X-Com Saga

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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

[FullAuto]

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

[FullAuto]

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

[FullAuto]

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

[FullAuto]

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 seemed strange covering her after all those

missions the other way around.

"Two parallel north-south passages," she reported, "wherever

those doors lead, it looks like it had its own secret passage

surrounding it."

Plasma and laser shots went off behind Akira and to the north,

near where Okamoto was supposed to be.

"Okamoto...what was that," he called.

No reply.

He checked his map and saw that Okamoto was still yellow.

Maybe his headset was out.

"Cover me Crossett," he ordered and headed back south, around

into the outermost of the two north-south passages. A floater lay

motionless on the floor with a plasma pistol next to it. Just around

the corner ahead, he could see Okamoto's head and shoulders.

"Okamoto's out."

"I'm on my way," Perez called, "you keep moving ahead so we

can get the hell out of here." She sounded very different, maybe

desperate. She had to realize she had just killed Andianov.

Akira moved back around to the doors and found Crossett still

watching them, along with Thompson, the Near Squad trooper. He

must have come around the other way.

"North side of the base is secure," he reported, "except for a

few lifts that Hudson and Mederow are mopping up. There are more

doors behind this area, probably leading into this inside hallway. The

tank and the sergeant have that covered."

"This is all we have left then," Akira said, "Hopefully this

doesn't lead down to another level."

Thompson didn't wait for further details. He stood and moved

up to one of the four doors. It opened, and beyond him Akira saw the

east wall of a large room, probably filling the entire space inside

the twin hallways.

"Big lift," Thompson reported, moving slowly out of sight.

"Let's go," Akira said, motioning Crossett forward. They

moved up to the doors together. The doors opened and they moved

inside.

The room was big, nearly the size of the high ceilinged

display case room. Around the outside were eight large cylinders

containing glowing fluids of some kind. In the center was a large

lift - the biggest Akira had seen yet. Their entire strike team could

probably fit on it at once, including the tank.

Akira watched Thompson move toward the lift, scanning for

anything hiding behind the cylinders. It was very quiet, almost too

quiet. When Thompson reached the edge of the glowing red platform, he

quickly raised his heavy plasma and fired on autoshot.

Suddenly Akira's vision went black and he was slammed in the

chest and head by a giant mallet. His blast lenses cleared again and

he saw that the room was filled with smoke, and

everything in it had been destroyed, including

Thompson. He quickly glanced to his right and saw Crossett choking

and stumbling through the door.

"Perez," he called over the headset, "Thompson is gone. Do

you think you can fly one of those damn things through an open

doorway?"

"For a shot up that lift?" She paused, "...Which door?"

"Far west," Akira called, "I'm heading through now. You've

got about five seconds from my mark."

Akira stood and was glad to find his legs still worked,

although his left arm suddenly felt as if his skin were being peeled

off. He moved to the door and it seemed to open more slowly than

before. Aliens could be coming down the lift at any time.

"Now," Akira called.

If she misses the doorway, he thought, I'm dead.

A few seconds later, as Akira ran for cover and was sure the

automatic door was about to close, the whistling sound came and went.

The explosion followed, behind Akira and above, and it seemed longer and

more violent than the others. Secondary explosions went on for what seemed

like minutes, causing Crossett to cover her bleeding ears and crouch

behind a wall.

Seconds later it was over, and intensely quiet except for the

ringing in Akira's ears.

"What the hell was that" Davies called.

"We hit something big upstairs," Akira called. He glanced at

Crossett - she looked disoriented, but was already getting to her

feet. "Crossett and I will check it out."

Akira moved up to the doors, cradling his heavy plasma in his

right arm, and Crossett followed. He moved into the room and scanned,

spotting the bodies of three aliens. Above him the ceiling was almost

completely gone, revealing another ceiling of alloy and exposed rock

higher up. The red lift field ahead of him had miraculously survived,

apparently generated from somewhere outside the blast area.

Akira moved to the red platform with Crossett at his back. He

scanned around the remaining edges of the room above and saw mangled

furniture and control equipment. He ascended to get a closer

look and spotted one more alien corpse near one of the destroyed

panels. He saw no other entrances to the room. They had apparently

cleared the entire base.

"You really trashed this place, Captain," he chided over the

headset, "but you got the last four."

"Good" she replied, unamused.

Akira sobered and descended to help Crossett find whatever

remains they could for Thompson's family.

THE END

[FullAuto]

6 - Big Fish.

 

The Skyranger barely reached cruising altitude, and already

they were passing over Indianapolis and descending. They were after a

very large, three-level UFO which had landed in northeastern Indiana.

It would be simple, open terrain, Akira thought, but that was a

deception. He was sure it would be one of the toughest battles in

months.

The UFO was of the three-level design with five landing

pedestals extending below it. Another just like it had skimmed over

China three weeks earlier, and the new Russian strike base had lost

its interceptor trying to shoot it down. That UFO had landed near

the China-Turkistan border, and the Russian base commander, Captain

Ragulin, had sent in the rookie strike team in power suits, with heavy

plasmas and blaster launchers. Even with all the supporting

technology, the battle went badly. By the time the captain finally

aborted the mission, six troopers were lost, including Okamoto, who

had voluntarily transferred over from Little Rock only a few days

earlier.

This time the pilot of X-COM's new UFO-like interceptor, the

Firestorm, had followed the alien ship as it approached the Little

Rock base at over mach three. Colonel Perez had ordered an evacuation

of all non-combat personnel from the base and had sent the Skyranger

up into a low holding pattern over Tennessee.

The Firestorm pilot had closed his pursuit distance enough to

use its fusion balls and plasma cannon, weapons that would have meant

a quick kill on any other UFO. The large UFO began to fire almost the

second the Firestorm did. In less than a minute the battle was over,

with the Firestorm backing off, badly damaged, and the UFO barely

scratched.

It passed within twenty miles of the X-COM base, but continued

on, erratically backtracking across Middle America for six more hours

before landing in in rural Indiana. Now the Skyranger was on its way

to catch the abomination on the ground.

Akira and Colonel Perez sat in their armor, helmets removed,

toward the back of the Skyranger's cargo bay. She was still in

command of the entire X-COM military operation, but that now included

another base and more troopers, so she had been promoted to colonel,

and a commanding captain had been chosen for each base. Akira was one

of them and was now in charge at Little Rock. Well, almost - Perez

was still stationed there, and she outranked him. He imagined his

problems were very similar to those faced by the captain of a navy

flagship with an Admiral on board.

"I still think you should stay back, Colonel," he said,

"You're too valuable."

She read through it, as Akira hoped she would. He liked Perez

and was genuinely concerned for the welfare of the organization, but

what he was really saying was, "Why didn't you stay behind and let me

lead this mission in peace?"

Without looking up, she said quickly, "If I want to run this

operation properly, I have to know what's going on on strike

missions."

"But there are video records, and ..." And you don't even

leave the ship, he thought. You sit at the ramp with your blaster

launcher and try to run the battle from there.

His mind drifted as he talked. They had had this discussion

many times before, with Perez complaining about all the special

problems of X-COM's high casualty rates and accelerated promotion

system, but whenever they got around to the issue of Perez's

involvement in missions and her authority at Little Rock, she would

use some excuse to cut the discussion short. She seemed desperate to

continue fighting and prove something, but what? Was she still trying

to make up for Andianov's death?

The promotion of other members of the strike team had also put

some distance between Akira and Perez, and had disrupted other ties

within the team. Davies had been selected to go to Russia as captain

of the new base there, but had refused. As far as Akira knew, he had

never been considered for the job at Little Rock.

And Crossett had nearly missed being promoted to sergeant to

fill the gap left by Akira's move. He had gotten wind that Perez

planned to promote Mederow, or maybe even Zander to that position

instead.

"Crossett has almost twice as much time in as Mederow, and

Zander's nearly a rookie" he had complained to Perez one day when

they were checking supply deliveries.

"She's a loose cannon," was Perez's only reply.

"She was a loose cannon," Akira said, "I agree, but only

because she's a natural at this. I've seen her become much more

focused over the last four months. She seems to know where the squad's

going next before I give the order."

"For God's sake, Perez," Akira continued, "even Morinov is a

sergeant in Russia now, and he's crazy. He got Bouton killed"

There seemed to be more to Perez's rejection of Crossett than

just perceptions of past self-discipline problems, but Akira didn't

know what. That night he and Crossett watched an old movie in her

quarters, and he asked her about it. She simply admitted that Perez

didn't like her and left it at that. The next day, Perez announced

that Crossett was the new Far Squad sergeant.

Now Crossett sat in the Skyranger with her squad, reduced to

just herself, a scout and a heavy to make room on the plane for the

team's two new psi troopers, Hudson and Tonida. Over the last two

months, every trooper had been evaluated for their psionic potential,

but only Hudson and Tonida had been chosen for further training. They

used captured aliens to actually attempt mental control using spiny

mental amplifiers developed by X-COM researchers.

Now the psis sat together in power armor, farthest back in the

cargo bay. They had suddenly become the most valuable items in the

X-COM inventory and were under orders to not even leave the ship.

Akira wondered how much good they would do. He would rather have had

two more troopers out where it counted.

The Skyranger landed and the ramp began to drop. Akira looked

to his left out the window and saw only corn fields, a few small farm

buildings in the distance, and what might have been a town far off.

"UFO right," Perez called out.

The hovertank slid out, followed by Zander and Mederow

crossing over to the left. Then Esser, the Far Squad scout, stepped

out of the Skyranger and floated around to the right. She disappeared

behind the plane's tail section.

The three members of Far Squad, plus Akira, all had flying

suits - reinforced power suits with anti-grav capabilities similar to

floaters. This was not the first mission they used them, but it was

the first where flying was key to their plan for taking the UFO.

As he moved forward to leave the Skyranger, Akira could see a

small, two story farmhouse directly ahead. Crossett was in front of

him, and Bradley in front of her. As Bradley floated forward above

the ramp, he aimed his rocket launcher at the farmhouse and fired.

From his vantage point directly behind, Akira could easily

follow the bright streak of the rocket's path. It hit the first floor

wall directly in the center. Old wood, rusted metal and years of dust

blew outwards, leaving a hole in the side large enough for two tanks

to drive through. Akira saw no sign of any aliens.

"I guess he can hit the side of a barn," someone commented

over the headset. It sounded like Zander.

Akira and Perez had talked for hours about changes in strike

team strategy and had come to the conclusion that the flow of raw

materials and captured supplies was steady enough that they didn't

have to worry about conservation during combat. They would use

whatever firepower they had to clear cover and get to the aliens fast,

and they wouldn't worry too much about property damage.

Crossett moved off and floated up behind the Skyranger's

stabilizers, and Akira heard her footsteps on the roof. As he reached

the ramp he heard another explosion behind him, toward the front of

the plane.

"What the hell is that thing?" Esser said over the headset.

There was a sizzle of laser fire from her position. "My grenade blew

right next to him and he's still standing."

"It's a soldier of a unknown race," Hudson, the psi, answered

from inside the Skyranger. "It's wounded, but not severely. The

closest approximation of the name is 'muton.'"

Akira glanced back before he left the plane and saw both

Hudson and Tonida facing away from him, toward the front of the

Skyranger - toward a solid wall. Hudson was holding a mind probe, a

large metallic sphere, and Tonida was holding one of the fragile

psi-amps. The sight gave Akira the creeps.

Akira heard the whistling crack of a heavy plasma, then more

laser fire.

"He took a grenade and two laser hits before he went down,"

Esser reported - she always assumed aliens where males.

"Sorry, Couldn't catch it," Tonida said.

Akira felt like things were happening too fast without him.

He manipulated the controls built into the left arm of his suit, and

quickly floated around to the right, following Esser's path. When he

got around the corner, he stopped for a second. Half of his field of

view was filled with an enormous alien ship, three levels high and

probably fifty meters across. The top two levels were supported by

five pedestals below, each the size of a small UFO. How many

grenade-resistant aliens were in there?

He continued toward the front of the Sykranger and noticed

smoke ahead. The side of a barn had been opened up, presumably by

Esser's grenade, and it was burning. Esser was floating ahead,

sliding into what was left of the barn's loft. On the main floor,

amid the smoldering bundles of hay, Akira could barely make out the

still body of a barrel-chested purple humanoid. A heavy plasma lay

next to it.

Akira checked his HUD. Zander, Mederow, and Davies, all in

power suits, were heading toward the farmhouse Bradley had blown open.

The tank was already there, checking the roof and the second floor. He

could see Esser in the barn ahead of him, and Crossett covering her

from atop the nose of the Skyranger. So there was no one between him

and the UFO.

Akira turned back to his left and saw Bradley using one of the

plane's stabilizers as cover. Another streak from Bradley's rocket

launcher cut across in front of the UFO and turned the side of another

barn to the right of the UFO into splinters, smoke and flames. Beyond

that barn Akira saw only cultivated fields and an orchard. To the

left of the UFO, next to the farmhouse, he could make out part of a

few small sheds.

"Crossett," he called over the headset, "have your squad

secure these two barns then move on toward the orchard. Near Squad,

when you're through looting the farmhouse, check out those small

buildings to the left of the UFO. Bradley and I will watch the center

and look for the entrance underneath."

"Yessir, Captain sir," Davies replied.

Akira had promised himself he would leave as many decisions as

possible up to the squad leaders. Hadn't he? Davies was usually

sarcastic, but Akira sensed genuine irritation this time. No time to

worry about it now, he thought.

He descended to the ground and found he could see much more

of the terrain underneath the giant ship. He was standing in open

sunlight, so it was difficult for his eyes to adjust to the dim

shadows around the pedestals.

A plasma bolt streaked past to his left and passed under the

Skyranger into the fields beyond.

He wasn't sure if it was aimed at himself or at Bradley, who

had descended to the ground a few meters to his left. Akira

thought he knew where the shot had come from - the small shacks on the

other side of the UFO - but he couldn't see any aliens there.

It didn't seem to matter to Bradley exactly where the alien

was. He carefully aimed his rocket launcher at the shacks, probably

worried about hitting Near Squad in the building next door, and fired.

Akira wasn't sure of what he saw, but he thought the rocket

actually went through a small window on the side of one of the sheds

before exploding inside. The whole front half of the building blew

open, destroying part of a smaller building next to it.

He dropped to one knee and aimed in that general direction.

As the smoke cleared, one of the misproportioned purple mutons stepped

out from right where the rocket had exploded.

"Damn," Bradley said, dropping his launcher and fishing a

laser rifle out of his pack, "that's one tough son-of-a-bitch."

Akira autofired his heavy plasm. At the same time, laser fire

cut across at the alien from a window on the second floor of the

farmhouse. The alien took three more wild shots in the direction of

the Skyranger. Bradley got his weapon down and added to the crossfire

for just a second before a small silver football streaked out of the

back of the Skyranger and up over the top of the UFO. Akira didn't

see it descend on the other side, but half a second later the blast

protection kicked in on Akira's lenses and everything went black.

His sight was immediately restored when the initial flash was

over. Charred, splintered wood and chunks of dirt rained down over

the entire area around the UFO. The two small buildings were

completely gone, as was the alien. Part of the farmhouse had also

been damage, but not too badly.

"Near Squad," Akira called, "Are you OK?"

"Fine," Davies replied.

"I almost had that one," Tonida reported from inside the

Skyranger, "I could feel it."

"Both squads," Perez called over the headset from inside the

Skyranger, "we have to give the psis more time."

Akira had actually seen Tonida and Hudson control aliens

back at Little Rock, in the containment facility. But he wasn't

confident enough in their abilities to risk giving an alien a chance

to shoot back while the psis mentally located it and attempted their

control.

Akira waved Bradley forward, and they both stood and moved

into the shade of the UFO. They split up, on either side of the

nearest pedestal. They had learned from the survivors of the Russian

assault that there were doors on the central leg and a large lift

inside, but that's as far as they had gone. Akira made his way

cautiously around the leg to get within sight of the doors.

As the center leg came into view, he spotted a set of doors,

on the side opposite the Skyranger. As he continued around and popped

a proximity grenade from his belt, he spotted another set of doors on

the near side of the center leg and caught a glimpse of purple in

front of them. Then a huge explosion on the other side of the leg he

was using as cover lit up the entire underside of the UFO and blew the

muton back against the doors.

No time to check on Bradley. Akira didn't have the grenade

primed, so he dropped it and raised his heavy plasma.

"I've got him! Don't shoot" Tonida shouted over the headsets.

Akira kept as much cover as he could, and continued aiming for

the huge purple chest. As he watched, the alien turned, reloaded its

blaster launcher, and went through the door into the center leg.

Akira checked his HUD and it confirmed his suspicion - Bradley

was dead.

"Davies, Bradley's gone" he called, "can you spare someone to

help me cover the doors down here?"

