As May 25th is rapidly approaching, I started thinking about how I personally would survive the Fall. Once I worked out how it could be done, I realised that government would survive because of the nuclear war contingency plans that were developed back in the 1950s. I don't think that Altair took this factor into account.

I then started thinking about the old greys. According to the game, we are expected to believe that they spent a year sitting around in a cave in India, scratching themselves. No way!

I've put the emphasis on my personal survival and the establishment of the Council of Earth instead of combat.

This story does contain some mid-game spoilers.

Sounds interesting, when will we see it?

He had some trouble posting it, so I'll post it if he can't get it to work.

THE FALL

BBC news report; Monday 31st May, 2004, 1800 BST. "In a statement issued half an hour ago, a government spokesman confirmed that telemetry from weather satellites is showing that the mysterious dark clouds that appeared in the upper atmosphere last week, blocking out all light from the sun across the world, have stopped growing and are now actually beginning to fall to earth. The Prime Minister has welcomed the news, stating that this proves that his farsighted policy of allowing the situation to mature was correct and strongly condemned the leader of the Opposition for his hasty call to launch an attack on our extraterrestrial brothers. The Prime Minister also demanded a full apology from the Daily Mail newspaper for its headline story which carried an alleged warning about our alien visitors from another group of aliens, a story that the Prime Minister called 'irresponsible and reckless scaremongering'. Internationally, scientists are confident that they will soon learn the nature of the dust clouds and are renewing attempts to establish contact with the alien spaceship currently in high orbit above the world. In other news, a duck held up traffic at Waterloo Bridge when..."

Sarah rang me. We had been best friends at university, partly because of our mutual interest in hill walking and partly because we had been the only ones on our course who turned up to lectures and didn't do drugs. We lost touch soon after graduation, but we had met up again a few months ago at an anti-war rally in Cardiff. We had recently begun dating and it was becoming serious.

"Can we meet up tomorrow morning, really early? I mean 5am? I need to go with you somewhere, and it's really really important."

I thought about this for a moment, Sarah did not use words like 'really really important' very often, and I trusted her. Also, hardly anyone had bothered to turn up at the office since the skies darkened despite the government telling us to carry on as normal. "Okay then, but why so early?"

"Thanks. I want us to get there before the rush hour starts. It'll be easier to explain everything when you see where we're going for yourself. Pack an overnight bag, and I'll pick you up at your place."

Sarah picked me up at 5am the next day. As we drove up to the Fforest Fawr region of the Brecon Beacons, Sarah explained her reasoning. "This dust, or spores, or whatever, I just know that something bad is going to happen. Don't ask me how I know, I just do. I've loaded up with supplies in the back, and there's a place I found where we can hole up until this thing is over."

I was a little dubious, but she pointed out that we could just think of it as being like a camping trip, and if the spores turned out to be harmless, we wouldn't need to spend more than a couple of days there. Her decisive argument was that we would have the chance to spend some time together.

She explained about the place she had found. "About a year ago, I was on a hiking trip in the Beacons, and I saw this strange looking building up on one of the mountains. I had a look around and it was like this underground hut. I read up on it, and do you know what it was?"

I confessed that I had no idea.

"It was a Royal Observation Corps nuclear fallout monitoring post, sort of like a miniature nuclear shelter. Back in the fifties, they built over 1,500 of them all over the country. If there was a nuclear war they were meant to measure nuclear explosions and radiation levels and stuff and radio the information to the government."

"What on earth for?"

"Well, if the government knew what areas were still safe, refugees could be sent there. Also a nuclear explosion would have destroyed the telephone system and the main radio transmitters. The ROC radio network would have been the only means of communication across the country. Anyway, they decommissioned the posts twelve years ago, except they must have missed this one."

We parked the car at a lay-by, and by torchlight while carrying our supplies, walked up a half mile track to the monitoring post on a spur jutting out from the hillside. We could hear some sheep on the hillside, and the twittering of a few birds confused as to where the sun was. The post was surrounded by a low wire mesh fence to keep the sheep out. On the gate some genius had placed the sign 'British Telecom property, keep out', most walkers were considerate about wandering onto private property, but an MOD sign was an invitation to trespass. The gate was unlocked.

On the surface, the monitoring post consisted of a raised hatchway leading down five metres to the living space. The hatch was a 60cm square metal plate hinged on one side and a concrete counterweight on the opposite side, it could be locked on the inside by turning a handle on its underside. The other surface features were a raised ventilation shaft, a pneumatic radio antenna and a fixed survey meter probe for measuring radiation levels. The living space consisted of a cramped room measuring 4.5 metres by 2.5. There was a bunk bed dominating one end of the room, a cupboard, a wall mounted desk, two folding chairs, a battery powered two-way radio and some measuring equipment for measuring the power of any nuclear blasts and radioactive fallout. Lighting was provided by a 12 volt florescent strip light. One wall was dominated by the large air-filtration system. There was a tiny side-room which contained a large 12 volt lead acid battery - our source of power, a petrol generator for recharging the battery, a pump for the pneumatic radio antenna, and a primitive chemical toilet - the only hygienic provision in the monitoring post. All the equipment was in working order except the radio.

