Chapter Twelve

'There's nothing I would like more than to "stop them",' Bambera said curtly. 'But I will not send my men on a suicide mission. If you've assembled the command staff simply to - '

'The Martians won't stop at Dover, you know. The world is at stake here.'

Captain Ford pointed to his charts. 'Brigadier, as soon as we know the full extent of the Martian plan, we can begin to sabotage it. Guerrilla tactics: block their convoys, blow up their factories. Ferment civil unrest ... '

'Until?' Lethbridge-Stewart asked.

'What do you mean?'

'Why are we playing at being the French Resistance? Who are our allies, who will help us?'

'No-one is happy with the Martian presence,' Bambera reminded him. 'The EU imposed trade sanctions to prevent the export of Martian technology. The UN would have passed that Alien Non-Proliferation Resolution if it wasn't for the Chinese veto.' With only six weeks to go before the British were due to leave Hong Kong, the Chinese were going out of their way to stay on good terms with the Martians. The United Kingdom's membership of the UN was officially 'under review', but in reality little had changed. They hadn’t even lost their seat on the Security Council.

'The government-in-exile are rallying support for us. The Queen is in Washington at - '

'The US Congress has already agreed not to interfere in Britain's "internal affairs". They want the Martian technology. The EU members haven't withdrawn their embassy staff. Bambera, we are on our own. We have to take the lead.'

'How?' she said scornfully.

Lethbridge-Stewart began to explain the plan that he had formulated on the way back from town. 'The Provisional Government is based in London, but we know that their military forces are all in the north, or heading up there. They are going to secure the northern cities - Manchester, Leeds and York are all Royalist strongholds. At the moment, the Provisionals can't even think of moving north of there, and so Scotland's almost untouched, apart from the air-raid on Edinburgh.'