There was a moment's pause. "Sure," Davies replied, "take the

tank."

It had probably understood the exchange, but it wouldn't hurt

to be more explicit. "Hovertank, cover the UFO's central..."

Another explosion came, followed by what could have been alien

screams. This one was in Akira's field of view and triggered his

shields. When they cleared he saw that it must have occurred up

inside the UFO. Part of the bottom of the UFO had been destroyed on

the opposite side of the center leg, leaving an opening large enough

for a trooper to fly up through.

Seconds later a muton stepped out of the door. Akira reacted,

but saw it wasn't carrying a weapon.

"I've still got him," Tonida called, "but I think he was hurt

pretty bad by the blast. On the second level the lift pops out where

two wide hallways cross. I think I got two aliens with the launcher."

Akira wanted to get around the leg to his left to see what the

first blast had done, but he was afraid to turn his back on the muton

or leave him uncovered. He switched his HUD to the hovertank's view

and saw that it was just moving around the far leg and the muton was

in its sight.

While Akira moved back around to where Bradley was, he heard

what sounded like a grenade, followed by laser and plasma fire near

the orchard. Crossett was giving orders to Esser over the headset,

but Akira didn't get a chance to listen.

As he came around the outside of the UFO's leg, he found

himself facing a muton on its way toward the Skyranger. The alien

turned blindingly fast and fired a heavy weapon of some kind. There

was a small explosion near Akira. It didn't seem small, but he

assumed it was because he survived it. His shoulders and the muscles

down his back all tightened as if trying to fold back around his

spinal column, and he lost feeling in his legs. He dropped to his

knees and his vision blurred.

Akira's weapon was pointed in the general direction of the

alien, so he managed to freeze where he was and squeeze hard for

autofire. The heavy plasma had some kick, but it was dampened by the

weapon's weight. Akira held steady and continued to fire at the

blurry figure barely moving in front of him.

"...Akira"

He heard Tonida yelling through the constant crack of the

plasma.

"You killed it! Hold it"

Akira's vision was clearing. He had thought that his suit had

been damaged by an alien grenade and he had collapsed under its

weight and lost visual input. Now he could see the alien was carrying

a small launcher and had probably hit him with a stun bomb. Control

of his legs returned and he moved the rest of the way around the leg

to cover the door. He was at the edge of a crater, over a meter deep.

Bradley's body was at the bottom, inside a jagged remnant of a flying

suit.

He could now see how the alien who had stunned him got past

Tonida's mind puppet. The blast had blown a hole in the side of the

leg, revealing a small lift inside. The mind puppet was still

standing beside the door, waiting for Tonida's instructions.

"Akira," Perez said, "I'm on a private channel. I want you to

come back and guard the Skyranger."

Akira didn't understand. Then he remembered his wild

shooting. She thinks I went berserk, he realized.

"I'm fine, Colonel," he said, "I got hit by a stun bomb and my

vision was blurred for a minute. I couldn't tell when the alien went

down."

Perez paused. "Fine."

"We don't need any more holes in this ship, Colonel," Akira

continued. Their plan was to try blowing a hole in the side on the

top level, with a blaster bomb, then go in with flying suits. "We have

a small hole in the underbelly on the other side and access to two

different lifts down here.

"I still want Far Squad through the top," she replied, "Davies

can cover the bottom with his power suits as soon as they've cleared

the surrounding area."

I guess I'm just a another trooper on this mission, Akira

thought. He could accept that for now.

"Crossett," he called, "Are you secure yet?" He checked his

HUD and saw that she and Esser had already moved under the UFO from

the other side. In fact he could see her looking at him between the

center and far right leg, her flying suit painted with the image of a

bowie knife - her choice of coat-of-arms.

"Secure," she said, raising her heavy plasma slightly to

acknowledge him. She had a habit of just appearing when he wanted

her.

"Toss me a 'P' Grenade," he said.

She snapped something off her belt, still training her weapon

on the far door. He couldn't see Esser behind the center leg.

"Primed or unprimed?" she asked dryly, tossing the grenade

twenty meters to land within arm's length of him. She had lost her

first trooper as a squad leader, but her sense of humor remained

intact.

He primed the grenade and tossed it into the opening of the

leg at his side to cover the small lift. "Lift in the leg near the

Skyranger is rigged," he announced.

The mind controlled muton suddenly began to move, turning back

toward the door.

"I lost it," Tonida called.

Akira aimed carefully so he wouldn't hit Crossett. He got off

one shot before the door closed and the alien disappeared inside.

"I think I hit it, but it didn't make a sound."

Akira wasn't about to go after it. He just hoped it was

either dead or injured too badly to be a threat.

"Area's secure." It was Davies. "We'll take the underbelly

now. You glory boys can head up top."

"Boys?" Crossett and Esser said together.

Akira could see two troopers tromping toward him from the left

where the tank was still standing guard. One was Davies, the other

small enough to be Zander.

Another explosion behind him caught him off guard. It took

him a second to realize it was Perez blasting a hole for them.

"Sounds like we might have a door up there," he said, "Let's

go."

He stood, moved quickly out from under the UFO and looked up

where he thought the blast had come from. There was a hole all right,

at the top level, big enough for one. He ascended and hovered just

beside the opening waiting for Esser and Crossett.

When they arrived, Crossett waved Esser inside. She went

through and they heard the thunking of her heavy soles on alien alloy

as she walked farther. "room," she said, "one door."

Crossett moved in next, and Akira followed. The room was

roughly a triangle. The wall they'd come through was the long side,

and the door was on the wall to their left. It had been blown outward

by the blast.

There was an explosion somewhere below, and Davies announced

that his squad was heading up the lifts.

The door opened into a hallway. Esser glanced out in either

direction then stepped out completely, moving slowly down the hall to

the left. Crossett followed, turning right and kneeling to cover

Esser's rear.

Akira followed, heading left and trying to keep some spacing

between them all. The hall went down a few meters and turned right,

probably very close to the outside wall of the ship. Esser took the

turn and disappeared.

"The hall's a dead end," she reported, "one door to my right."

Akira heard the door whoosh open, then close. Then he heard

plasma fire below, and Hudson yelling "I had him, I had him."

"...quiet," Davies ordered, "Zander's hit"

"I'm OK," Zander called, "the suit took it all. I'm just a

little shaken up.

Esser appeared around the corner again. "empty," she said out

loud, "no other doors."

Crossett was still against the wall to the right, covering the

hallway in the opposite direction. Only a few meters down it

intersected another passage, and again ten meters farther down.

Esser motioned that she was going left at the nearer

intersection. Crossett nodded and moved forward almost to the corner,

turning so she could see down to the left and straight ahead. Akira

got down across from Crossett, covering the hall to the right.

A soon as Esser rounded the corner she was shot. A plasma

bolt caught her in the leg and took her down only a meter or two from

Akira. Crossett immediately stepped into the hallway and filled the

hall with plasma. Akira didn't dare step out into the crossfire, so

he kept his eyes on the other two passages. Just as he heard the

death scream of the alien Crossett was shooting at, another muton

lumbered out of a doorway toward the end of the center hall.

Akira got off one snap shot and missed, then his clip ran dry.

Crossett turned to see what he was shooting at.

"This one's mine," Hudson shouted over the headset. Akira

wasn't sure of that meant he already had control, or if he was just

claiming the alien and they were still at risk.

The muton lowered its weapon and moved toward them.

"Hudson, I don't like aliens moving toward me with loaded

weapons," Akira said.

"Okay with me."

The alien lifted its weapon, a plasma rifle, and popped out

the clip. Akira reloaded his at the same time. The alien continued

around the corner past Esser's body and stopped, facing away from

them.

Akira had time to check his HUD. Esser was still alive. He

moved down to her and plugged his medi-kit into her suit's medical

interface. The scanner showed that her leg was badly damaged and

bleeding. She was still conscious.

"Captain, I've been hit."

"Yes, I know ..." Akira said, momentarily at a loss for words,

"... you'll be fine." He applied coagulants and pain killers and

activated some of the pressure devices built into the suit to stop the

bleeding. She might actually make it, he thought.

He was nervous, because her life was in his hands, and because

his life was in the hands of a mind-controlled alien with no clip in

its weapon. He finished and left her where she lay. It was as safe

a place as any.

"Load up Hudson, but keep that damn thing in front of me."

"Sure, Captain." The alien loaded the clip back into its

rifle and started down the hall.

"Stay where you are, Crossett," Akira ordered, "I'll escort

the mind puppet around this way.

They began a systematic search of half of the ship, with

Crossett covering the center hallway to warn them of any aliens

crossing over from the other side. Akira would wait outside doors

while the alien stepped inside. Hudson would report on what the alien

saw. The entire process worked well and was uneventful until they

reached what turned out to be a triangular room on the opposite end of

the UFO from where they had entered. The muton stepped inside and was

immediately shot three times by plasma fire.

Whatever had done it was at close range, just on the other

side of the door Akira guessed. He had enough time to pull a grenade

off his belt, prime it, and toss it inside just as the door closed.

The blast went off immediately after the door closed, but

there was no sound from the alien.

It might not be dead, Akira thought. "Can you get it, Hudson?

Tonida?"

"I can tell where it is," someone replied, "but I really need

to see it to get control."

"I've got it," Colonel Perez said. There was a whistling

noise somewhere outside the UFO, then a blast knocked the door next to

Akira out into the hall and sent molten alloy spraying through the

opening. The alien inside screamed in pain for just a second.

Akira stepped into the room and dropped to one knee. It was

filled with smoke and metal vapor that would probably have choked him

without his armor. A muton lay motionless on the jagged floor and he

could see inviting sunlight through a new opening to the human world

outside. In the center of the room was a small lift platform.

"Davies," he called, "I've got a down lift in the corner

opposite where Far Squad came in. Are you secure below it?"

"Not yet," Davies replied, "just a second..."

Akira ducked inside the room so he couldn't be shot from

behind. He stood behind the alien body and tried to cover the door

and the lift.

"...we see it now. It's clear."

Akira turned and continued the search through the alien world

of the ship. All he had left to search on his side of the center

passage was a square room directly in the center. As he moved toward

it, There was plasma fire below and Davies announced that the second

level was secure and his squad was moving up.

Seconds later a trooper, Mederow, stepped out of one of the

doors from the center room. Soon Zander and Davies were there, and

Crossett was free to head down the hall to her right.

In a few minutes they had searched the entire area.

When things had calmed down, Akira went to check on Esser.

Crossett was already bent over her and had removed both of their

helmets. "I hate the smell in here," Crossett said as Akira

approached, "It smells like oil and rotting fruit." She pulled her

knife and started cutting her hair. Akira checked his medi-kit, which

was still attached to Esser. She would be fine.

They were both interrupted by Davies, stomping quickly up,

still in full armor.

"You should come look at this, Akira."

Akira followed him without asking, back to the what looked

like a control room, one of the last rooms they'd checked. Once

inside, Davies pointed at a display on one of the panels. They had

taken alien controls intact before, but never with displays active -

at least not with anything on them they could understand.

The small panel they stared at showed a slowly rotating orange

sphere, marked by rough, irregular patches of brown and partially

obscured by the strange alien writing. The writing was

unintelligible, but it was not difficult to figure out what the sphere

was.

"Mars," Davies said unnecessarily from inside his

environmentally sealed power suit.

THE END

[FullAuto]

7 - Alien Abduction.

 

When the Skyranger arrived in southern Mauritania, just north

of the Senegal river, the helicopters from HMS Resolve were still

there. Akira watched them fly low to clear away the top layer of

loose sand with their prop wash.

An interceptor from Russia had found this base after X-COM's

new hyperwave decoder, designed with the help of captured alien

navigators, had intercepted and decoded signals from a large alien UFO

on a base supply mission. The interceptor had kept its distance and

followed the supply ship until it landed within a few hundred meters

of where the helicopters now swept back and forth. The interceptor

then followed the supply ship after it took off and shot it down with

plasma cannons over Libya. The Russian strike team would deal with

recovering it.

The Little Rock strike team had been re-equipped for this

mission, a few of their plasmas swapped out for stun launchers. By

studying captured alien information and captured alien leaders, X-COM

scientists had determined that there was a key to the whole alien

operation, but it wasn't located on Earth - a strike team

would have to go to Mars. They also discovered that higher ranking

aliens, alien commanders, might be stationed at alien bases and might

be useful for determining exactly where on Mars the alien facility was

located. So their primary objective on this mission was to capture a

commander alive.

Akira had seen the ship that would take them to Mars, still

under construction in a hangar at Little Rock. It was a cross

between the Skyranger and a medium-sized UFO. In fact it combined

some of the best of human and alien technology into a ship which would

fight better and fly faster than any interceptor, yet be able to carry

eighteen troopers and two tanks. Akira would have liked to give it a

test run on this mission and bring along the extra tank and a few

extra rookies. He had been on one alien base raid before, in Russia,

and he knew that ten troopers were barely enough to operate down there.

And the two psis hanging back left him only eight.

He and the psis disembarked from the Skyranger last. They

walked across the sand toward the two exposed, nearly horizontal alien

alloy hatches. The helicopters still hovered low overhead, blowing

sand harmlessly against the ten armored troopers arrayed around the

area. They had completed their missions, but their pilots had never

seen power suits, flying suits, or hovertanks before. Akira

suppressed the urge to give them a demonstration of his flying suit

and just waved them off, back to the Resolve.

Perez wasn't with them. A week earlier, before a mission in

the mountains of Peru, he had finally convinced her to stay behind.

She had been reluctant then, but today, with both of her strike teams

on separate missions, she had not even mentioned coming along. Her

absence had done two things: It had opened up room in the Skyranger

to add a trooper to Far Squad, and it had indirectly brought Crossett

and Akira closer together.

During the Peru mission he had noticed Crossett bantering with

Blake, the second scout to take Esser's place during her recovery.

After that, he had felt the need to spend more time with her. He

wasn't jealous, he just didn't like to think of her starting up a

friendship with Blake which could erode their own.

So he began seeing her every night, watching movies, cooking,

and reviewing old mission footage. One night they left the base for a

short time and went into Little Rock. They ate at an Indian restaurant

near the river.

"I think the last mission went smoother without Perez," he

said.

Crossett moved her palau around her plate, but didn't speak.

"Well?" he continued, "Don't you think so? She was a mild

annoyance to me, but she seemed to really have it in for you. What

was the problem?"

Crossett quit playing with her food and gave him a look of mild

disbelief, shaking her head slightly. "You never figured it out, did

you? You're a good soldier and a good friend, 'Kira, but sometimes

you're unbelievably naive."

"What?"

"I think you're a good soldier because you understand aliens

better than humans."

"WHAT?" It was really beginning to bother him, especially

coming from Crossett.

"You," she said, smiling a little, "... you were the problem."

He was still confused. He tried to remember all the things

he'd said to Perez, searching for something that could have offended

her enough that she would take it out on Crossett just because she

was his friend. He realized he had been staring at Crossett with his

mouth hanging open.

"What?" he said for the third time. "What did I do to her that

she would hold it against both of us?"

This time Crossett laughed out loud. "She LIKES you 'Kira.

You couldn't tell?"

At first he couldn't accept that, but the pieces finally began

to fall into place. Perez had a very subtle personality, and hanging

around Crossett, so direct and open, had probably dulled his

sensitivity to it. He thought back again and realized she could be

right. But then why take it out on Crossett?

Of course, the answer was obvious. Everyone in the Little Rock

base who didn't know them well enough assumed Akira and Crossett were

romantically involved. Perez was jealous.

Crossett was eating again, probably waiting for him to work

through everything, and probably knowing what conclusion he would come

to. How could she stand being around him, always waiting for him to

catch up to her.

She looked up at him and he realized that she might not be as

direct and open as he had thought. There was something more than

friendship there. He felt it too, but had denied it, forced it down

out of fear. It was fear of losing her, fear of losing concentration

in combat, and fear of talk among the other troopers.

But, what the hell. The base was talking about them anyway,

he thought. Might as well give them something to talk about.

He reached across the small table and took her hand. She

didn't look surprised. He stood and leaned over the table to kiss her

hard on the lips, and she seemed to expect it. They went to a hotel,

arm in arm, and made love. He finally managed to surprise her a few

times.

Now she stood with her squad, out on the sand, near the

entrance farthest from the Skyranger. She was standing beside Blake's

tall figure, and they appeared to be talking privately. It didn't

bother Akira this time, He realized that any jealousy, any thoughts of

possessing Crossett, as a friend or a lover, were foolish.

Crossett had a relatively new squad - Esser, Torban and Blake.

They had only seven missions between them, which was less than half of

what Zander, the least experienced on Near Squad, had by herself.

Crossett would have to watch them closely down there.

