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Links: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/mass-effect-invasion-mass-effect-xenonauts-crossover.949108/
(In 1958, NATO and the Warsaw Pact come into contact with a hostile UFO. It seemed to defy the laws of physics with the way it moved and the way it's mass seemed to almost...fluctuate. A joint NATO-Soviet mission managed to defeat the alien incursion, but only barely.
To defend against possible future incursions from hostile alien entities, the two great powers form the Xenonauts: a clandestine organization designed to give humanity a fighting chance against the alien threat.
Mass Effect/Xenonauts crossover.)
The Iceland Incident
April 23, 1958
Deep in the bowels of the Pentagon, a frenzy was in progress. Analysts and experts and advisors of all sorts scurried around and spoke in hushed voices, all in reaction to the incredible event that had occurred earlier that day:
In space, not far beyond the orbit of the moon, an incredibly powerful heat and energy signature had been detected. The military had quickly stepped in, clamping down on civilian observatories that had also discovered it, and military analysts brainstormed theories of what exactly it could be.
At first it was, naturally, thought to be some kind of Soviet device. They had, after all, launched the Sputnik probe not even a year ago. It wasn't inconceivable that it was some kind of non-publicized Soviet project.
Then the device did something impossible: from what America's best physicists could tell, the craft's mass was not...static. When it appeared to activate its engines and move on an intercept course with Earth, it moved faster than any craft ever made by man. The Soviets couldn't possibly have something so advanced. No one on Earth had that kind of technology. So, with the impossible eliminated, the improbable remained: the craft was not of Earth.
Hence, the incredible frenzy sweeping through the Pentagon.
----ooOOoo----
Lieutenant Commander Ernest Smith led his flight of F-8 Crusaders on their assigned patrol path. The higher-ups had not deigned to disclose what exactly it was he and his men were patrolling for. As such, it came as something of a surprise when a colossal aircraft appeared out of the clouds. The fact that he could still clearly see it despite its obvious distance gave a measure of just how enormous the craft really was.
"Uh...command, this is eight flight. We've got a visual on an unidentified contact, please advise." he said into his radio. Even for a consummate professional like him, concealing the unease in his voice was a challenge.
"Eight flight, command, please describe the contact." came the reply.
"It's...very large. Larger than any aircraft I've ever seen. Profile is not aerodynamic, almost...boxy looking, though there's what looks to be some kind of engine shape in the rear of its profile. Can't see much detail at this range." there was no response for almost a full minute.
"Command, please advise." he said again.
"Eight flight, be advised, contact possible UFO of alien origin. Say again, alien origin. You are to approach at low speed and attempt communication." came the eventual reply.
What?
Aliens? "Attempt communication" how the hell was he supposed to do that? Despite his misgivings, he followed orders, and his flight moved in towards the UFO. When they got to a closer range, Ernest could see the craft in greater detail, including what looked very much like some kind of weapon mounts to Ernest's eyes.
"Command, be advised, UFO appears to be armed. Please advise." he said into the radio.
"Eight flight, you are to broadcast the following message…"
And so, Ernest Smith became the first human to attempt to communicate with an alien intelligence, broadcasting a simple greeting over his plane's radio.
Thirty-seven seconds later, Ernest Smith became one of the first five humans to be killed by an alien intelligence, as the UFO fired on eight flight with a laser array, instantly destroying every plane in the unit, save one. The remaining pilot jerked his plane down into a rapid dive, acting on instinct. The move saved his life, as when the UFO fired again barely a second later it only damaged the plane instead of completely destroying it. The pilot was able to return to base in his half-dead plane, the sole survivor.
----ooOOoo----
With the rapid mobilization of so many NATO aircraft in the North Atlantic, the Warsaw Pact had begun a mobilization of its own, fearing NATO invasion. It was then that secret talks between the two great powers began. The NATO scientists confirmed what the Soviet ones had already suspected: the contact seen in the skies earlier had been of alien origin.
Even as the two powers discussed their strategic options, the US was about to take a gamble. The UFO was pretty hard to miss on radar, what with it being the size of a guided missile destroyer that had somehow learned to fly. Pinpointing where the craft was going wasn't difficult: it was heading for the north of the US's eastern seaboard. With the destruction of eight flight, a decision was made.
Almost a hundred planes were ordered to converge on the UFO's position. Their mission: to shoot down the alien ship and protect the eastern seaboard, at any cost. The planes gathered together and then made an attack run on the ship.
The UFO's laser defense fired non-stop, and some kind of extremely advanced kinetic weapon now joined the fray, claiming the lives of dozens of pilots in less than a minute. However, some of those pilots were able to get their missiles away, and even against the incredibly advanced alien defenses, some missiles were still able to hit their target.