The monitoring post inventory consisted of enough food, bottled water and petrol to last a two person team for three weeks - Sarah had taken enough supplies with us for another week. There were also spare cartridges for the filter system and a few tools, including an official issue crowbar, a first aid kit and a small portable cooker. Many of the cans of food were of the zero emission self-heating variety developed in the 1980s. There was a small hand pump, apparently to deal with flooding during winter exercises and any accidents with the chemical toilet. I also found the official log books. They showed that the monitoring post had been regularly maintained and the supplies refreshed - the last inspection had been in March. It looked like the government had forgotten to decommission this post and the maintenance had continued out of sheer inertia. The entire post had been designed to accommodate two or three people for the best part of a month, although living conditions were primitive and cramped.

I got the filter system working while Sarah closed the air-tight hatch. I then switched on the generator for a couple of hours to top the battery charge up, and we stowed away the supplies that Sarah had brought. Fortunately the filter system was efficient and there was no build up of fumes from the generator.

We switched on the radio - the news had changed dramatically in the last hour or two. "Reports are flooding in of massive casualties wherever the spores have landed; initial estimate put the death toll at over a hundred thousand. So far, the spore have landed in the Pacific region and eastern Asia, however they are expected to land all over the world in the next few hours. Stay indoors, seal all windows and doors, and do not go outside unless absolutely necessary."

Sarah and I exchanged horrified glances. I wondered how she had known that the spores would be dangerous. "Do you think the filter system will work against the spores?" she asked.

"I think we're going to be okay. It must have been designed to work against radioactive dust. The radioactive dust from Chernobyl stayed in the atmosphere for weeks. These spores must be much larger as they fell from the atmosphere so quickly. And I don't think they're going to congregate here. We're right up on top of the hill here, and you know how windswept it is up here. We've got petrol and spare cartridges for the filter, and I've seen the instructions and it looks very easy to change the cartridges."

We continued to listen to the radio that evening. The spores were now falling across the world. Anybody who was exposed to the spores showed the same symptoms - severe blistering and open sores on the skin and a burning sensation in the lungs, death invariably followed in less than an hour, not matter how small the exposure. Several hasty autopsies at centres specialising in highly infectious diseases revealed that the spores had been absorbed into the bloodstream, where they had rapidly multiplied, causing massive cellular damage. The emergency services had collapsed under the strain because almost anybody who tried to help the casualties became one more victim of the spores. Several nations launched nuclear missiles at the alien spacecraft, which simply moved to a much higher orbit beyond the range of the missiles.

Although it had been a long day, Sarah and I spent the entire night listening to the radio in silence.

R.O.C. FFOREST FAWR

We continued to pick up BBC transmissions the next day on the portable radio. The news across the world was terrifying. The spores were continuing to fall across the world and billions of people were now either dead or dying, the only known defence was to stay inside and seal all windows and doors, and even that was no guarantee. As if things weren't bad enough, there were reports flooding in of UFOs using some kind of energy weapon to bomb installations across the world. The attacks did not seem to be random, but no one could work out the pattern. So far, the only known attacks in the British Isles had been on Salisbury Plain.

We heard the last ever BBC report that afternoon: "...confirming that the spores have contaminated the water supply. Do not drink unfiltered tap water under any circumstances, drink only bottled water. Do not venture outside no matter what the reason. If you are sick or injured, do not go to..." The voice was cut off, perhaps because the power to the transmitter had cut out. I tried the other stations but there was only static.

Sarah started crying. "It's all over for us, isn't it? The entire world, we're finished, I mean, what hope is there?"

I put an arm round her shoulder and hugged her while I thought about what to say next. "We're still alive, and we're damm well going to stay that way. A lot of people have been lost, but remember there are lots of other survivors like us out there - individuals and small groups who are well placed to get through the disaster and are wondering what to do now. The aliens have done their best to destroy us, and they failed, and it's our turn now. We'll meet up with other survivors and get organised. And then we'll exterminate each and every one of those alien bastards. About a hundred thousand years ago, an asteroid strike or volcanic eruption reduced the human race to less than ten thousand individuals. For thousands of years our species was on the verge of extinction, but we got through it and came back stronger. And we'll do it again"

We decided to try to fix the problem with the radio transmitter, as it used a different frequency to the normal civilian stations. Privately, I didn't think it would do much good, but it kept our minds occupied better than thoughts about whether our relatives had been among the first to die, or if any of them were still alive, trapped in their houses and having to passively await the end. We talked as we worked, I learned more about Bon Jovi than I could ever possibly want to know, and Sarah got a synopsis of every single episode of Hancock's Half Hour. Still, the conversation was better than thinking about what was going on in the world outside the hatch - were our relatives already dead, or were they sitting there at home, in the dark and awaiting their fate? We tracked down the problem with the radio; it was only some loose wiring. It would have taken an idiot ten minutes to track down and fix - we had taken five days. At least trying to find the problem kept our minds off what was happening on the other side of the hatch.

