It was not a good morning. It'd been a few days since the opera and so far the EIC had been relatively quiet. Oh he'd been summoned for a "no tea" chat with the General, but that had been relatively… calm. The fellow had asked a question, he'd answered, maybe not to the fullest truth.

And now they were in the situation that the EIC had decided to "defer" funding to the wider Society whilst they "re- assessed" things.

But on the upside, they had retained their workshops, the material and the function of their independence. He'd laid all that out and countered Marter that, had the chap actually asked then the conversation could have been cordial. He'd also raised the issue of alien impersonators and proven collaboration with elements of British society intent on anarchy - why would this just be limited to Fenian separatists or criminals with opportunistic moments.

Marter had looked him square in the eye, "Do you suspect everyone Will?"

"Anyone not ready to heft a rifle in defence of this city and the Empire, yes. Men who cajole with a chequebook and expect that to carry weight… well, sir, gets my dander up. Bled enough for the Company interests in the colonies, think I'm owed one minor loss of control."

"He says you threatened to shoot him."

"I used the pistol to illustrate a point, sir. I am sorry that a man accustomed to partaking of fine wines and comfortable chairs was not able to grasp the nuance of my analysis."

He'd had more of a back and forth but had been given a rebuke by the General, "You're on thin ice, Will. If the situation wasn't so dire and my options so few, you'd be out on your ear. As it is, your card's been marked by some in the Society… but I will say, off the record, you've won over a few of the chaps here. But watch your step. Others'll see how you've handled Smytheson and may not telegraph their next move so openly."

So here he was, sat in the mess in the Tower, nursing a drink. He'd know there'd be politics, but since this little venture wasn't quite the British Army, it had some additional headaches.

Five bombs across the city; seven separate strikes by the aliens; a riot in Bermondsey. And everyone looked to him and the "Exalted Company" as one passing Major had derisively termed them, to solve it all! Of course, the Constabulary and the Yeoman brigades in London had helped. They'd gotten four of the bombs, but the fifth had taken out a set of shops in Oxford street. A firefight around Kings Cross had been targeted at civilians and they'd beaten them back.

But it was so much, never ending. And this was just London.

He sighed and leaned back. The door rattled and Moira Vahlen stepped in. She caught sight of him and frowned, "Herr Anderson, it is only 10:15. A bit early for a kleines Getrank, ja?"

"I've been awake since 7 yesterday Morning. This is practically still evening for me. You'll excuse me a small indulgence to keep myself steady."

The Doctor frowned and took a seat opposite him, "You are troubled it seems."

"Finding it tricky to see the wood for the trees, y'know? We've got objectives but feels like we're on the back foot. No communication devices sighted, no push options, just reeling wherever the buggers punch. Navy is getting restless and Parliament has pressure to send it out to support the colonies. Other MPs are saying we should park another five Ironclads on the Thames just in case. And no ruddy movement around Horsell, save for a potential valiant push which.. Well I'm worried."

"The heat ray. We still have no effective counter."

"Save sticking everyone in some sort of mobile bloody castle."

"A colleague from the Society for Engineering… he has some rather drastic ideas there. But the problem is the steam engine… the excess heat turns his concept into a steam-broiler rather than an effective kampfsmachine"

Anderson sighed again and nodded, "If we could replicate their weapons, maybe even their machinery, we could strike a more effective blow."

"Ah, well, then I am timing my arrival to perfection. How you English always describe us in the Germanic states - getting the trains on time?"

"Do go one," he leaned forward, resting elbows on knees, glass cradled in his hands.

"Shen feels he has accomplished something. I have made some headway as well and Bradford has something even more exciting. May I borrow you, or is your current company sufficient?" she glanced pointedly at his glass. Anderson smiled and tossed the remnant into the fire which flared briefly.

"Lead on, fair maid."

In the workshop Anderson found himself staring at a segmented suit of armour, mounted on a mannequin.. It looked… slight, however, with a blue tinge to it's layering. Nearby on a table lay several ranks of bullets, stacked point up in neat rows. Anderson smiled politely and waited. Bradford lounged against the door frame, a half grin on his face. He was sporting some light stubble, his moustache growing thicker now.

Shen stepped forward and rapped his knuckles on the armour. It made the sound of tiling being struck, "I call it carapace armour. Our new chitinous friends gave me the idea. And our older ideas on keeping a man fighting longer. Weight was an issue with our prototypes. But the enemy has gifted us with a solution. Two fold, in fact."

He stepped back and took a revolver proffered by a waiting assistant. Then he leveled the pistol at the armour and fired. Anderson flinched and then blinked. The round had sparked off the armour, leaving only a faint dent and scratch.

"What the devil?"