The damage to the ship was substantial. It was forced on a dramatic trajectory change, heading for what was likely to be a crash landing. It's likely impact spot would be in Iceland.
----ooOOoo----
Lieutenant John "Jack" Miller led his platoon forward with the rest of their infantry company. It was still something of a shock to know that, barely two miles across from them, a unit of Soviet infantry was likely advancing in the exact same manner. What really floored him was the knowledge that those troops were advancing as allies, not enemies. Like everyone else in the operation, he'd been briefed on what it was they were facing. Nevertheless, it still surprised him how quick the two mortal enemies had been to set aside their differences. The higher-ups must be scared shitless if they're working together like this.
Not that Jack could blame them. He was scared shitless too. He had a duty to his men though, he couldn't let them down. So, when the torso of his point man suddenly exploded, splattering blood over the green Army fatigues of the men behind him, he didn't miss a beat.
"DOWN!" he roared, hitting the dirt even as he shouted.
Bullets whizzed overhead. Alien bullets. Jack looked around and saw his men returning fire, M14s barking as they spat their 7.62 caliber bullets at the enemy. It didn't seem to give the aliens much pause, as all around him men of his own platoon and of the rest of the company died grizzly deaths as the strange alien bullets ripped through them. They were getting ripped apart, even at this range.
"We have to move up! Everyone, on me!" Jack screamed to be heard over the noise of battle.
The other officers had apparently had the same idea, as all around him the troops sprang from their cover and began rapidly advancing forward. The casualties were grievous, but they were rewarded when the humans got close and for the first time saw their enemy in the flesh. Jack didn't stop to think as he fired at the...thing that had been knocked down in front of him. A strange purplish sheen appeared over the alien as Jack fired, which only prompted Jack to fire more. Eventually, the purple thing dissipated, and blood splattered out of the fallen alien.
Only when he was sure it was dead did Jack really look at it. It wasn't an attractive sight. The alien had a sinister appearance. Blood red eyes and a squashed nose hung over a strange mouth filled with razor sharp teeth that it bared even in death. It's body had two arms and two legs like a human, but that was the end of its similarities. It held three claw-like fingers on each hand, with spines on its elbows. It's knees looked more like a dog's or a rabbit's, and it wore no shoes on it's clawed feet. It was clothed only in simple briefs and bandoleers of some sort draped over its shoulders. It did not fit the image of the enlightened alien come to save humanity from itself seen in so many movies these days.
Jack didn't get to look at the alien for long, as the human attack continued, with troops flooding in at breakthroughs in the aliens' defensive positions. Real progress began to be made when tank support, in the form of M48 Pattons, rolled in and began firing on the more fortified alien positions.
Casualties were still horrendous. The dead far outnumbered the wounded, as the incredibly powerful alien guns ripped apart the insides of anyone unlucky enough to be hit in their center of mass. Most of the wounded had been hit in one of their extremities. Not even the tanks were safe, as even the alien small arms seemed to be able to shred through their armor if they concentrated their fire for long enough. Despite this, the advance still continued. Jack led what was left of his platoon through the carnage, stepping over the corpses of a strange, four-eyed alien that seemed to be of an entirely separate species than the ones he had encountered earlier.
When he could see the form of what must be the alien ship in the distance, his platoon came under heavy fire. Jack was hit by a graze in his lower leg. Unfortunately, the nature of the alien weapons meant that even a graze was a serious wound. He was, reluctantly, evacuated to the rear line while his senior NCO took command.
----ooOOoo----
With his leg wound dressed, Jack had little to do but sit around at the field hospital, his leg propped up, and wonder anxiously about the fate of his men. To occupy the time, he'd found himself chatting with a fellow by the name of Eric, a British Lieutenant who'd taken a grizzly wound to the arm, and seemed to be eager to take his mind off of the injury.
"Well, let's suppose it really is a scout mission, who would they be scouting for?" Jack asked.
"Their equivalent of a nation, presumably. Perhaps they're just the advanced unit of a larger alien fleet, already on its way." Eric said.
"What could they possibly want? What could they get here that they couldn't find on some other planet that isn't occupied by a bunch of angry natives? If they can manage to travel here, they can manage to travel anywhere, right? So why not just move on to the next world?" Jack said.
"Maybe livable worlds like ours are a rare commodity. Could be that there aren't enough of them to go around, so it's worth the cost of invasion. Of course, this is assuming that resources are a motive for them at all. They could have a motive that we wouldn't be able to comprehend. They're not even human, after all." Eric said.
Their conversation was suddenly interrupted by an incredibly loud noise and gust of wind that rattled the cloth of the tent they were in.
"The hell was that?" Jack shouted.
The explosion had been the detonation of the alien vessel. The human troops, who had been steadily closing in, were eviscerated in the blast, along with what few aliens survived, and almost everything else within a little less than a kilometer.