On the morning of June 8th, I used the pneumatic pump to crank up the radio antenna (well oiled, thankfully) and we were ready to begin transmitting. We sheepishly sent out a few "is there anybody there" type messages. Then came that wonderful reply:

"This is ROC Ledbury receiving you strength three. What is your situation and location?"

Sarah and I were too excited to speak for a moment - to hear the sweet sound of another human voice when we had began to feel that we were the only survivors in the world. Sarah replied "Thank god, we thought we were the only ones. Me and my boyfriend are holed up in what we think is an ROC monitoring post in Fforest Fawr in the Brecon Beacons."

"Do you have everything you need?" asked our new best friend in Ledbury.

"Yes," I replied. "This post was well maintained, and we've got enough supplies and power for another three weeks or so. One request - do you have any news? We haven't heard anything since the BBC stopped transmitting on Wednesday."

"I'd be happy to pass on what I know. The most important thing is that the global spore-fall ended on Thursday. Apparently the skies are clear now, but there seems to be a lot of spores just lying on the ground. The eggheads at Nantwich and the Cotswolds think that the alien spores are unstable, and they're going to break down in a few days. In the meantime, you two should stay inside. Don't open that hatch for any reason."

"Nantwich? How many other people have you contacted?"

"So far, about twenty other ROC posts, and of course the strategic nuclear command centres. The people in Dover have even picked up calls from France and Belgium! Over the last couple of days we've set up a radio network that covers a fair bit of the country. By the way, your transmitter probably only has a range of sixty or eighty miles tops. The good news is that we're trained at doing a sort of relay system, so I can pass on any messages for you. We think there's quite a few other shelters out there whose occupants don't have a working radio. Oh yes, mobile and land-line phones don't work anymore, so we're back to short-wave radio."

"What's with all those ROC posts? The government was supposed to have decommissioned them when the cold war ended."

"Mostly they did, but the decommissioning went over budget, so they didn't bother with the rest. During the twilight, some ROC veterans like me had a feeling we should take our families to the posts. I've got my wife and daughter here. It's cramped, but at least we're alive. The Veterans Association maintained some posts as well."

"Surely it must have cost the government money to keep maintaining the posts?"

"Yes, but that comes out of a different budget"

Typical government stupidity. Sarah and I laughed for the first time since the Fall began. "Okay," I said. "We're signing off for now to conserve our power. We'll contact you again same time tomorrow to see if there's any news."

Despite the civil defence cutbacks of the previous decade, the nuclear shelters and monitoring posts had managed to build up an efficient short-wave radio network in the days after the spore-fall. It was a tribute to the civil defence planning of the 50s and 60s and the dedication of the volunteers of the ROC. Between us, we shared news, information, advice and even jokes. On June 20th, Sarah and I were told that the alien spores were breaking down rapidly, much to our relief. We were advised that we should still wait another few days before venturing out if possible.

During those days we heard many anecdotes about the ROC including how they had once shot down a German V2 rocket in 1945 when one of the observers fired a warning rocket which accidentally hit the V2, and the difficulties involved in emptying the chemical toilet, specifically getting the waste up the shaft without spilling any. Apparently, during exercises most personnel had done their business behind a bush to put off the messy task of emptying the toilet. These anecdotes made our world feel far wider than the narrow confines of our rustic shelter.

On the 24th, news came through that contact had been made with HMS Ark Royal. Most of the crew had survived because the air ventilation system automatically filtered out radioactive dust, and as it happened, the alien spores. The fact that this aircraft carrier - the flagship of the Royal Navy was still out there greatly lifted our spirits. The commander of the Ark Royal was planning to anchor in the Solent and use the helicopters at his disposal to look for survivors across southern Britain.

Sarah and I picked the morning of June 27th for a shopping trip to Brecon, 12 miles away, as we had almost no petrol left for the generator. The previous evening ROC Ledbury gave us some advice and the latest news.

"The spores have completely gone now, we don't know what they were, and now it's likely to stay that way. Some patrols have gone out there looking for survivors, and it's pretty desolate as the spores destroyed all the animal and plant life. The main problem is going to be the zombie mutants."

"I beg your pardon?"

"There's some kind of zombie mutants out there and they've attacked several patrols. The soldiers reported that they looked like dead and emancipated people with some kind of massive hideous lump growing out their backs. It's worse than Night of the Living Dead. You'd better get a gun. The first time you see a farmhouse, go in there and look for a shotgun. Most hill farmers had one."

Sarah and I had never used a gun in our lives, so Ledbury spent the next hour patiently relaying instructions on how to use a shotgun.

We decided upon our plan in the evening. We would load up the rucksack with some bottled water, a couple of self-heating cans of food, and some tools, including the Government Issue crowbar. We planned to drive to the nearest farmhouse, look for that shotgun, and then load up on supplies in Brecon before making our way back. I also planned to take some gardening supplies. It wasn't too late in the year for an autumn crop of peas, lettuces, beetroots, onions and radishes if we grew them somewhere in the valley sheltered from the wind. I thought that as seeds are stored in airtight packaging to keep them viable, they would still be viable. Besides, some fresh food would be a welcome change to our present diet.