Akira hoisted his blaster launcher - his problem now that

Perez wasn't along - and gave the signal. The scouts, Blake and

Zander, moved toward the two hatches. As they stepped within about

two meters of them, the doors slid open.

Akira wondered if there were vertical drops down into the

base, and whether they would be too far for the troopers in power

suits. But as he watched, Zander moved cautiously and smoothly down,

as if she was on a steep set of stairs.

"There's a ramp leading down to one of the glowing green

rooms," Zander reported over the headset.

"Here too," Blake added.

Zander's head disappeared below the sand, and Davies waved

the tank forward, then Mederow and his stun launcher entered. Akira

wondered again if he had made the right choice, trading three heavy

plasmas for stun launchers. It would greatly increase the odds of

getting a commander alive, but it could also cost a few lives.

Davies moved in, and Akira followed. At the bottom of the

ramp they found themselves in one of the large green rooms, about ten

meters across, with a tank-sized lift in the northeast corner.

The psis came down last, Hudson with Akira and Near Squad,

Tonida with Far Squad. They each carried a cumbersome mind probe,

hoping to mentally locate an alien commander. Until then, the squads

had to assume every alien was a commander and take appropriate

precautions.

"Far Squad. All inside?" he called.

"All inside," Crossett replied.

"Head down into the base, and try to merge your perimeters as

soon as possible," he ordered, "and keep an eye out for anything that

looks like the command center from our Russian base footage."

Akira sat back now and watched his squads deploy, forcing

himself to stay quiet. He couldn't see Davies's expression, but he

could imagine how he felt having Akira right at his elbow - he had

been in a similar position with Perez along.

Near Squad was down quickly. Akira was not surprised that

they found themselves in a square alien alloy room the same size as

the green one above. It had one large opening on each wall. As Akira

stepped off the lift he could see that the southern opening led into a

passageway of some kind, and the west opening led to a smaller hallway

running north-south. He didn't have a chance to check the other

openings.

"Bug," someone yelled over the headset, but Akira couldn't

tell who it was. He brought up his head-up-display, but had no time

to interpret it. The trooper covering the eastern opening, just to

Akira's left, stood and moved toward the corner of the room opposite Akira

and the lift. It was Mederow.

"What is that?" Mederow asked, probably not expecting a reply.

Davies was covering the west opening, and Zander the south.

They both turned as Mederow moved and began firing plasma and

laser through the opening to Akira's left. Return plasma fire came

back and cratered the wall above Zander's head.

Akira spun left and instinctively raised his blaster

launcher as a towering metal biped stepped through into the room. His

first impression was of a reaper covered in armor, then of a robot

reaper. Akira had to suppress the urge to squeeze the trigger on the

launcher.

Through the din of plasma discharge and destruction, Akira

could hear something over the headset.

"It's ... sectopod .. tough." It sounded like Hudson.

Akira had no weapons to defend himself, but he was still on

the lift platform. He made the arm motion and began to ascend. The

metal reaper turned to face directly at him, and he could only hope

his armor would help him survive a nearly point-blank plasma hit.

Just before the room descended out of sight, and before the alien got

off a shot, two final streaks from across the room took it down.

The lift took him up into the green room, where he found

himself facing Hudson.

"I could probe it," Hudson said out loud, "But there was

nothing there to control. It was mostly machine, and I couldn't..."

"Alien," the headset blurted, "moving among the cases in the

big room."

Hudson froze in his crouched stance and tightened his grip on

his psi amp.

Akira's HUD now contained a flashing red light. He descended

on the lift and switched his HUD to the video channel of the spotting

trooper. He knew that voice - it was Blake. He came up with Blake's

view, a large room like they'd seen in Russia, lined with specimen

display cases, like a big museum. As he watched the merged scene of

what he saw and what Blake saw, a strange alien appeared for a few

seconds in Blake's world before disappearing behind another case.

Blake kept his head and didn't take the shot with his laser rifle.

It was roughly humanoid, and gliding along, almost like a

floater, but it was completely covered over by orange robes - a deep

orange version of the grim reaper. Why did everything have to remind

him of reapers?

"It's just a soldier," Tonida reported, "they don't seem to

have a spoken language - closest English word to their race-concept is

'ethereal'. Not too tough physically".

The alien appeared again, and this time it spotted Blake.

Blake got off a laser autofire, and seemed to hit. The alien fired a

heavy plasma and grazed Blake's armor.

"I can't control it," Hudson said, "these things have some

awesome mental powers."

Akira reached the bottom of the lift and saw that Near squad

once again had things under control, with Zander and Davies cautiously

advancing through the openings to the south and west to join Far

Squad.

Meanwhile, Blake was not firing back at the robed creature and

had nearly been hit again. He finally fired back and killed it.

"Damn. Something was inside my head for a minute there," he said, "I

think they might be turning this mind control stuff back on us."

It had been months since the strike team had faced sectoids in

combat - the only race they knew of that used mind control. Now they

may have found another race, possibly even stronger.

But the last time they had faced mind control they had had

none of their own, and new X-COM troopers hadn't been screened for

their ability to resist. Now they would find out if it was all worth

it.

Akira knew what the mental strength ratings were of everyone

on his team. They were all relatively high, at least in the top third

of the recruits screened. He also knew that some of the veterans,

specifically he and Davies and Mederow, were somewhere around average.

Mederow's score was slightly below average, and Perez had considered

dumping him from the squads.

Akira checked his HUD. Crossett's squad was ten or fifteen

meters to the southwest. The advancing troopers in each squad had

already seen most of the intervening space. A barren hallway ran

directly east from Crossett's squad and passed just south of the room

where Akira was standing. Crossett had already begun moving east

along it, giving orders to her squad as she went.

"Torban has at least thirty meters of solid wall off to our

west," she reported, "It could be the edge of the base if it's laid

out anything like the last one."

Akira could see Zander heading south into the cross-passage,

meeting up with Crossett to secure the southeast corner of their zone.

On his HUD he could see the tank to the north, and the schematic

representation of what they knew so far showed a solid wall there too.

"It looks like we have an edge of the base to the north and to

the west," he said over the headset. "Far Squad, freeze on a line

with the south hallway. Near Squad, keep a line to the east, even

with the lift room. Send whoever you can spare to the north and west

to clear our rear, and I want at least one stun launcher from Far

Squad back there,"

Akira gave up trying to track everyone in both squads, and

concentrated on finding a use for his blaster launcher. He couldn't

haphazardly destroy the place and risk killing a commander. The only

use he could come up with was to blow open a more convenient route

into the command center.

A heavy plasma fired to the south. Akira's HUD showed no

aliens spotted.

"What is this thing," Crossett called, "some kind of alien

tree?"

Akira switched to her view and saw a room covered in the dark

blue velvety material. In the center was a rooted plant of some kind,

probably three meters tall and four meters across at the top. It had

thick, rubbery-looking branches, topped with colorful, spurting disks,

like flattened doughnuts.

"..Can't probe it," Hudson said, "It's alive, but I don't

think it's very intelligent.

"My plasma blew off pieces of it," Crossett said, "but it

would take all day to whittle it all down. I'll just wait and see

what it does."

Akira thought about having Crossett drop back, then hitting it

with the blaster launcher, but it didn't seem necessary.

"found the northwest corner," Esser reported, "we've got a

couple of those rooms with the rows of suspended spheres and one

large, square enclosed area with only one door. It's..."

"How big?" Akira broke in. Could they have the command center

already?

"What?"

"The door. Is it large enough for a tank?"

"No," she replied, "It's a normal door, around the west side

here."

"Tank," Crossett ordered, "go to where Blake is now and cover

the display room with Torban. Blake, help Esser check that door."

"Captain," Crossett called on the open channel, "I can see a

thin north-south passage to my south-east about fifteen meters, and it

has a small window. Looks like it could be the command center. Maybe

Zander could..."

"Bug" someone called out, followed by the "thwump" of a

launcher. One red box flashed on Akira's HUD, then a second. He

switched and came up with Torban's view of the display room. About

halfway across the large room were one of the ethereals and another

robot reaper.

"The launcher didn't do it ... reloading."

"Ethereal soldier," Hudson called, "it's not a commander."

Akira switched to the tank's view - it was still moving

through the suspended sphere rooms, not yet in sight of the display

room. Torban might be able to reload and stun the ethereal, but could

the robot reaper even be stunned?

Akira checked his HUD map. The hallway to the south of him

was clear, except for Crossett, tucked into a side passage. And Far

Squad's lift room was empty for now, at least until the tank got

there. Good.

Akira knelt, quickly programmed waypoints into his blaster,

and fired.

His heart stopped and he thought of Perez and Andianov as he

watched the silver football streak from his arms into the hall to his

south, then disappear around the corner to the right. the blast came

a half second later, its flash reflecting through the passages and

lighting up the room where Akira stood. The flash was followed by a blast

of hot gases and smoke.

If the bomb had followed its course, it should have hit a

display case toward the far end of the big room, behind the aliens -

hopefully close enough to destroy them, but far enough away from

Torban.

"Nice shooting, Captain," Torban called, "I just hope there

wasn't anything important in any of these cases"

Akira resumed breathing and checked his HUD - All known aliens

dead, all troopers alive.

Only a few seconds later, Akira's red indicator flashed again.

This time he switched to Blake's view. At first it was a little

disorienting, until Akira realized Blake was looking up a lift shaft.

At the top was an alien - and ethereal - with its back turned.

Akira overlaid the HUD map and saw that Blake had moved down a

passage inside the large square area at the squad's rear. He had said

nothing over the headset, probably trying not to make a sound - nearly

impossible in powered armor.

"Not a commander," Hudson reported, then Tonida said

something, but Akira was distracted. Mederow, still covering the

rooms to the east of the lift room Akira was in, suddenly dropped his

stun launcher, stood, and ran straight ahead, through a room with a

glowing purple floor.

Akira moved to the opening to be able to track Mederow

better. "Mederow," he called, foolishly using an open channel, "get

back here." Mederow kept going, through into a dark room beyond the

purple floor.

"What happened, Akira?" It was Davies on a private channel.

"Don't know. He just stood and ran off that way."

Meanwhile, Akira still had Blake's view up. He heard and saw

a grenade go off at the top of the shaft, then Blake ascended. When

he reached the top, Akira heard plasma fire and Blake collapsed. His

video was still running, and seconds later, just at the corner of the

skewed field of view, Akira saw another trooper ascended the lift. A

small launcher went off, then Esser's face appeared as she fumbled for

something next to Blake's body. She moved out of view and Akira heard

a laser on autofire.

"Two dead ethereals up here," she reported "that last one

could have killed me, but I think he tried to get inside my head

instead."

"Checked both," Hudson said, "one leader, one soldier."

Meanwhile, Mederow re-appeared to the east, carrying something

in his right hand. As soon as he entered the purple room, he turned

stiffly toward Akira and tossed the object toward him.

Akira watched it land only a meter or two in front of him, and

only then realized it was a grenade. He tried to jump back to his

left, behind the wall in the lift room, but the grenade went off

before he got there. It blew him back, right onto the lift, and

knocked the blaster launcher out of his hands. Zander was still

inside the passage to the south and had avoided the blast.

Akira remained conscious and was surprised to find the suit

had taken most of the damage. He seemed to only have a few bruised

ribs and a major headache.

"What was that?" someone asked, probably Davies.

"Mederow..." Akira answered, getting back to his feet, "he's

lost it completely."

He moved back to the opening, next to the destroyed robot

reaper, and picked up Mederow's stun launcher. Zander moved to where

she could cover the east and south.

Mederow was still there, with another grenade in one hand,

priming it with the other. His face was expressionless. He wasn't in

a hurry or excited, as if he was only putting on his shoes or pouring

himself a cup of coffee.

Akira didn't wait for the grenade to come his way. He fired

the stun launcher and hit the far wall, only a meter or two from

Mederow. The trooper wobbled a little and seemed to nearly drop the

grenade, but he continued his motions, getting ready to throw.

Then a bolt of plasma from off to Akira's left took Mederow in

the shoulder, creating a spray of molten alloy and a small cloud of

vapors. Mederow went down, dropping his grenade. It went off a few

seconds later, just beside his head. His icon on Akira's HUD

schematic flashed for a few seconds, then went white.

"Mederow's dead," Akira announced.

Akira was surprised by how much Mederow's death effected him.

He stood motionless for a few reckless seconds before recovering his

senses and getting behind the cover of the wall to his left. He and

Mederow hadn't been that close, but he had been easy to get along

with, and it seemed like he'd been in the squads a long time.

Maybe it's all finally getting to me, Akira thought.

He forced himself back to business. "Davies," he called on a

private channel, "You and Zander can't cover this side by yourselves,

and I'm no help covering with only a Blaster and a laser pistol."

"Right," Davies said. His voice didn't have the usual edge on

it - Mederow must have gotten to him too. He called to Crossett, who

directed Esser across to the east.

"I've got Blake," Esser called back, "he needs a medi-kit."

"Drop him near the lift," Torban called, "I can ..."

"Leave him," Crossett ordered, "we don't have time for that -

I need you in the room to my south."

Akira was sickened by his initial response of satisfaction

that Crossett could so callously disregard Blake's injuries. He felt he

had to do something about it. "Zander, move south into the

passageway. Esser, cover east from this lift room. I'll head back

and take care of Blake."

Confirmations of the orders came from Zander and Esser, but no

one else commented on the plan.

A few seconds later he saw Esser trotting cautiously into the

room from the west. He motioned her toward the east opening, dropped

the stun launcher, and picked up his blaster. Damn thing's like an anchor,

he thought. If he wasn't so afraid of what it could do he would have

traded weapons with Zander and sent her back to treat Blake.

He moved quickly west toward Blake, who was still a lively, solid

yellow on his HUD. As he trotted the thirty yards through the alien

alloy passages, he thought about how seamlessly the squads were

operating, cooperating instinctively and able to trade members without

a glitch. He wasn't sure they could have done that when Perez was

commanding.

Blake lay motionless right next to Far Squad's lift. Akira

attached the medi-kit's diagnosis package to the port on Blake's suit.

It was obvious he had been hit in the chest, on the left side and

under his left arm. Diags told him the arm was fine, but there were

serious internal injuries, probably aggravated by Esser carrying him.

Still, he would probably live. Akira gave him the recommended levels

of coagulants and stimulants, trying at the same time to slip

artificial skin through the jagged fist-sized opening in his flying

suit.

"My guess is your fighting days are over for a while," Akira

said out loud. "but who knows how long this will go on."

Over the headset, Crossett and Davies were giving orders to

organize the squads - now only five troopers, including the two

sergeants, and a tank. Akira watched them on his display, moving into

a rough line from the tank, which had located the southern limit of

the base, north-west all the way up to Davies, moving along its

northern limit. They would sweep east, securing every door and lift as

they went to protect their backs.

If the command center was indeed just south-east of Crossett's

position, they would wrap around it like a hand grabbing a grenade.

Again a red box flashed on Akira's HUD without a word over the

headset. He switched to automatic and Torban's view came up, again

looking up a shaft at a robed ethereal. Akira was amazed at how

motionless and quiet Torban was able to stand - not an easy trick in a

suit designed to detect and amplify your every move.

After five or six painful seconds, Hudson finally called in.

"Not a commander."

"Give me second with this thing," Tonida called.

Torban waited, still unbelievably still. Under any

circumstances the suit should have been making small whirring noises

as servos reacted to minute balancing movements and nervous jitters.

Akira brought up the heavy's status display and found out how he did

it. Torban had manually increased his movement triggering threshold

to the point where only significant movement registered. It would

slow down his reactions quite a bit, but it was an interesting trick.

"I had him for a short time," Tonida reported, "long enough to

see he's alone."

That was all Torban had been waiting for. Akira, still on the

status display, saw his movement threshold drop to near normal, and

other indicators all went up, indicating sudden movement. He switched

back to video and saw that Torban was moving behind a wall of some

kind. A second later a grenade went off and the alien gave out a

shrieking, warbly cry. Torban immediately turned, pulled his laser

pistol from its holster and headed back toward the lift. When he

reached the top, Akira could see that the alien was dead.

"We're going to have to make you a scout, Torban," Akira said,

only half joking.

Davies interrupted. "I think I have the eastern edge here.

Me and Esser will start south."

Akira had done what he could for Blake, so He stood and

checked his map. He decided to join Crossett and move toward the

command center. As soon as he moved off in her direction he heard

plasma fire directly in front of him, either from Crossett or directed

at her. He resisted the urge to just run to her and brought up his

display - no red box.

"One of them took a shot at me through the window on the

command center's side passage," Crossett called over the headset.

"I didn't get a read on it," Hudson called, "Sorry."

A few seconds later, Akira moved into the room with the large,

strange plant. Crossett was covering its eastern opening.