----ooOOoo----
The "Iceland Incident", as it came to be called, was one of the most closely guarded secrets in human history. Those few who were still alive who had witnessed the course of events and survived were sworn to secrecy, destined to be kept under surveillance for the rest of their lives.
To the rest of the world, the Iceland Incident was a watershed moment in the Cold War, where an attempted Soviet invasion of Iceland was stopped by a rash deployment of a nuclear weapon on the island that scared both sides into a truce. Direct lines of communication were opened, treaties were signed, and both nations weathered the political and diplomatic fallout of their official actions.
To the few hundred people who knew the truth, the Iceland Incident was the single most important event in recorded history. The survivors of the event on both sides were gathered together to found the Xenonauts: a joint Soviet-NATO organization that would meticulously research the incident, and develop weapons and tactics to protect humanity from a now very real alien threat.
At first, the Xenonauts enjoyed a wealth of funding, and were able to set up underground surveillance facilities and radar arrays were set up around the globe.
As time passed, and research of the crash site continued, it became clear that not much of any use could be salvaged from what little remained of the alien crash site. Even evidence that the alien attack had occurred at all was spotty. Only a few grainy photos of the battle had been taken, and every alien corpse had been atomized in the blast.
As the years went by, and the Xenonauts' supporters in both powerblocks died or retired and were replaced by people unaware of the Top Secret event, the leadership of both sides withdrew their support as geopolitical considerations made them suspicious of the joint organization. Eventually, funding dried up so much that it was a struggle just to keep the lights on at the headquarters.
Despite it all, the Xenonauts still clung to life, determined that humanity's greatest asset against the alien threat not be extinguished.
----ooOOoo----
Hello there! This little piece is the start of an idea I've been workshopping for a while now. If you're a reader of one of my other stories, fear not, this won't be supplanting any of them and I fully intend to finish all of them. I'm just the sort of writer that needs to get an idea out onto paper, or else it will just languish for all eternity in my google drive ideas folder, and I didn't want this idea to fade away.
As always, thank you for reading, and please leave your thoughts in the comments.
The Invasion Begins
October 1st, 1979
Throughout the Earth's orbit, satellites began to inexplicably go dark. As the governments of humanity scrambled to find an explanation, observatories the world over reported scattered heat signatures and dark shapes all around in the Earth-Luna sphere of space. All over the planet, reports of UFO sightings and disappearances began to happen with ever-increasing frequency. For most of the denizens of the planet, the day marked the beginning of the alien invasion.
For the Xenonauts, it marked the end of a twenty year grace period.
----ooOOoo----
October 17th, 1979
Lars Holmberg watched from his anti-aircraft post as a pair of Saab 37s dueled with the...thing in the skies. Never before had he been more grateful to be part of the Flygvapnet ground crew instead of being a pilot than when he saw the two jets suddenly torched by some sort of...ray gun or laser beam or God knows what. The burning remains of the jets crashed violently into the Stockholm city-scape below them, and Lars could only hope that they hadn't killed anyone else where they crashed.
The hostile craft suddenly made an impossible turn and shot back out towards the sea, making loud thunder claps as it broke the sound barrier.
As it made its way out to the sea, Lars could see another pair of jets rapidly making their way towards the craft, coming in from the South. As they got closer, Lars could just barely make them out. They looked like F16s to him. Americans operating in Swedish Airspace? Things must be worse than I thought!
The F-16s made an attack run on the craft. Lars expected to see them get fried just like the Saabs from before, but the only thing he saw was a puff of smoke from the fighters, leaving a charred-looking spot where they had presumably been hit by (and survived?!) the ray gun.
The fighters opened up on the craft with their cannons, showering it with lead before shooting over the craft and immediately moving to turn back around for another run. A strange purplish sheen appeared over the craft, and it was at that moment that Lars finally began to believe the rumors of UFOs. He'd thought (or, more accurately, "hoped") it might be Soviets when he first saw the craft, but he highly doubted there were any Soviet planes that could survive a minigun barrage without even getting their paint scratched. And there definitely weren't any Soviet aircraft with a purple energy shield around them.
The F-16s came back around towards the target. The UFO seemed to be wise to their tricks now, and this time it fired on them with some kind of projectile weapon as well as the lasers. One of the F-16s dove to dodge the incoming fire, being lightly peppered by the projectile weapon and scorched by the laser in the process. However, its wingman fired a pair of missiles at the UFO before breaking off. One of the missiles burst into flames short of the target, a victim of the ray gun presumably, but the other struck home.
To Lars's surprise, the UFO was actually damaged by the missile, and it went down in flames, crashing into the Baltic Sea. The F-16s, battered but still flying, made their way back over Stockholm and away to who knows where.