For the time being, we decided that we would retain our shelter as home. We had clean, uncontaminated water from the mountain streams, and we could get everything we would need to survive in shopping trips to the small market towns in the region. I pointed out that with so much death, there would be a serious risk of disease if we decided to live in any of the towns, or even entered the larger cities. At least we didn't need power for the filter anymore. With the spores gone, we get our air needs from the natural circulation from the ventilation shaft.

NEW WORLD

I opened the hatch at 7.30 am and we stepped out of our shelter for the first time in 26 days. Unfiltered air!

The first thing that struck me was the desolation. Across the hillside and the valley all the trees were blackened and dead, their leaves gone. I looked down - the grass and heather had withered and died. The second thing that struck me was the silence. Few city-dwellers realise how loud the countryside can be due to the chirping of birds, the buzzing of insects and the noises of cattle and sheep. Yet there was only the silence of endless death. Sarah also felt it - that oppressive feeling of being the only one left alive in the world. The Brecon Beacons can be bleak during the winter months, but this was many times worse. During winter, you know that the flora and fauna are merely dormant, waiting for spring to arrive. The others had warned us what to expect, but nothing could prepare you for the sight.

We started walking down the half-mile footpath to Sarah's car. We saw our first sign of life about half way down the path, a strange featherless bird-like creature crawling around helplessly on the road. The creature looked like a small pterodactyl gone wrong. It must have seen us because it suddenly started emitting loud cries and squawks. "I've never seen anything like that," said Sarah as we stood there watching the creature pathetically trying to flap its wings. "Could the spores have mutated it like that? And why didn't they kill it just like everything else?"

We reached the car and drove to the farmhouse shortly afterwards. It looked like a typical Welsh hill farm with a couple of barns adjacent to a white painted farmhouse with a slate roof. The farmer had made his living from the hardy mountain sheep that had lived in the nearby fields and dotted the hillside before the twilight and spore-fall. We found the farmer's body outside one of the barns. His body was partially eaten and in an advanced stage of decomposition, but it was still possible to see the open sores on his skin caused by the spores. I tried to avoid being sick or start thinking about what kind of creature had eaten him.

A search of the farmhouse revealed a gun case in a cupboard in the farmer's bedroom. Inside the case there was an old looking shotgun and three boxes of cartridges - 36 in all. The shotgun was a typical double-barrelled shotgun with a two round capacity. Most farmers had one for dealing with foxes and putting down sickly livestock - a cartridge costs about 50p but a vet can charge up to £100 for his trouble. We decided to take two boxes with us and use the third box to practice loading and firing the gun.

I was at handling the gun than Sarah, as she had more trouble handling the 'kick'. She suggested that I take the shotgun and cartridges, and she takes the backpack. We also decided to take a couple of carving knives from the kitchen, just in case. I felt guilty about not doing anything about the body of the farmer.

When we walked out to the car, we saw a hideous monster. Sarah screamed, and no wonder! The upper half of the creature's body looked like a giant repulsive fly with large insect wings, but that wasn't the worst of it. The lower part of the body appeared to be an upside-down upper part of a human body. The human part looked severely emancipated - sucked dry even. Then I noticed that the mutant was holding a pistol in its human arms!

The mutant hovered towards us, firing its pistol twice. Fortunately its shots were wildly inaccurate - controlling the aim of a dead, upside-down human must have been taxing its dexterity to the limit. I recovered some of my composure and fired the shotgun, catching the creature in its left pair of wings. It was still flying, but unsteadily and fired again, narrowly missing Sarah. I gave it the second barrel in its ugly insectoid face, killing it instantly.

"Did you see that gun?" As I asked, I realised how pointless my question was as Sarah indicated how close that last bullet had been to her head. "I think we'd better go to Sennybridge and then head on to Brecon. It'll only add another six miles to our total journey."

"Why? It's twenty-toe country."

"The army camp. Those mutants must be a lot more dangerous than we thought if some of them have guns. I think we'd better add assault rifles and flak jackets to our shopping list. And what did you think of the wings on that creature? It couldn't have used those wings to fly - they're too small. They must have been for controlling direction and speed instead. I expect it had some kind of biological way of creating internal buoyancy, anti-gravity if you like."

"You've been watching too much Star Trek," commented Sarah.

"Well, we have just been chased by something that was half human and half giant mutant fly. I wonder if it was the creature that ate the farmer? In any case, they're going to be a serious problem for other survivors as well."

We got back to the car and drove on. The next habitation we reached was a hamlet called Heol Senni. Heol Senni consists of about thirty houses clustered around an inn by a crossroads. It slopes down almost to a bridge over a small river called the Afon Senni. Just outside the hamlet there is a farmhouse that was converted to a bed and breakfast hotel. Normally in late June the gardens and hanging baskets would be a riot of colours and you would regularly expect to see backpackers enjoying their hiking holiday in the Beacons. Now, the sight of the place only showed what had been taken from us. There were several decomposing human and animal bodies lying on the pavement and in the dead gardens. Many of the bodies had been worried by scavengers. A car had crashed into a wall, and the driver was lying slumped over his wheel. Several putrefying lumps of flesh in a large pond were all that was left of somebody's Koi collection. As the air was deathly still in the heat of late morning, an ominous air of decay was hanging around the hamlet.

