The Yeomen of England (Posleen in England)

Chapter Six: Working in Groups

Hack Green Military Command Bunker

Cheshire, United Kingdom

21^thst March 2001
The room was big and large, and yet it wasn’t big enough to hold the two hundred and thirty people comfortably. Some of them knew what was happening; others had been recruited over the last week without a clue as to what was happening. They ranged from military experts, newly rejuvenated, to civilian specialists, many of whom had once worn the uniform of Britain and served in the military.
Colonel Tom Anderson stepped up to the podium, smiling down at the innocents gathered below. He knew that it was wrong, but he felt galvanised by the chance to finally put some of his research into action. No one had seriously predicted fighting a World War One-like battle, not even him, and the few such battles fought since World War One had always been in faraway places; Iran, Ethiopia…never the West. Never in civilised lands, not even the Balkans.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. They’d already had a few incidents of culture shock; rejuvenated veterans were not used to women in the military. He knew that it would only grow worse as they recruited more and more…and that it would explode when they went on to conscription. Some of the men had served in the Indian Army, before India became independent; they hadn’t quite expected to have to deal with Asians and Chinese as equals.
“Some of you have been briefed on this already,” he continued, watching their reactions. “Others…have not been briefed.” He spoke rapidly, running through the Posleen threat and the short time span. “We have only five years to prepare,” he concluded. “What we do here, ladies and gentlemen, will determine the survival of Britain.”
The BBC reporter coughed. “This isn’t a joke, is it?” She asked. There were some chuckles. “You really are serious?”
“I was at death’s door,” a young man said, in an accent that hadn’t been in use since the Second World War. “Now…look at me.” He pivoted on one foot. “I haven’t felt this good since they put my second heart in. I was on death’s door and…”
“Why didn’t you knock?” Anderson asked dryly. The young man had been one of the officers who’d made the most fuss over seniority. “Gentlemen, ladies, we have very little time. Before a month is over, we have to have a working plan for the complete and total mobilisation of British resources, one that will allow us to do that without simply destroying the economy and panicking people. You people are the finest we have in your fields.” He grinned. “Not a single one of you is a rear-echelon type, or a planner who doesn’t implement your plans.”
There were some chuckles from the people who understood the joke. “There is good news and bad news,” he continued. “The good news is that the Prime Minister and the informal formal War Cabinet – don’t ask – have pretty much given us a blank check. All the systems we want that we think would be useful – we can have them. We can do anything, as long as it’s helpful; requisition anything, order anything.” He paused to allow that to sink in. “The good news is that we have only five years to get ready – so we’d better get it fucking right the first time!”
He took a long breath. “You have all, pretty much, agreed to be working on this project for two months,” he said. “At the end of that time, we expect that the entire problem will have become public knowledge, and to prevent panic…we have to have a clear plan to handle the Posleen when they land. This base is at your disposal; work on it and come up with plans we can use. We’ll meet again at the end of the week, long enough to hopefully come up with a complete plan.”
He looked around the room. “You’re going to think that that is awfully fast,” he said. “I’ve had some experience drawing up plans myself” – there were chuckles from those who remembered his reputation – “and normally it takes months to draw up workable plans.” He paused significantly. “We don’t have months, people, so we have to move as fast as we can.”
***

Captain April Weston⁸ knew, without false modesty, that she was one of the best captains in the Royal Navy, one of the only women to ever have stood for admiral rank who had come out of surface warfare. Her relations – she was distantly related to Lord Mountbatten and the Royal Family – had stood her in good stead, but few would have denied that she had earned her rank.