"Hello 'Kira," she said on a private channel, without

turning. "I was watching - nice work on Blake."

"Thanks," he said, getting down on one knee to her south,

"Which way to the command center?"

Crossett motioned with her heavy plasma at the long wall

directly in front of them. "In there."

Akira glanced along the wall. It stopped, and the passage

curved east about five meters north of them, and it did the same about

fifteen meters to the south. In the center of the wall was a small

window into what looked like a parallel north-south passage.

"It could be the command center," Akira said.

Crossett turned and looked at him through augmented lenses and

alien alloy. "It is the command center."

"We're snagged for a little while," Davies called, "we hit one

of those small lift rooms with the windows. I have to cover while

Esser checks it out."

A red box flashed, followed by the a repeated whine of plasma

and laser fire very close to the north-east.

"I'm hit," Zander called, "but I think I got it."

Akira's gut turned hollow. He switched to an open

channel. "Hudson, what was it?"

"Don't know, Captain. Didn't have time."

"Damn." Akira said out loud.

Zander had heard. "Sorry, Captain," she said, "I ..."

"Don't worry about it. How bad are you hurt."

She paused, "... I'm fine."

Akira hated this. Why couldn't he just kill aliens? Now they

might have lost their commander and Zander's concentration could be

shot. He thought about sending her back and taking her place in the

sweep. That would probably make her feel even worse, but it might

save her life. He decided to trust her and leave her in place.

Akira checked his HUD schematic to see how everything was

progressing. Esser had checked out a small room above the windowed

lift room and found nothing. Now Esser, Zander, and Davies were

arrayed in an east-west line from just north of Akira to the eastern

edge of the base. Torban was directly south of Akira, and the tank

south of him, in an open hallway running along the south edge of the

base. They had secured all but the south-east quarter.

"I have a large set of doors to the south of me", Zander said,

"just like in the videos."

"Good," Akira said, "That's the command center. Can we cover

those doors with at least two stun launchers?"

"Torban," Crossett ordered, "move up there. The rest of us

can cover this end."

Akira realized they only had two stun launchers - Mederow's

was still lying in the room with the purple floor. He looked down at

his blaster launcher and wondered what use it would be. Any blast

could easily kill the commander behind a wall somewhere - if it wasn't

already dead. And the squad was packed pretty tight now. When they

were sure they had an alien commander they could use the launcher to

level everything else, but he would worry about that when the time

came.

"I'm going back to get Mederow's launcher," he said out loud

to Crossett. He patted her shoulder as he passed behind her, heading

north. His alloy glove on her armor made a dull, impersonal clunk.

By the time Akira reached the purple room and the stun

launcher, the tank had verified that the south wall of the command

center was solid, with no way out, and had stopped to cover a room

with a small lift. Torban and Zander were covering the big doors and

Crossett had moved to the small window to watch the hall inside the

command center.

"I've got one of these damn up-and-down lift mazes over here,"

Davies reported. I think I can handle it on my own"

"Right," Akira called, "but if you run into the commander, try

not to be too hard on it."

Akira swapped weapons and moved south, dropping into position

beside Zander. "We're heading in." Zander, Esser, Akira, and Torban

all stepped through the doors, into an east-west passage.

"Looks like the same layout," Akira announced. He pointed to

the east, where the hall turned south. "Esser and Torban that way.

Zander keep close behind me."

Akira went west, about ten meters, where the hall also turned

south. He rounded the corner and got down. The hallway was empty.

It turned back east about twenty meters ahead, and was featureless

except for the small window halfway down on the right - the same

window he and Crossett had seen from outside.

A muffled explosion went off somewhere, but Akira wasn't sure where.

It sounded like it was both in front of him and behind him. The red

box flashed. A second later there was a blast of plasma fire and

another explosion. The red light went out.

"We stunned one" Torban announced.

"Not a commander," Hudson reported.

Akira moved south, and Zander followed. Before they reached

the corner, they were hit by a huge explosion. Akira's blast

lenses activated immediately and left him blind as he flew back into

something else, probably Zander. Sight returned a fraction of a

second later, and Akira had to strain to see through the smoke and

metal vapor. He was lying on Zander's leg, but her suit seemed to be

intact.

"You OK?" he asked, not waiting for a reply before bringing up

his HUD schematic - Everyone solid yellow.

"What was that?"

"Must have been a blaster bomb, confined in the passage to the

south," someone called.

The tank was to the south. Akira switched to its view and

found it still guarding the small lift. At the left edge of its

field of view he could see some smoke, but nothing like the

devastation of a blaster bomb.

If they have blaster bombs, its going to cost us a lot to

get near them, he thought. But they had to do it.

"Zander, go around and collect the alien they stunned, and

drag it somewhere where things aren't exploding. Torban and Esser,

head south now - let's get this over with."

As Akira rounded the corner, he found the site of the first

blast. It had completely destroyed the large set of doors leading in

to the lower level of the command center, along with most of the wall

around them. It had also blown open part of the wall to the south,

leading out of the command center. It must have been just out of view

of the tank, he thought.

He began to wonder if an alien could have gotten past them

through that hole, but his thoughts were cut short. A silver blaster

bomb zipped out through the open doorway, gleaming briefly in the

eerie alien light, then making a sharp left turn.

Again the world exploded, leaving Akira disoriented, but still

kneeling upright. He thought he had heard a man scream through the

lingering sounds of destruction, but he wasn't sure. His HUD was

still up, and just as he located the other stun launcher group on the

map, one of their marks turned from yellow to white. It was Torban.

He checked detailed status on Esser and found that she had

been seriously injured.

"Zander, ..." he called.

"I've got it," she said, "I'll take care of her."

Akira had used a blaster launcher and knew it could be

reloaded and fired again in just a few seconds. He moved quickly

toward the destroyed doorway, hoping to get a shot before the next

bomb killed him.

As he reached the doors, a robed alien stepped out directly in

front of him, carrying a large launcher. Akira reacted and fired his

stun launcher, engulfing the alien and himself in a series of sonic

shock waves.

Akira stumbled, and fumbled to reload his launcher, but his

hand was not entirely his own, making only some of the movements he

commanded of it. In his weakened state he felt someone else inside

him. It was like the alien in his head in the Amazon raid, but much

stronger and larger than Akira. He had no option but to move aside

into an unused corner of his mind and let the alien take control. It

was for the best anyway, he thought.

Another explosion went off somewhere and the large alien left

Akira alone to slowly, cautiously crawl back to the center of his own

thoughts. He sat there for what seemed like hours, wondering if the

alien would come back.

...

"Captain?"

Akira opened his eyes and scanned around without moving his

head. His helmet was off. Davies stared down at him, still in his

full armor, holding a stun launcher in his hand.

Crossett walked up. "Is he OK."

"Sure," Davies said, "just stunned. You got the last one."

"Good," Crossett said, "It almost got to Blake."

Davies noticed Akira move and knelt down beside him. "Sorry,

Captain. I had to stun you to get the commander."

Akira came to his senses. "We got one?"

Davies removed his helmet. He was smiling like Akira had never

seen him smile before, "Yes, sir. You got him, mostly. You ready for

a vacation on Mars?"

"My bags are packed," Akira said, pushing himself up to a

sitting position and trying to shake the stuffing out of his head. He

looked at the stunned alien beside him. The psis had already fit it

with a psi-suppression collar.

"I have to go check on Esser," Crossett said. Before she left,

she bent over and patted him on the thigh. It made a dull, impersonal

clunking sound.

She looks good in alloy, he thought, as she stomped off down

the smoking passage.

THE END

[FullAuto]

8 - Exposure.

 

Akira and Crossett were sitting in one of the small common

rooms on the bottom level of the Little Rock base's living quarters

when the alarm sounded. Akira received a personal page over the

intercom.

"Perez wants you," Crossett said smiling.

It was an inside joke, one Akira wasn't quite ready to laugh

at yet. He just gave her his best look of cold disgust and said

nothing.

They had been watching local news. A clean cut, well-chiseled

man with an accent from some state farther north tried his best to

squeeze every ounce of sensation from a group of a few hundred

students from the University of Arkansas and the Baptist College who

were marching north toward the state capital. Some of the students

carried peace signs and placards displaying general slams against the

military. There was also a group of students trying to block the

gates of Camp Robinson, on the north end of town.

But what concerned Akira the most were the two dozen or so

students who had driven sixty miles northwest in crowded cars, into a

remote area of the Boston Mountains, to march back and forth outside

of a small military supply post built on the site of an old bauxite

mine. They explained to the single reporter on the scene that it was a

test site for experimental aircraft.

"Do they know we're down here?" he asked out loud.

"Probably not," Crossett said, "Someone may have seen the

Skyranger or the Firestorm taking off or coming back, but they don't

seem to have a clue what's really going on."

There were only a few seconds of coverage about the Boston

Mountain protest, then the station went on to other stories.

A few minutes later, Crossett and Akira felt the sudden roar

and thunder clap of the Firestorm taking off and immediately going

supersonic. The news station quickly cut back to cover the event.

Their tape showed another old college student sedan pulled up

on the twisty gravel road and five more protesters piled out. The

attention of all of the students and the news camera was suddenly

drawn back to the supply post by the dramatic sounds. The camera

missed whatever had made the noise, but some of the students had seen

it. Most of them huddled together for a few seconds, then one ran off

to an extremely old Ford Escort and drove off toward Little Rock,

probably to get friends. The reporter, who had been facing the other

way during the launch, interviewed students to get a description, and

got a wide range of answers.

"You'd better go, boss," Crossett said, "sounds like we've got

customers. You can monitor the action outside from the command

center."

Akira set off west, through the base's main lift, toward the

small command center spread out inside the radar equipment rooms.

We're in no shape to mount a UFO recovery, he thought. It had been

less than a week since their base raid in Africa, and he hadn't even

had time to fill out the squads with replacement troopers. And there

were those damn students outside - could they launch with them around

and give them even more of what they were looking for?

He found Perez in a small room filled with monitors, below the

short range radar room.

"It's one of the big one's," she said, "coming in from the

northwest at about Mach four."

Akira checked the radar screen and saw that Perez had launched

the Firestorm to intercept. "What's that interceptor going to do?

The last one that attacked one of those monsters was destroyed."

"He can follow it," she said, "pinpoint its landing site."

Akira nodded.

"Come look at this," she said, and led Akira down the hall

into a room below the long range radar next door, carefully stepping

around scattered electronic equipment and loose cables as she went.

She pointed to a relatively new display mounted up in the far corner

of the room, connected to their new hyperwave decoder.

The information the decoder had deciphered and translated from

the ship's transmissions confirmed that it was one of the large,

five-legged alien battleships. It had also classified it as a muton

ship.

"What do you make of that mission?" Akira asked.

In most cases the decoder could also surmise the basic

objective of the UFO, such as base supply, terror missions, or

scouting. In this case the mission was just "retaliation."

"I asked Dr. Morey about it. He said it indicates the aliens

want to inflict damage on the sources of the attacks which have

damaged their own ships."

"Us," Akira said, "this base."

"I would guess so."

"Do they know where we are?"

"Don't know - scouts have come close, but have never landed

here. "

"And Morey's people have had the mind shield operating for a

couple weeks," Akira added, "to try and block the emissions from all

the psionic activity." He paused for a moment, thinking. "Maybe the

ethereal commander has somehow given our position away."

"Maybe," Perez said, "but we checked it for transmitters and

scanned for alloy, and it's had a psi-suppression collar on since we

nabbed it. Maybe the aliens are watching the local news."

They both hurried back to the command center. Davies was at

the tracking display.

"Which way is it going?" Akira asked.

"Southeast," Davies replied, "looks like it's coming this

way."

"It could be here in about twenty minutes," Perez added.

"Do we have enough defenses?" Akira asked no one in

particular. Davies and Perez shrugged without saying anything. The

base had point defense systems - missiles and plasma, and an unfinished

grav shield to slow down incoming weapons or ships, but they had never

been used and never tested for fear of giving away their position.

Perez gave no sign of taking charge. She was looking at Akira

for this one. Technically, he was in command at the base.

He thought it through. It would take nearly ten minutes for

the handful of experienced troopers to get into their armor and

collect their weapons. They would also have to evacuate whoever they

could.

"Davies, call the..." Akira suddenly remembered the protesters

again. "Damn."

"What," Davies asked.

"Perez, Get Dr. Morey in here, and Perry. Fast. Davies, you

get the troopers suiting up, and round up any recruits that have

passed a reasonable amount of screening. Get them into defensive

positions with weapons and headsets, and some of the old personal

armor, if we still have any."

Akira waited a few minutes to give Perez a head start finding

Dr. Morey and Perry Lem, the Chief Engineer, then he went to a command

terminal and set off the general evacuation alarm. He watched the

track of the UFO for a minute as it made noticeable progress across

Idaho, accompanied by the rhythmic honking echoing through the

underground base. It crossed into Wyoming just as Dr. Morey and Perry

arrived.

Morey was a tall, authoritative scientist who communicated in

short, intense bursts in between forcing himself to listen to other

opinions. But he was brilliant and very convincing if allowed to talk

uninterrupted.

"Dr. Morey, get your people and the engineers out of here, and

away from the supply post. And on your way, try to convince the

students up there that this is a real emergency and they're in real

danger. Tell them there are volatile materials on the post and we

think they might explode or something. Just get them away from

here."

"An alien battleship may be here in about fifteen minutes,"

Akira continued, "Can you evacuate the Avenger?"

"Don't think so," Perry said, shaking his head and wringing

his plump hands. "we have the drives pulled apart to test the

navigation system. It would take us hours to get it up again."

"Dr. Morey," Akira continued, "How far along are you with the

alien commander?"

"It's tough," Morey said, "We have the mind shield and

psi-suppression fields operating, so our use of psi-amps is limited,

and the ethereals don't seem to have a spoken language."

"Can you evacuate it in the Skyranger?" Akira asked.

As he spoke they heard the roar of the Skyranger's vertical

thrusters echoing in from the hangar to the south west. "Damn," Akira

said, "No time to land it again."

"It would have been dangerous and disruptive to move the alien

anyway," Morey said. Akira couldn't tell if he was serious or just

trying to make him feel better.

"One more question," Akira said, "Will the tanks' programming

allow them to help defend the base if we're invaded?"

Morey looked questioningly at Perry, who stuck out his lower

lip in thought, then nodded slowly.

"Sure," Perry replied, "I don't see why not."

"Then it's time for you both to leave."

They both turned and headed back east toward the lift and the

living quarters. Before they disappeared, Morey turned and said

"Good luck, Captain."

Akira nodded and looked back at the monitor. The battleship was

nearly into Colorado already. It may be coming for the alien

commander, he thought. Maybe that means we're as close to the

answer as we think.

A few minutes later, the Firestorm caught up to the UFO. It

managed to drop in behind and get a good look, confirmed the

battleship classification, then followed at a safe distance.

"Firestorm-2," Akira called, "if the target gets within a

hundred klicks of the base, I want you to hit it a few times then bug

out for the emergency hangar."

The pilot acknowledged.

The evacuation was proceeding smoothly, but he could see that

the reporter at the scene realized something important was

happening. Vans filled with dozens of scientists and engineers

streaming from a small supply post gave him plenty of fuel for

speculation.

One of the vans stopped and Dr. Morey stepped out. He tried

to shout over the barrage of questions and accusations from the

students.

"I am Dr. Stan Morey, of the DoD Alternate Energy Development

Project," He began. It was their official cover story, provided by

the U.S. government. Was there really such a project, Akira wondered?

If so, the heat would soon be on them.

"For the past few months," Dr. Morey continued, "we have been

using this facility as a secure laboratory for the development of a

compressed hydrogen fuel. Your presence here compromised that

security and we were forced to make plans to move our research

elsewhere. Unfortunately, an accident in packing the existing

material for shipment has left it unstable and near the point of an

unpredictable and little-understood slow fusion reaction. For your

own safety, we must insist that everyone evacuate an area within a

radius of ten kilometers from this base, until the small group of

experts we've left behind can stabilize the sample."

"Nice," Akira said out loud.

"I just caught the end," Crossett said, coming into the room

in her full flying suit, except for the helmet. "but it sure sounded

convincing. Morey's a scary guy."

Akira smiled. "We'll see if it works." The students were

still discussing the situation among themselves, but a few vehicles

were already loading up and heading down the road.

Davies arrived, wearing just the environmental suit that went

underneath his armor. He checked the radar monitors.

"Looks like we've got about eight or nine minutes," he said.

"How do you want us deployed, Captain."

"What have we got?"

"Well, we have us three, plus Zander, Perez and the two psis.

We also have the two tanks and one rookie, Richter, checked out on

plasma and power suit. I figure we can give him to Crossett."

Akira nodded quickly.

