Manley's Deposition

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Deposition: 21 April, 2028: Dr. Robert Manley

 

The convention was going badly, so I was in the hotel bar before noon. It had been

the same thing all morning, in every paper presented. "Of course, we have

insufficient experimental data, but..." and, "If we extrapolate from what little data is

available..." and, "Naturally, this is all speculation, however..." Xenology was like

that in those days. It was pretty depressing. I had just about decided to skip my

own presentation--nobody but bored, brown-nosing grad students would be there

anyway--and take the next transorbital home. I wish I had. Instead, I ordered

another beer and continued sulking.

 

When that bottle was about half gone, there was a tap on my shoulder. I swiveled

my stool around slowly, scowling. As far as I knew, there wasn't anyone within two

hundred miles I really wanted to talk to. A man I had never seen before stood there

grinning. He was big, he was wearing brown leather, and I was thoroughly

intimidated.

 

"You are doctor Manley, aren't you?" he said in his huge, deep voice.

 

"Yes," I said, but I would've agreed if he'd said I was Thomas Jefferson. He was

that big.

 

"Great," he smiled. It made me feel a little safer that I had made this Slavic-looking

giant happy. "Please come with me. I have a research proposal for you." He turned

and strode self-assuredly out of the bar. Of course I followed him.

 

I didn't know then that he was an X-COM vet, but there were clues. His dark

brown hair was really short--that chopped-off, military haircut. That was a sort of

trend with the kids, though, so I didn't really think about it. What should have told

me was the way he carried himself. He was totally relaxed, like nothing on Earth

could possibly threaten him, but he seemed to notice everything. He looked both

ways at every intersecting hallway before he stepped out, and he twitched when he

heard the elevator doors slide open. I guess I was too busy wondering what he

wanted from me. I thought I was dealing with some monstrous, overeager grad

student. My primary worry was how I was going to get out of sponsoring his

research without angering him. Neither of us said a word until we were in the

elevator.

 

"Where are we going?" I asked. He looked down at me as if just noticing that I

was still there.

 

"My room," he said curtly. "It's secure." I wasn't exactly sure what he meant by

that, but by following him this far I had tacitly agreed to view his proposal. We

didn't speak again until he had locked the door to his little suite behind us. The bed

seemed tiny compared to him. I wondered how he slept on it.

 

"Doctor Manley, what's the biggest problem facing researchers in your field?" He

had settled himself onto one of the two cane chairs in the room--gently, as if

making an effort not to break it. I hunched uncomfortably in the other one. The

shades were closed, and he had turned on all the lights.

 

"How about you tell me who you are first," I was emboldened by the discomfort

and the beer, I think, or I would never have asked so bluntly. He didn't seem to

take offense, and I relaxed a little.

 

"Call me Gregory," he said. That's about when my nagging, half realized suspicions

sort of crystallized. I put two and two together.

 

"Wait a minute," I sat up straighter. "As in 'Gregory Illych'?" he glanced away

momentarily--answer enough. "As in 'X-COM Captain Gregory Illych'?" I

continued. Now, he started to look uncomfortable. I think I had guessed before he

was ready for me to know. "Renegade X-COM Captain Illych for whom half the

world's security agencies have shoot-to-kill orders?"

 

"Uh, yeah," he looked down at his scuffed boots. I didn't know why the military

authorities wanted him so badly. Nobody knew. I suppose I just assumed that it

had to be something horrible. At least he wasn't proud of it, I thought. It didn't

really occur to me until later that I had been in a locked hotel room with probably

one of the most dangerous men on the planet. I don't think I could have been more

intimidated, anyway. I mean, he was just enormous, like I was sharing a room with

a truck.

 

"So, what's your interest in xenology?" I said, more to fill the silence than anything

else. I felt stupid as soon as I had said it. Any soldier from the old X-COM would

just naturally have an interest in alien studies.

 

"You haven't answered my question," he said simply. I didn't have to think over my

answer for long.

 

"Well, it's obvious," I began. This was one of my favorite diatribes, and it was

unusual to have a willing audience. "Xenology is a general term covering all the

areas of study relating to things alien, right? Now, before the war, xenological

studies were all speculation. There was no data. As far as the researchers knew

then, there might not even be any aliens at all. That all changed with the invasion

from Cydonia, or so we thought.