"Our new alloy. We have worked out, thanks to Doctor Vahlen, how to effectively melt it and mould it without it losing its consistency or breaking down into constituent elements. Part of the material is a new element we are referring to as "Elerium". Very volatile and not something we can replicate. The alloy is made by,... Well have no clue."

"Ja. The method for maintaining the bonds is… difficult. But with samples we are able to create effective armour plating as you can see here. Our fallen mechanical friends have yielded a surprising amount. And we have salvaged parts from discarded weaponry, raided supply depots and other sources… donations from confused citizenry, for example."

"Indeed. But as you can see, its durability is most effective. The Muton e have encountered wear armour scaled up, as it were, and more densely packed. Hence their… resilience. However, we have found a rather interesting weakness," Shen produced his sharpened scrap of alloy and approached the mannequin. He dragged the shard across the armour. The noise was worse than fingers down a chalk board. He gestured at the deep groeve left. Anderson blinked.

"Surely you'd need something stronger to do that?"

"Something we're still looking into, but sufficiently sharp alloy has more penetrative impact than our densest steel. Observe."

Shen stepped back and levelled the pistol again. The shot rang out and the mannequin rocked back, a hole clearly visible on the chest plate where the heart would be. The old man turned, a smug grin on his face. Anderson blinked.

"That's one hell of a vulnerability. Surely…"

"The enemy utilise directed energy or heat weaponry. The only physical weaponry we have seen are their rockets, which are just carriages for chemical attacks, or the Muton ritual blades," that came from Vahlen. Shen nodded.

"Yes, this illustrates an interesting blind spot. A complacency perhaps. Note their indifference to our cannons until they were felled by them. And what happened? A shift in strategy. They are not accustomed to our method of warfare, our weapons."

"So their armour is, what? Resistant to their OWN weapons?"

"And why not?" retorted Vahlen, "We do likewise. Until now we had not considered manufacturing counter-heat armour. Or medizinisches from dead bodies… of aliens. But the fact is we now have a firm counter for their plasma AND a counter for their own armour."

Anderson chuckled, "Fortuitous news indeed. But I'm waiting for the other shoe…"

"We got enough to maybe outfit our boys here, boss," Bradford straightened and approached, "Maybe give the ideas to your friends upstairs. But ammunition may be an issue for consistency. We can't make more alloy. But if we can keep salvaging it… and we'd need a supplier who can get it if we want to expand…"

Anderson leaned his head back and groaned, "Oh bollocks."

"What?"

The colonel ran a hand over his face, "I think I just went and pissed off a potential partner."

Smytheson sat in his office, stewing. He'd managed to drink away the shakes now. His supervisor, an ageing dullard called Wilberforce Fortescue had just laughed at him when he'd recounted the tale. But the old dodderer had at least clipped the ear of that General who, apparently had collared Anderson. But he still felt… chided.

Unable to relax, he tossed the paperwork back on his desk The correspondence was… not good. Lines of communication with the ports were spotty and he had only intermittent updates from field officers. Last he'd heard from Mumbai was a general SOS. Africa was dark. The West Indies, well, apparently still active and were perplexed by the talk of "invaders". The company was… well it was a relic. But it still held influence. Tenuous. Renamed subsidiaries, old contracts. Business never died… they just reignited like the phoenix of old. Damn that scurrilous Colonel. Didn't he realise officers were supposed to turn to the right and accept things. He'd have ended up with a nice comfortable Directorship if he'd played the wicket. Of course, perhaps he should have opened with that. Most of the other Regimental types flustered but backed down.

He strode down the corridors of the surprisingly small headquarters of the pre-eminent Global superpower. People claimed it was Britain. But the Country had merely stood upon the shoulders of giants.

He emerged to a surprisingly crisp summer afternoon. A fine mist was descending across the street. He was about to step out when a carriage clattered up and skidded to a halt.

A man stepped out. He wore a top hat and had a thin smile.

"Smytheson? Yes? Friend?"

"Excuse me, I do not…"

The gentleman pulled his jacket back briefly revealing a silvery weapon. The man… if it was a man… inclined his head again at an angle that just looked off.

"Join us, yes. For a ride. Yes. We have questions. You will answer. Yes."

"I… I…" Smytheson swallowed and looked up and down the street. No one within earshot and he wasn't sure he'd be able to make a break for it. He exhaled, straightened his jacket and stepped up into the carriage. The tall-man stepped in behind him and the door clicked shut. There was the crack of a whip and the carriage was away, clattering down the street.

"The East India Company hates us?"

"No… just some rather inconveniently placed upstart We may have to wait a while before securing much in the way of support."

Bradford shook his head and shrugged, "They're a relic. Never liked 'em anyway. Bleed you dry and barely give you anything. Why'd you think we chucked that tea in the harbour?"

"Oh yes… that was theirs wasn't it?" mused Shen. Anderson waved a hand.