“We have to assume that a large percentage of our people will be going to Fleet, April,” Admiral Bledspeth⁹ said. Inter-service politics had already reared its ugly head. “I imagine that you will be one of them.”
“I confess that that would be…different,” Weston said. The Royal Navy had never sent a spaceman into space, to her certain knowledge. “Why exactly did you want me here?”
Admiral Bledspeth laughed. He’d known her since she’d been a baby; she was one of his favourite nieces. “You have a different take on affairs,” he said. “How can we use the Royal Navy for defending Britain?”
Weston allowed herself a moment of thought. “According to this report, the Americans are reactivating their old battleships,” she said. “We can’t do that, of course, as we don’t have any battleships, but if we were to arm the frigates and destroyers with heavy weapons and heavier armour, we might be able to harass them from the shore.”
She glared down at the reports. One of the problems that had been repeated at length – as if they wouldn’t have understood the first time – was that they didn’t have the slightest idea where the Posleen would land. If they landed in Southampton, the Royal Navy could engage them with gunfire and missiles. If they landed near Oxford, the Royal Navy would be helpless.”
“That would depend on how long our ships could stand up to Posleen weapons,” Marine Captain Ward said. Weston scowled at him; she’d never liked him. There had been the nagging questions surrounding his career in the Falklands War. Still, it was a valid question. “Can we put enough armour on them without sinking them ourselves and scoring an own goal?”
“The Galactics are supposed to be showing us how to make extra armour,” Weston said, flicking through the shamefully thin briefing. They’d been assured that everything that the British Government knew was being shared. Given how thin the folder was, she found that depressing. “Perhaps the frigates will be able to stand up to them for longer.”
Admiral Bledspeth frowned. “If that doesn’t work, or isn’t possible, then we have to commit the Royal Navy as an evacuation force and nothing else,” he said. “Could we land Marines behind Posleen lines?”
Marine Captain Ward hesitated. His service in the Falklands had been under such circumstances, but the Posleen were very different from the Argentineans. “Do the Posleen have lines as we understand them?” He asked. The information wasn’t clear. “The bastards just seem to mill around, half of the time.”
“They’re slaves to their leaders, the so-called God Kings,” Weston said. “I guess they’re not good at caring for them.”
“Perhaps,” Admiral Bledspeth said. “Now, about calling up the naval reserves; we’ll need to rejuvenate the entire reserves and everyone who has sailed in a warship. That should be…interesting.”
“Do we have time for new construction?” Weston asked. She stared down at the charts. “If we start work now, could we build a battleship? Would we get the resources to build one?”
“I would not expect them to give us the resources,” Ward said. “A battleship takes up a lot of resources and the Posleen could sink it quite easily.”
***

“The Americans – some guy called O’Neal – have come up with the idea of powered combat armour,” Anderson said, briefing some infantry officers. He smiled to himself; all of the military and civilian personnel had formed themselves into little groups, sharing ideas and plans. Over in the corner, a handful of civilians were working on evacuation plans for cities, talking about the need to maintain calm at all costs.

“I won’t go into details – they’re covered in the briefing packets – but they’re basically MASK or Voltron-type suits, built using Galactic technology. If we can get enough of them, we’ll be using the suits as a rapid reaction force, intended to plug holes in the defences.”
“I see,” Captain Tyneside said. “How many suits can we expect?”
Anderson shook his head grimly. “It depends on Galactic production capability, of which we know fuck-all,” he said. “To add insult to injury, some of the units will be slated for deep-space deployment, and we may or may not have them for deployment in the UK. The Americans are working on the Darhel, and we’ll be contributing to a joint fund, but for the moment we’re looking at a ceiling of a thousand such suits, perhaps more.”
“That’s…not very many,” Captain Tyneside said. They’d passed ‘sir’ some time ago. “The Posleen might just land in a city.”
Anderson nodded. “If we have time, we’ll have the entire non-military population safely in the Highlands,” he said. “The odds are highly likely, however, that we’ll have to fight to hold open escape routes. Any thoughts?”
“Other than nuclear demolition weapons for the cities?” Captain Tyneside asked dryly. “We’re going to have to fort up everywhere, preparing trenches all over the country. We really need more manpower than we have.”
Anderson nodded and waved a hand at one of the groups. “That lot is working on a conscription plan,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’ll have something like half of the entire currently-active army slated for deployment to the threatened worlds, which will limit our ability to absorb the new recruits.”
“I don’t like that at all,” Captain Tyneside admitted. “We might be cut off from our forces abroad. What would have happened if we’d been cut off from the BEF and the Germans had invaded?”
“We would still have won the war,” Anderson said, who had researched such scenarios thoroughly. “Still, I take your point, but we have to earn Galactic funds, and this is the only way we can do it.”
Captain Tyneside nodded sadly. “I cannot say that I approve,” he said, “but I understand.” He changed the subject. “We would have to spend the rest of this year rejuvenating NCOs and officers from the past, and then start using them to train up the newcomers. Christ, what a problem.”
Anderson nodded. “We have planners working on mass production of heavy guns, machine guns and other weapons, ones that might just be working in time. We can’t rely on the Galactics, not with all of the demands on their equipment, so we have to make do with what we have. We’re working on mass expansion of our industries, and at the same time building weapons we haven’t used for years.”
“Sounds like you should rejuvenate some of the people who really know about building these things,” Captain Tyneside commented. “You know, the people who built weapons for the Second World War.”
Anderson blinked. “Good thought,” he said, scribbling a note down on a piece of paper. “This is going to be trickier; many of them are in retirement homes. We have to catch those who might snuff it before we can make a public announcement, the ones who might just be useful.”
He glanced across the room. “Excuse me a moment,” he said. “I think I need to speak to the representative of the world’s greatest broadcasting company.”
***