----ooOOoo----
October 27th, 1979
Commander John "Jack" Miller entered the conference room, and sat at the head of the table. He looked at the five people around him, the heads of the various departments of his organization, and he began speaking.
"Alright, people. I've finished the last round of phone calls,and we are in business again. Our Condors' little 'demonstration' has paid off big time. We haven't been idle for twenty years, and we've just proven it to the governments of the world. I've secured funding from both of the major power blocs and every non-aligned government I could get to answer the phone. We've also got leave to use their airspace, meaning we can effectively operate with impunity anywhere we can get our interceptors to. Let's make sure our sponsors' investment pays off. Doctor, " he said, turning to Chief Scientist Doctor Edward Brown, "what's your analysis on our interceptors' performance?"
The Chief Scientist turned to the commander, his trademark sardonically amused expression on his face, "Our F-17s did well. Better than they had any right to, truth be told. I suspect that they weren't facing a proper combatant. Likely some kind of support or reconnaissance craft."
He adjusted his glasses. "The laser-resistant layer of their hull performed admirably, but I wouldn't get our hopes up too much. This UFO was much smaller than the one from 1958, its lasers were likely of significantly reduced power. Though I must say I was pleased with how well Condor-2 handled taking a beating from that projectile weapon of theirs. I doubt it could handle a direct hit, but the results are still promising."
The Chief of the Air Wing, Ted Green, spoke up at that. "I'd say it's a damn sight better than promising. It's downright exciting! It took damn near a hundred planes to bring down the UFO from '58, and that was only at the cost of dozens of pilots' lives. Now we're able to bring one down with a pair of jets, and both of them survive the encounter? It's enough to make me giddy."
Ted knew better than anyone the power of the enemy in the air, as he was the lucky survivor from the disastrous first contact with the '58 UFO. Jack had found a friend in the man, and he couldn't refrain from taking the bait.
"Please refrain from being giddy in the conference room, Chief Green." he said with a completely straight face. Having sated his comedic desires, the Commander went back to business without missing a beat.
"While I'm also pleased by the performance of our planes and pilots, combat is only one half of the problem. We have to be able to actually catch the enemy to fight him, and our Condors' targets outran them in our first two sorties before they snagged the one in the Baltic. We need to start work on a high speed interceptor." he said.
The Chief Scientist spoke again at that. "That may not take as long as you might think. We don't have to design one from scratch. I spied something in the technology-sharing dossiers that caught my eye. The Soviets have been working on an experimental supersonic interceptor, the MiG-31. It's supposed to be a superior version of their MiG-25, which for those of you who aren't aware is one of the fastest fighter jets in the world. It hasn't entered proper production yet, but I think the design will suit our purposes, with some modifications."
Jack grimaced at that. "It was like pulling teeth to get the US to give us F-16 schematics and parts, and that was an in-production plane. It's gonna be a challenge to get Moscow to cough up the designs for their secret experimental interceptor."
The Chief Scientist raised an eyebrow. "I have full confidence in your abilities commander, truly. Get me those schematics, and I can get you a new interceptor design within a week."
Jack sighed and turned to the chief engineer, a burly Russian by the name of Adrian Federov. "I can probably weasel some parts shipments out of the Kremlin, but the plane itself will need to be assembled in-house, I doubt they're going to be willing to part with any of their prototype models. That's a bigger job than anything we've ever done before. Are your people up for it?"
The engineer scratched his chin. "Is no problem. Always need more hands, but we can get job done. We'll need larger workspace if we are going to build more than one or two."
Jack smiled. "Well, with the funding we've secured, I've already ordered a full expansion of the base. Every department is going to get more space and more hands. This is the real deal, people. We're not just going to be sitting around and hypothesizing and experimenting like we've done for the last twenty years, we're going to take the fight to the enemy. The governments and militaries of Earth are going to be too tied up just trying to hold the line and put out all the fires to go on the offensive. We're the only hope of winning this war. We're humanity's sword against this new threat."
A man wearing a beret cleared his throat at that. "And on that note, I think we need to have a discussion about our Xenonauts." It was Eric Wilson, the English officer Jack had met during the Iceland Incident, and another old friend
Jack nodded for him to continue.
He did. "While I have full confidence in their training and skill, I'm concerned about their equipment. They're going to be at a serious disadvantage in combat, and they won't have the advantage of numbers like we did twenty years ago. I think giving them an edge should be a priority for our research."
The Commander turned to the Chief Scientist. "Any news on that front, Doctor?"
"Well, without a sample of their weapons to test it's difficult to say, but from what data we've managed to get from the 1958 incident we think that some of their small arms hit with the same force as a .50 caliber round. We can't realistically protect against that with trauma plates and kevlar, which is why our men's gear is centered around flak protection for the most part. No point adding the extra weight of a plate when it won't even stop the round. We'll need a working example of the aliens' weaponry to devise a method of defending against it." the Chief said.
