1 - Saving Wales.

Shuji Akira watched Kojima quickly check the grenades on his
belt, then brace himself, without thinking, against the Skyranger's
restraining straps. "Just move fast and get behind something," he
said in Japanese, "and don't worry about your rear. Crossett and
Gaudin will cover you with the heavier stuff." The trooper and heavy
weapon specialists recognized their names and turned to give Kojima
the evil eye and a smile. Kojima said Crossett had cut her hair shorter
on each mission and was going to get out when she went bald.
Akira studied Kojima's every move, wondering which were
important to mimic for his own survival. Kojima was the Far Squad
scout, and a veteran by X-COM standards, with four missions and four
confirmed kills. "Mostly floaters," he would say, "they're sneaky, but
they sometimes go down with only one shot. I let the Heavies take
care of the Heavy bugs."
Akira could tell the Skyranger was descending - England
somewhere - but he was surprised to find he wasn't frightened.
Everything had happened so fast. He was still trying to catch up.
Part of him was still back at the underground base in Arkansas and
hadn't even boarded the Skyranger yet.
Had it been only five days ago that the officials in suits had
visited his Defense Force training camp on Hokkaido? They had
casually reviewed everyone in his platoon, and quickly chose him. His
commander offered him a chance to not only serve Japan, but the whole
world. He was not given any details, but the mystery appealed to him,
and the chance to be in a group of elite warriors, samuria from around
the world. He accepted and was on a plane to America in three hours.
He suspected he hadn't been selected for his abilities as much
as for the fact that he had no wife or children and only limited
family contacts.
He soon regretted his decision. He and Marc Bouton, a
recruit from Europe, were quickly inducted into X-COM, the highly
secret international Extraterrestrial Combat unit. Over the course of
three days they were bombarded with information about new weapon
systems and what little was known about the alien technology they were
up against. And to prove the mission was serious, Captain Marcelle
took them into the refrigerated storage areas to see the bodies of
dead, autopsied aliens.
But the most disconcerting and surreal part was the mission
reports and battle camera footage taken in previous raids. Most of
the aliens were mysterious and far off, and the footage was poor, but
there had been one taken off a dead troopers body at Santiago which
terrified him. The image was shaky, the trooper running along beside
a building, continuously glancing to the open street on his right.
Then there was a dull thump, thump, and when he turned back to the left
a reaper stood on its two stalky legs, towering over him and staring
right at him. The trooper stopped and got off one wild shot before
the reaper jumped him and smothered the camera. After a few seconds
of crunches and screams, and wild camera panning, the camera lay on the
ground, recording just the dead trooper's hand and a pool of blood.
Then this morning the alarms had sounded, they all boarded the
Skyranger, and Akira was told he was to be the scout for Near Squad,
meaning he would help secure the area near the Skyranger.
The Skyranger hit ground and jerked Akira back to reality.
The rear ramp began to lower. Kojima crouched down and motioned for
Akira to do the same. "Bouton's a rookie," he said, "you don't want
him to blow your head off if he sees an alien right away and gets
excited."
After that, Akira was all business, completely focused. It
was the last time the two would talk.
As the doors opened, Akira saw they were in a small country
village with a few fields and a large building to the right. Kojima
stepped forward onto the ramp and scanned the area. "Far squad left,"
he yelled in English and jumped off the left side of the ramp.
Akira had been through a few hasty disembarkation drills. He
took a few steps onto the ramp and jumped off to the right, dropping
four feet to the ground, crouching and scanning the area. He felt
light on his feet, carrying just a laser pistol, a few grenades and a
stun rod. He wasn't sure why he had the stun rod and was tempted to
drop it. Kojima had told him it was for stunning aliens at close
quarters, but that had to be a joke - some kind of initiation thing.
He heard someone drop to his left, probably Crossett. He could
see an empty field to the right and the building off to his left, but
most of his view was blocked by a stone fence straight ahead.
He was the scout, so the rest of the squad was waiting for him
to move. Finally his sense of duty, his desire to have it over with,
and his curiosity were enough to get him to his feet and up to the
fence.
As soon as he reached the fence, he saw it. A man-sized
crimson specter stood at the edge of a small orchard between him and
the building. But it did not stand, it floated just above the ground,
gliding along slowly. He lost a second or two getting over the
surprise and remembering the spotting signal. It was enough time for
the floater to see him. There were crackling sounds and yellow
beams streaking silently past him. One hit the wall in front of him
and blew out chunks of rock.
Akira fell back on his training. He quickly gave the
signal, the international sign language symbol for bug, pointed his
laser pistol and squeezed the trigger hard for automatic fire.
His training with high-powered rifles led him to expect a
serious kick, but it never came. The pistol fired off streaks of
golden-orange destruction in rapid succession, sending dirt and
branches flying, and destroying one tree completely. He also thought
he hit the alien at least once. It was a beautiful display, and it lifted
his confidence for a second or two.
Then the wall ten feet to his left exploded in a green
flash, peppering him with rocks and mortar chips. He heard the
crackling of laser fire and human screams behind him and then a woosh,
followed by a deafening explosion and an unearthly, piercing shriek.
He started to turn and drop, then remembered Kojima's advice. Someone
would cover his rear.
By the time he turned back, Crossett had moved up and was
kneeling, aiming and firing at the floater with her laser rifle
through the newly-formed breach in the wall. Akira knew instinctively
that this was his chance. He raced along behind the fence, head and
shoulders exposed, out beyond the point where the Skyranger would
block fire from his rear. He made it to the end of the fence and got
down, scanning the orchard.
The floater was there. He didn't know if it spotted him, but
it began to move toward him. As it glided from behind the cover of a
small tree, a single laser shot streaked across and opened the
side of the alien in a burst of steam and burned tissue. It gave a
short scream as it dropped.
"Thanks Crossett," Akira whispered to himself.
Akira made his way cautiously across the orchard. For the
most part, everything was very quiet, with occasional, but intense
bursts of battle sounds behind him. Obviously behind him. There was
no one in front of him, no troopers anyway.
He reached the near corner of the building and scanned along
both walls before ducking around to his right. No obvious doors to
the right, and one large service door to the left. He would leave
that one to someone else.
He moved along, hugging the wall, glancing to the right into
the orchard. The images of the helmet-cam and the reaper threatened
to break his concentration, but he managed to stay focused.
He peaked through the first window he came to. Most of the
inside of the building was one huge storage area with a twenty foot
ceiling, probably a warehouse of some kind. In the far corner there
was an enclosed office area which merged with a mezzanine level
running all across the far side. He saw nothing unusual, no movement.
He checked each window as he went, and glanced behind and saw
Crossett covering him from the end of the fence, and Gaudin moving
up with a heavy cannon.
He rounded the corner of the building and dropped to one knee.
Nothing there. Screams and another large explosion far off sent
shivers up his spine and reminded him how spread out and vulnerable
the squads were.
Straight ahead and to his right were open fields, devoid of
aliens and beyond the required security perimeter. All that was left
was to check out the building.
He saw a small wooden door near the far end and made for it
quickly. He wanted to be done with it and back in the air in the
Skyranger. No, he wanted to be back in Japan.
He knelt by the door and listened for a few seconds. He heard
trooper footsteps behind him. What was he listening for anyway, he
wondered. What sound did a floater make? Then he heard a door open
inside, probably on the first level and nearby.
Time to kill one myself, he thought, and charged into the
door, dropping down again, ready to fire. He was in a small office
room with another door open into the warehouse and a set of stairs
going up. He glanced out the door, saw nothing and concluded that the
whatever opened it must have gone up the stairs.
He had two grenades on his belt and decided this would be as
good a time as any to use one. He plucked one, primed it for a very
short fuse, and moved quickly up the stairs.
The stairs opened into a room the same size as the lower
office, but open to the wide mezzanine. It was a bad location to
emerge, and any alien up there would have had the advantage of cover,
and probably surprise. But Akira was lucky - the area was empty.
Then he heard laser fire directly below and loud thunking
sounds from the warehouse. The room he was in had a window facing
inside, so he moved to it and looked out over the room.
A floater hung near ground level, half-way across the floor.
Someone, probably Crossett was shooting up its cover through a window
below.
Before Akira had a chance to react, the floater saw him and
took two rapid shots up at the window. The first was wild, blowing a
hole in the outside wall of the warehouse to Akira's left, but the
next hit the thin wooden wall below the window, shattering the window
and destroying most of the wall around it.
Akira turned to take cover and found himself facing another
floater near the stairs, no more than twenty feet away. The floater
got off a shot. A glowing yellow sword shot from his pistol and
stabbed through Akira's left shoulder.
Akira dropped the grenade and fumbled to bring up his own
pistol. He squeezed off one shot, missed and decided the grenade was
too dangerous. He turned and jumped through the hole in the wall.