"So, we have some promising solutions but a longer term supply problem. For now, let's issue what we can to our standing forces. Doctor Vahlen, can you prepare an advisory document for the British Armourers - if they can at least fabricate a knock-off or emulate to some degree, maybe locally source some shrapnel in the field to jury rig some ammunition at the least, it gives us an edge."

"Of course. We have something else."

"I'm all ears."

"Please… follow me."

They all trouped to from the workshop, across the road to the Hospital. Vahlen led them through antiseptic drenched corridors to the basement morgue cum interrogation room. A Muton had been tied down, via chains and was currently being wheeled away. Vahlen tutted. Anderson blanched slightly at the various protrusions and scars on the creature. Divested of its armour it was still a hulking brute of a thing. Vahlen caught his glance.

"Oh, those? No, those were on it already. Ritual scarring we believe. So, in summary, we have been using a variety of techniques - Shen is quite gifted and I have a number of specialists from the military and who we have… dragooned into service. So far, most of the captives have succumbed to our techniques. And we have quite the treasure trove."

The group settled in in the morgue attendants alcove and Anderson crossed his arms.

"Dare I ask?"

"Pressure points, chemical inducements, low level hypnosis," mused Shen.

"Pain application, direct questioning, some more directed drug administration."

Bradford shuddered, "Don't feel right, torture."

"We do what we must. The Tall-men were most agreeable to discussion. We've got a sort of… cypher of the alien linguistics. Each is fairly curtailed as, it would appear, they are commanded by psychics."

Anderson deadpanned, "So we need to round up every carnival show touring the country for collusion?"

Vahlen gave him a withering look, "Not your palm reading schwindler. Apparently tele-pathos. To use the mind to see far distances. This is why their command and control is so unified. It also leads me to surmise their communication devices to not operate in the same way our own radio or telegraph machinery does."

"So, hard to ruddy intercept."

"Jawohl. But if we secure a transmitter or receiver or whatever the term is… then we now know what to look for. And this makes seizing one of the glowing beings paramount."

"So, what else?"

"The Alien languages are… stunted. As if they have been curtailed. This suggests that these are not truly independent beings. They are… slaves."

Anderson frowned, "The Tall-men don't act like slaves. No collars."

"Do they need a collar if their masters are a thought away?" interjected Shen. The group gave a collective shudder and Anderson dry washed his hands for a moment. Vahlen continued.

"The Muton was our latest… guest. We believed it to be among the least intelligent of any of the alien species we've encountered. What did surprise us was how much knowledge it actually had. But mostly on the level of muscle memory - it reacted in a sedated state, reassembling a dismantled rifle. This makes sense. Their commanders want an effective soldier. So they provide the Muton with a complete understanding of their weaponry and tactics, as this beast represents their most formidable front-line combatant. So far. It was resistant to our techniques, likely due to its limited mental faculties. BUT we've learned a great deal from the captive about the alien weaponry."

"So why show off the elerium…?"

"We can't create their weapons… but this knowledge has advanced our understanding of energy, ballistics, light. From such a crude beast. But the core message here is we were able to extract some useful information beyond this. Not just an understanding of weapons; an understanding of the nature of our enemy. Of their soldiers. And of where they are."

Anderson leaned forward. Bradford chuckled, "We got three locations from big-tough-and-dead. Resupply bases, where they got funneled through. Got a nice bit of information on their likely disposition around their landing sites too. Defensive formations, fields of fire, that sort o' thing. Got it all sketched up, pretty like."

Shen and Vahlen chuckled as Anderson leaned back, shocked, "Bloody hell. Save this all for a single day, why don't you?"

"Had to be sure, boss. Shen didn't know his stuff'd work, Vahlen wasn't sure she wasn't just confusin' the grunts and pig squeals for info and I had to interrogate the humans. Your Irish buddies are… not too friendly."

"Not bloody surprising. So, is that all?"

Vahlen shifted, "I said slaves. That may not be the right word. They are… I think bred not recruited. All autopsies so far have shown a disturbing uniformity. Brain structure, bone structure, organ shape, weight."

"Well, humans are all much of a muchness on the inside…"

"Nein. We have variation. Trust me when I say that, between each… type of beast we have found there is no such variation. They are different from one another across class, but identical at the base level within their groups. So, a weakness in one specimen is likely to be a weakness in all… and further to that, it seems they may have hit another unexpected snag."

"How so?"

"We are undergoing somewhat of a resurgence in diseases in this country. And it would appear our new visitors are not so well equipped to cope."

She stood and walked over to a mortuary rack and hauled open the door. Out slid a metal bed on which lay three curled up grey-monkey forms. Anderson and the others joined her. Anderson gazed at them.

"No bullet wounds. What killed them?"

"Bacteria. Minute, insignificant… bacteria."