The Commander turned to the Intelligence Chief, Todd Sterling, next. "Anything to add, Todd?"
The man nodded. "From what I've been able to glean from the intelligence given to us by our partners, the aliens haven't taken any kind of serious offensive action as of yet. Speculation suggests that they're focused primarily on gathering information at the moment, although they have been seen going after targets of opportunity from time to time, usually in the form of any war planes they detect. We don't know what they're looking for, or what they're going to do when they find it, but shooting down their scouts will disrupt their activities at least somewhat. It's the only way we can realistically hit the enemy right now."
He went on. "This is the calm before the storm, we should use this time to learn as much as possible about our enemies and their technology, just as they are doing now. We need to give our men an edge for when the real fighting starts."
The Commander nodded. "We'll need to shoot down one of these scout craft again, overland this time, so we can more easily scavenge it. On that note…" He turned to the Quartermaster.
"How are we for fuel?" he asked.
The Quartermaster, a woman by the name of Denisa Kvasnicka, spoke after a slight nervous hesitation. "We used up most of our pre-invasion fuel reserves in the recent sorties, but fortunately basic supplies like fuel, food, medicine, and munitions won't be a concern anymore with the support of our sponsoring nations. As for personnel, getting our hands on qualified individuals should be much easier now that we have the funds to pay for them."
She looked at the other department heads in the room, and continued. "If any of you have any contacts that could be of use to us, send their information to my office. I'll get in touch with them and handle recruitment."
She received nods in return.
The Commander spoke. "Thank you, Quartermaster. I would also like to discuss locations for future sub-bases. We simply won't have enough coverage with one location...."
The discussion continued on, but all who were present noted the change in the demeanor of their fellows compared to the last 20 years. To say they were happy to have been right would not have been accurate. In truth, they would very much have preferred to have been wrong. Yet, none could deny that the invasion gave them a sense of grim validation. It was energizing, in a way.
While the situation was the culmination of their worst fears, it still felt good to be taking action again, instead of languishing in their base, engaging in the same pointless debates over the same hypotheses they had been discussing for twenty years. Now, was the moment where they could prove that it hadn't been a waste of time.
----ooOOoo----
XENOPEDIA: ALIEN INVASION
You've probably already noticed we're being invaded, Commander, so I won't state the obvious. The situation is bleak; none of the major powers are able to defend their own airspace, let alone protect the rest of the planet. It seems things are up to us. My team stand ready to help - there may only be a handful of us, but some of the finest minds on the planet are at work in your laboratories (this organisation offers a certain freedom from intrusion that appeals to those of intelligence). The key to beating our enemies is to understand them; we are keen to study any extraterrestrial equipment you can recover from the battlefield.
In the meantime, we have been gathering intelligence on the size and composition of the alien fleet orbiting our planet - mostly images and data obtained from orbital satellites or ground-based observatories. Given the depressingly disjointed response from the rest of the planet, this is probably the most in-depth study of the invasion to date. We have conclusively identified over five-hundred UFOs in the Earth-Luna sphere of space, with several times that amount of additional probable signals. From what we can gather, the largest UFOs are remaining in Lunar orbit at the moment. The smaller contacts are in high orbit over the Earth itself. The craft we see in our skies at the moment are likely some kind of parasite-craft launching from a mother ship. We won't be able to learn more until we get a (relatively) intact sample of one of these parasite-UFOs.
Right now the enemy appears to be operating mainly in an information gathering capacity, with no significant offensive actions being taken as of yet. We need to take advantage of this relatively calm period to learn as much as possible about our enemy, and find ways to adapt against their technology.
In light of this, I have two recommendations: that we consider supplementing our existing F-17 Condor aircraft with a heavier interceptor capable of carrying more powerful weapons, and that we investigate some form of battlefield support vehicle to aid our soldiers when securing crashed alien craft. Both proposals are already on your desk.
XENOPEDIA: F-17 "Condor"
The F-17 Condor is the primary Xenonaut interceptor aircraft, a general purpose dogfighter derived from the F-16 Fighting Falcon. The Condor's Autocannon makes it well-suited to destroying smaller craft, whilst it also carries Sidewinder light missiles to make it a credible threat to medium-size vessels
The Condor has broadly similar performance to its parent aircraft but uses a modified airframe that dramatically increases its operational range and survivability against alien weaponry, at the cost of top speed and payload. The alterations to the airframe have been made based on our studies of the UFO's weapons and tactics used that day. The UFO's laser weapon seemed to fire at all possible targets at once, and then go into some kind of cooldown phase. Based on this, we designed an aircraft capable of surviving the first shot, and then getting its missile or cannon barrage away in the cooldown period before breaking off.