He fell ten feet onto a pile of crates. As he fell he saw the
warehouse streaked by the fireworks of an X-COM heavy laser. When he
hit he remained conscious long enough to hear the exploding grenade
and the screams of a dying floater, much longer and more dramatic
this time.

. . .
"... had us worried there, Squaddie," Captain Marcelle said.
His face filled Akira's still-cloudy field of view.
"Can you hear me Akira?" Marcelle was in his uniform, covered
in blood. Mine, Akira realized.
"Did you hear me? You're going to be fine."
They were in the Skyranger, engines running, in flight.
"Kojima?" Akira said.
The captain looked distressed. "Didn't make it son. Neither
did Sergeant Buchard."
The captain propped Akira up against the wall. Akira glanced
around. The Skyranger was full of artifacts, dead alien bodies, and
stacks of metal sheets like Akira had seen at the base, roughly cut
from a UFO. Six other troopers sat silently against the walls.
Crossett was there, smiling at him and cutting her hair with a bowie
knife.
"I didn't get to see a UFO," Akira said to the captain.
"You will. You're Far Squad scout now"
Akira noticed the pile of floater bodies toward the rear of
the plane. I got one of you, he thought. Then he saw two more
bodies, wrapped carefully in blood-soaked white cloth, one barely
recognizable as a human form. One of them was Kojima.
Akira searched around on his knees for his equipment, checked
it over and sat patiently back down.
"Damn you," he said out loud.
THE END

2 - The better part of Valour.

Compared to the flight to England, the trip from Little Rock
to Arizona was just a hop, but still two too many hours to think about
what was coming - a desert, everything right out in the open. Most of
the troopers had grumbled about not having cover, but as a scout,
Shuji Akira liked the idea - nothing for the bugs to hide behind.
He was near the rear of the Skyranger, ready to be the first
trooper out the back ramp. Between him and the ramp sat a heavily
armored robotic tank, equipped with a powerful rocket launcher. It
would leave first and scout the area.
It had been a new addition when the skyranger had salvaged a
small UFO crash in Alberta ten days earlier. A rookie scout named
Maxwell had been killed on that mission, but otherwise it was a
complete success, largely due to the presence of the tank and its
ability to obliterate light cover.
Akira had missed that mission, still healing from a shot to
his shoulder. The scout who was killed had been in far squad, where
Akira would have been. He wondered if he would have fared any better.
Morinov, the near squad scout, now sitting across from Akira,
had gained notoriety and respect during that mission by sneaking into
the back of a shed and using his stun rod on a skinny, bubble-headed
alien who's complete attention seemed to be on Bouton and his laser
rifle out front.
The captain had raved about it, "That's what we have to do to
win this! I don't have a medal for you, son, but I'll let you name
these new bugs."
"They're sectoids," Morinov said, and it stuck.
Unfortunately the alien had died, locked away in an empty room
in the living quarters, but its loss convinced X-COM command to build a
special containment facility for the aliens right in the base.
Morinov had told the stun story so many times that Akira got
completely sick of it. Even Bouton, the most easy-going trooper in
the squads, had made comments under his breath. And Bouton was
Morinov's backup trooper, the one person he shouldn't tick off.
Akira turned to his right to talk to Crossett. She would be
right behind him off the ramp. After five missions, her yellow hair
was even shorter than his, about two inches long and uneven in places.
"Hair's nice," he said in English.
She smiled and slicked it back. "Domo areegatto gozeemas,"
she replied. He was sorry he had ever tried to teach her Japanese.
"Remember, `Kira," she said, "just point and duck. I'll do
the shooting."
While she talked, she rolled her eyes to the right toward
Morinov and pretended to stab at him with her bowie knife. Bouton saw
it, snickered, then composed himself and gave her a disapproving
look. Morinov was oblivious, squatting and staring forward past the
tank, already planning his next stunning triumph.
When the alarms had gone off that afternoon, Akira and
Crossett had rushed to the radar center, along with half of the
troopers in the base. From there they had watched the track of the
UFO and seen the interceptor converging on it. Nearly an hour after
the UFO was first detected, heading south from Idaho, the interceptor
caught up with it over Nevada.
The captain punched up the display from the interceptor's
targeting camera. The UFO looked slightly larger than any they'd seen
so far.
"Get close enough to launch an Avalanche," the captain said
over the comm link to the pilot.
"..Avalanche launched.."
Nearly a minute passed.
"...A Hit...he's turning, heading west...250..."
"Follow him, Interceptor-1," the captain said, "if he tries to
head out to sea, hit him again, otherwise let him fly or land where he
pleases."
The troopers in the room all turned and stared at the captain
in amazement. Why not just blow it to pieces? There were two more
Avalanches loaded on that interceptor, and a laser cannon to finish
him off.
The captain was still staring at the displays, but he seemed
to sense the confusion.
"We have other X-COM radar sites coming on line in secret bases
around the world," he said. "The UFO incursions are not a local
event. In fact some areas are being hit harder than North America.
There is even evidence of a possible alien base somewhere in Russia."
He turned to look each trooper in the eyes.
"We can't win in a straight battle with the aliens, not with
the resources and technology we have. But we may be able to use the
alien technology against them, and maybe learn enough about them to
stop them."
There was still confusion in the room, but a few of the
troopers were somberly nodding their heads. Akira understood too.
"We have to take the aliens alive and their equipment intact
if we can."
With that he turned back to the displays. Fifteen minutes
later the UFO had landed in eastern Arizona, near a town called
Holbrook, and Akira was rushing to the Skyranger.
Now, two hours later, they began their descent over the
desert. Only the troopers far behind Akira, toward the front of the
Skyranger, could see outside, so Akira judged their progress from his
first landing experience.
They hit ground and the ramp began to drop. The evening sun
blazed in on Akira and forced him to squint as he got ready to
disembark.
Someone near the windows called "Bug left."
Mine, Akira thought, and pulled a grenade off his belt.
The ramp hit ground, kicking up loose sand and crushing a
small cactus. Akira ran quickly onto the ramp behind the tank,
priming his grenade with his teeth and clutching his laser pistol. He
heard a crack and a dull thud against the back of the Skyranger. Had
he missed a bug behind the Skyranger somewhere? Too late to find
out; he was already off the ramp to the left.
He landed in the parched sand behind the Skyranger's landing
gear, and scanned the area. He looked for the violet outline of a
floater, but instead spotted a small grey figure with a large head.
One of Morinov's sectoids.
As he threw his grenade, Akira heard someone on the Skyranger
fire off a laser rifle on autoshot. There was a high-pitched nasal
shriek far to his right, which got the attention of the grey alien.
It turned for a second and spotted Akira around the corner of the
landing gear. The world went to slow motion as the alien brought its
weapon around and raised it to aim at him. Then the grenade went off
and blew the little grey body four feet into the air.
Akira took time to scan the area. He saw no UFO and was about
to send his squad right. He checked again and saw a thin trail of
prints leading back from the dead alien toward a small mesa in the
distance. He moved forward cautiously, a dozen paces from the
Skyranger, and crouched behind a cactus. Now, around the edge of the
mesa, he could see a rounded wall of metal.
"Far Squad left" he called back. Crossett was still near the
ramp. She nodded and yelled something back to Sergeant Evans.
Akira moved forward, crouching and scanning often. There was
no good cover, and at the moment he couldn't remember why that was a
good thing. He went wide to his left, not approaching the UFO
directly. He wasn't about to leave his flank open, and Crossett and
Davies could watch the center. The tank should have been there.
Maybe the captain had programmed it to hang back, Akira thought -
rockets tend to kill aliens, not take them alive.
He made it behind a small ridge with a patch of scrub and
cactus on the other side. he poked his head up and scanned carefully.
A large panel in the side of the UFO facing him somehow looked
different than the surrounding wall. It had to be the door - or one
of the doors.
Then he noticed movement on the side of the UFO opposite the
mesa. Another small grey figure was moving out into the open. Akira
wasn't sure Crossett and Davies could see around the mesa. He didn't
think he could hit it with his pistol, and was afraid it would be
scared back into cover by wild shots. He pointed his pistol and
waited.
He remembered the captain's speech and wondered how the hell
they were supposed to sneak up on an alien in terrain like this. This
time he would just have to settle for an intact UFO. As the alien
moved out into the open area in front of the UFO, Akira gave the bug
signal and pointed. As soon as he saw that Crossett had spotted it,
he squeezed hard for autofire.
At the same time, Crossett fired her laser rifle, and Davies
rattled off six High explosive rounds with his autocannon.
The succession of explosions drowned out the crackling of
laser fire. The alien was blown apart and buried in sand and glass.
"Sorry captain." Akira said out loud, "I guess you won't be learning
much from him."
Akira could see clearly for a hundred meters or more to the
left and behind, and saw no sign of aliens, so he made his way slowly
around toward the side of the UFO, hiding behind small brush and
cactuses as he went. He saw nothing beside the UFO and moved up to
its corner. He knelt down with the open sand to his left, the UFO
door straight ahead and the mesa beyond.