Charlene Jackson was reeling against the wall, wondering absently if it was all a nightmare. She’d expected a war, but she’d never expected this, never expected men and women clinically discussing schemes like poisoning humans for aliens to eat. The images from the alien worlds, of small alien beings crunched like tiny mice and eaten by the monstrous semi-centaurs…

It felt almost like a betrayal. She’d always loved the pictures of the centaur creatures, from their existence in the Narnia books to fairy tales. It had been part of her childhood…then the dream had betrayed her by coming true. She’d been sick, twice, when she’d seen the recordings; even some of the military men had reacted the same way. She forgot everything except her disgust and her horror.
“Are you all right?” The Colonel asked. She was certain that he hadn’t been sick; he seemed to be enjoying himself. “Come with me.”
He led her into a private room. Charlene was too upset to care about being alone with him. She gasped once and gratefully accepted the tissue he passed her. “Thanks,” she muttered, wiping her eyes. “I’m sorry about the mess.”
“It hits us all that way,” the Colonel admitted. His name was Anderson; she remembered now. “Every time we see those images.”
“You’re lucky,” Charlene said. “This is no joke, is it? Not one of those American tricks to see how people will react in a stressful situation?”
“I’m afraid not,” Anderson said grimly. “I’ve checked it out as best as I can, but everything adds up, from the American involvement to the aliens. I’ve seen one of the friendly ones, one of the Himmit.”
“What about the other fighting race, the Darhel?” Charlene asked. “What are they like?”
“I’ve never met one,” Anderson said. “There aren’t any pictures either, they’re careful about them. Why? I have no idea; there are teams researching them as well, but information is so limited.”
“I see,” Charlene said. “Why am I here?”
Anderson smiled at her, a grim smile that flickered briefly on his face. “In two months, perhaps earlier, perhaps later, we will have to inform everyone what’s happening,” he said.
“There’ll be panic,” Charlene protested. “That’s far too soon.”
“So I have advised the Prime Minister, and so someone called General Horner has informed the United States of America’s President,” Anderson said. “We’re hoping for longer, particularly since that would give us time to rejuvenate the really essential people without anyone noticing or demanding that they themselves get priority. We’re planning for two months.”
“It will be like the War of the Worlds broadcast,” Charlene protested. “Didn’t you hear about the panic?”
Anderson grinned. “That’s why you’re here,” he said. “We want you to write articles, present TV shows…presenting our efforts in the best possible light.”
Charlene glared at him. “You want me to do propaganda for the military,” she said. She grinned suddenly. “You just want me for my body.”
Anderson shook his head slowly. “The Posleen give the saying about eating someone out a whole new meaning,” he said. He sighed. “I won’t lie to you, Miss Jackson; we will take ghastly losses, perhaps even large parts of the country. Preventing a panic is essential, and propaganda, as you put it, is part of that.”
Charlene sighed. “It’s at times like these I wish I’d listened to what my mother had told me,” she said. “It was something about never volunteering for anything.”