We have dramatically increased the range of the craft compared to the stock F-16, but not without cost. The increased range is believed necessary - we have rather a lot of planet to protect. Doing this has reduced the payload of the Condor, but it is still able to carry two light missiles and a craft cannon. This is a versatile combination; Sidewinder missiles have been proved effective and reliable against human aircraft, but we do not even know if we will be able to get a missile lock on alien vessels. The cannon has a shorter range and fires powerful shells that should be useful in a dogfight. One of the two weapons should hopefully prove effective against an enemy vessel.
XENOPEDIA: BASIC ARMOR
The Basic Xenonaut armor is derived from the experimental US PASGT Armor system. There are some minor modifications to suit our ergonomic needs, along with changing the color scheme to our standard mottled grey-brown color. We tried to design our Xenonauts' uniform colors to blend into as many environments as possible (They'll be fighting all over the planet, after all.) but it may very well have been a waste of effort. We don't even know if the aliens see on the same color spectrum as we do.
Our studies of the Iceland Incident have led us to conclude that the primary small arms of the aliens are some kind of incredibly advanced projectile weapon. If our ballistics models created from recountings of the event are accurate, an alien "rifle" slug hits with the same force as a .50 caliber machine gun round. Even the most state-of-the-art trauma plates and kevlar armor has trouble stopping rounds in the .30 caliber range and often below that, which means that any extra armor given to our troops would just be useless dead weight. As such, the Basic Xenonaut armor has no plating, and instead relies on kevlar and other ballistic materials to protect the user from fragmentations and ricochets, not direct hits.
Until we get our hands on some samples of the aliens' weapons, this is the best we can hope for.
----ooOOoo----
Author's Note: Hey all, thanks for reading that chapter. There was a bit of a delay to this chapter, as I always seem to have difficulty getting the first few chapters of a story out, as planning a chapter out in this phase is difficult for me, so I have to free write.
I'm going to be focusing on my other two stories for the next stretch (links in my signature), so work on this particular story is going to go at the bottom of the queue while I get a chapter out for the other two. I have a lot of free time coming up in the next few weeks, so hopefully I can get some rapid fire chapters out the door.
Next chapter: We finally get to see the Xenonauts in action!
As always, thank you for reading and please leave your thoughts in the comments.
Extra Xenopedia Entries
AN: Hey gang! These are just a few non-essential xenopedia entries I've put together for a few miscellaneous items that the Xenonauts have as of this point in the story. These are fun and easy to write, and they help offer some explanation for a few of the things that are different from the games.
XENOPEDIA: BALLISTIC PISTOL
The current service-pistol of our organization is the Beretta 93R, a select-fire machine pistol with a removable stock. This pistol was selected because of our concerns over the enemy's personal energy shields that seemed ubiquitous amongst their forces in the Iceland Incident. There was some concern that a conventional pistol would be effectively useless, as even rifle rounds took multiple hits to bring down an enemy's shields during the Incident. As such, it was determined that our pistol rounds lack of power would be compensated for by sheer volume of fire. Initially we accomplished this through adding extended magazines to our earlier service pistols, but recent developments in Machine Pistol design have led us to seek out a more modern option.
The handgun has two modes: three round burst, and semi-automatic, with a twenty round magazine. It has a retractable foregrip and attachable stock (which likely won't see as much use by us as its designers intended). It will mainly be used to arm base personnel and as a sidearm for our troops in the field, but some specialist units may opt for the hand gun over a heavier weapon. The three round burst is a compromise, intended to offer a greater volume of fire without making the weapon wildly inaccurate from the recoil. It's unclear how effective pistol rounds will be against enemy shields. The weapon shouldn't be expected to carry the day, but it's nevertheless a useful tool in our arsenal.
XENOPEDIA: BALLISTIC ASSAULT RIFLE
The current service-rifle of our organization is the US-made M16A1 5.56mm assault rifle. The 5.56 cartridge was chosen over heavier cartridges such as the 7.62 due to our theory that volume of fire will matter more than raw kinetic energy, and as the 5.56's smaller size enables our troops to carry more ammunition, the decision was made. The rifle itself was chosen not for any particular excellence on its part, but rather due to logistics. The weapon is ubiquitous, and it's easier on our logistics to use NATO weapons and ammunition rather than Warsaw Pact equipment, and a bottleneck in our supply lines is not something we can afford to risk just to use another, marginally different, rifle. Despite rumors to the contrary, the M16 is a reliable and proven design, and it will serve our Xenonauts faithfully, providing the same tactical flexibility in combat with the aliens that it does in combat with our fellow man.