The small research team at Little Rock had developed hand-held
motion scanners for the scouts. It didn't seem to be necessary in the
open desert, but Akira wondered if they could detect motion within an
intact UFO. He removed the scanner from his belt and held it still.
Waves of white light converged into four bright spots. If he was
reading the range information correctly, one spot was only a few
meters in front of him, inside the UFO. Another was also straight
ahead, but farther away, beyond the UFO. The other two were back
behind the UFO somewhere.
Suddenly Morinov appeared on top of the mesa, moving quickly
down toward the front of the UFO with his laser pistol in one hand and
stun rod in the other. With the open terrain around the Skyranger,
near squad must have checked things quickly and moved on toward the
UFO.
But if Morinov was up on the mesa, who were the two blips
behind the UFO. Akira was hit with a feeling of dread and moved along
the UFO's side to see for himself. Lack of information was the most
disconcerting part of battle. Morinov should have checked behind
before moving to the front. He had left his squad's right flank open.
Before he rounded the corner to the back of the UFO, Akira
heard something like a laser discharge, but different, followed by a
short human scream and a second shot.
Akira dropped his scanner, rounded the corner and dropped to
one knee. He was looking at the back of a sectoid, less than three
meters away. It was holding an extremely large gun, bigger even than
a heavy laser.
Akira had stashed his stun rod in his backpack and didn't want
to take the time to unpack it. He aimed carefully for the alien's
lower back and squeezed off a single shot. The alien dropped and lay
still.
Beyond the UFO was a dead trooper's body, flopped motionless,
face down on the sloping side of the mesa.
Gaudin, the near squad heavy weapons trooper, appeared at the
top of the mesa and looked down at Akira, then at the body. It must
have been Bouton.
Akira heard more alien fire, this time from in front of the
UFO. He moved around quickly the way he'd come. He peeked around in
front but saw nothing but the alien Davies had blown up, so he went
around the front of the UFO and stayed close to the wall.
Crossett was already there, against the wall on the other side
of the doorway. "Morey went in and got shot," she said calmly, "The
door just opened for him."
Idiot, Akira thought. He probably went right in waving a stun
rod.
Now Akira wished he hadn't dropped his scanner. "Get ready,"
he said, and primed a grenade. He moved up to the door. When he got
within arm's reach, it opened quickly. The inside was dimly lit
compared to the outside. Akira didn't wait for his eyes to adjust.
He moved inside and tripped over a body, ending up on his knees and
almost dropping his grenade. A green beam shot over his head and
vaporized part of the wall next to the door.
Akira raised his pistol, but there was no need. Crossett
filled the room with a strobe of automatic laser fire and the alien
went down screaming.
There were two doors out of the room they were in, to the left
and right. Akira tried to cover them both as Crossett dragged
Morinov's body out of the ship. Crossett came back in and knelt down
a couple yards away. Akira noticed she had a grenade in her hand too.
We're a pretty dangerous team, he thought.
They kept low and moved along the walls. The wall between the
doors bellied out, blocking the view between them. Crossett stopped
while she could still cover both doors, and Akira moved on toward the
one on the right. He waited only a second or two next to it, then
moved in front of it. It opened with a slight "woosh" sound. He
stepped inside and got down, and saw no aliens. The door wooshed
closed behind him. He was in a control room of some kind, and all the
panels and controls still looked intact. The captain will be happy,
he thought. This room, together with the area they'd entered through,
comprised nearly the whole inside of the UFO, with the exception of a
circular area in the center which bulged out into both.
He stood up to move around the wall to his left. He heard a
door open ahead of him, followed by laser fire mixed with alien weapon
sounds, then there was an explosion. The UFO contained the blast, and
the concussion stunned Akira for a few seconds. Instead of going back
he moved quickly forward through the room. As he approached a closed
door around the other side, it opened and a small grey alien stepped
through.
Fear and reflexes took over. Akira fired autoshot until he
was sure the alien was dead. Through the open door he could see the
door into the entry room, and another door to the left which had to
lead to the center of the ship.
He went through that door and found himself alone in a
circular room. In the center was a silver half-sphere with a long,
glowing red cylinder rising out of it - nothing else.
He left the room and looked through the door into the entry
room. Sergeant Evans was bending over Crossett with a medikit, and
Davies was covering the door Akira had just come through with his auto
cannon. Akira wondered how close he was to being blow up like the
alien out front.
"All clear on this side," he said.
He still had a primed grenade, and he couldn't be absolutely
sure no aliens had made it past Crossett and got behind him, so he
went back into the control room. It was empty except for the dead
alien. "You shot her, didn't you?" he said. "Well, I have this
grenade, and nowhere to throw it, and I don't want it to damage all
the captain's new toys."
He bent down and lifted the alien up and tucked the grenade
underneath, then ran quickly to the entry room.
The explosion surprised Davies and Evans, but he motioned that
everything was clear.
Evans looked up. "Looks like she took a shot in the leg and
tossed a grenade too close by. If there's no internal damage from the
concussion, she'll be OK."
Akira bent over her. Her eyes were open, but she didn't seem
to be fully conscious. "I'll duck and let you shoot, if you let me
handle the grenades, OK?"
She nodded weakly.
"Who else got hurt?" He asked Sergeant Evans.
"Bouton's dead. Sergeant Perez is out checking Morinov. He
might live, but he's probably no good to X-COM any more."
Akira walked back outside into the sun and walked around the
UFO again to make sure the area was clear. The alien he had shot in
the back was gone, but Bouton's body was still on the side of the
mesa. He picked him up and carried him back toward the Skyranger.
On the way back he passed Captain Marcelle, already bringing
torches and heavy tools from the ship to dismantle the UFO.
"Good work, Akira," he said as he approached, "I hear you're
the one that crippled the sectoid that got Bouton. We've already got
him locked up inside the Skyranger."
Akira passed without saying anything.
When he reached the Skyranger he laid Bouton's body on the
ramp and went inside. Up against the far wall of the cargo bay was a
collapsible cage, all set up, with a little grey alien inside. It was
already sitting up and conscious.
Akira stared at it and it stood up. Large, oval, featureless
green eyes stared back.

THE END

3 - Japanese Monsters.

"We shouldn't be doing this at night," Akira complained to no
one in particular. Captain Marcelle would know it was directed at
him.
There was silence in the Skyranger for a minute or two, just the
thrumming of the jet engines. Then the captain stood and walked
casually to the back of the cargo compartment, toward Akira. He
looked at each trooper, nodded his head and flashed a forced smile at
a few of them.
When he reached Akira, he squatted down, forcing Reynolds, the
rookie trooper sitting behind Akira, to move back. The captain brought
his face very close beside Akira's, with his mouth up to his ear. He
reached up and turned off Akira's headset so the other's wouldn't
hear.
"There are people dying in Tokyo, squaddie," he whispered,
"your people. I'd think you'd be anxious to get there."
Akira said nothing. He could feel that the captain needed a
shave, and if the acrid smell of sweat was any indication, he was also
very nervous.
"Anyway," he continued, "you have a right to your opinions,
but keep them to yourself. The rookies have it hard enough as it
is. And if you don't care about your countrymen, think about all the
funding were going to loose if Japan sees this as alien retaliation
for its X-COM support and backs out."
With that the captain pushed on his knees to stand up and
turned to face the rest of the strike team. "We should arrive in
Tokyo just minutes before dawn. We can secure the area around the
Skyranger to provide a safe haven for civilians, then spread out into
the city. We won't have to wait for morning because Tokyo has street
lights."
The previous afternoon, an X-COM radar base in China had
tracked a large UFO over Japan. It had disappeared over Tokyo for
only a few minutes, then shot off out of radar range over the Pacific.
It must have dropped off the aliens that were shooting up the place.
Without a UFO, Akira had no clear mission objective other than killing
bugs and trying not to kill civilians.
From news reports, they had learned that the alien's terrorist
activities were confined to a few city blocks, and the Tokyo police
had surrounded the area and were keeping civilians out. But there
were still civilians in the area, and the police had taken heavy
casualties trying to help them.
Up until now they had had very few, if any civilians to deal
with on UFO recovery missions. Now there would probably be more
of them than bugs - a few blocks of Tokyo could mean thousands of
people.
The captain held up his alien plasma rifle, recovered in a
previous raid, and checked to make sure the clip was seated properly.
"They don't know were coming," he said, "but they sure as
hell will know when we arrive. Up until now we've remained a secret,
with only a few lively rumors from our trip to England in March. If
we want to keep it that way, we have to make sure we recover all our
casualties and give as little information as possible to the locals,
including the police."
What do we tell them, Akira wondered, that we're a UN
peacekeeping force that just happened to be in town with our plasma
weapons? What happens if a stray shot takes out a civilian? Then
the media won't leave it alone until the Japanese Government tells
them what happened.