The next hamlet, Defynnog was almost a carbon copy of Heol Senni. This time, however we saw another mutant fly hovering by the crossroads. This time it was unarmed, so Sarah stopped the car and I calmly emptied both barrels into the ugly creature's face at point blank range, which was the first time Sarah had smiled all day. We reached Sennybridge shortly afterwards. Sennybridge was just a larger version of Heol Senni, pre-Fall population: 1,500, current population: me, Sarah and a very recently deceased flapping mutant. It had tried to waddle out of the way, but Sarah swerved the car and got it anyway.

The army training camp itself was surprisingly unimpressive. There was a parade ground with a flagpole and a couple of now barren fields. There were some houses for the officers and their families, and some prefab barracks for the soldiers. One end of the camp was dominated by a large administration block. Security was provided by a low brick wall and a sign by the gate saying "Ministry of Defence property, keep out". After what we had seen today, Sarah and I were getting good at not thinking about the decomposing bodies.

We cautiously explored the administration block - there were a handful of bodies inside as the spores would have got into the air-conditioning, but not many. Presumably as most administration workers had been civilians, they had decided to stay at home with their families during the last days.

We found the armoury - there were no signs of looting so there couldn't have been any other survivors in the area. Although the armoury cupboards were locked, the keys didn't take long to find. We found everything we wanted and even a pair of small field radios. I was a bit dubious about the assault rifles - in recent years the SA80 had gained a reputation in the mass media for being unreliable and difficult to maintain, and the government had been slated by the media for being too cheap to replace them with assault rifles that actually worked. Even an unreliable assault rifle is better than no assault rifle, but we decided to take a pistol each as well, as a backup.

We spent the rest of the morning on the indoor firing range, learning how load and fire the assault rifles and pistols, and how to switch between auto-fire and single shots with the SA80s. After a few hours, we had both become reasonably competent at handling them. We still had no idea about weapons maintenance, but as there were soldiers in some of the larger bunkers, we though that we could find out what we needed to through the radio network. We then had a meal of self heating beef stew, put on the flak jackets and helmets and then set off for Brecon.

Sarah and I gathered all the supplied that we needed in Brecon, including the gardening equipment and seeds. I also found some transparent flexible plastic tubing which would come in useful when we had to start siphoning petrol from abandoned cars.

The journey back was uneventful until we were back on the footpath leading to our shelter. We were greeted by the loud squawking of the flapping mutant we had seen earlier, but this time it had company! Two additional mutants. This time, they appeared to be humanoid creatures with grossly enlarged heads and upper torsos and what appeared to be emancipated human bodies. Two withered looking arms sprouted from their obscenely misshapen heads. Fortunately they weren't armed.

As the humanoid mutants walked over to us, Sarah and I dropped our shopping and pulled the pistols out of our side holsters. The horrible creatures continued to advance, so we opened fire. We each used up a magazine before those horrible creatures fell to the ground, oozing green blood, largely due to our unfamiliarity with firearms. I realised that it had been the screeching of the flapping mutant that had attracted the other two creatures, so I stamped my foot down on its skull, silencing its cries instantly.

THE ALIENS

Sarah and I decided that in future, whenever we left the shelter we would be wearing helmets, flak jackets and side holsters. One of us would be the 'mule' and the other would be the lookout, assault rifle at the ready. We would also take the field radios with us as well. We then decided on June 30th for our next trip, this time to the small mining town of Hirwaun.

We started off by looking for survivors, nothing. At the other end of town there was a drystone wall, and beyond that, fields of dead grass and open moors. We saw a bronze coloured blob at the far end of the fields. I looked at it through our field binoculars; it was a small landed UFO! I could see three aliens walking around, they appeared to be searching for something, or someone. The aliens looked like the stereotypical aliens you get in bad sci-fi and even worse magazines on the paranormal. They were wearing what appeared to be reddish jumpsuits, and each one was holding a small object in his hand.

Sarah and I ducked below the wall - the aliens did not appear to have seen us, but they were defiantly moving in our direction. I thought about this situation. We were wearing our armour and we had our rifles and some cover, they were in the middle of an open field. We could either retreat before the aliens spotted us, or we could fight them. Then I thought about my sister - she would have been married in another month if the aliens hadn't come, and I realised that there was only one thing to do. I looked into Sarah's grey eyes, and I could see her thinking the same thing.

We started burst firing at the aliens. It took them a moment to realise what was happening and where the shots were coming from, and in that moment one of the aliens went down. The two survivors exchanged shots with us for a few seconds - those objects they were holding were some kind of energy weapon but fortunately it didn't seem to have a burst fire mode. Then there was a loud gunshot from a hundred yards to our left. One of the aliens fell, the gun fired again and the last alien was down.