"Beyond that we have six rookies that I'd trust with lasers,

and I found personal armor to fit four of them."

"Oh," Davies continued, "and Esser - she's hurting pretty bad,

but she refused to leave and is trying to squeeze into her armor."

"Fine," Akira said, "she can guard her living quarters."

Akira looked up at the crude map of the ever-changing base on the

wall above the terminals. "We have to prevent any damage to key

systems on this base, but our priority is to defend the containment

facility and the Avenger's hangar. If either was destroyed we'd be

set back months. If they know where we are, I don't think we'd last

that long."

Akira looked closer at the map, as if reading information that

wasn't printed there. "We can shut down the main lift and lock the

sliding hangar doors from here to keep them out for a while."

"Not long," Davies said, "A good plasma shot would rip through

the hangar doors like paper - they're made of pretty light stuff. And

there are shafts running alongside the main lift that are big enough

for bugs to get in. I don't know how effectively we can block them."

Perez was just walking in, already suited up. She looked as

if she'd stumbled across a party she hadn't been invited to.

"Colonel," Akira said, "can you see about shutting down the

main lift once everyone's out, then block the small service shafts

around it?"

"Sure, Captain," Perez said without much enthusiasm, and left.

Akira checked the monitors again. The UFO was in Kansas, less

than six minutes away and still headed directly for them.

"I have to suit up," he said, "I want the rookies split up and

in defensive cover where we can watch them." He pointed at Crossett,

"You and Richter take the rocket tank and cover the southwest hangar

and alien containment. Davies and Zander get the plasma tank and

cover the Avenger. We'll arm the psis and put them upstairs in the

living quarters with Esser. Perez and I will stay near here to cover

the lift and the hangar next door."

With that he ran out through the lift room, where Perez and

two rookies were stuffing shafts with lab equipment, then south into

storage to find his armor. He changed in the center of the floor and

got his helmet on just as the interceptor pilot reported through the

chatter of excited rookies that he was breaking off his attack.

A few seconds later, as Akira ran back toward the command

center, the base echoed with a low, pulsing whine . It must be the

plasma defenses, he thought, but he had never heard them in operation.

When Akira reached the command terminals, he saw that the

plasma defenses were indeed firing, as were their one laser battery

and two outdated missile launchers. The UFO was now nearly directly

above them, at about fifteen hundred meters and descending fast.

The external cameras were still operating, and Akira could see

that some of the students and the reporter and camera crew had been

foolish enough to stay. Now they could see the ship and were

beginning to understand how large it was. Some ran for their

vehicles, others stood and watched the high-tech fireworks display in

awe or fear.

"No more secrets," Akira said out loud.

Perez heard him as she walked into the room. She stood beside

him and watched the monitor, letting her heavy plasma drop at her

side.

"We'll have to go soon," she said, "in the next few days, if

we survive this. We can't hold off the press for long."

As they watched, the small groups outside came within range of

the battleship's huge plasma weapons. A series of flashes

that saturated the camera and left nothing but charred, cratered

ground. One pulse caught two carloads of students fleeing down the

road, and the next took out the outside camera.

"There's nothing more to do here," Akira said, "let's get into

position."

Perez motioned toward the lift room. "I told Okabe to wait

for the missiles to stop firing, then head into the passage below the

missile room to cover the hangar's east exit. Kidd is on the other

side of the lift."

"What do they have on them?" Akira asked.

"Lasers," Perez said, "Okabe only has a pistol."

"Against mutons?" Akira shook his head and tried to position

himself below the short range radar so he could see north into the

hangar and east to lift. "You cover the west side of the hangar.

They'll have to pass under the laser defenses to get out that way."

"OK. Good luck."

Just after she left the room, a hollow explosion went off to

the north, following by sounds of metal bending and falling down into

the hangar.

"North hangar doors are down," Akira reported as he ran out

into the hallway and knelt down just outside the hangar.

Two more identical explosions sounded to the south just as

Akira saw a large, barrel-chested purple alien drop into the hangar

only a few meters away from him. He swung his heavy plasma around and

autofired. One shot hit and seemed to shake the alien up a little.

It turned within the spray of plasma and looked directly at Akira.

Another plasma bolt caught the alien from behind before it could raise

its weapon.

It dropped, and Akira could see Perez behind, in position at

the entrance to the passage beneath the laser defense room. Suddenly

at least two separate streams of plasma streaked across toward her

from the eastern part of the hangar, hidden from Akira's view. Perez

jumped back, and Akira couldn't tell if she'd been hit.

There was a short pause in the exchange, but the sounds of

weapons fire from other parts of the base filled in. Crossett was

barking out orders to one of the rookies. Akira took two quick steps

north toward the hangar, stopping just behind the opening.

He could see two mutons toward the back right corner of the

hangar, and as he watched, another dropped down to their left. Perez

moved up, and more plasma streaked as she returned fire. The rookie

Okabe was firing too, with his laser pistol, from a hiding place

somewhere east of the hangar.

Akira guessed that Perez couldn't see the alien which had just

dropped, so he sprayed it on autofire as he backed up a step out of

sight of the other two.

The muton moved quickly to its right into the plasma defense room.

"Perez," he called on the headset, "A muton has moved into the

passage to your north."

He wasn't sure she had heard it through all the plasma fire.

She didn't respond immediately so Akira called again as he began

moving around toward her.

"I've got one," Hudson the psi reported.

But which one, Akira thought.

"Perez. Alien to your north," he called again.

As he passed under the long range radar, Akira heard plasma and

laser fire directly behind him, probably on the other side of the

lift. He ignored it for the moment and continued around to the north

toward Perez.

He approached from the south just as the muton entered from

the north and pointed its weapon at Perez.

The alien got off one shot before Akira sprayed it with

plasma. When he was sure it was dead, Akira rounded the corner to

check on Perez.

She was still up, but crouching on one leg and leaning against

the wall, firing into the hangar. The armor on the other thigh had

been blown open, and there was a fair amount of blood.

"Thanks," she blurted out. Akira could hear the pain in her

voice.

Akira's mind raced. He couldn't treat her with mutons firing

at them from the hangar. He had also lost track of the aliens. They

could have left the hangar and be coming at them from any direction.

More sounds of weapons fire, mostly laser this time, echoed to

them across the hangar.

"One...One of them got past us," someone said excitedly over

the headset, "From the lift...Kidd is down."

In the mean time, Akira had moved up, almost into the hangar.

From partial cover around the edge of the opening, he spotted two

mutons moving toward the front of the hangar. They fired

sporadically in his direction, missing wide to his right.

Akira took careful aim at the lead alien and fired. The

single plasma shot caught the muton in the abdomen, ripping open its

purple covering and armored skin. It stopped for a few seconds but

didn't go down until Perez hit it in almost the same spot.

The second muton paused and fired in their direction. The

bolt shot past to Akira's right. Perez gave an audible grunt, and

Akira heard the metalic thunk of her suit hitting the floor.

He glanced back and could see that she had been hit in the

chest, just below her left shoulder. It looked bad. He moved toward

her, pulling at his medi-kit and moving his body between her and the

hangar.

"...Go..." she blurted over the headset, "that's an order."

Akira glanced back over his shoulder into the hangar. The

last muton had moved almost to the entrance to the missile defense

area. Suddenly one of the rookies - Okabe - spun around the corner

and began firing at the alien from only a few feet away.

The muton towered over Okabe, and they were too close together

for Akira to take a wild shot. He dropped to one knee to aim.

Okabe got off three shots with his laser pistol, probably all

hits, before the alien got him point blank in the chest with its heavy

plasma. He dropped just as Akira shot the alien cleanly in the head

and took it down.

Akira brought up his HUD. Okabe was a white cross - dead.

Perez was flashing. He turned and found her leaning against the wall,

still conscious. She had her own medi-kit half unpacked and was

trying unsuccessfully to take care of her own wounds.

"Let me do that," Akira said, crouching beside her and taking

the medical monitor cable from the floor with his armored gloves.

"Won't work," she said, "the jack's gone."

It was true. The jack would have been on her chest, where

there was now a charred hole larger than Akira's hand. Her status

telemetry seemed to be working, so he switched to the limited medical

information on his HUD as he began working on the wounds.

He didn't like what he saw. She was on the verge of shock and

had lost too much blood already. Coagulants would help, but

stimulants might kill her.

Before he could take any action, Perez looked up at him, and

her eyes cleared.

"Go," she said in her crisp, earthy voice, with no sign of

pain. "The aliens that got out are headed for the psis."

Akira stared at her for a few seconds. Was she actually

thinking clearly about the situation at a time like this, or was she

hallucinating?

"Can't you ever follow orders, Captain?"

She was right. There was no time for this. If the psis became

casualties, the Mars mission would be delayed too long and might never

happen.

"Davies," he called over the headset, "What've you got?"

After a pause of a few seconds, marked by plasma fire from

somewhere south of them, Davies replied.

"Something got the plasma tank from behind," he reported,

"Webb is down, and we have one alien under psi control."

Akira found the injection port on Perez's neck and gave her

coagulants. "The one that got your tank could have been the one that

got past the rookies up here. They're both down too."

"This hangar's secure," Crossett interrupted, "but Richter's

hurt and one of the rookies went berserk in the lab north of alien

containment."

"Go" Perez repeated out loud to Akira.

Without a word, Akira dropped the medi-kit items within reach

of her, laid his hand on her shoulder for a second and ran south the

way he'd come.

"Crossett," he ordered on a closed channel, "keep your squad

there and protect alien containment. If it looks like your berserk

rookie might injure the alien commander, shoot him."

"Her," Crossett corrected, "it's Collignon. And yes, I'll do

that."

Instead of running straight through the empty hangar, Akira

followed the passages along its edge. He saw no troopers or aliens

until he reached the main lift.

The big lift doors were open, and he could see a trooper's

body on the other side. He approached cautiously and saw that it was

Kidd, his laser rifle still in his hand. He had taken at least two

plasma shots in the chest. A strange, glistening organic sack lay on

the floor beside him, like a pale alien afterbirth.

Akira continued east into the living quarters. He could see

down the central hallway into the psi lab's cluster of evaluation

chambers. He had just seen the body of a rookie, probably no older

than nineteen, and it had barely effected him at all. His only

concern was that an alien had gotten past and now threatened the psis

and the entire X-COM project. He decided he would have to take time

later to figure out what this was all doing to him, and he knew for

sure he wanted it to end.

As he rounded the corner to his right, into the north-south

passage, he caught a glimpse of purple moving into a doorway about

five meters down on the left. A trooper moved into the opening on

the far end of the passage, just inside the Avenger's hangar, and took

a wild shot at the alien before it disappeared.

If Akira remembered correctly, that was the door that led to

Esser's barracks and the psis.

"Hudson," he called on the headset, "did you get it?"

"Not enough time," Hudson called, "but we're ready when it

comes up."

Akira ran down the hall, as did the trooper on the far end.

By her size and location he guessed it was Zander.

"Let Esser take the shot," Akira ordered, "Hudson and Tonida,

hide yourselves if you can." He knew it sounded callous, using a

wounded trooper as a shield for the psis, but they were more critical

now.

As he reached the doorway, ahead of Zander, something floated

in behind her from a side passage. It was like a shining opalescent

water balloon about a meter long.

Akira took aim at it. Zander was running towards him and took

it as a cue to duck. He didn't realize until later that she might

have actually thought he was under alien control and aiming at her.

As the balloon moved slowly toward them it shimmered brightly

for a second, then something very much like a plasma bolt shot from it

over Zander's head and to Akira's left. It was followed by an

explosion, like a grenade, and heavy plasma fire from the quarters

upstairs.

Akira had walked this hall thousands of times over the last

year, coming and going from his living quarters down the hall. Now

the presence of an alien in the same corridor, in his home, struck him

hard. He was suddenly, uncontrollably angry.

It helped to squeeze hard on the alien contours of the heavy

plasma trigger and to watch the spray of plasma bolts pass around and

through the alien balloon, ripping it to smoking shreds on the floor.

Almost in response, he heard a long volley of plasma and laser

fire from the hangar to the south - Davies hangar that was supposedly

secure. There might have also been another shot from upstairs mixed

in.

Akira pushed through the door and took the stairs in three

jumps, ignoring the sudden burst of chatter over his headset. He

entered one of the common bunk areas and found Hudson with a laser

rifle trained on a prostrate muton. Esser had her helmet removed and

was bending over Tonida, who was propped against the wall and had

taken a shot in the leg.

Zander looked up at Akira. "It doesn't look too bad," she said,

"toss me your medi-kit."

Akira reached to his belt, half expecting that he had left the

kit with Perez, but it was still there. He popped it off and tossed

it to Zander. He brought up his HUD to check on Perez and found her

cross flashing, but still yellow.

In a few seconds he was back down the stairs, passing Zander

on her way up. He moved quickly south past the slippery remains of

the balloon alien and stopped at the entrance to the Avenger's hangar.

The sight of the new ship, sitting apparently unharmed, helped return

his calm analytical frame of mind.

Then he saw Davies power-suited figure sitting just inside the

storage area to the west of the hangar, next to a dead muton,

with Dreyfus standing guard over both of them. The rookie looked

extremely glad to see Akira.

"He was under control," the rookie reported very calmly, "then

he just took a shot at the sergeant, so we had to kill him."

"Are you sure it's dead?" Akira asked. He glanced down at the

alien and realized it was an unnecessary question.

Davies let out a painful, snorting laugh inside his suit and

prodded Dreyfus in the side. "Oh, he's dead all right. Dreyfus here

decided to use its body for autofire laser penetration testing."

Dreyfus looked hurt at first, and couldn't see the expression

on Davies face, but the rare note of admiration, and maybe gratitude

in Davies voice was clear to Akira.

"How bad is it?" Akira asked Davies.

"I'll be fine for a while," he replied, "You should worry

about cleaning this place out."

Akira nodded and switched to his headset. "Crossett," he

called on the open channel, "leave someone to watch containment and

sweep north. You've got everything west of the access lift."

"Understood."

"Zander," Akira continued, "head north through the living

quarters to the missile battery. I think we may have an alien or two

wandering still. We'll cover each other and check the second level

as we go"

He spoke out loud to Dreyfus. "You head up the far east edge

of the base. I'll try to give some backup to you and Zander."

Dreyfus nodded and ran recklessly across the hangar toward the

psi labs.

"I'll guard the Avenger," Davies added seriously.

Akira brought up his HUD to monitor progress, and it didn't

take him long to notice the small, steady white cross toward the

northwest corner of the base. Perez was dead. And she had died alone,

Akira thought.

He stood for a moment as a mixture of memories, regrets, and

self-blame took over his mind as effectively as any alien mind

control. He tried to shake it off, but only managed a slow, mindless

shuffle back toward the living quarters.

Crossett must have been watching her HUD too. "Perez is

gone," she reported flatly.

The control in her voice was enough to snap Akira back to

action. He would have to deal with the memories and guilt later. For

now he convinced himself that it was the aliens and only the aliens

that were to blame.

He moved into the living quarters, up within ten paces of

Zander. He watched on the HUD as Crossett's squad advanced. When

they reached the midway point between the south and north hangars, the

bug warning light flashed and Akira switched his HUD automatically to

the spotters view. He was just in time to see Crossett's tank launch

a rocket right into the hallway below the long range radar room.

The muton survived the explosion but was immediately hit from

the side by plasma fire.

"Another one down," Crossett called, "last one?"

Akira was still on the tank's view, studying the destruction

the rocket had caused inside the hallway and radar equipment rooms.

Apparently the tanks didn't distinguish between alien and X-COM

property.

As he shuffled forward and tried to discern details of the

damage in the other room, a plasma bolt shot across the passageway on

his right. There was apparently an alien in with the mind shield

equipment, firing across the psi labs at Dreyfus.

Akira checked to see how Zander was responding - she was

moving up to enter the mind shield room from the west. Akira moved

into the psi labs while Dreyfus wildly fired back at the alien with

his laser pistol.

A second plasma shot came from the north without interrupting

Dreyfus's fire. He either has great cover back there, Akira thought,

or he's the luckiest bastard in the world.

Akira moved along the psi evaluation chambers, but thought

twice about stepping out into the cross fire of the central hallway.

He stopped where he could see partway north up the hall, and caught a

glimpse of the muton before Zander's plasma fire tore open the right

side of its big chest.

The alien fell forward to its knees, and before it crumpled

into a fetal corpse on the floor, it looked directly at Akira. There

was no way for Akira to interpret the expressions on an alien face,

but he got the distinct impression of confidence, of a sense of

victory. If it had been human he would have expected a smug, knowing

smile.

"This side's clear", Crossett called, "Krause and I are

heading topside to check on the battleship."