Akira glanced behind him at Reynolds. The trooper was
fumbling with his plasma rifle, nervously checking over the lock on
the clip and the large trigger, probably designed to accommodate both
floater and sectoid fingers. Reynold's motions were jerky and
nervous. They didn't increase Akira's confidence in him.
"Remember, Reynolds," Akira said, "I'll go first. Just stay
were you can see me and some of the area in front of me. I'll signal
you if I see any bugs and we'll kill them together."
The rookie took a deep breath and calmed down some. He
started chewing again on the same gum he'd had since they took off.
"We still have a few hours," Akira said, "try and get some
sleep."
"Sorry," Reynolds whispered, "I just don't like flying."
Akira tried not to smile. He lay back against the wall and
closed his eyes, but he couldn't get to sleep. He kept seeing
visions of Japanese, people he knew, facing floaters and sectoids and
reapers. He's afraid of flying, Akira thought. I envy him his
ignorance.
four hours later, as they descended on autopilot and the
Skyranger switched to vertical thrusters, Akira had not slept at all.
But he had to shake Reynolds hard to wake him.
This would be Akira's third mission without Crossett for backup.
She had spent a month recovering from her wounds and exercising her
damaged leg. In the mean time they had replaced her with a rookie,
who had lasted only two missions - blown open by a plasma shot in
Iceland.
Now another rookie had stepped up to take her place. Why did
they keep signing on? Why did they stay when they saw the casualty
rates? Why did I stay, Akira wondered. Everyone thinks they're
immortal.
The Skyranger hit ground and the ramp began to lower.
"No lights out there," Sergeant Evans called from the back,
"so get flares ready, and kill the inside lights."
Akira transferred his plasma pistol to his left hand and
grabbed an electro-flare off his belt. The alien contours of the
pistol actually seemed to fit better in his left hand.
The lights went out.
As far as he knew, Far Squad had no UFO to secure on this
mission, so after the rocket tank had moved to the bottom of the ramp,
Akira poked Marin, the Near Squad leader, and waved her to the right.
Akira called "Far Squad left," and jumped off the ramp to the left.
In the moonlight he could make out the shapes of nearby buildings, but
the bright neon signs and interior lights were all out.
I guess we're in the right place, Akira thought. "Where are
your street lights, Captain?" he said out loud.
The Skyranger's computer had set them down in a small plaza
behind a blocky office building. The back of a small gas station was
visible to the right of the offices, with what appeared to be a
convenience store beyond that. To his left was a warehouse of some
kind. Above the warehouse he could see the brightly lit high-rise
buildings of Shinjuku - giant banks, department stores and hotels
clustered around the ordered confusion of Shinjuku Station.
He saw no sign of movement, but noticed a dark, prone figure
on the sidewalk between the office building and the gas station. He
threw the flare, and it landed within a few feet of the still form.
When it hit, the shock activated it and it lit up the corner of the
office building and the surrounding parking lot. The dark figure on
the ground was now obviously the body of a man in a business suit. The
sidewalk around him dark with blood.
Akira had grown up in Yokohama and had taken the train to
Shinjuku many times. He had fond memories of those outings, and he
realized that after today they might be ruined forever.
He was suddenly aware of Reynolds, squatting in the open on
the ramp above his head. "Get down here," he whispered. Then he
moved along the belly of the Skyranger, using the front landing gear
as cover to check out the door of the office building.
While he tried to peer in through the glass door, he noticed a
light moving up above. Through a third floor window, he could see
someone waving a light of some kind. The light moved up to the window,
then stopped, occasionally catching pieces of its owner in its beam.
After a few seconds, a young woman's voice yelled down in Japanese.
"Help us, please. It's in here somewhere"
Seconds later the light shook and fell, and the woman screamed.
The light must of landed at a strange angle - it still shone against
the ceiling and far wall of the room, casting disfigured shadows of
the woman or whatever else was in the room with her.
Reynolds didn't speak Japanese, but he had heard the scream
and reacted. He was off the ramp and running for the front door. As
Akira jumped up to intercept him, he heard the distinct sound of a
plasma weapon off to the right, near the scouting rocket tank. As he
reached Reynolds, just in front of the door, he saw the trail of a
rocket and the entire landing area was lit up by an explosion near the
gas station. Secondary explosions continued as he pulled the trooper
down beside the door. Just the thing to get an alien's attention
while we're wrestling in plain view, he thought.
"Let me go first," Akira said harshly, "and keep your head on."
He checked through the door again and still saw nothing, so he
stood to move in. He was not used to the weight of the body armor he was
wearing, formed from alien alloys, and now realized he had pulled a
muscle in his right leg jumping up to stop Reynolds. He put all his
weight on it, winced, and decided he could bear it for a while.
He moved forward into a lobby and reception area, lit only by
moonlight and the eerie glow of gasoline fires. At the opposite end of
the lobby, hallways went right and left. There was also an alcove at
the far end with two sets of elevator doors. The elevators would be
useless without power.
Akira decided to check down the hallway to the right for
stairs. He turned to call Reynolds forward to cover the other side, but
he was already moving up into position. He might work out, Akira
thought, and moved cautiously down the hall. He saw the door to the
stairwell, three doors down on the far side. There was no time to
check out all the rooms on this level - he would have to rely on
Reynolds to guard his rear.
He walked ahead, then thought he heard movement inside the last
door before the one marked 'stairs.' He crouched quietly beside it
for a few seconds and was sure he heard a sliding or scraping sound.
He opened the door and got down. It was very dark, so he tossed in a
flare.
He was in what looked like a small waiting room for a doctor's
office - a few chairs, mats and low tables. A small area filled with
office equipment and a door to the left were partially hidden by a
paper divider. No sign of aliens.
Akira went wide to the left, using the chairs as cover. He saw
movement behind the screen and was ready to strafe everything behind
it with plasma fire when he noticed a human leg.
A civilian. He stood and walked beside the screen. Something
flew and hit him in the chest, bouncing off his armor, then there was
a crash like breaking glass. Then something else hit him in the head.
He lifted his pistol, but the barrage stopped, and he found
himself facing four huddling civilians - a woman, a man, and two young
boys.
"It's all right" he reassured them, "we're here to help
... special police," he added lamely. Had they been huddled there all
night?
He saw motion at the corner of his vision, near the door he
had come in through. He new immediately it wasn't human and spun to
fire, but two shots came from the alien in rapid succession. One
missed off to Akira's left, the other came right at him. The impact
jerked him back, but he managed to bend over and stay on his feet.
Another shot went over his head.
Akira brought up his pistol and fired. He barely had time to
look at what he was shooting at before it was motionless and steaming
on the hallway floor. It was the strangest alien he'd seen yet - like
a man-sized, bloated snake or lizard with arms.
Reynolds appeared in the doorway, brimming with energy and
smiling uncontrollably. "I got him" he whispered loudly, "I heard
the crash in here and was on my way when I saw him come across the
hall."
Akira noticed a numbness throughout the right side of his chest
and abdomen. He was still bent over, afraid to straighten up or pull
his left hand away from his chest out of fear of what he might see.
Reynolds finally figured out what had happened. "You need a
medic?" he asked.
"Just get back out there and watch the hall," Akira ordered.
Reynolds lost his smile and left.
The numbness was receding and being replaced by sharp pain,
spreading out into his right armpit and down into his groin. Akira
looked to the side and saw the woman tearing off pieces of her
clothing, trying to wrap her husband's leg. It had been hit by the
stray shot from the alien and was badly damaged. It wasn't bleeding
much though - the plasma must have cauterized the wound.
Akira straightened up and pulled his hand away from his chest.
His armor had absorbed most of the blast. A small area of skin had
been exposed and burned away on the right side of his abdomen. It
didn't look too serious, but it hurt like hell.
Damn civilians, he thought. Next time we should just stun them
all.
As he left the room he saw Reynolds on one knee behind a chair
in the lobby. He continued down to the stairwell and went in quickly.
Had the snakeman they killed come down from the third floor? Were
there more on the second, or in the rooms he hadn't entered off the
lobby? At any rate, it hadn't sounded like the woman up in the
window had been shot, so there was a chance she was still alive. Akira
decided to go there first, then work his way back down to the Skyranger.
He made his way cautiously up the stairwell, checking every
turn, until he reached the third floor. The door out of the stairwell
was locked. One shot from his pistol completely destroyed the door
handle, lock, and part of the door.
Akira pushed the door open and waited quietly in a shadowy
corner of the landing for any aliens coming to investigate. In
a few minutes he stepped through into the hallway, emerging almost
directly across, he figured, from the young woman's room.
He heard shooting below, out near the Skyranger. It was a
plasma weapon, so it could have been X-COM or alien, or both.
The door to the room was open, and he could see the light
shining inside. He scanned down the dark hall as he crossed and moved
in. It was a small office, divided in two by a dark wooden partition.