 

"I was in college then, and you can imagine the excitement. Everybody rushed to

major in xeno stuff--biology majors switched to xenobiology, psychology majors to

xenopsychology, and on and on. I was just starting my doctoral studies in

biochemistry, and I certainly wasn't immune to the hysteria. I got my degree in

nonhuman neurochemistry just in time to spend a month doing research in an

X-COM base. I ended up the world's foremost expert on alien nervous system

chemistry." I paused for breath, and Illych just nodded. I guessed he'd already

known all that. If I had thought about it at the time, I would have figured that that

was one of the reasons he'd come to me. In a way, I was an X-COM vet, too.

 

"After the war, I was really looking forward to a long stretch of productive

research. I would be at the top of one of the highest-profile areas of research. In a

few years, I figured, we would have the aliens' whole brain chemistry mapped out.

Of course, the world military had other plans.

 

"Everything from every X-COM base and laboratory, every sample of anything

alien, every tiniest fluid stain or integument scrape was confiscated and locked

away. It was all locked away from those who could best use it" I took a few

seconds to calm down. That part always got me mad all over again. What a waste

it had been! "It was a five month fight just to get the recordings from the hyperwave

decoders that we had invented. Even then, at least half of it had been edited

out--censored!

 

"So that's the problem. The stuff has stayed locked up. They claim that military

researchers have been working on it, but I've seen their reports. They obviously

have no idea what they're doing. Everything in those reports is a repeat of

something we discovered while X-COM was active, or a minor extension of our

work. Meanwhile, the materials are being consumed by the experimental

procedures. I know what was in those bases. I know how much they're hiding from

us. I've been following the research, and I have a good idea how much of the alien

specimens are left. It isn't much. The military broadcast a claim two years ago that

it was almost all used up. They had the gall to ask us to volunteer any samples we

had been hoarding, the cretins.

 

"So that left the rest of us, the non-military researchers, out in the cold. We couldn't

be re-trained, and there's been no experimental data to work with, no resources.

Some few have turned parasite, leaching what they can off of what information the

military releases. Their research isn't what you'd call stellar. Most of us can't even

do that, though. I need samples to work on; I can't just go on speculation and

extrapolation. All my work for the last few years has been essentially worthless.

 

"That," I paused for effect, "is the primary impediment to xenological research

today. Now tell me why you care." He shifted around in his chair and it creaked

nervously.

 

"Aren't there rumors that some scientists have secret access to the remaining

military specimens?" he asked without preamble.

 

"How did you..." I began. "Wait." I stopped to gather my thoughts for a moment;

this guy was way ahead of me. "Okay, yes, That's a rumor I've heard. Nobody

really believes it, though. What possible reason could the military authorities have

for allowing secret access?"

 

"You said yourself that they're getting nowhere by themselves," Illych got up and

pulled a beer out of a cooler. It disappeared, engulfed in his hand. I remember

being surprised that someone who was being hunted by several security

organizations would allow himself to drink. "Rather than admit their failure, I say

they'd be more willing to engineer some covert research opportunities." What he

said made sense, but he hadn't dropped his bombshells yet. He pulled some glossy

sheets out of the cooler and tossed them at me. "I know it's going on. I know

where. I know who." He leaned back on the bed with a satisfied smile. "There's

proof."

 

The sheets were old style 2-D photographs. I recognized the scientists in them, and

they were recent shots. Dr. Baird had shaved off his beard no more than a month

ago, and in the photo he was clean faced. I even recognized one or two of the labs.

What I didn't recognize at first were the specimens. When I did, I said something

I'd rather not repeat.

 

"You're convinced," Illych said quietly. "Good. Now, we can get down to

business." I was convinced, all right-- convinced, betrayed, and hopping mad. He

got up and reached for the cooler again. I stood, too.

 

"Hey," I grabbed at his elbow, emboldened by familiarity, I guess. I'd swear I never

saw him move. Just all of a sudden I'm lying on my back next to the window, and

my jaw really hurts. He didn't say anything, just stood there looking at me. I

guessed--correctly, as it turned out- -that that was no time to be showing

weakness. I tried to shrug off the pain. "You never answered my question. Why do

you care?"