We waited for a few minutes, but there was no sign of any more aliens. We then walked over to where our unexpected ally had been, but he was nowhere to be found. Sarah and I inspected the alien craft, it was just sitting there. There was no discernable entrance, and the structure of the craft gave an impression of being unpleasantly organic. We then walked over to one of the alien bodies. The dead alien was oozing yellow blood from its wounds and the jumpsuit looked unpleasantly organic. I was worried about the possibility of other aliens turning up to investigate what had happened to their comrades, so Sarah and I recovered one of the alien weapons and promptly returned to the monitoring post that we had begun to think of as home.

As soon as Sarah closed the hatch, I was on the radio to ROC Ledbury with the news of our encounter with the aliens. He was astounded at the news and delighted that we had 'bloodied the bastards'. Apparently there had been a couple of eyewitness reports in Northern France, but as far as he was aware, this was the first time anyone had managed to fight them. He promised to pass our message on to the regional command centre.

The next evening we radioed Ledbury at the pre-arranged time, and we were disheartened by when they had to say. Apparently regional command had concluded that we were either insane or lying. Apparently it was absurd to think that a couple of honorary members of the ROC could have pulled off something the army hadn't managed yet We had risked our lives against the aliens, and for what? Ledbury said that the personnel at the other ROC posts believed us and they understood our anger and frustration. Apparently it was an army tradition to sneer at the Civil Defence organisations and take the credit for their accomplishments. Ledbury said that the same thing had happened when Rudolph Hess made his famous flight to Scotland.

First thing next morning, Sarah and I drove to the regional command bunker outside Bath and demanded to see the idiot in charge. He was apparently too busy to speak to us, so we dumped our captured alien weapon in the lap of the functionary who deigned to honour us with his time, and we stomped out.

When Ledbury radioed us that evening, he sounded remarkably cheerful. "You two caused a right rumpus with that stunt you pulled in Bath! There's been messages going between Bath and National Strategic Command in Hampshire all afternoon over it. Apparently that bloke you gave the alien weapon to started playing with it, and he accidentally destroyed a filing cabinet and his office door! When his secretary found him, he'd fainted from shock! The general in charge at Bath has been chewed out for wasting two days by not listening to you! Hampshire wants to speak with you directly. We've worked out a system to slave several transmitters to yours, so range won't be a problem for once, but there'll be more static interference than normal. The next voice you hear will be theirs."

The person we spoke to was a no-nonsense general who spoke in clipped, precise terms. He grilled us for over two hours, questioning us on every detail of our fight. The only disappointment for him had been that we didn't have any idea who the fellow survivor was. Evidently the aliens had wanted to find him, and equally evidently he didn't want to be found by either the aliens or us.

By the time troops and scientists from the regional command centres in Bath and the Midlands turned up at Hirwaun, it was too late. The aliens had recovered their vessel and the bodies of their comrades.

DREAMLAND U.K.

During the first couple of weeks of July, intensive agriculture programmes were started in the area around the National Strategic Command Centre in Hampshire; this was thought to be the most efficient way of feeding the population. The humble ROC posts were retained as with the telecommunications network down, they were the only means of communication and ground reconnaissance in large parts of the country. Survivors were being located by helicopters operating from the Ark Royal, and they were warned about the growing dangers posed by the mutants and advised to travel to Hampshire, where they could be fed and protected. Most survivors were glad to do so, relieved to know that some organisation had survived in Britain. A few small groups of survivors decided that they preferred their new independent lifestyle, although they were still told where to go if they changed their minds. The plan that had swung into action was an adaptation of contingency plans drawn up in the 1950s for the continuation of government in the aftermath of a nuclear war; there would have been hardly anyone left to govern, but that was hardly the point.

On the morning of July 14th, a new voice came in over the radio. "Hello ROC Fforest Fawr, are you receiving me?" The voice, which had a definite Indian accent, was new to us, and by now we were familiar with the voices of all the personnel at the bases within range of our transmitter. The signal was very strong, so he could not have been far away.

Sarah was closest to the radio. "This is Fforest Fawr. I'm receiving you. Who are you? What's your situation?"

"Please listen carefully. I using a field radio and I am in a farmhouse four miles to the south of your monitoring post. I would like to meet with you face to face. I am the person that the aliens that you fought were hunting."

"Do you want to come up here then?"

"I would prefer not to. That might place you both in a great deal of danger from the aliens, which I would prefer not to do. Could one of you come here and meet me?"

I was curious about this individual. He had fought the aliens, yet he had clearly avoided meeting other survivors, up till now. I butted in. "Okay, we'll go. I can take a field radio which will let us keep in touch."

He gave further directions, but his next reply was enigmatic. "When we meet, please do not be alarmed by my appearance. Physically I am very unlike you."

"What do you mean?"

"When you see me, your first reaction may be hostile. You will probably wish to kill me. I know why and I understand."

"Is that why you ran off like that two weeks ago?"

"Yes."

"I don't understand."