On the near side were four small wooden desks with personal
computers and filing cabinets. Beyond the partition, Akira could see
one large, wooden desk.
There was no one on the near side, so he moved around to the
large desk and the window. Desk items and papers were spread
across the floor, and the flashlight lay on the desk, but the woman
wasn't there.
Where did she go? The window was closed, but he looked out
and checked below anyway. No sign of her down there. He could see
the Skyranger in the plaza below, but he saw no troopers guarding it.
That was strange. He decided he hated anti-terrorist missions - none
of the usual procedures seemed to apply.
He planned to briefly search the third floor and head back
down, but he was worried about being shot by Reynolds. Then he
remembered his headset. He had forgotten to turn his back on after
the captain had talked to him. He switched it on and heard the end of
an exclamation that sounded like Sergeant Perez.
"... back to the Skyranger. Right now ... "
She sounded pretty upset. How much had he missed?
"Reynolds," he whispered into his headset, "I'll be coming
down the other stairwell. Don't shoot me."
There was no reply.
"Reynolds, did you get that"
Maybe the transmitter wasn't working.
Perez's voice came through, interspersed with heavy breathing.
"Akira? ... is that you? ... Reynolds must be gone ... get back to the
plane."
Out the window he could see two troopers moving quickly into
the area lit by flares around the Skyranger. It looked like Perez and
maybe Davies.
If they were running from something, then he didn't have time
to wait and see what it was. And if Davies's rocket launcher couldn't
stop it, a few pistol shots from a third floor window probably
wouldn't either.
Akira left the room as fast as his injuries could tolerate and
crossed the hall to the stairway he'd come up. Are we really going to
abandon these people here, he wondered, or are we just regrouping?
As he rounded the landing between the first and second
floors, he stopped. At the bottom of the flight of stairs was a young
woman making her way slowly up. Her head was bent down and all her
movements were very slow. Was she the woman from the window?
"You should come with me," Akira said, "you'll be safer
outside."
As he spoke she moved up two more stairs and lifted her head
to look at him. Even in the darkness Akira could see that she was
disfigured. Her face and eyes were swollen, and her limbs looked as
if she had been severely beaten. She was obviously dazed, so he moved
down to direct her outside.
As he stretched out his arm to put it around her shoulders,
she suddenly lashed out and struck him with unbelievable strength,
sending him flying down the stairs. He grabbed the railing to slow
his fall and ended up laying at the bottom.
She let out a high, guttural wail and moved slowly toward him.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs he paniced and shot her.
She staggered for a moment, then stopped, dropped to her
knees and went very still. He could see only outlines in the
darkness, but she seemed to change shape. The flesh on her side
stretched out to a sharp point then went back in. Then the same thing
happened on her neck.
As Akira scrambled to his feet, sharp, dark objects emerged
from her neck, and it appeared as though her body just ripped down the
middle. Something else emerged, something pointy, bipedal and quick.
Akira ran for the lobby and didn't look back. He could hear a
clicking sound behind him. As he crossed the lobby the clicks were
getting closer and he realized he couldn't outrun whatever it was.
As he left the building, he turned to his left, intending to crouch
against the wall and shoot the creature as it passed.
Suddenly a rocket shot past, within a few feet of his head
and exploded behind him. The blast knocked him forward, flat on his
injured chest. He lay there in pain, unable to move for a few
seconds. The clicking was still there, behind him, getting closer.
Then it was past him, moving toward the rear of the Skyranger.
There were shouts of other troopers - he couldn't tell if they were
right in front of him or coming from his headset. He heard laser and
plasma fire and a scream.
The shooting stopped, the pain faded, and Akira pulled himself
up. Perez and Davies were near the rear of the Skyranger. Davies had
dropped his rocket launcher and pulled out a laser pistol. They were
both pointing their weapons down at the dead creature and a fallen
trooper.
"What the hell are these things?" Davies asked, scanning
nervously around,"You all right, Akira?"
"I think so."
"Get in the plane, Davies," Perez ordered, "I want you ready
to hit the autopilot and get us out of here if I give the order."
"Aren't we going to wait for the others?" he asked.
"Sure. As long as we can."
The trooper on the ground was Captain Marcelle. Akira checked
to make sure he was really dead and thought about moving his body into
the Skyranger, but that could wait.
Akira got down close to the Skyranger's ramp and Perez
covered the other side. The sun was just beginning to come up,
coloring the tops of the buildings golden-orange.
A minute or two later he saw something moving beyond the
flares, but within the light of the few gas fires still burning.
"Something coming," Akira said into his headset, "to your
left, near the store."
"It's me" a voice said, "don't shoot."
It was Marin, the Near Squad scout. She was running as fast
as she could across the open plaza. When she was less than fifty
yards away, a plasma bolt shot from one of the buildings off to the
right and hit her square in the side. Without enough armor to go
around, the rookies had gotten the short end of the stick, and it cost
Marin her life.
Akira stood and leaned his pistol on the ramp. He could
barely see one of the snakemen, around the corner of a one-story
building. He got off six shots, but it was very long range, and only
a couple shots hit anywhere near the alien.
Then Akira heard the distinct thump, thump, thump of an auto
cannon and the whole corner of the building where the alien stood was
wracked by explosions. There was no sign of the snakeman afterward.
"Who was that," Perez said into her headset, as she ran out to
check on Marin.
"Me, Gaudin. I'm coming in. Kolitov is dead ... no, wait
... hey Kolitov, over here ... what the ..."
Another round of auto cannon explosions went off, this time
near the gas station. Minutes later Gaudin was running toward the
Skyranger without his autocannon, trying to strip off his ammo belt
and headset.
As he got nearer, one of the bipedal crab creatures scooted out
of the shadows behind him, gaining on him fast.
Akira fired until his clip was empty, hitting the creature
once. Perez waited, probably afraid she'd hit Gaudin, shot and killed
the creature just before it reached him. Gaudin didn't even seem to
notice. He ran right up into the Skyranger and sat crouched in the
back corner, hugging his knees.
Perez picked up Marin's body and carried it back toward the
plane. "Who's left out there," she said into her headset.
There was no reply.
She laid Marin in the back of the Skyranger. "Kolitov ...
Reynolds ... Sergeant Evans?"
no reply.
"Get the captain in here and lets go," she ordered.
Akira walked toward Captain Marcelle and thought he noticed
movement. He stopped and quickly loaded a new clip. Marcelle's arms moved
and he pushed himself up on his knees. He had the same bloated look
of the young girl inside.
Akira pointed his pistol "Sorry about this, Captain."
He shot Marcelle three times, then forced himself to watch the
emergence of the crab creature. When the captain's body began to
split, he suppressed the urge to vomit until he was done firing and
was sure the creature was dead.
He turned and lost it beside the ramp. He noticed Perez
looking past him in shock at what was left of the captain's body.
He jumped painfully onto the ramp and was the last one inside.
Davies hit the autopilot and the ramp began to close. Seconds later
the inside lights came on. Akira, Perez, and Davies looked at each
other solemnly and said nothing. Gaudin still sat in the corner, face
in his knees, shaking his head.
"Going home," Gaudin mumbled.
Akira wondered what would happen to Tokyo as those creatures
transformed everyone.
"That was my home."
THE END

4 - Mind Games.

Through the windows on the right side of the Skyranger, Akira
could see the Amazon rolling by below like an endless, lumpy, dark
green carpet, broken only by the silver arteries flowing east toward
the Atlantic. Where are we going to land in all that, he wondered.
"Is that plasma too heavy for you, Sergeant?" Captain Perez
asked.
It took a second for Akira to realize she was talking to him.
He hadn't completely adjusted to his new rank. He lifted the big
plasma weapon with both hands and tried not to let his arms shake
under the weight. She seemed to be carrying hers with no trouble.
"No. No problem." It was the most powerful infantry weapon
X-COM had, and there was no way he was going to give it up. "I'm not
a scout anymore," he added, "I don't need to be so light on my feet."
She gave him a skeptical, sideways look, then turned to look
out her own window.
He had a lot of respect for Perez. She had become captain in
the shake-up following the disastrous mission to Tokyo, at a time when
a lot was happening within X-COM. New recruits had to be trained, and
world governments had to be reassured after Japan withdrew funding,
presumably under an agreement with the aliens to stop terrorist
activities in Tokyo.
And the base itself was growing. New living quarters,
laboratories and workshops were always under construction, and new
researchers and engineers came in every week.
Akira found it interesting that, although X-COM was
fundamentally a military organization, the scientists and engineers
now outnumbered the soldiers nearly four to one. Well, without them
they wouldn't know how to use and maintain plasma weapons, and they
wouldn't have personal armor, or the new hovertank sitting in the back
of the Skyranger, built through reverse-engineering of captured UFO
components.