Technically, Akira should have given an order to move up the

lift, but he knew she was probably thinking much more clearly than he

was. "We're clear here too," he reported, "Don't go after the ship

until we're out too."

"Roger, boss."

Zander was making sure the muton was dead, so Akira went to

check on Dreyfus. He was still kneeling, in the center of the hall

about five meters south. His laser pistol was still pointed toward

Akira.

"You're a very lucky trooper, Dreyfus," Akira said as he

approached, "hopefully it's a consistent trait. You'll need it if we

get to Mars."

Dreyfus snapped out of his trance and stood. Akira could see

that he was physically unharmed.

"Let's go up and see the ship," Akira suggested.

The one-sided conversation was interrupted by Crossett. "It's

gone," she reported, "The ship is gone. No sign of any more aliens."

"Could any be hiding in the buildings," Akira asked. He

headed for the lift, and Dreyfus followed.

"No," Crossett replied, "they're gone too. Flattened." She

paused for a few seconds. "You'll have to come up and see for

yourself, 'Kira. There's nothing left up here."

The immediate danger seemed to be gone. Akira's mind raced ahead

as he ascended the lift. The UFO had landed in sight of witnesses,

some of whom may have survived. And the news offices in Little Rock

might have tape of the entire incident. It would be only hours before

the place was surrounded by reporters and blustering local politicians

demanding to know what was going on.

"Zander," he called on the way up the lift, "Davies is in the

south storage area. See if he needs any help."

"Gotcha," she replied.

He reached the surface and found Crossett with her helmet off.

He removed his own so they could talk quietly while the two rookies

moved among the remains of the supply post looking for survivors..

"We have to go very soon," Crossett said, staring out toward

the twisted, burning wrecks of student cars and the new van.

Akira thought for a moment, then turned to head down the lift.

"Try to get ahold of Morey and Perry. Get them back here immediately.

Tell them they can have any resources they need, and they can shut

down the mind shield, but they're working eighteen hour shifts until

the ship is ready and the ethereal spills its guts"

"Ethereals don't have guts."

Akira allowed himself a brief smile at that. he watched her

for a moment as she turned and looked out through the destruction.

"You haven't cut your hair after these last two fights, " he

said.

Crossett just shrugged her shoulders as best she could in her

flying suit.

"I'm going to see if I can contact Washington," he

said as he left, "Maybe they can invoke national security and suppress

this mess, at least until we're out of here."

Before attempting to make the satellite link with half of the

surface equipment destroyed, Akira went to see Perez.

Richter was with her. He was stripping her flying suit and

getting ready to move her to cold storage. Two of the rookies were

standing nearby, just watching silently.

Akira wanted to help her, but there was nothing to do. He

briefly considered taking her with them to Mars, but it was an

unnecessary gesture which would just take up space and disrupt the

mission. Maybe she was actually better off. Maybe they would all die

horribly on Mars.

. . .

Akira and Crossett watched the local channels closely that

night. The destruction in the mountains and the loss of one station's

reporter had not gone unnoticed, but there was no mention of the huge

UFO. Apparently there were no survivors.

The DoD regretfully reported that research on an important

alternate fuel source had been disrupted by the students, resulting in

the unfortunate explosion which had devastated the area. The

potential for lingering radiation and future explosions justified the

evacuation of the immediate area around the base.

There would be a complete investigation. Congress was already

choosing representatives to head up the initial review, which could

take months.

"So no one knows we're here," Akira said.

Crossett leaned against him. "No one except the aliens."

 

THE END

[FullAuto]

9 - God Of War.

 

Akira took a final, quick slug of his coffee, spilling a

little on his jump suit. He tried to wipe it off with a napkin as he

walked toward the main lift to greet the Russians.

The western skies had been relatively quiet for the week since

the Little Rock base had been attacked - just one snakeman terror

ship, prudently shot down over the open Atlantic. The scientists had

used the time to intensify the interrogation of the ethereal commander

and had discovered the location of the alien base on Mars.

During the same period, the Russians had taken on a harvester

and a muton battleship. They had lost a lot of good troopers,

including Captain Ragulin, and now had only five to send along to

Mars. Akira had seen the list and knew that Morinov was one of them.

In fact, he was their captain now, taking over for Ragulin. Akira tried to

forget his previous impression of Morinov, who was remembered at

Little Rock as a reckless braggart.

Morinov's promotion had come out of an emergency council of

X-COM's national representatives, held in the wake of the attack at

Little Rock and the disastrous Russian missions. The same council

had promoted Akira to commander of the entire X-COM organization - a

position left vacant by Perez's death.

Akira ascended on the main lift, emerging from the floor of a

large, corrugated metal storage shed, hastily erected to cover the

lift after the base was attacked. The Russians were already there,

unloading from the van and glancing around with mild curiosity.

Akira was surprised he didn't spot Morinov immediately,

expecting a loud, energetic personality to stand out in the group of

more stoic Russians. Morinov finally turned from a conversation with

one of the troopers and walked toward Akira. He saluted and Akira

clumsily saluted back.

He'd aged, Akira thought, and all his brash, youthful energy

was gone - replaced by a cool analytical stare. It wasn't until they

shook hands and exchanged greetings that Akira realized he had gone

through a nearly identical transformation in the last year. Suddenly

the idea of judging someone based on actions taken before the defining

experience of X-COM seemed foolish.

"Has our equipment arrived?" Morinov asked in English, handing

Akira a manifest.

Akira politely glanced at the list, which he could recite

from memory. "Everything is in the southeast storage area. You can

inspect it as soon as you're ready. The plasma tank is being delivered

by special Air Force transport and should be here this morning."

"When do we leave?"

Akira checked his watch. It was barely 0800 in local time,

making it early evening for the Russians. "We can let your troops get

some sleep this afternoon, then launch in the evening."

The Russian troopers had gathered around - two additional men

and two women. The two men were Korkia and Maleev, but he didn't know

which was which. Akira recognized Zdanovich, the only remaining

Russian psi, from her photos. And the other woman, Iwahara, was the

only remaining Japanese trooper in X-COM besides himself. Recruiting

had slowed to nothing there after the Japanese pact with the aliens.

"Ohayoo gozaimasu," Akira said, bowing slightly to her with a

solemn face. "Shintsu desu."

She bowed quietly in return.

"Will we have time to adjust our schedules during the flight?"

Korkia or Maleev asked.

"Dr. Morey says the flight to Mars will take thirty-two

hours," Akira replied. "If he's right, we'll arrive mid-day for you,

but the middle of the night for us." Akira had already thought it

through and was actually more worried about the shifted cycles than he

let on. "We'll get some extra rest on the flight and hope it's

enough."

Morinov glanced around at his troops. "Then lets leave now -

this morning. You will fight in your afternoon, we will fight in our

early morning."

It had merit. The Russians could sleep two nights on the

Avenger. "Sounds good," Akira said, "Let me check with our engineers

on the Avenger's status and find out when the plasma tank will

arrive." He also wanted to check with the scientists to make sure it

would be daytime when they arrived at the site on Mars.

Akira gave the Russians a brief tour of the base, forgetting

that Morinov already knew his way around most of it, then went to talk

to Perry Lem.

The Avenger could be ready in two hours, so Akira moved the

launch up. They all kept very busy for the first hour, inspecting

equipment, writing letters, and eating if they had appetites. All the

troopers, with the exception of Davies, worked quietly, keeping their

thoughts to themselves. Davies, completely recovered from his leg

wound, moved among the Little Rock troopers, getting progressively

louder and more animated, patting the rookies on the back and going on

about how they were going to destroy the bugs for good this time. Far

from being an inspiration, he seemed to be getting on everyone's

nerves. Akira finally had to send him off to double-check the

ammunition stores in the Avenger.

Akira checked to make sure the Russians had everything they

needed, then went and found Crossett in one of the small common

rooms. They sat together, studying Dr. Morey's report on the ethereal

commander, but said very little. For twenty minutes the base was

completely quiet, but thick with apprehension. Then the alarms

sounded.

Akira headed for the command rooms, and Crossett followed.

Morinov and Maleev were there already, pointing at the display and

whispering in Russian. They moved against the wall as Akira and

Crossett entered.

Akira glanced at the screen and saw a UFO track coming toward

them over the Pacific. There was also a report on the Air Force

transport carrying the plasma tank. It was less than fifteen minutes

away.

He continued on into the next room to check the hyperwave

decoder's monitor. He wasn't surprised to find the UFO was a

battleship on a retaliation mission. He was a little surprised that

the transmission pattern was ethereal.

"A battleship full of psionic ethereals," he said out loud.

If it was after their base, which he didn't doubt, and it got past the

base defenses, which the last one had, the ensuing fight could cost

them valuable resources needed for Mars. They might even lose the

whole war.

He moved back to the main control room and only then noticed

that the two Russians had been silently following him. Crossett was

still watching the displays, and Davies was just walking in. Akira

ordered the launch of both interceptors and gave the pilots

instructions to attack, but to back off if they took too much damage.

The base defenses might be able to finish off a damaged battleship.

"It's a battleship full of ethereals, headed for us," Akira

announced. "Captain Morinov, please make sure your equipment is all

stowed on the Avenger, then let's get all the troopers on board. We

leave as soon as the transport gets here and we can load up the

hovertank - we'll leave without it if we have to."

Everyone nodded and moved off quickly to finish preparations.

Akira went to find Dr. Morey and Perry Lem to start the evacuation,

and possibly the booby trapping of the base.

Ten minutes later the transport was landing. The UFO had

reached California and was still moving on a steady course toward

Arkansas.

Akira did a quick inspection of the Avenger. The Russians

were loading the last of their equipment, and one of Perry's engineers

was reviewing the ships navigational settings. She turned and smiled

as Akira approached.

"Captain - I mean Commander, It's just about ready to go."

She was too happy, and Akira's initial impulse was to chastise

her to impress upon her the seriousness of the situation. He checked

himself, realizing how little he understood the engineers - they

seemed to thrive on the hopeless situations and last-minute pressures.

And today they were going to see the culmination of all their work

over the last year.

Akira managed a smile back, ignoring the knots in his gut,

"What's this Cydonia place like?" he asked.

"Cydonia's its old name," she replied, "pre-Mariner. It's

actually the eastern highlands of Acidalium Planitia."

"What's it like," Akira asked again.

"Oh. Well, it's hilly, and a little rough in places. But it

won't be as bad as, say, landing in the Andes."

Akira had dozens of other questions for the engineers - would

their power suits hold up in the Martian atmosphere? How would it

effect the hovertanks? Would they have enough light on the surface?

He had already asked Perry specific questions as he thought of them

and had received terse replies which somehow left him uneasy.

Akira left her and went to round up all the troopers and get

them onto the ship. He found most of them already on their way. The

evacuation was also going well - all but a core handful of the

engineers and scientists were already on the road.

Akira contacted the transport, told them to send the tank down

the main lift on its own and advised them to take off as soon as

possible. The design of the Avenger required him to board before the

newly arrived hovertank was loaded, but before he entered he shook hands

with Perry Lem, who had stayed behind to see the launch.

"Good bye, Perry," Akira said, "don't forget to lock up when

you leave."

Perry smiled. "I will, and I'll leave a few surprises for any

intruders."

Akira quickly herded the troopers into the ship. Crossett and

Richter were the last to show.

"It's already over Kansas," Crossett reported as she climbed

the ramp. "We have about four minutes."

Akira followed Richter up the ramp and ordered their own plasma

tanks inside, arranging everyone to leave room for the Russian tank.

"Perry," Akira called out, "If you're still out there, open

the hangar doors."

"Yes, sir."

The automatic launch sequence would have opened them, but

doing it ahead of time could save them a few precious seconds. Akira

heard the steady metallic grind of the opening doors, still not

completely repaired from the last alien attack. Before the sound had

subsided, it was accompanied by the whirring of a plasma tank on the

move, and the Russian tank slid into view at the bottom of the ramp.

Morinov called out something in Russian and the tank moved up

the ramp into the ship. Akira immediately gave the order for Davies

to start the launch.

"Does your tank speak English?" Akira called back to the

Russians.

One of the Russian troopers whispered something in Russian

and his squad-mates all laughed, even Iwahara.

"Yes," Morinov replied, snickering, "A little. But she

prefers Russian."

Akira knew their good humor was fueled by nerves, and probably

at his expense, but he was glad to hear them laugh. It was a good

omen for what could be the most important departure in human history.

The Avenger's ramp rose quickly into position and Akira's eyes

had to adjust to the ship's relatively dim interior lighting. Seconds

later there was a brief jolt, as if the Avenger had jumped an inch or

two in the air, then landed back in the hangar.

"Anything wrong?" Akira called back to Esser, who was next

to one of the ship's control stations.

"No, Sir...We're up. Radar altimeter data shows us at eight

hundred meters, accelerating at just over three Gs. Internal sensors

show just under one G."

Troopers began moving around the ship. There was just enough

room on board for each of them to stretch out and sleep - something

the Russians would have to do soon. Akira walked forward toward Esser

and the control stations.

For the first time Akira really believed they might make it to

Mars. They would complete the trip, historically assumed to take

months, in just over a day. If we get through this, he thought, the

human race will do some amazing things, but if we fail...

"Colonel," Esser called out, not realizing he was right

behind her, "The Battleship is less than a minute from the base.

Interceptor two is down, and interceptor one has broken off its attack."

"Has the UFO changed course?" Akira asked over her shoulder. He

could tell by the jerk of her hand on the display controls that he had

startled her. She was as wound up as everyone else.

"Not that I can tell," she said.

Akira watched the radar signature of the huge ship approach

the base and ignored the urge to contact the base on the radio.

Hopefully, Perry was already on his way out.

"After that beating from the interceptors," Esser said, "the

defense systems may be able to destroy it."

"Maybe," Akira replied, but they had the same defenses as last

time - the grav shield wasn't even finished yet.

The battleships symbol changed to a green cross sitting on top

of the white box marking the Little Rock base. Akira moved back

toward his seat, knowing that a rocket tank could not hold out against

so many ethereals. He wondered if Perry had gotten away in time - he

was no soldier.

He settled in for the trip, reviewing the two pages of sketchy,

and possibly unreliable information the scientists had extracted from the

ethereal commander.

Two of the Russians were already asleep, and the rest were

trying to get comfortable.

...

thirty-three hours and 270 million kilometers later they could

see the blotchy, rust-colored planet getting steadily larger at the

information station. There were no windows on the Avenger.

Akira scanned around and found Davies nearby, checking over

his blaster launcher. "Wake the Russians please, Sergeant," he called

calmly. Davies nodded and began his rounds. They were both amazed

that the Russians could sleep on this flight - Akira himself had

gotten very little.

As they made their final approach, the planet seemed to rotate

beneath them. Akira knew enough about Mars to recognize the

unimaginably huge rise and caldera of Olympus Mons as it rolled over

the horizon. The Avenger, moving at sub-orbital velocity, seemed to

creep past, just above the mountain's northern slope, as if trying not

to wake it.

After a few minutes Olympus was behind, and two more majestic,

ancient volcanos marked their path to the north and south, like

sentinels guarding the alien stronghold. Akira did not know their

names, and he saw them only briefly. The visual display was gradually

obscured by a golden glow as they entered the thin Martian atmosphere.

The glow continued for five minutes, then faded as the Avenger

slowed to two kilometers per second. They were twenty kilometers up,

descending slowly across a large, cratered plain, weathered over

millions of years by the thin, fast Martian wind.

Within a few minutes Akira saw high, rough terrain rise over

the horizon.

Esser called up some maps that Dr. Morey's people had supplied.

"That's all Acidalium Planitia ahead of us," she reported. "What used

to be called Cydonia is back along those highlands. Her alloy finger

traced a line from what she estimated was their present position,

eastward to a sight someone had marked with a small box on the map.

Dr. Morey had explained to Akira that the site was already

interesting before the aliens gave it away, because crackpots had

interpreted strange shadows in Viking images of the area to be ancient

pyramids and a huge face rising out of the ground. It was

interesting, Akira thought, that Dr. Morey had still referred to them

as crackpots.

It took less than ten minutes for the craggy orange rise to

roll toward and underneath them. To their south the rough, hummocky

terrain went to the horizon. To the north, the drop at the edge of the

highlands looked like the edge of the world, broken only be deep

crevices carved by huge, but long gone rivers.

Esser began to slew the camera around and play with the

magnification. In a minute she had it pointing at a rough, shadowy

area ahead of them. At first Akira could make out no interesting

details, but as they approached and settled toward the surface, he

could make out terrain features that obviously were not natural. There

were at least six strange pyramids, all oriented with the cardinal

points of Mars, but scattered with respect to each other on a

conspicuous patch of level terrain. To the south of the pyramids was

a face, a human face larger than any on America's Mount Rushmore,

staring skyward from the rusty Martian dust.