XENOPEDIA: BALLISTIC SHOTGUN
The Xenonauts' acquisition of the Franchi SPAS-12 for our arsenal is a relatively recent development, as the weapon is still brand new. While some would have preferred that we adopt a more proven design, I think that this weapon will prove a valuable asset to our arsenal. The SPAS-12 variant in use by us uses a 8+1 tube magazine, and is capable of firing in either semi-automatic or pump-action mode.
The utility of a shotgun in our war against the aliens is something of a matter for debate amongst our peers. However, I believe that the sheer versatility of the weapon and the wide array of ammunition available to us will prove extremely useful. There are few small arms rounds more powerful than a twelve gauge slug, and the added volume of fire from a buckshot round could be extremely useful against enemy shields. The other, less conventional ammunition (some of which could potentially be developed by us in the future) means that a shotgun can be as much a tool as it is a weapon. The shotgun will be a potent addition to our arsenal, albeit a situational one.
XENOPEDIA: BALLISTIC SNIPER RIFLE
The Xenonauts' use of the SVD-63 "Dragunuv" sniper rifle is somewhat unusual in that it is the only Soviet-made gun in regular use by our organization. The reason for this is actually quite simple: most of the marksmen in the earlier years of our organization happened to be drawn from Soviet and Soviet Satellite states, and those Xenonauts requested they be allowed to use the familiar weapon over a NATO design. The logistical profile of a marksman rifle is smaller than that of an assault rifle, and so the concern of ammunition bottleneck was deemed negligible.
The rifle itself is an excellent design. Nothing particularly remarkable, just a quality, proven design. It will serve our marksmen well on the battlefield.
XENOPEDIA: BALLISTIC MACHINE GUN
The standard machine gun in use by our forces is the FN MAG. While not particularly remarkable, the design is proven and battle-tested. We have modified the design to take both regular belt-fed ammunition, as well as smaller 50 round "clips" that enable it to be more easily used by a single Xenonaut.
We suspect that our machine guns could very well prove the difference between victory and defeat in many of the early battles of this war. Sheer volume of fire will have to make up for our relative lack of kinetic energy in comparison to our alien enemy's weapons, and the machine gun is the most prodigious provider of volume of fire. It is a heavy weapon, unwieldy, suited more for providing supporting fire from a distance than for storming an enemy fortification. Used wisely, this may be the most potent weapon in our arsenal.
XENOPEDIA: ROCKET LAUNCHER
The rocket launcher in use by the Xenonauts (dubbed the XRL-1) has the distinction of being the only homebrewed weapon currently in use by our organization. It is reliable, inexpensive, and highly versatile. The custom design allows us to use many of our own custom-made rockets, making it an incredibly versatile weapon, capable of firing even the most unorthodox warheads we could devise. While the launcher is a potent weapon, I would advise that our troops use it conservatively. Scavenged alien technology and equipment is a lot less useful when it's been blown to pieces by a rocket.
The First Mission
November 4th, 1979
A pair of F-17 Condors cruise along on the path towards their target, a UFO detected a few hours ago. It's moving fast, too fast for them to overtake it. Home base had been about to recall them when the UFO suddenly veered hard to the West, enabling the pair of planes to take on a new intercept trajectory.
Condor-2 spotted the UFO first.
"UFO sighted, preparing to intercept!" she called out to Condor-1, her accent very thick and very Russian.
"I'm with you." came Condor-1's reply, sounding for all the world like an American radio host or TV personality, rather than a fighter jet pilot.
The pair went on their intercept trajectory, and Condor-1 felt his whole body tense up. He had felt the same way in the dog fight in Stockholm a few weeks ago. There was just something unsettling about that laser the aliens used. No chance to dodge, you either went down with the first shot, or you survived it and went in for the kill while their power cycled. It was combat reduced down to simple math.
The math was in the Condors' favor today, and as the UFO unleashed its lasers on the pair of planes, it failed to bring either of them down. Condor-1 was sure he could feel the heat from the weapon when it hit, even if the engineers swore up and down that the cockpit was insulated and he couldn't possibly feel it.
Sporadic projectile weapon fire came at the planes from the UFO, but it was too late to stop the barrage of autocannon fire that buckled the craft's shields and sent it into an uncontrolled descent. The wreck that the Swedes had managed to drag out of the Baltic Sea had been a pile of useless (albeit scientifically interesting) scrap. The missiles, it seemed, were overkill for the tiny scout craft like this. So, the science team had requested that the air team utilize autocannons when tactically permissible, to minimize destruction of useful salvage. The damned energy shields made things difficult, but they could be overcome by holding down the trigger for longer than standard.
The planes followed the UFO for several minutes, before watching it crash into the Greenland Tundra.
Condor-1 spoke over the radio. "Base, this is Condor-1, splash one. Flight 1 returning to base."
"Acknowledged, Flight 1." came the reply.
Condor-2 spoke to Condor-1. "That was easier than last time."