 

He bent over the cooler, "I liked X-COM." A sheaf of papers came out with two

more beers. He threw one to me, then unfolded some kind of map on the bed. I

didn't feel like getting up yet, so I stayed put. "I think we got a bum deal after the

war."

 

"You were heroes for a while," I chipped in. I knew what he was going to say, but

I couldn't say it for him. I've run into more than a few old vets who weren't too

happy with the way things turned out, and I've learned that the best thing to do is to

help them talk it out--sort of prod them along. The word 'heroes' usually does the

trick.

 

"Yah," Illych said. "Heroes." He looked down at his hands for a few long seconds.

"That lasted at least a couple of months. Then how do you get a job when your

only real skill is sneaking around frying monsters? You know, that wasn't the worst

of it. I mean, sure, they treated us vets pretty awful. We got some tiny benefits

package and a little fame, then the push off. But what really got to me was how

they treated the X Lady herself." Now, there was a term I hadn't heard in years. 'X

Lady' was how the hardest core, most vicious, meanest, and most successful

soldiers referred to the organization. To them, X-COM was like a mother figure-

-a woman for whom they'd do anything, take any risk. When one of her bases was

invaded, I remembered, all the soldiers fought like demons, but certain men and

women consistently went way over the top. There were even rumors that they stole

alien corpses out of storage and had private, secret barbecue parties.

 

"Okay," he continued, "I can understand they figured there wasn't any threat left.

Why keep the bases open? I got that part. And yeah, they had to pension us all off

and get rid of the techs and the ships and all. No problem, just sell off everything.

That's respectable. She'd have just faded into glory like an old soldier's supposed

to." He stopped to drink.

 

"That didn't happen," and I knew what did.

 

"Yah," he stood and started pacing the room. "That's when it started to get ugly.

The undersea research was the only redeeming part of the next few years. I got to

ride in the prototype of one of the new subs. It was great. But after they sold off

X-COM 1, that was it. No more nothing.

 

"I guess the real bull started when somebody got the bright idea of selling off the

merchandising rights. Merchandising" He started counting off on his giant fingers.

"Gummy Sectoids, Muton Cola, Chrysalid Malt Liquor, Plasma Pops, Blaster

Launcher Gum," he paused to switch hands, transferring his beer, "toy weapons,

toy craft, fake 'Elerium' crystal charms, Squaddie dolls, alien action figures" Illych

ran out of fingers. "The films weren't so bad, but the comic books" He shuddered

visibly. "Then there were the Hallowe'en costumes, the inflatable Floaters, and that

long, public legal battle with that auto company that named one of their models

'Avenger'. I mean, it was just plain degrading!

 

"Is that when you got the military after you?" I asked, standing. He looked over at

me without moving his head, and I picked up the chair I'd sat in before and sat in it

again.

 

"Yeah, sort of. See, my first try wasn't so smart. I got together a bunch of X'ers

and headed for the corporate headquarters of the company that was doing all this.

They didn't like our attitude." He snorted. "Their security goons were probably

pretty good for keeping out terrorists. On our way out, we had to get past some

military. That's when I got this price on my head."

 

Illych was leaving out the important parts, but I knew all the rest from the news

broadcasts. The public had never found out who had destroyed the Goss Tower or

why, but it had been an awesome spectacle. Fifty stories of burning offices and four

hundred people dead is something that sticks in your memory like a bad dream.

The 'military' he referred to meant the entire Houston police force and all the

National Guard that had been able to reach the site in time, plus several heavily

armed civilians. According to the press, none of the attackers had survived.

 

"You blew the Goss Tower?" I said, astonished.

 

"Yah. Only survivor." He sat heavily on the bed and stared at his boots. "Damn

shame, all those people, but we hurt the company bad."

 

"They told us you were all killed."

 

"Yep. Chased me all the way to Guatemala." He didn't say it like he was proud,

more as a matter of course. "Always hated jungles," he muttered. He had my

attention now, and I had to keep him from drooping into introspection.

 

"So what's the plan this time?" I tried to sound enthusiastic, despite the fact that I

had already decided that going along would be suicide. This guy's sanity was long

gone; he was way over the edge.

 

"I know where they're keeping the bulk of the samples that are left. You want in, I'll

get you in." Illych looked at me, and he was dead serious. "All I want in return is a

promise, but it's a promise I'll hold you to." I knew he would, too. He'd hunt me

down if he had to, and there'd be no way for me to escape. I realized right then that

I had better start watching my step, 'cause I'd gotten myself into a very dangerous

situation.

