  She’d been blown out of the sky, along with her wingman.  It was quite possible that the remainder of the RAF had met the same fate, or had been caught and destroyed on the ground.  Who the hell were they fighting?
     
    A set of general orders, directed to soldiers and TA reservists, flickered into existence.  They were ordered to make their way out of the cities and rendezvous with officers at certain locations, each referred to with a different codename.  Alex stared at them, before realising that whoever had taken command of the British military wouldn’t have wanted to put their instructions on the military network, no matter how secure it was supposed to be.  The unknowns were probably monitoring every move they made. 
     
    But she had no idea where to go.  The RAF had never anticipated needing to establish covert rendezvous points, certainly not since the end of the Cold War.  She could find a list of military bases online, yet the chances were good that they had been destroyed or attacked and occupied by the unknowns.  The unknowns...their enemy didn't even have a face!  Who the hell were they fighting?
     
    She clicked on one of the options and an answer, of sorts, floated up in front of her eyes.  Aliens.  It seemed impossible, but so did the ghosts – the ghost aircraft that had blown her out of the sky and killed her wingman.  She covered her eyes for a long moment, feeling the world spinning around her, and then looked back up at the screen.  The damning words were still there.
     
    “Aliens,” she whispered.  How long had it been since she’d watched the television show where the RAF had accidentally shot down a UFO, only to