"You will, when we meet. Despite the risks, it is important that we do meet. There is much that you need to understand if we are to stand against the forces invading this world." He signed off. Even though he had been the one to call for the meeting, he defiantly sounded apprehensive at the prospect.

Normally Sarah and I went out together, but this time seemed different. I planned to take one of the field radios, and Sarah would listen in on the conversation back at the post. She could also use the main radio to automatically transmit my conversation to the posts at Ledbury and Gower. I went through the now routine procedure of donning my armour, helmet and side holster. I then checked my rifle and sidearm before leaving home. It was not long before I pulled up the car outside the farmhouse.

I went into the farmhouse and opened the door to the living room and I was horrified by what I saw. An alien! My finger began to tighten on the trigger on my rifle. Then I thought that this was an alien who had killed two of his people, and perhaps I should wait before killing him.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me you're an alien?"

"Would you have agreed to meet me if I had?" asked the alien, calmly.

I already knew the answer to that one. "Well, who are you and what do you want?"

"My name is Mr Slooz. As you can see, I am a member of the race that attacked your world, however I represent a different faction within that race. We believe in peaceful coexistence with other worlds, and are opposed to the other faction's philosophy of seeking power so that they might dominate others. We are appalled and ashamed by what they have done."

It had never before occurred to me that aliens could have internal factions with serious differences of view. This never happened in any sci-fi film I had ever seen. Mr Slooz went on to explain how his people had been observing us for thousands of years, while staying out of the way of the development of our civilisation. After the Roswell incident they had decided to discreetly approach several world leaders, and a number of bases had been set up at secret locations across the world, with the aim of gradually acclimatising people to the notion of extraterrestrial life - this was apparently the purpose of those 'leaks' of information from Area-51. They had been a calming influence on the politics of the cold war; the diplomatic deal that had ended the Cuban Missile Crisis had apparently been brokered by them. It had surprised me to learn that one such base had been set up at Enfield Down on Salisbury Plain, and Mr Slooz had been the Reticulan ambassador to the United Kingdom. I wondered why they had been so interested in Earth, when they had the whole galaxy to choose from.

"At first we were interested because our worlds are only forty light-years apart; this is one of the closest worlds to our own where life has advanced beyond the single-cellular level. Then we discovered that life on your world is genetically extremely similar to life on ours, and we realised that life on our two worlds must have had common origins."

"You aren't going to start going on about panspermia, are you? I hate that theory. I mean if life came here from elsewhere, how did it get started over there?"

"We considered that theory, however fossil records on your world stretch back further in time than they do on ours. We now think that life originated on your world of its own accord, and it was then deliberately transplanted to ours. We do not know who did this, or why."

"Has this got anything to do with why the other Reticulans want our world so badly?"

"I do not know. If it does, why did they destroy so much in their attack? If it does not, why else did they choose a planet so close to our homeworld?"

"So, what's with this other faction? What caused this split?" I asked.

"Our world was subjugated by a powerful alien race many thousands of years ago. We endured their oppressive rule for many centuries before they disappeared as enigmatically as they came. In time, we learned how to travel to other worlds, and we discovered that there are many other intelligent races in the galaxy. This was the origin of the rift in our society. Some people were frightened by this discovery, and they believed that the only way we could avoid being enslaved again would be to conquer or destroy every race we encountered. Others felt that it was wrong to judge all races by the standards of those who had once enslaved us, and we should at least give other races a chance.

"Every race we encountered was peaceful and receptive to our diplomatic overtures; we never found any evidence of the people who had once conquered us. In time, the xenophobic faction of our race dwindled to a small minority, but it did not go away altogether. They made a violent attempt to take over our government six hundred years ago, believing that they were acting in the best interest of our people. As they were greatly outnumbered, they soon lost the resultant civil war. Some of them escaped during the chaos, and we have been looking for them ever since. However, space is vast and they must have stayed away from advanced systems - we never found any trace of them or where they had gone."

"Until they turned up here."

"Yes. We do not understand why they attacked your world. When they destroyed the Q-port in your system, they must have known that we would send a large war fleet to your world to oppose them. Now they are caught in a trap of their own making."

I thought about this for a moment. "From what you've said, those bastards are after power, right? So they must think there's something about Earth that can make them powerful enough to defeat your fleet."

Mr Slooz found this thought troubling. "It may be so, but we have no idea what the nature of this power is. Unfortunately, even we have not found a way to travel faster than light. With the Q-port in your system destroyed, it will take twenty years for our fleet to reach your world."

I swore. "They're going to be too late. If we can't beat the invaders ourselves, we're finished. And even if we do, we're still finished. The environment is going to take tens of millions of years to recover from the attack, and the climate is going to be screwed up as well. The only reason why Britain doesn't have the same climate as Siberia is the Gulf Stream, and our scientists already know how easily that can be disrupted."

"When our fleet reaches your world, they will be able assist in the rebuilding of your world. One of their first priorities will be to repair or replace the Q-port in your system to allow normal travel between our systems. When we realised how similar life on our worlds is, we took samples of the genetic structure of many animal and plant species on your world. We can use our skills in biotechnology to recreate those species by creating stable mutations of animal and plant species native to our world."