 

"What is it?" I asked.

 

"You do all the research you can. You release everything you find, make it all

public. No secrets." I didn't have to think it over for too long.

 

"Okay," I committed myself. "You get me in to the alien samples, and everything I

get out of them goes public." Of course, I regretted the decision later.

 

-:-

 

Later was two and a half days later, crouched in the dark behind an aluminum shed

at some horribly early hour of the morning. Gregory Illych had gone ahead to recon

the main building. I was left alone, totally incapable of using the weapon he'd left

me with and even less capable of getting myself out of there.

 

I knew that we were in Brazil, but I had no clue how we had gotten there without

being stopped by the security at the airport or by customs. We were on the

outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, but damned if I knew the way back to the city. I knew

how to get over the fences, I just didn't know what he had done to keep them from

frying us. I knew where the minefield started and ended, but I had no idea how

he'd picked our path through it. I remembered where the three guard posts had

been, but I hadn't even seen what he'd done to the occupants. I had watched him

disarm the motion detection net, but I still hadn't a clue how it worked. I felt a chill

in spite of the humid Brazilian summer.

 

I was having some fierce second thoughts--and third and fourth by then--but I

followed Illych in. Let's just say my options were limited.

 

Illych appeared in front of me and smiled a big, white, boyish smile. He slid away

again almost immediately, and I went after him. We slunk quickly across ten meters

of open space, then ducked into a covered doorway. The security light was

conveniently out. The unmarked, battleship grey door was already unlocked, and

we slipped silently through. I had a feeling that Illych had already been here. It

might have been some lingering scent in the hallway, or it might have been the three

unconscious soldiers around the first turn.

 

Up two flights of stairs and we ran smack into a chain- link security barrier. The

corridor beyond ran straight as a razor and smelled of gun oil. It was ten feet high

and had a single door at the other end, fifteen meters away. I looked up at Illych

and, for the first time, saw consternation on his face. Uh-oh, I thought.

 

He pulled something from one of his many pockets and bent to the locking

mechanism. It sprung open with a little "ping" after a few seconds. Illych attached a

wire to both the frame and the door itself, then swung the gate as far as the wire

would reach with one gloved hand. I started to follow him down the tiled hallway,

but he stopped me with one outstretched, hairy arm. He motioned me to wait,

pointing to a tiny black box attached to the wall near the door at the end of the

corridor. I'd thought it was the security lock for the door itself, but he seemed to

think otherwise.

 

Illych flipped some new lenses into his goggles and peered ahead. What he did

next, I wouldn't have believed if I hadn't seen it myself. Backing all the way up past

the security barrier, he took a huge, running leap into the hallway. I'd swear I saw

his back brush along the ceiling at least half the way. He landed not five feet short

of the door, and I saw him make a real effort not to fall forward. With one smooth,

elliptical movement, he flipped open the black box and smashed its contents with

his fist.

 

He waved me on, and I went in.

 

The storage facility was a lab like any other. I'd seen hundreds just like it. We

didn't dare turn the lights on, but I knew where the special specimens would be

kept in a setup like this. I stepped through the dark room and into the walk-in

cooler, feeling like I was on my turf for once. As I yanked at the cooler door, Illych

grabbed at my shoulder, but he was too late.

 

The lights came on.

 

-:-

 

You know the rest. Before you all came barging in and shooting the place up I saw

everything. My, what a mess you've made of it. The one opportunity mankind has

ever had to study alien species', and you military types have even botched that up.

The samples in those jars are contaminated; any first year grad student could see

that. They're useless.

 

That poor, pathetic excuse for a Reaper you've got on life support is almost as bad.

How could you not realize that the implants were necessary to the structural

soundness of its neural system? It's in every damn report that ever came out about

the things! Even if I weren't going to spend the rest of my life in military prison, I'd

never be able to get any valid data out of those pitiful samples, anyway. I might as

well be working on one of the toy figures.

 

No, I do not have any idea where Illych went. The bastard left me for dead is what

he did. As far as I'm concerned, I hope he never gets out of that damn jungle and

you all never find his body.

 

END OF STATEMENT