Perez had been the obvious choice for captain, though. At the
time she had nine missions, more than anyone else, and she had been a
sergeant since Buchard was killed in Wales. The only drawback was the
fact that some national representatives held her responsible for
leaving Tokyo at the mercy of the aliens. She seemed to blame herself
too, but everyone else new that, by giving the order, she had saved
valuable equipment and a core set of troopers to allow the fight to
continue.
Akira was promoted too, and was now Far Squad's sergeant. The
strike team's first three missions under their new leaders had gone
well - only two casualties from all three. And for the first time in
months there were no rookies on the Skyranger. Akira had a good squad
- Gaudin, Crossett, and a relatively new, but intelligent scout named
Okamoto who had been recruited only days before Japan withdrew
support.
Crossett had joined them on missions again right after Tokyo -
they were severely short on good soldiers and couldn't afford to leave
her behind. She had been in longer than Akira, and he knew that she
would be sergeant if she hadn't been injured, but she didn't seem to
hold it against him.
Her hair had grown out an inch or two during her recovery,
probably costing her a few more missions, but Akira noticed she had
been cutting off less on each one. He began to think she actually
enjoyed all this.
Crossett turned to say something to Gaudin and caught Akira
staring at her. She smiled and gave him a thumbs up. She could feel
it too, he thought - This is the best squad we've ever had. He wanted
to be up there in Okamoto's place, with Crossett covering his back.
"We've never fought in the jungle before," Perez said from
behind him.
Akira turned and could see in her face how concerned she was.
She certainly didn't have Captain Marcelle's poker face. "There are a
lot of places we haven't fought," he said, "especially some of the
newer troopers in Davies's squad."
Sergeant Davies was sitting against the wall right across from
Akira, checking over his medi-kit. "So what?" he said, "The bugs have
never fought us in the jungle either."
He's right, Akira thought. "I wonder if they're as afraid of
us?" he said out loud, "After all, they're the ones on the alien
planet."
"They're just bugs," Davies said quickly, stowing his medi-kit
and picking up his plasma, "and bugs don't have feelings."
The Skyranger began its descent and Perez stepped toward the
center of the cargo bay and addressed everyone. "Our interceptor was
badly damaged bringing down this UFO. It looked like a fairly big
one. I want Far Squad to find it and guard it, but don't go in until
Near Squad's ready to back you up. And take care of yourselves."
They descended quickly and the autopilot headed for a small
clearing. Akira tried to spot signs of the UFO before they reached
tree level. The only interesting feature he could see was another
clearing off in the distance. The UFO could be at the bottom of it,
but he wasn't sure. Their landing area turned out to be so small that
the Skyranger's vertical thrusters burned the surrounding canopy as
they descended.
It was much darker below the canopy, but when they hit ground,
Akira thought he could see the dull glint of alien alloys in a sunlit
clearing through the tree trunks and sparse undergrowth. He saw no
aliens, but there were plenty of places for them to hide.
"Anything that looks like a UFO or alien on that side?" he
asked Davies.
"Nope."
The ramp was already dropping and Akira could feel the first
hints of the warm, humid atmosphere. "UFO left," he called.
Okamoto echoed with "Far Squad left," and after the hovertank
slid out among the trees, he and Crossett quickly dropped out of sight
to the left side of the ramp. Akira watched them for a few seconds
through his window, then moved toward the ramp himself.
"Bug, sector thirteen," Okamoto reported calmly from
everyone's headset.
As Akira reached the ramp and Gaudin jumped off, they heard
the deep, repeated whistle of a heavy plasma on autofire, followed by
an alien scream.
"Gottem," Crossett called, "it was one of those little guys -
a sectoid."
Akira jumped down beside Gaudin. He was surprised at how thin
the ground cover was, but the trees were dense, limiting visibility to
thirty or forty yards. He could still see Crossett and Okamoto moving
off at a right angle to the Skyranger, to the right of where Akira
thought he saw the UFO. Higher up he could see the hovertank,
scouting ahead just below the canopy.
Gaudin stood and moved toward the front of the Skyranger. "I
think I see one," he said.
"Where?" Perez asked over the headset, "Which sector?"
"To the left..." he began, then Akira saw him wince and press
his left hand to his temple.
"ahnnn...sector..."
As Akira watched, Gaudin suddenly turned to his right and
fired a rocket through the jungle toward Crossett. It hit a tree long
before it reached her, blowing the trunk to pieces, shaking all the
trees nearby and bringing down heavy branches, screeching birds and
howling tree dwellers.
"What the hell was that" Crossett protested. Akira could see
her looking back at them through the debris and flames.
Gaudin didn't reply. Akira turned to find the rocket launcher
pointed at him and Gaudin reaching in his pack for another rocket.
Akira focused past Gaudin and saw one of the small grey
aliens, partially obscured behind a large fern about twenty yards in
front of the Skyranger. The alien was not pointing a weapon, just
staring in their direction. Akira took careful aim so he wouldn't hit
Gaudin and squeezed off a single shot. The plasma bolt singed the top
of the fern and took the alien square in the chest. It went down.
Akira stepped behind the Skyranger's back landing gear for
cover and peered through at Gaudin. He was shaking his head, still
holding the rocket in his hand.
"You OK, Gaudin?" Akira asked.
"Uh...sure..just got dizzy for a second there."
Gaudin stared at the rocket in his hand, felt in his backpack
and found only one more rocket, then stared at the destroyed area of
jungle.
"Drop your launcher and get out your laser, Gaudin," Akira
ordered, "your going to stay here and guard the Skyranger until you
recover."
Gaudin nodded without looking up and dropped his launcher as
if it were burning his hands.
Akira passed him and moved as quickly as he could into the
jungle, as afraid of being shot in the back by Gaudin as of running
head-on into a sectoid. He made it to where the alien had gone down,
went around to the left of the ferns, and found it lying there,
obviously dead.
"UFO is in sector thirteen," Okamoto reported. "I'm moving
around to the right to find a door."
Akira could see the wall of the UFO straight ahead of him,
three levels high. "And in sector twelve," he added. As he moved
slowly toward it, he noticed that the side of the UFO had been opened
up on the second level, presumably by the interceptor attack.
Suddenly there was a strange voice inside his head, pushing
him aside. It was as if there were two of him inside his mind, one
being forced out by another who was desperate to protect the UFO and
defend the aliens against an unprovoked attack by humans.
Akira strained to force out the usurper. He thought of
Crossett and managed to bring up memories of troopers killed by the
aliens. He regained control and was immediately invaded from another
direction, this time it was a little harder to fight off and seemed to
take minutes.
He found himself kneeling on the ground, still in the same
spot. Had he hurt anyone? He glanced around and saw no other
troopers, and there was no chatter over the headset.
Seconds later a small silver football streaked past over his
head and turned sharply toward the Skyranger. There was a deafening
explosion behind him. He felt the blast and turned to find a huge
area of jungle to the near side of the Skyranger engulfed in a
fireball. The bottoms of the trees had been vaporized and their
trunks blown outwards, bringing the canopy down in a burning ring
around the whole area.
"Gaudin" Akira shouted in his headset.
"He's dead," Perez replied. "What the hell was that?"
Akira decided he wasn't going to wait around for that to
happen again. "Perez, we can't wait for Near Squad. They've got
guided missiles of some kind and some way to get inside our heads and
turn us against each other."
"Then go," Perez replied, "Davies, get your squad there as
soon as you can."
Akira primed a heavy, bulbous alien grenade they had captured
on a previous mission and tossed it up through the breach in the side
of the UFO.
Seconds later there was a tremendous blast and expulsion of
metal fragments from the hole. He stood and ran to the door. It
opened in front of him with a woosh, and he stepped in and dropped to
on knee. To his left a high wall ran nearly to the opposite side of
the UFO. To his right was a high room, reaching to the top of the UFO
and comprising its entire front half. The opposite side of the room
contained a large table surrounded by metal arms, like the robots in
an automobile plant. Some kind of large animal, possibly monkey or
human, lay on the table, skinned to lay its insides bare.
The high wall to his left had a jagged hole at the top,
directly above Akira's head, probably blown out by his grenade.
Thick, noxious smoke was settling around him, burning his nose and
eyes.
"Found a door half-way around the UFO," Okamoto reported.
Akira could hear a door open to his left, somewhere on the
other side of the wall, then another that sounded like it was
somewhere up on the second level.
There was a door immediately to his left, and the high wall
was open at the far end. If he went either way he would leave his
rear undefended.
"This is Okamoto. Me and Crossett are inside. It's a small
room with no doors, just a glowing red field of some kind around a red
panel on the floor."
"It's a lift," Akira said, "We saw some in Iceland. If you
want to go up, step in and wave your arm upwards." It sounded simple,
but it had taken Akira a long time to get up the nerve to step into
one the first time. Then he had flailed around and nearly been killed
trying to imitate the actions of the sectoid he'd seen use it.