"You really think we can win?"

"Yes. The other Reticulans have greatly underestimated the ingenuity of your people. They believe the spores and the destruction of your communication satellites have made it impossible for those of you who are left to organise yourselves effectively and fight back. They believe that the transgenants they have created will be able to kill the survivors. Your short-wave radio network is already proving them wrong. Your radio waves are low powered, so they can only be adequately monitored by mounting standing patrols. Scientists on our world concluded that radio is a dead end technology thousands of years ago, and the other Reticulans do not believe you are capable of organised resistance, thus they do not consider standing patrols to be worth the effort. The other Reticulans know that there are some of us on your world, and they know that we will do everything we can to stop their plan, whatever it is. They bombed the Dreamland bases, including the one at Enfield Down in an attempt to kill us all. They are now attempting to hunt down those of us who survived."

"Why don't you seek refuge among us?"

"If we do that and the other Reticulans find out, they will launch direct attacks on your bases and refugee centres in order to get us. Thousands of your people would die for our sakes. Instead, we have chosen to go into hiding and try to find out information about the other Reticulans, information that we shall discreetly pass on to your people. On that day in Hirwaun, I had deliberately made what appeared to be a careless mistake so that the other Reticulans would search for me there. I wanted a chance to study them. After the fight, I had a day to examine their ship before they sent a larger ship to recover it."

"What did you find out?"

"They are still using technology similar to our own for the most part. Their vessels are invisible to human radar, which is making it impossible for you to intercept them. However your radar systems can be adapted to detect the radiative emissions of their navigation systems. I have spoken to one of our people who happens to be a navigation and communications technician, and he has written instructions on what to look for and how to adapt your radar systems."

Mr Slooz handed me a plastic envelope containing about thirty pages of writing and technical drawing. Although it was in English, I understood about one word in two. I was assured that our military engineers would find it informative. I thanked him for risking his life to obtain this information on the invaders. Before I took my leave, Mr Slooz urged me to try to persuade our leaders to adopt a multinational approach to resisting the invaders.

COUNCIL OF EARTH

I got back at lunchtime. Sarah and I had been amazed by the revelations of my meeting with Mr Slooz, as had the people at Ledbury and Gower. The chap at Ledbury suggested that we keep this information within the ROC network for a few hours, as the military would refuse to believe it. He thought that the best approach would be if Sarah and I personally hand the technical plans to the military engineers at Bath that afternoon. They would be receptive to us because of the incident with the alien laser weapon. The military engineers would then back us when the ROC network informs the military authorities the next day.

There was a series of blazing rows across the network during the next few days. When the military engineers announced that the had implemented the radar modifications and they had spotted a UFO, the authorities in Hampshire admitted that they vaguely recalled a project involving extraterrestrials at Enfield Down, and that one of them was named Mr Slooz. Apparently even the military could understand that there was no point in maintaining a military secret that the enemy already knew about.

One week later a wing of Harrier Jump Jets operating from the Ark Royal used the radar modifications to successfully intercept an alien laboratory ship and its attendant fighters, the first time in the war that human forces had shot down an enemy vessel.

Although the nations of Western Europe were used to military and economic cooperation, the problems facing the remnants of humanity were severe. The alien vessels were faster and better armed than our interceptors. Reports from reconnaissance patrols were also showing that the number of transgenants was increasing in many areas, and that some new and deadly types of transgenant were appearing. It was becoming clear to our leaders that we could only defeat the aliens by fully pooling our resources. Following some intense diplomacy in late August, the following message was relayed across all radio networks:

"Representatives of the national governments of Great Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain have agreed to an unprecedented level of cooperation in order to fight back against the aliens. In each nation, all military, scientific and economic resources are being placed under the direct jurisdiction of an international body called the Council of Earth, which will be made up of representatives from all member nations. The spearhead of our military efforts will be an elite force called the Phoenix Company."

The Beginning.

Thanks for posting it - I was having real trouble with Internet Explorer (***** Microsoft).

A former coworker of mine one who was in the Royal Observer Corps told me all that stuff about the ROC. Many of their old monitoring posts can still be seen, if you know where to look. However, the names of the individual bases I mentioned are ficticious.

It seems to me that the Old Greys couldn't have known about the whole thing about the biomass before the invasion, otherwise they'd have put a stop to it by having a large fleet in our solar system to meet the dissident Reticulans. I also thought that the redical split in Reticulan society would have had to have been caused by something big. I also think that the dissident Reticulans are not Bloefeld style villains, but they genuinly believe that their actions are in the best interst of their people.

Accounting Troll, that is by far the best AfterMath Fic that I have read, and it makes sense. I love the way the story was told and the facts were real enough to be believable.

It reminded me of some of the best UFO fics around. If only you could continue on. I am already cutting and pasting your post and putting it in my novels folder.

Keep up the good work.

Hey, someone read it

I'm not sure where I should go next with this story. Maybe the psycological effects of the invasion on the survivors in the refugee centres? Or perhaps the Reticulans aren't the only alien race to have a base here?