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    Quiet Resistance
    Quiet Resistance
    Quiet Resistance
    Ebook107 pages1 hour

    Quiet Resistance

    By David Bridger

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A science fiction alternative history with alien invaders, spies, and assassins.

    *spoiler* Trump is still a baddie!

    Aliens invaded Earth and occupied the UK and the USA. They assumed the roles of the human upper classes, many existing members of which welcomed and collaborated with them in order to maintain personal wealth and power. Resistance movements were formed, but their effectiveness was limited by the constant and deadly threat of an orbiting alien spaceship.

    Thirty-five years later, when two spaceship slaves escape down to Snowdonia in possession of humanity-saving information, New Scotland Yard detectives Carmen Wood and Thomas Able are sent to find them in a race against time and overwhelmingly well-resourced alien agents. The next five days will change the world forever.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBeaten Track Publishing
    Release dateJul 27, 2019
    ISBN9781786453587
    Quiet Resistance
    Author

    David Bridger

    David Bridger settled with his family and their two monstrous hounds in England's West Country after twenty years of ocean-based fun, during which he worked at various times as a lifeguard, a sailor, an intelligence gatherer, and an investigator.

    Read more from David Bridger

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      Book preview

      Quiet Resistance - David Bridger

      Quiet Resistance

      Quiet

      Resistance

      David Bridger

      Beaten Track Logo

      Beaten Track

      www.beatentrackpublishing.com

      Quiet Resistance

      SMASHWORDS EDITION

      Second Edition

      Published 2019 by Beaten Track Publishing

      First published 2018

      Copyright © 2018, 2019 David Bridger at Smashwords

      https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/davidbridger

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

      The moral of the author has been asserted.

      ISBN: 978 1 78645 358 7

      Editor: Emma Shortt

      Cover: Frauke Spanuth of Octopi Covers

      Beaten Track Publishing,

      Burscough, Lancashire.

      www.beatentrackpublishing.com

      A science fiction alternative history with alien invaders, spies, and assassins.

      *spoiler* Trump is still a baddie!

      Aliens invaded Earth and occupied the UK and the USA. They assumed the roles of the human upper classes, many existing members of which welcomed and collaborated with them in order to maintain personal wealth and power. Resistance movements were formed, but their effectiveness was limited by the constant and deadly threat of an orbiting alien spaceship.

      Thirty-five years later, when two spaceship slaves escape down to Snowdonia in possession of humanity-saving information, New Scotland Yard detectives Carmen Wood and Thomas Able are sent to find them in a race against time and overwhelmingly well-resourced alien agents. The next five days will change the world forever.

      Contents

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      About the Author

      By the Author

      Beaten Track Publishing

      1

      Able stood in deep shadow and absorbed the summer night. It tasted like a copper coin. Cloud-racing blue moonlight made a metalled river of the broad road surface between two high banks of old warehouses all shuttered up with steel, and thunder rumbled south of the Thames, setting off distant car alarms as the storm splatted its first big raindrops into the road’s thirsty dust.

      Eleven o’clock, as forecast. Able had checked the weather and worn his raincoat. The jokers on his team called it his Sam Spade coat. Whatever. It was black, it kept him dry, and it had deep pockets for his pistol and torch.

      Two hundreds yards away, three young men in bright summer shirts rounded a corner and hurried in his direction on the other side of the road, hunching their shoulders against the rain.

      Able pressed back against the gritty wall of his delivery bay, but they stopped in a huddle before they got near him.

      A slice of red electric light opened with a heavy steel door, and a smoky jazz trumpet moaned into the night as the slice widened to swallow the punters and then thinned back to nothing all in one slow movement.

      It was the pattern of approaching gentrification. Redundant warehouses stood empty until an illegal club or two appeared among them. Soon would come the property developers, and then the new apartment dwellers and the stylish little shops and cafés they attracted.

      Which meant the rogue banger he was hunting would move on soon, if he hadn’t already.

      A tall man strolled into view. His bearing suggested youth and privilege, and he wore wraparound mirrored sunglasses, at night, in the rain.

      Either he was Able’s subject, or he was the kind of coincidence Able didn’t believe in.

      The newcomer scanned the road as he approached the only warehouse door that had a computer-coded entry system.

      Able stood still. Banger night vision would catch his smallest movement.

      The subject passed the computer keypad as if he didn’t know it existed. He remained on the other side of the road and walked as far as the jazz club’s steel door, then turned to stroll back at a slower pace, looking intently into every doorway and alley.

      When he reached the spot opposite Able’s hiding place he paused, removed his sunglasses, and stared directly across the road.

      Able didn’t breathe.

      The subject swayed his torso slowly like a dancer, like a cobra, turning his face this way and that as if to give his superb night vision every chance to penetrate the deep shadow.

      Definitely a banger.

      Able curled his finger around the pistol’s trigger inside his pocket. They could move fast when they wanted to, and there was no knowing what a rogue would do. If this one attacked, he’d drill the bastard.

      He could always buy another raincoat.

      Thunder snarled overhead and growled around the East End for long seconds. Rain fell heavier, and lightning flashed, illuminating the banger’s pale face before he jerked his forearm up to protect his eyes.

      Good timing.

      With a final look left and right along the road, he replaced his sunglasses and crossed to the wall-mounted keypad.

      Able used his night scope to clock the code the banger was tapping in.

      The door opened and closed behind him without a sound.

      Now, Able had a decision to make. Wait a while, so his subject would move away from the door and wouldn’t hear him going in? Or go straight in now and hope the banger was making enough noise inside to mask the noise of Able’s entry?

      Go straight in.

      He drew his pistol and slipped through the door.

      Blood pounded in his ears, and the small solid clunk when the door closed behind him sounded too loud to go unheard. He stepped to one side and waited for a foot scuffle or a rustle of clothing that might warn of an imminent attack.

      None came.

      While his heart rate slowed down to normal-in-the-circumstances, his eyes adjusted to the uncertain blue light inside the building. It came from somewhere over to his left. Somewhere obscured by structural walls or big objects. It was more a glow than a light.

      The air was still, and the appalling smell confirmed beyond doubt that he was in the right place.

      The rogue banger problem was accelerating. The first case had been fifteen months ago, and it had taken Able’s team two months to track him down. The second case was eight months ago. The third, last month. And here was the fourth.

      All in London. Which came as no surprise, because the only pattern indicator they had was that the rogue bangers were all young playboys, and wealthy young bangers on this side of the pond liked to play in London.

      He’d bet the States had a rogue problem too, but so far the Yanks were saying nothing.

      Music started. Complicated, fast, heavy electronic beat stuff, loud in the big high-ceilinged space. That would help.

      Able moved towards the light. He wished he had a handkerchief to breathe through, but put the thought aside. He needed both hands free.

      The electric blue light was a fly-zapping rectangular lamp on the white tiled wall of what had once been a commercial kitchen.

      The banger sat pale and

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