[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.“You’re masters at unarmed combat, sneaking about.and Chess?”“There was a trooper up at Hereford who was a five-star chef,” Butcher said.Gabriel couldn't tell if he was being serious or joking.“And there was a little old woman who knew absolutely everything about plants and kept massive greenhouses.Every six months, a dozen lads from Hereford would gather around this tiny old lady and learn what they could safely eat in the wild.She never had any problems with vandals either.I wonder why.”Gabriel opened his mouth, and then looked up as the butler entered the room.“Pardon me, sir,” he said, “but the Brigadier has returned from his trip.He is waiting for you in the library.”“Good,” Gabriel said, standing up.Butcher moved ahead of him, watching for assassins lurking in the corridor.Gabriel had tried to talk his close-protection detail out of being so paranoid, but Butcher had pointed out that the aliens had human collaborators who might be more adroit at tracking him down.Haddon Hall’s small staff had just had to get used to the three men watching their every move.They were all security-cleared, positively vetted, yet none of them had expected to be suddenly living in an occupied country.Gabriel hadn't expected it either.Lightbridge-Stewart stood up when Gabriel entered the library.“We got the consignment underway,” he said.The alien was on his way back to his people, then.“I wanted to discuss a possible operation with you, while I was here.My staff have been putting together a plan we’ve entitled Operation Hammer.”Gabriel frowned as he took his seat.The Americans loved bold and purposeful operational names – Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom – but the Ministry of Defence preferred to assign names at random, on the grounds that anyone who heard the name wouldn't automatically know what it meant.Using a purposeful name was unusual and it suggested that someone intended for it to become public sooner rather than later.“The core problem, Prime Minister, is that we cannot prevent them from moving wherever they please – and, if necessary, bombarding us into submission,” Lightbridge-Stewart said.Gabriel nodded, concealing his impatience.“They have the ability to hit us wherever they want, put bluntly, and it cripples our ability to mount a sustained insurgency.We need to show them that we are not going to roll over for them and surrender.”“Particularly after we returned their captive,” Gabriel agreed.“How do you intend to hammer the message into their heads.”“We can cripple their command and control network,” Lightbridge-Stewart said.“Maybe not for very long, but we can bring it down long enough to mount a series of attacks on their bases – and the collaborator government in London.At the very least, we would force them to fall back and rebuild their collaborator force from scratch.We might even give them enough of a bloody nose that they pull out of Britain altogether.”“I doubt they will feel inclined to surrender,” Gabriel said, dryly.“It's much more likely that they’ll take a step back and hammer us from space.”“It’s possible,” Lightbridge-Stewart agreed.“The problem, however, is simple; do we take advantage of the one chance we are likely to get to hurt them, and smash their collaborator government, or do we surrender the initiative to them? We know they’ve been working on building networks for controlling our civilians and putting them to work on alien projects.How long is it going to be before the last resistance fighters are pushed to the Highlands, or the North Yorkshire Moors, or.”Gabriel nodded.“We’re stuck,” he said.“We can keep irritating them, but if we piss them off too much they might just decide that they’re better off without us.”“Maybe not,” Lightbridge-Stewart said.“We were talking to the alien captive about them committing genocide – about them wiping out the entire human race.From what we were told, they can’t – there are interstellar laws that prohibit genocide [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]