The door behind him opened and he turned to find Thompson, the
Near Squad Trooper, facing him with his heavy plasma raised. Akira
jumped to the side and raised his own weapon, half expecting to be
shot, but Thompson just gave him a strange look and scanned around the
room.
Akira composed himself. "watch this room while I check in
here," he ordered, waving his gun at the doorway. He stepped up to it
and the door opened. Inside was a small room with a platform, in the
middle of which was another lift. No doors. He primed a proximity
grenade and tossed it beside the lift. "Lift on the Skyranger side of
the UFO is rigged with a 'P' grenade," he reported over the headset.
He left the room through the door and ordered Thompson to
guard it, then he moved along the wall to where it opened and turned
to the left. He got down and checked around the corner. The ceiling
was only one level high and there were various containers or cages of
some kind arranged like a small museum. Most contained animal and
plant specimens, but a few contained mutated or alien creatures. No
doors.
Akira cautiously searched behind the cases and found no
aliens, so he made his way back towards Thompson. He rounded the
corner and moved along the high wall, intending to somehow detonate
the proximity grenade and take the lift up to help Crossett and
Okamoto. When he got within five meters of Thompson there was a high
pitched whistling sound from above and a small explosion at the
trooper's feet. For a second, Akira's field of vision contracted to a
small tunnel. He felt dizzy and nauseous, but he didn't fall over or
pass out. He recovered slowly and looked up to see an alien pointing
a luncher of some kind at him through the hole in the wall.
He raised his heavy plasma and squeezed off one shot, but
missed far to the right, striking the wall. He was still too dizzy to
aim properly.
Before the alien could get him, a plasma bolt shot through the
opening in the outside wall of the UFO and killed it.
Who could have shot through from outside the second story,
Akira wondered. Then he remembered the hovertank. "Perez," he said,
"remind me to thank whoever programmed that flying monstrosity."
Thompson was down. Akira checked him and found that he was
still alive, and had no visible injuries. He was preparing his
medi-kit to treat him when he heard an autofired laser on the second
level.
"Last one coming down your way, 'Kira," Crossett called.
Akira heard the proximity grenade explode, and he barely had
time to crouch down beside the door before it opened and a sectoid ran
out.
He hadn't had time to drop the medi-kit and get his heavy
plasma into position, but it didn't matter; the alien ran right past
him. It ran to the wall across the room and stood there, fidgeting
with its hands.
Akira heard movement above and looked up to find Okamoto
pointing his laser rifle down at the creature.
"Hold it" Akira called. "Toss me your stun rod."
Crossett appeared above and trained her weapon on the sectoid
while Okamoto pulled out the long blue stun rod and tossed it down.
Akira caught it and walked slowly up to the alien. It looked right at
him, and even in its alien face and featureless eyes, Akira recognized
fear. As he stood over the injured alien, he thought he sensed the
beginnings of another attack on his mind. He reached out with the rod
and pressed the end against the alien's side.
After a blue flash and a "tzzt" sound, the alien slumped to
the floor.
Akira looked over the stun rod. "I guess these are good for
something." He turned and Crossett looked down and gave him a thumbs
up and a smile.
"All clear," she reported over her headset, and reached for
her knife.
THE END

5 - House Call.

The immediate area around the Skyranger was clear, so the
strike team disembarked quickly and ran the twenty meters to the
small, scrubby hill. It was Akira's second mission using the new
powered armor, and it still made the whole scene mildly unreal. He
breathed air from a life support unit inside the suit, watched the
world through computer-enhanced, blastproof lenses, and every move he
made was mimicked by the suit, relieving him of the burden of its
weight.
A Russian security officer of some kind and two farmers were
standing on the near side of the hill. Andianov, who had replaced
Gaudin a month earlier as the Far Squad heavy, translated Russian for
Captain Perez, who was also encased in alien alloy. After a few words
were exchanged, the officer nodded to the farmers and they pulled
aside piled brush and leaves to reveal a metal door. It was at least
three meters wide, maybe more, like two UFO doors together.
The farmers immediately ran off around the hill to the right.
Perez, Andianov, and the officer followed and they all stopped where
Akira could still see them. The farmers pulled aside more brush,
probably revealing another door that was still hidden from Akira.
An interceptor following a large alien ship had detected
strange emissions from this area of the Russian steppes, east of
Rostov. In response, X-COM representatives in Russia had enlisted
local authorities to help them with the search for the source,
claiming there might be an underground terrorist training base built
by the KGB during the late 80's.
The interceptor had narrowed the search area to a few square
miles, and the entrance had been found the next day. Now the officer
at the site and the enlisted farmers looked skeptically at the array
of unearthly firepower and technology standing before them. The
hovertank was certainly unlike anything they had seen so far, and as
far as they knew, the three leaders in power armor could have been
robots. In fact you could only tell the three leaders apart by the
relative sizes of their suits and the family coats-of-arms they had
painted on them. Perez explained that the special suits were required
because the base was being used to process and smuggle nuclear
material out of Russia.
"We split up," Perez said over the headset, turning back
toward the strike team. "These are the only two entrances they've
found, so we shouldn't have anything coming out and getting behind
us."
Splitting up made Akira uncomfortable, but they had no idea
how cramped it might be below. A large group might just end up
stumbling over each other.
"We'll take the other entrance," Akira said, pointing with his
heavy plasma to the one farthest from the Skyranger. He waved his squad
forward - Okamoto, Crossett, and Andianov. Davies's squad and the
hovertank gathered near the first door. Perez and Zander, the team's
new medical specialist, followed Akira.
Okamoto moved up to the door, and one section of it opened,
sliding up into the hill. The scout moved in and waved the rest of
the squad forward before disappearing farther inside.
Crossett moved in next. She was different on this mission -
maybe actually afraid, or finally showing fear. This mission was very
different. They had only a rough idea how large the base was down
there. And up until now, even when inside a UFO, open terrain and
freedom hadn't been too far away.
Akira checked his heavy plasma clips and turned quickly to
Perez. "We have to regroup as soon as we can down there," he said.
"Sure," she said, "but we have to cover this entrance the
whole time. Each squad can establish a perimeter, then we'll expand
toward each other and try to merge before moving out into whatever
else is down there."
Perez was carrying a blaster launcher, the monstrous
cannon-like device used by the aliens in Brazil, and then in Omaha, to
launch the silver, football size guided bombs. Akira had seen tapes
of one of X-COM's test firings in Nevada. The bomb had maneuvered as
programmed around one shack and slammed into another, destroying both
structures, along with everything else within a blast radius of twenty
meters. It had left a crater eight feet deep.
"Do you really think you should use that inside?" Akira
asked.
He couldn't read Perez's facial expression within the suit, but
she looked silently at him for a few seconds. "I'll be careful. You keep
your head down."
The nature of combat was changing quickly. The next big
tactics change beyond blaster launchers was already on its way - if
it worked. The researchers at Little Rock thought they had learned
enough about alien mind control psionics from the sectoid captured in
the Amazon to construct psi-amps for the troopers and train them how
to use the same powers against aliens. Psionic training laboratories
were nearly finished behind the living quarters. Everyone in the
strike team would soon be assigned to an entire month of psionic
evaluation.
Crossett was already inside the doors. She had stopped where
Akira could see her through one of the doors which opened for Andianov
to enter. She was lit by a strange green glow which seemed to be
coming from the floor.
Akira moved to the door, it opened, and he stepped through.
His squad was inside a large square chamber, with a glowing green
floor. In the far corner was the red glow of a down access lift.
This one was large enough for a tank to use.
"Okamoto and Crossett, down you go. Okamoto take north,
Crossett south. Otherwise make it up as you go."
Okamoto and Crossett stepped onto the lift and Crossett made
the arm motion. They descended back to back and were gone.
"What have you got?" Akira asked over the headset.
"A maze," Crossett replied, "like the kind they use to study
rats."
"No bugs," Okamoto added, "but there are four clear entrances
to this room. We need help to cover all of them."
"OK. Andianov, with me."
Akira and Andianov moved to the lift and descended. They
arrived in a room the same size as the one above, but with four wide
openings to other areas. Okamoto crouched to the north, scanning a
large room with a high ceiling, filled with the strange display cases
Akira had seen on the Amazon ship. To the south, Crossett covered a
wide passage that split into two dark, jagged tunnels through some
strange blue organic material.
Akira waved Andianov to the east and took the west passage
himself. It led to another room, or maybe a very wide north-south
hallway, lined with large glowing spheres, each held off the floor by
four thin tubes. No aliens. There was no opening to the west.
Their first objective would be to meet up with davies. Akira
used his teeth and tongue to activate a head up display map of where
each trooper was and the areas they had seen so far. Davies was to
the north, as expected, about forty meters away.
Before ordering the squad to expand the perimeter north, he
moved into the sphere room and up to its south entrance, dropping to
one knee where he could keep and eye on both openings.
"Zander," he ordered, "come west and cover this room with the
spheres."