Akira turned to make sure everyone was ready. While they

finished sealing their armor he repeated their mission instructions.

"We'll be landing in a minute or two," he began, and left a

few seconds for that to get everyone's attention. "Keep your suits

sealed at all times and be careful moving in the lower gravity."

He had to stretch up so all of the troopers toward the back of

the ship could see him over the three hovertanks in the center of the

hold. "I can't tell you exactly what this mission will be like. Our

research team believes there is an entrance to some kind of

underground base inside one of these pyramids, and that the alien

mastermind behind the entire Earth invasion is somewhere down there."

He realized he wasn't giving them much to go on, so he tried

to bring it all back to something they understood. "We'll treat the

surface like a UFO recovery mission. The Americans will be Far Squad

and take the plasma tanks with them to search for the lift. The

Russians will watch the area around the Avenger and escort the psis to

the lift once we find it. Remember, this time we're here to destroy,

not capture." His last sentence brought unintelligible exclamations of

approval from inside sealed helmets.

The American psis, Hudson and Tonida, sat together just to

Akira's right. By now they were probably used to being treated as

precious cargo and didn't show much reaction to the plan. Akira

couldn't see much of the Russian psi, Zdanovich, who sat with her own

people nearer the ramp.

Akira quickly sealed his own helmet.

"We're down," Esser called over the headset, "and decompressing."

As the air hissed out of the Avenger, Akira looked over the

thirteen troopers and the tanks. It was the largest and, with the

exception of a few rookies, the most experienced X-COM force ever

assembled. And it would probably be the last - no matter which way

things went. The hissing stopped and dim, orange tinted light poured

in as the rear of the ship opened up. His stomach lurched as the

ship's artificially gravity cut out and he was suddenly standing on

Mars.

There was more he wanted to say to them, but it would have to

wait.

"Far Squad left," he called out. Davies repeated it.

A plasma tank slid out first, and Akira moved to the monitors

in the back of the Avenger and switched one of them to its viewpoint.

The tank was immediately hit from the right by a plasma bolt. The

view swerved and centered on a small crater southeast of the ship.

The light was dim, like late twilight on Earth, but Akira could make

out the familiar shape of a sectoid on the monitor. Out of the corner

of his eye, he could also see the American psis clutch their psi amps

and spin to face southeast.

The tank took a shot at the sectoid and missed. Immediately

after, the tank's viewpoint disappeared and Akira felt dense vibration

through the hull of the ship. Two enemy markers flashed on his HUD

and more plasma fire went off, tinny and quiet in the Martian

atmosphere, even with his helmet's amplifier at maximum. He checked

the monitor showing the schematic map view and confirmed that the

first tank was gone. The other monitor switched automatically to the

spotter's view.

It was Korkia. He had killed the sectoid and was now firing

at one of the flying disks, barely visible off beyond the crater. He

was also blocking the ramp so that the second hovertank couldn't get a

shot.

With one hovertank out, there was more room to move around

inside the ship, and Akira could see Davies trying to get forward with

his blaster launcher. Another member of the American team, probably

Richter, had moved outside and floated around the corner to the left.

Akira's blood pressure rose - it was taking too long to

disembark - one alien blaster launcher shot inside the avenger right

now would wipe out most of his troopers and decide the whole war.

He was about to order the Americans to move out, despite the firefight,

when another quiet explosion punctuated the disappearance of the last

enemy marker on his HUD. The troopers cleared the ramp and their exit

proceeded like a drill.

As the third tank was gliding out of the hold, Akira heard

another plasma shot and the monitor switched automatically to tank

two's view. It had been hit, and was firing through a square opening

near the top of one of the pyramids. Morinov was quick with his

blaster launcher - he must have had a few waypoints programmed

already. Though quieter, the whistle of the flying blaster bomb

sounded the same as on Earth. Akira watched through the tank's

cameras as the bomb passed through the small opening and turned the

inside of the pyramid into a blazing hell. A second later the sound

of the blast hit Akira and he regretted having an amplifier. The

sectoid inside the pyramid disappeared, but the blast seemed to do

little damage to the pyramid itself.

The tanks and American troopers spread out quickly among the

pyramids. Akira moved past the psis to the ramp and could see the

remains of the destroyed Russian tank at the bottom. The enemy marker

flashed again. This time Akira switched his HUD to Dreyfus's view.

Dreyfus had spotted a sectoid moving behind a pair of pyramids just to

the north of the ship. He hesitated to shoot, probably afraid he

would hit Richter, who was almost directly in the line of fire and had

turned to face Dreyfus for some reason. After a few seconds Richter

took a quick shot with his laser rifle, hitting Dreyfus.

"Dreyfus," Akira called firmly, but calmly, "Shoot Richter."

Akira's HUD told him Dreyfus was wounded and would need

attention soon. He moved out onto the ramp to head that way himself,

but saw Crossett already moving along the south edge of the pyramid

to take care of it. I should stay here and command, he reminded

himself. He remembered how much he had grumbled to himself about

Perez coming along on missions and wondered if any of the troopers

felt the same about him.

Akira could see Dreyfus now, but not Richter. The wounded

trooper knelt and hesitated. After another shot from between the

pyramids barely missed him, he squeezed of at least six laser shots on

autofire.

Akira checked his HUD's map view, which showed no symbol for

Richter - he must have switched off his link.

He switched back to Dreyfus' channel. "Did you hit him?"

"Sure, I hit him," Dreyfus replied, "He's down."

The bug marker flashed again and Akira heard plasma fire

toward the front of the ship. He had no time to orient himself and

change views before the marker disappeared. One of the Russians said

something over the headset. By the tone, Akira thought he might be

swearing.

"Trooper Maleev has killed another sectoid west of the

Avenger," Morinov called from the other side of the ramp. Akira

guessed it was a much shorter and calmer translation of what the

trooper had actually said.

Davies yelled out instructions over the headset for Esser to

check out the pyramid to the right, which had already been hit by

Morinov's blaster launcher.

Akira was still on Dreyfus' view. The trooper was moving

toward the back of the pyramids and was just passing Richter's body.

Richter looked very dead. Akira suddenly realized how hard shooting him

must have been for Dreyfus - they had come through training together.

He wondered if Dreyfus could hold up through all this,

Akira's thoughts were interrupted by movement to Dreyfus's

left - a sectoid. The trooper saw it too and got off one quick shot,

missing far to the left and striking some dim structure in the

distance.

The alien had been moving south, not directly toward Dreyfus,

but now it turned and lifted a large weapon. Dreyfus had knelt down

and was taking better aim at the alien. Before he could fire or

the alien could use its weapon, a plasma bolt shot over the trooper's

head and seared through the thin atmosphere, right into the alien's

chest. It let out a horrible, shrill, high-pitched scream and

dropped.

Tank Two had moved around the pyramid to the east of Dreyfus

and had taken the shot. Akira switched to its view, fifteen feet off

the ground. It turned north and moved toward another pyramid.

"Dreyfus," Akira called, "stay behind cover where you are.

Let Crossett check out your wounds."

The trooper's advance stalled as Esser and Davies found the

entrances to the two nearest pyramids and went inside to check them

out.

"Some sort of control center. Empty," Davies reported.

"Same here."

Akira took the time to study the map on his HUD and hop

between trooper viewpoints. They knew of five pyramids now - the two

Esser and Davies had just searched, two more to the north of those,

and one west of the Avenger. Zander was getting ready to enter that

one. The two tanks had found the east and west edges where the

artificially flat terrain gave way to the natural rough hills. They

were moving along its edge toward the two pyramids to the north.

Akira suddenly realized that the ground around the pyramids,

flattened and smoothed by the aliens, had craters in it. He knew very

little of how often craters were formed in an area this size on Mars,

but it was the first solid evidence of just how old these structures

were. It was intimidating, so he got his mind off of it.

He fumbled with his mouth controls to find a private

channel.

"Crossett, How's Dreyfus?"

"He's stable," she replied immediately, "Not hurt all that

bad, and his suit resealed properly"

Akira checked his HUD again. Dreyfus and Crossett were in the

small gap between the two nearest pyramids. There was a wide space,

maybe forty meters, between them and the two pyramids farther north,

so there was a lot of open ground to cover.

"Dreyfus," he called on the open channel, "hold your position

and cover the open area to your north. Davies, Esser and the tanks

will come around at those other two pyramids from the flanks."

"Yessir"

Akira was going to confirm the plan with Davies, who didn't

like to be left out of decisions regarding his squad, but he didn't

get the chance. The bug marker flashed, this time from tank three.

It was approaching the pyramid to the west and spotted a sectoid

around the side. The plasma tank got off one shot and missed, then

was hit by the alien's plasma fire.

Akira thought about launching one of his blaster bombs, but he

only carried five and didn't know what they might need them for in the

future. He programmed the waypoints anyway and waited.

The tank turned quickly and moved back toward the pyramid to

it's south. It had spotted the alien, which could now be destroyed,

even without line-of-sight, by a grenade.

"Got that one," Tonida the psi called excitedly.

"I've got a bead on it if you loose control," Esser called.

Akira stood, tapped a few of the controls on his right arm,

and flew up five meters and north toward cover behind the top of one

of the pyramids. He heard plasma fire and switched to Esser's view.

She was indeed aiming carefully at a sectoid, which had its back

turned to her and was firing at something hidden off in the darkness

behind the pyramid. Another distorted alien scream announced that it

had hit something.

"Splash one for the psis," Crossett called.

"Two if they can make this one blow itself up," Esser

replied, still aiming carefully.

"Tonida, can you hold it?" Akira asked privately, immediately

regretting his choice of words.

"I think so, but someone has to keep it in sight."

"Okay," Akira replied, then added Esser to the conversation.

"Esser. See if you can move up to that pyramid. We're going to send

the sectoid inside, and I want you to follow."

Esser agreed, but sounded skeptical. She moved north, keeping

her weapon pointed at the alien, which moved back and forth on the

pyramid's west side.

Tank Three slid into Esser's field of view, heading farther

north to another pyramid just visible in the thin light. From his

observation point behind the peak of the pyramid, Akira could dimly

see the tank for himself. He was amazed that it could understand so

quickly that the sectoid was under mind control and completely ignore

something it was otherwise trained to kill instantly.

He looked to his right and saw Davies moving up to the door of

a pyramid to the northeast. Tank Two had already passed around its

far side and moved around to the north. Below him, Crossett moved

cautiously out into open terrain.

Suddenly, he saw the tracks of two plasma bolts aimed at the

tank, each originating from a different location far off to the north.

distorted plasma fire sounds seemed to come from all directions, and a

dull crash of metal told him the aliens had hit their target.

Three alien markers lit up on Akira's HUD, then one

disappeared as quickly as it had come. He looked hard into the dim

landscape and saw what must have been a cyberdisk, straight north, out

beyond the last pyramid. He couldn't make out the other source of

plasma fire to its left.

Crossett knelt in the open and autofired continuously at the

cyberdisk. As Akira entered waypoints into his launcher, the disk

began firing back at Crossett.

Akira let the blaster bomb fly. It whistled up, over the

pyramid, dove quickly down to the ground out beyond Crossett, and

streaked straight ahead into the cyberdisk. He thought he heard a

secondary explosion from the cyberdisk's self-destruct mechanism.

When his visor cleared there where lumps of Martian dirt and

pieces of the cyberdisk raining down everywhere, some plinking against

his flying suit as he hovered in place. with much less gravity and

almost no atmosphere to resist it, the debris from the blast was

spreading much farther than it would have on Earth.

Another large explosion went off near the second source of

plasma fire, followed by the distorted scream of a sectoid. Davies

must have tossed a grenade from behind the northeast pyramid, Akira

thought.

Akira switched back to the open channel. "What was that third

alien marker?"

"That was mine," someone replied. It sounded like Zander. "I

was face-to-face with one when I stepped into this pyramid, but it's

dead now."

Akira checked his map. Zander was inside the pyramid off to

the west of the Avenger. Davies was heading into the pyramid to the

northeast, and the psis still had control of their sectoid and were

sending it into the pyramid to the northwest with Esser close behind.

Akira waited for bug markers, but none flashed. In a few

seconds Tonida called out.

"Our sectoid found the lift."

Akira switched to Esser's view. She was standing just inside a

pyramid, aiming carefully at the back of the captive sectoid. The

floor of the room glowed green like the main lift in an alien base

back on Earth.

"That's it," Akira called, "Tonida, get your alien back

outside and post him to the north as a guard. Esser, follow him and

shoot him if he turns on you. Everyone else head for the lift."

"Morinov, space your troopers to the northwest of the Avenger

to guard the psis as they cross."

Akira watched from behind his pyramid as the troopers below him

and to the east cut across the open field toward the lift. Crossett

ran back for a moment to retrieve a grenade from Richter's body and

spare clips from a dead sectoid.

Akira dropped down beside her as she moved across toward the

lift. "I expected worse," he said out loud, but realized she couldn't

hear him.

They reached the lift safely and Akira quickly counted twelve

troopers, including himself, and the one surviving tank. Esser was

still outside.

"Esser, kill the alien and get in here."

The plasma shot outside was followed by an noticeable flinch

from Tonida. In a few seconds Esser was inside.

Zander had located a strange panel on the wall beside the

lift. When Akira gave her the signal she pressed it and they all

descended at once. Akira had been afraid all along that all the

intelligence they had about this place would lead to a trap. He

waited to descend into a barrage of plasma fire, or a blaster bomb set

to go off in the center of their group when they arrived.

But the lift stopped without incident, in a room about the

same size as the pyramid, but with wide openings to the east and

west. Through the openings Akira could see more glowing green floors.

Troopers quickly moved to check out the neighboring rooms and

found them empty except for large lifts. It looked too similar to an

alien base on Earth.

"We'll split up," he announced. "The Russians will take the

east lift with the remaining plasma tank. The Little Rock squad will

take the west." Now he turned to find the psis. They were still

clustered together. "You psis will stay up here and monitor from

these rooms. If you see we're all dead or you lose contact with us

completely, get to the surface and try to get the Avenger back to

Earth."

The group split up and headed into the lift rooms. Troopers

from each squad carefully checked down the lift shafts before stepping

out onto them. Akira looked across to the other room and saw Morinov.

He nodded and gave the order to descend.

Akira watched Esser and Zander drop into the unknown and he

switched to Esser's view. He waited to hear an explosion or a burst

of plasma fire, but none came. Esser was looking into another room to

the west. It had a smaller room, three or four meters across, inside

of it, with windows all around.

"Looks like a base," Esser called, "we're in a typical room

with an opening in each direction. I see a..."

"Shhhhh" Zander interrupted. "Listen"

She sounded panicky. Esser was quiet, as was everyone else on

the channel, but Akira could hear nothing. Crossett and Dreyfus were

ready on the lift, but he hesitated to send them down until he found

out what had disturbed Zander.

Esser view froze for a second, then suddenly spun around to face

east. Something quick and black moved into the opening, less than ten

meters away. The pulse of a laser rifle and the blue flash of a

heavy plasma on autofire mixed for a few seconds, and a chrysalid lay

dead on the ground only two paces from Zander.

Akira had occasionally thought about the worst scenarios on

Mars. The trap situation, with a quick death from plasma fire or

blaster bombs was not the worst. A base full of more chrysalids than

his squads could handle had crossed his mind, but he'd always quickly

forced it aside.

He waved Crossett and Dreyfus down and watched them disappear

into the floor, then he moved onto the lift with Davies. He suddenly

felt a large explosion through his whole suit, and the room below was

saturated with a bright white flash. Alien and trooper screams came

to him from below, and over his headset.

He quickly checked his HUD. In the room below the Russian

squad's lift, Iwahara's symbol had gone white and Maleev's was flashing

yellow.

"Morinov," he called, "Maleev is wounded."

"I see. On my way down now"

We can't keep this up, Akira thought. If we keep losing

troopers at this rate, we've lost. The possibility of defeat had

been overshadowed by hope and much greater unknowns when they'd

started this mission. Now it loomed in front of him as reality -

maybe even the most likely outcome. Who did he think he was to

presume to come here, to the alien stronghold, with little more than a

dozen troopers. Now he had eleven - only eight without the psis.

He descended and found troopers moving out through each of the

four openings of the room. Crossett was moving quickly to the east,

probably trying to find the source of the blaster bomb attack before

another one was launched.

The bug marker flashed and Esser fired three shots with her

laser rifle through the western opening. Akira's weapon needed no

direct line of sight, so he stayed around the corner on the lift and

brought up his HUD map.

"An ethereal," Esser reported excitedly, "inside that little

room. I don't see it now."

Esser had stopped firing. Davies moved around to get a look

while Akira programmed way points. He hoped a blaster bomb explosion

centered on the opposite side of the room would take out the center

room and the ethereal without harming Esser.