Just as he finished speaking, a purple form glided smoothly
into view at the far end of the room. Before it noticed him, Akira
autofired in its general direction. The first bolt of plasma missed
and struck something in the large display room beyond. later shots
might have hit the alien, but he couldn't tell because he hit one of
spheres to the left of the alien and it exploded like a small grenade.
When the flash was over, the floater was motionless on the ground.
Zander stepped cautiously into the room, and Akira motioned
for her to cover the north. Then he turned and moved south into
another area of blue organic surfaces.
The hallway turned into a dim tunnel and split left and right.
He went right and found himself moving back around in a circle to a
point where he could see the sphere room to the north and more blue
tunnels to the east.
"Coming your way, Crossett," he reported over the headset and
moved east. The tunnels seemed to follow the same circular pattern,
splitting right and left. He took a quick look up the left tunnel and
waved to Crossett, kneeling, ready to fire. If he were an alien he'd
be dead.
He went back and took the right tunnel to the southeast and
came back around in a circle to an eastward opening into a normal,
alien alloy room with a partially enclosed area in the center. The
opening in the small enclosed area faced west toward him, so he could
see inside. It contained a lift going up.
There was chatter over the headset - Davies ordering
Hudson south. A few seconds later he heard heavy plasma fire.
"Damn, I'm hit." It sounded like Davies, but the voice was
distorted by pain.
"Where are you?" Zander asked over the headset, "I'll come
help you."
"Hold it, Zander," Akira ordered. He quickly checked his map
display again. Thompson was near the sergeant. "Davies has his own
medi-kit and Thompson can help him with it."
"Thompson's covering our north flank, Akira," Davies said
testily, "I'll be fine. You worry about your own squad."
Akira turned his full attention to the room in front of him.
No opening to the south - solid wall. All the way from the sphere
room to here there were no openings from the south, so the squad's rear
was clear.
"Far Squad, we have a wall ten meters to our south and west,
and the area is all clear," he said over the headset. "Zander and
Okamoto move out north into the large room to link up with Near
Squad."
"This is Davies. We're secure to the west and north. The
tank is scouting the big room now. It looks like there is nothing to
the west of it either."
"Good," Perez chimed in, "as soon as it's cleared, everyone
can sweep east."
Akira needed to know where the lift ahead of him led.
"Andianov, can you see into the room to your southeast?"
There was a short pause, then Andianov answered. "I can see
part of it, the back of the small enclosure and the opening behind
it."
"Keep an eye on it. I'll be gone for a minute."
Akira moved up to the glowing red lift field and stepped in.
He was about to make the hand motion to go up when he noticed movement
above, through the lift's shaft. Through the red glow he could barely
discern a purple figure moving across to the side of the lift.
The figure was moving out of sight, so Akira only had time to
get off a single quick shot. It missed, he thought, but it must have
made enough noise to get the alien's attention.
Akira had one alien grenade on his belt. He pulled it off,
still scanning and pointing his plasma through the hole above. He
primed it short and tossed it carefully up through the shaft.
The explosion came quickly, followed by alien screams. He
wasn't sure how long the area above would be clear, so Akira quickly
made the arm motion and ascended. At the top of the shaft he scanned
quickly, spotting one immobile alien, but no others. He was in a
small room containing a few alien display cases, but nothing else.
There were no obvious doors.
Up through the shaft he heard two bursts of plasma fire, followed
quickly by Okamoto's voice. "The big display room is secure...hold
it...reaper"
Laser fire.
"I hit him. He's headed south, toward you Andy."
"I don't see him"
Akira made the hand motion and descended. He moved out of the
enclosure quickly and around to the north where he would be able to
see Andianov.
Andianov glanced quickly at Akira from an opening in the
hallway. It was enough distraction to keep him from seeing what Akira
saw - a blood-red reaper plodding down the hall on its two stalky
legs, around the corner from Andianov, but only a few meters away.
Akira had been haunted by the reaper he'd seen in X-COM
battle footage, but this one was real, and it obviously saw him. It
began to move faster toward him, passing within two meters of
Andianov.
Akira moved slowly, unable to concentrate amid thoughts of what
the reaper would do to him - the sounds of crushing bones from the
videos. The reaper was nearly on top of Akira when he heard plasma
fire from behind it. He finally managed to squeeze the trigger on
his own weapon, not even sure where it was pointing.
The creature's chest and right leg blew apart in bursts of
plasma. Akira could feel the searing heat even through his power suit.
The reaper dropped with a heavy thump at Akira's feet.
He looked beyond it and saw Andianov, and Okamoto farther down
the hall, both with their weapons trained on him.
"Sorry, Sergeant," Andianov said, "I didn't see it until it
was past me. It might have gotten me if it hadn't seen you first."
"Well, it's dead," Akira said, "that's all I care about right
now."
Akira turned to cover the east opening of the lift room. It
led into another room about the same size, in the center of which was
a room about half the size. The interior room had a window or opening
of some kind facing him, and through it, as he moved slowly forward,
he saw the red glow of a lift, then caught a glimpse of purple motion.
He got down and waited. A few seconds later he heard a door whoosh
open.
"This is Hudson," Akira's headset squawked, "just saw a reaper
go around the corner twenty meters east of me."
"Get down, Hudson," Perez ordered.
Akira quickly checked his HUD map to see where
Hudson was. Would she actually try to maneuver a blaster bomb past
Him? Before he could protest, he heard the high pitched whistling
sound.
The bomb exploded at the far northern end of the alien base,
but to Akira, even with his suit blocking most of the sound, it
sounded like a grenade going off right next to him.
"Huds...hud...right," the headset crackled as at least three
people questioned Hudson at the same time. Akira checked his map -
Hudson's signal was still there.
"I'm here," Hudson reported after a few tense seconds, "I'm
fine - just a little stunned. Can we just hang back now and let the
captain nuke everything that's left?"
"As you were, Squaddie," Perez replied, "there may be
valuable equipment in this base. Begin your sweep east."
Meanwhile, Akira had seen no sign of the floater in the window
room. He moved forward and knelt where he had a clear view of the
lift through the window. He could also see that the north end of the
surrounding room opened into an east-west hallway. He caught a
glimpse of purple in the hall before it slid out of sight to the east.
"This is Akira. Floater in the hall to my northeast," he
reported over the headset - and immediately regretted it..
"Get down, Akira," Perez said.
"I've got it," Andianov called.
Akira called up his map and saw Andianov begin to move.
"Perez, don't..."
He heard the whistling sound and reacted, pushing off with his
legs to jump back and to his left, into the lift room for cover.
The blast hit, but afterwards he couldn't remember hearing it,
only feeling it, like an electric shock to his entire body. The flash
triggered the shielding on his blast lenses, but they cleared in time
for hims to see molten debris and superheated air surge into the room.
His suit protected him from the worst of the concussion, and he
remained conscious.
Akira stood and stumbled around the wall into the hallway.
The alien alloy floor was scorched and twisted for as far down the hall
as he could see through the smoke and dust. He saw no sign of the
floater, but Andianov lay motionless on the floor a few meters ahead.
He moved toward the body, passing a hallway off to his left,
conscious of the fact that there were now at least two routes for an
alien to move in behind him.
"Andianov's down," he reported, "Crossett, move up to cover my
right."
"Already there, 'Kira."
He glanced right and behind and saw her, standing in the room
with the windowed inner chamber. She wore only personal armor and
suddenly looked extremely vulnerable. She finished tossing a
proximity grenade through a window to cover the lift inside, then
waved quickly to him. "How is he?"
"Don't know yet." Andianov's legs and abdomen were covered in
blood. Akira checked his map while he fumbled with his medi-kit. As
he prepared to seal the wound in artificial skin, Andianov's little
yellow light on his HUD turned to a white cross.
"No." Akira checked the portable monitor on Andianov's belt,
thinking it might have been damaged by the blast. It was functioning
correctly. Andianov was dead.
Akira did what he could, injecting stimulant and administering
clumsy CPR, made extremely difficult and dangerous by his own power suit.
"Andy's dead," Crossett reported over the headset, "Akira and
I are leaving him here."
Akira glanced at her quickly. She looked back without
expression. She was right - time to go.
He picked up his weapon and looked around to get his bearings.
The blast had blown out the west wall of the hallway, exposing a
parallel passage and a long stretch of adjacent doors.
There was a series of chatter from Davies's squad, followed by
a grenade explosion. "The tank has the central east-west passage
covered," Davies reported, "That should free Okamoto to help you down
there."
Akira checked his map. The tank was indeed covering a large
hallway in the center of the base. Okamoto could move out.
"Good. Okamoto, move east twenty meters, and plant yourself
there," Akira ordered. Then he knelt and covered Crossett as she moved
forward around the window chamber.
"Bare walls, south and east," she reported out loud.
Akira continued to watch the row of doors and the spaces ahead
as Crossett moved on. It