Things grew quiet as Esser waited for the alien to reappear.

Now Akira heard what had frightened Zander only seconds before - the

sliding click, click of chrysalid claws on alien alloy.

It was hard to locate in the maze of rooms, but it sounded

like it was coming from the west. He switched to Esser's view just as

a shiny black and green shape skittered into view from the northwest.

Akira let his blaster bomb fly as Esser swung her rifle to

fire at the new threat. The silver football-shaped bomb streaked

behind and within a few feet of Davies, then cut around the corner

into the other room. Akira's body shook violently. As his eyes

recovered from the flash, he could still see debris flying into

the room. Esser and Davies had been knocked down, but she was getting

up quickly, laser ready to fend off whatever had survived. Davies

stayed low and began programming his own blaster launcher.

Akira reloaded and watched through Esser's camera as she

scanned back and forth across the devastated room. The small,

windowed room in its center was nearly gone. As the smoke and metal

vapors began to clear, she centered on a lumpy black shape oozing

fluid just inside the other room.

She stepped forward cautiously to check it out.

"Let me check the bug," Davies ordered. "You cover me."

Meanwhile, the rest of the troopers, realizing no one was hurt

in the blast, spread out even further.

Crossett had moved all the way into the room to the east, and

could probably see Morinov and the tank. "There's a dead ethereal in

here," she called, "and it's got a blaster launcher."

One less to worry about, Akira thought. But he had no idea

how many there were.

"Another one here too," Esser reported. "That last blast got

the chrysalid and the ethereal I saw in here.

Akira still had Esser's view up. Something moved at the left

edge of her vision. She dropped to one knee and brought up her

rifle. She was looking south, into a large room filled with display

cases, apparently identical to the large rooms they'd seen in bases

back on Earth.

Whatever had moved was at the far end of the room, but was no

longer visible. As she continued to aim in that direction, A heavy

metallic sound came from just southwest of her. She jerked her weapon

right just as a giant sectopod lumbered into view only a few meters in

front of her. She didn't bother aiming now, but stayed kneeling and

squeezed off autofire.

Akira was as startled by it as she was and had to suppress the

urge to raise his own weapon and fire. He quickly decided the

creature was too close to Esser for him to use his blaster launcher.

Esser got in one, or maybe two clean hits before the robot

fired. Her video feed lit up as plasma hit her and dispersed, taking

molten alloy from her armor with it. She was knocked back, but landed

with her viewpoint somehow upright and straight ahead.

The camera survived, and Akira could see another group of

laser rounds cut across from off to the left somewhere. One of them

caught the sectopod and its legs gave out. It collapsed and didn't

move.

"I'm OK," Esser called.

Akira checked his HUD and found out that she was. It looked

like she hadn't been injured at all by the blast. He checked trooper

positions and realized the shot that killed the sectopod had come from

Dreyfus, who had moved down a passageway to the south of the lift

room.

He took note of the positions of the other troopers. Crossett

and the tank had moved south, parallel to Dreyfus and had hit a large

enclosed area. Maleev had moved east from the Russian lift room with

Morinov covering the north.

A bug marker interrupted him, and he switched immediately to

the spotter's view. It was Crossett, peeking around the northwest

corner of the large enclosed space at one of the balloon aliens Akira

had seen at Little Rock. She was aiming carefully, but not firing.

"I've got it," Hudson called.

Akira thought quickly. "Use it as a scout," he ordered, "but

don't go too quickly. Crossett, follow it an keep an eye on it."

"Yes, Commander."

Suddenly, three more bug markers appeared in quick succession,

accompanied by plasma fire from all around him. The trap, he thought.

Akira cycled through viewpoints. The first marker had come

from the tank, which was far to the east, facing a sectopod at close

range. The second had come from Morinov, but Akira saw that the

Russian was now running into the other lift room with no aliens in

sight. He wondered for a moment if Morinov had gone berserk, until he

rounded the bend into the passageway to the east, where Maleev had

gone. Maleev was still there, but he was immobile, in a kneeling

position with a chrysalid bending over him.

Morinov got off one shot before something exploded right at

the alien's feet. The blast wiped out the video for a few seconds,

but when it returned, Akira could see the chrysalid and Maleev were

down. He didn't have time to watch another chrysalid emerge from

Maleev.

The third marker had come from Davies to the north. Akira

could see that he was in one of the large display case rooms. He

could also see an ethereal looking back at him from behind one of the

cases less than five meters away. Almost as soon as Akira switched to

the view, he lost it. Akira checked his HUD - Davies' marker was gone

too. Either he had been hit so hard that his link had been

destroyed, which didn't happen often, or he had deliberately switched

it off. But Akira hadn't heard an explosion or plasma shot from that

direction.

Akira began programming his own launcher. He decided Davies

was under alien control and destroying the alien in the room with him

might help. But could he place the explosion so it wouldn't hurt

Davies?

"Esser, take cover" he called out.

"Davies," he said to himself as he worked, "shake it off!

Kill the damn bug."

Akira was ready to launch, but stopped when he saw Davies

video re-appear.

There was no sign of the alien, and Davies bug marker was

gone. Davies suddenly turned and was facing the alien, only a few

steps away. He looked down at his blaster launcher, and cleared the

waypoints, but before he did Akira could see that the ones he had

programmed would have taken the bomb back toward himself and the other

troopers.

"I...," Davies mumbled, obviously struggling, "Akira...I

can't..."

Akira didn't get a chance to say anything. Davies quickly

programmed a single waypoint and pulled the trigger.

Davies view lit up and saturated as Akira felt the blast from

only twenty meters to the west. The flash lit up the inside of the

lift room like flash powder. He ran recklessly west past Esser, then

north to where Davies had been, meeting Zander moving more cautiously

in from the east. She covered him as he examined Davies' still body.

His power suit was badly charred and dented inward in places

from the blast, but there were no obvious penetrations. Akira grabbed

clumsily for his medi-kit and managed to get Davies hooked up. He

found no signs of life.

He removed Davies' helmet. He wasn't sure why. In the

strange atmosphere of the base it might insure his death. Maybe he

just thought the trooper should die in the open, not sealed up in some

tin can. Blood flowed from Davies' mouth and a cut in the center of a

large purple wound on his forehead.

For a few seconds, Akira's thoughts drifted back over the

last year, to his first missions in Wales and the Arizona desert.

Davies had been there. Others had been there too - Gaudin, Perez,

Evans, Bouton - all dead now.

"It's time to end this," he said out loud. Zander continued

to cover him and glanced over at Davies but said nothing.

Akira checked his map display again. The tank had survived

the fight with the sectopod, but Maleev was dead. It looked liked the

Russians had found the eastern extent of the base, and Akira guessed

that the two large display rooms the American team had entered

represented the western edge. Esser was moving farther into the

southern display room, and could see no openings or doors on the

opposite wall. Akira hoped that meant they had also found the

southern extern of the base.

So the problem had limits. But we may not have to clear it

all out, he reminded himself. They would find the mastermind, kill

it, and take it from there.

Korkia and Crossett, with her celatid scout, were each

about to enter small doors to large, square enclosed areas. The

similarities between this base and those on Earth made Akira suspect

that the mastermind would be in something similar to a command

center, with nested hallways and a large lift, but neither of these

looked like a command center.

Korkia moved into a small door on the south side of the square

area north of the Russians. Akira switched to her view and saw a

straight hallway with a lift at the end. It was just what he expected

and just like in the Earth bases.

Meanwhile, Crossett had followed the celatid through a door on

the west side of the southern enclosure. He again switched views and

saw a hallway similar to the one Korkia was in, but longer. And it

appeared to split at the end, going north and south..

This was different, Akira thought. Everything else they'd

seen so far in this base matched some pattern of rooms back in the

Earth bases, but this one didn't.

"Everyone north of the lift rooms, hold your advance for now,"

he ordered.

He kept Crossett's viewpoint, but left Davies' body and moved

south and east, back toward the lift room. He froze when a bug marker

flashed, and he heard laser fire close by to the south. He moved two

steps farther, until he could see down the passage which ran south

from the lift room.

Dreyfus was ten meters down, firing wildly at a huge, bubbly

mass moving at him from the south. Akira had a clear shot at it past

Dreyfus, but he had no weapon to use. He began programming waypoints

for a blaster bomb shot, but the creature was too close to Dreyfus by

the time he finished.

He watched as it reached its prey. It stopped directly in

front of Dreyfus, who kept his head and got in one more hit. Then,

without doing anything to the trooper, it slid back south. Dreyfus

hit it again as it moved away and it collapsed on the floor and lay

there oozing.

"You are the luckiest bastard I've ever met," Akira called.

Dreyfus didn't reply. He was frantically scanning to the

south and east for more creatures.

Akira still had Crossett's view up and could see now that the

split hallways each ended with small lifts after only five or six

meters.

"Hudson," Akira called, "send the alien up one lift.

Crossett, cover the other one."

For a just second Akira expected Davies to break in and make

some jab to remind him not to order his squad around directly. But

that little rivalry was all over now.

"OK," Hudson replied, "the celatid's heading up."

There was a pause for a few seconds, then Hudson let out a

loud whoop. "Jackpot," he called. "The little bag bought it, but I think

this is the place. There's a big room right above you, Crossett, and

it's crawling with ethereals. At the back there's a huge blob that

looks like it could be the brain."

Akira ran through his options. He could risk a blaster bomb

up the lift past Crossett, or he could send troopers up one or two at

a time with grenades to finish of the ethereals. They could also wait

for the ethereals to come down after them. He checked the map on his

HUD and realized he still didn't really know the layout of the room,

just the description Hudson could give.

As he studied the map, the layout of most of the new room

suddenly appeared, accompanied by flashing bug markers.

"Who the..." Akira blurted over the comm link. But it had to

be Crossett. He switched to her view and saw the room. It looked

like she was at the back of a small theater, with chairs facing west

toward something at the other end. There were large tanks of some

fluid in the corners, but Akira didn't get a chance to see many more

details or get a good look at what Hudson had identified as the

brain.

Crossett had come up firing wildly, and it looked like she had

taken down one of the ethereals. She tossed a grenade farther into

the room and moved a couple steps south, enough to see the pulsating

blob before plasma burst against her and she fell.

"No," Akira grunted deep in his throat, and began running

southeast towards her. He heard the grenade go off and another

ethereal moan. As he entered the passage to the south, he saw

Dreyfus, a complete rookie only days before, calmly holding his

position at the far end.

Akira was embarrassed for a second and regained his composure.

He checked his map again and found Crossett's marker still flashing -

still alive. He knelt in the hallway to think for only a second or

two, counted his blaster bombs - one in the chamber and two on his

back - and began programming waypoints.

"Stay where you are, Dreyfus," he ordered.

His first shot streaked east down a side passage, then turned

sharply south as it followed the outside of the enclosed area below

the theater. An instant later, the whole area lit up, and the blast

pressure dissipated down half a dozen connecting hallways.

Akira allowed himself to move east until he could see the

destruction. Through the smoke and vapors he could see that the blast

had destroyed the door to the long hallway, along with most of the

walls around it.

He placed another bomb into the chamber and felt the dull

click as it dropped into place. He was in a hurry to get to Crossett,

but he forced himself to take his time. He had fought for nearly a

year and lost dozens of friends. He didn't want to blow it now.

He heard heavy plasma fire far to the north, but managed to

ignore it as he programmed. He pulled the trigger and watched the

bomb disappear through the opening he'd just made.

This blast nearly knocked him over, but he regained his

balance and dropped his last blaster bomb into position. He hoped the

second shot, programmed to go up a few meters inside the doorway, had

destroyed the floor in the center of the room, allowing him to send a

bomb up into the room without risking an explosion near Crossett.

As he finished his programming and was about to pull the

trigger, possibly for the last time in the war, an ethereal stepped

out of the destruction into the hallway only a few meters in front of

him.

Akira couldn't launch with the alien there, and he had no

other weapon. Instead of running, he waited for the plasma bolt to

come, instinctively deciding it would be better to take it in the

front instead of the back.

Instead of a plasma bolt, the alien threw its mind at Akira.

He found himself once again struggling for space in his own head.

Most of his thoughts turned against the other troopers, and his hand

moved to reprogram the launcher.

But the struggle ended, and the alien left Akira's mind

abruptly. He glanced around and found himself in the same place as

before, but with the correct waypoints programmed on his launcher to

send the bomb toward Dreyfus. The alien lay in a still pile on the floor.

At the other end of the hall, Dreyfus lifted his laser rifle

slightly in a mock salute.

The mind control had been too successful, and Akira had come

to close to using the launcher against his own people. And he wasn't

sure he could risk sending a bomb up into that room with Crossett

there. He threw it aside and grabbed the dead alien's heavy plasma

and made sure it was loaded.

"Thanks, Dreyfus," Akira called down the passage, "Let's end

this thing."

He motioned for Dreyfus to follow and headed into the

destruction caused by the first two bombs.

Once inside, Akira could see that his second blaster shot had

blown a large hole in the floor of the theater room. Akira stopped

beneath it and waved Dreyfus past him to the lifts.

Crossett was up there, but so were ethereals, he thought. He

waited for a few seconds and listened. An alien glided into view up

above just long enough for him to take a quick shot and miss.

"I can't believe it," Tonida called, "Zdanovich got that one -

an ethereal"

Plasma shots seared the air above Akira, one streaking all the

way across the opening over his head toward where he had seen the alien.

Zdanovich said something in Russian, then switched to English.

"I could not get a shot at the brain. The ethereal is dead."

"Time to go," Akira said out loud. He pulled a grenade from

his belt, primed it short and motioned for Dreyfus to go up the lift.

Akira tossed the grenade up over the edge to where he saw the

plasma shots coming from. It exploded almost as soon as it landed and

another alien moaned as Akira hit his flying suit controls to ascend.

He rose into the room amidst rows of broken and burning seats

and he quickly took in the scene in front of him, forcing himself not

to turn around and check on Crossett.

The brain was there, pulsating directly in front of him. Time

slowed as he pointed his heavy plasma at it. He could see an

ethereal's flame orange robes near the left edge of his vision, but he

didn't let his eyes drift from the brain or his weapon point anywhere

else.

As his finger applied pressure to the trigger, the brain

called out to him somehow. In a fraction of a second it passed on the

story of the alien's relationship with humans, how the aliens guided

human development on Earth and would help them and live with them as

brothers and sisters in the future.

Akira's finger let up on the trigger a little, but the sound

of laser fire at his back cleared his head. He thought of Crossett

dying behind him and Davies' body down below and squeezed hard on the

trigger.

The first shot blew of a large piece of the brain, but Akira

kept firing. Dreyfus finished off the ethereal to the left and added

laser autofire to the barrage. Within seconds the brain was

reduced to a lump of charred, steaming sewage slowly oozing of of it's

platform.

Akira scanned the destruction in the room and made sure no

ethereals were hiding. He moved quickly back to Crossett and plugged

in his medi-kit. She was unconscious and hurt bad, but she would

make it.

"What's going on, Akira?" Morinov called. "We've got ethereals

out in the open and running away."

"It's over," Akira called on the open channel, "the brain is

dead. Clean up the remaining aliens and lets get out of here."

. . .

They collected their casualties and headed back to the

Avenger. Dreyfus carried Davies' body and Akira carried Crossett.

Zander and Esser returned from cleaning up the panicked aliens on the

north end of the base and, out of habit, gathering up alien technology

items. Korkia and Morinov carried the two dead Russians on board.

Akira was quiet. He realized he should have been ecstatic - The

whole invasion could be over, and he would be a hero back on Earth.

But all he felt was tired and a little angry. When he was in the

middle of it all, everything was urgent and a struggle to survive. Now

that he let himself believe it was over, he just kept asking himself

why it had ever happened in the first place? What did all those

soldiers and innocent civilians die for?

Dreyfus, on the other hand, couldn't stop talking. "Wow! I

can't believe we did this," he repeated every few minutes. As Zander

and Esser loaded the last few items on board, Dreyfus stopped what he

was doing and turned to Akira.

"Now what do we do?" he asked.

"We wait for them to come back," Akira replied. He touched

the button to close the doors in the back and re-pressurize the

Avenger. When it finished he removed his helmet. Then he reached up

to his left shoulder, then his right hand popped his commander

insignia off of his power suit. He handed them to Dreyfus.

"I won't be needing these any more, but I have a feeling you

might."

Dreyfus stared as the insignia dropped into his gauntleted hand.

Akira reached over and started the launch sequence, then sat

down beside Crossett. She was conscious, but groggy from pain

medication. He removed her helmet and she gave him a weak smile.

"Congratulations, Commander," she said, then she reached

behind and pulled out her bowie knife. She handed it to him and

pointed a shaky finger up at her hair. "All of it this time."

THE END