"Yeah. I just still can't shake the feeling that we're shooting down the alien equivalent of a civilian prop-plane. We shouldn't get used to it being this easy."
----ooOOoo----
November 5th, 1979
Charlie-1 made its way to the UFO crash site, its cargo of Xenonauts huddling together in its hold. Charlie-1 was a Chinook helicopter, heavily modified by the Xenonauts to get as much range as physically possible, and even then it still needed frequent mid-air refueling from any local governments the Xenonauts could get to cooperate.
The modifications had come at a cost, as the generous troop complement of the Chinook had been shrunk down to just eight people. For the chronically personnel-hungry Xenonauts, however, this reduction wasn't too big of a blow.
Their leader, call sign "X-1", got a signal from the pilot on his headset.
"Coming up on the crash site now, X-1. Not a lot of cover down there." the pilot said.
"Can't have everything. How close can you get us?" X-1 asked.
"A lot closer than I'd like, considering we don't know what, if any, anti-aircraft abilities they might still have. There's a hill to the south of the site. I'm going to put her down behind it, that way you can recce the area from an elevated position." the pilot replied.
"Appreciate that." X-1 turned around to face his Xenonauts. "Alright boys, get ready. He's putting us down."
The assembled men, veterans of special forces from both sides of the Iron Curtain, voiced their acknowledgement.
----ooOOoo----
Charlie-1 set down on the Icey terrain, behind a hill. The Xenonauts exited it with precise, well-drilled movements, making sure every angle was covered. X-1 made a hand signal, and the squad moved up the hill. At its peak, X-1 took a knee, his squad doing the same.
"X-5, set up for overwatch here." X-1 said. The squad marksman complied, going prone in the snow, trusting his thick winter-camo overcoat to keep him dry.
X-1 stood up, and signalled the others to move out. The squad made its way down the other side of the hill, trying their best to make use of what little cover there was as they made their way to the alien ship over 100 meters away. The lack of incoming fire suggested that the aliens (if they were alive) must be huddling in the sealed wreck. Understandable, given the cold. As they approached the entrance, and still no contact came, X-1 ordered his men into read positions around the craft's entry hatch. X-3, the LMG operator, took up a position in front of the hatch, lying prone. Another Xenonaut set a breaching charge, and, after a brief count, X-1 pressed the detonator.
The explosion was instantly answered with shots from the alien weapons flying wildly out of the entrance. As the smoke cleared, a strange, alien face briefly appeared, before being destroyed as X-5 splattered the contents of its head against the wall.
X-3 laid down suppressive fire, and one of the xenonauts stacking up around the hatch tossed a flashbang into the ship. The alien fire silenced for an instant, and it was all the Xenonauts needed as they rapidly stormed the craft and gunned down the inhabitants. They'd been trained to "double up" on a target, to compensate for the defenses of the alien energy shield. Thus, the aliens were dispatched by at least two xenonauts each, with the human soldiers firing at them on full automatic, rapidly buckling the aliens' shields and perforating their torsos.
A quiet settled over the ship as the brief fire fight ended.
X-2, the second in command, turned to X-1 and spoke. "That was too easy."
X-1 nodded. "I don't think we were facing trained fighters here. I'm guessing that the Doc's theory is right, and this is just a scouting craft. We need to take advantage of things while it's still relatively easy. Learn as much as we can before the hammer drops."
X-2 nodded, and the Xenonauts proceeded to sweep the rest of the small craft.
----ooOOoo----
XENOPEDIA: ALIEN AUTOPSY-"FROGMAN"
Well, Commander, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that X-3's aim ensured that I had at least one cadaver that hadn't had its insides turned into ground meat, so he has my thanks for that. The bad news is that, based on the evidence available to me, this alien is not the same as the aliens that attacked Iceland 20 years ago. Without any physical remains from the Iceland Incident to examine, it's hard to be certain, but I'm reasonably confident that we can add this as a third, entirely new species. The implications of this are many and varied. Is this new species affiliated with the previous ones, or is it independent? If affiliated, does this suggest that our enemy is some kind of multi-species polity? If independent, does that make them a competitor to our prior foes, or merely a third party? This corpse proposes many such questions, but it offers no answer to our most important question of all: Who is our enemy, and why are they here?
The specimen itself is quite interesting. Indeed, "Frogman", the title bestowed upon it by our troops, is an apt description. It bears strong similarities to Amphibian species here on Earth, even possessing similar reproductive organ structure.
It is incredibly lean. Its entire body seems to be perfectly structured for raw efficiency. Without a live specimen, it is difficult to give exact numbers, but we speculate that its metabolism is many times faster than that of a human. This efficiency appears to come at a cost, however, as we see many signs of what we presume to be aging damage, such as noticeably decayed joints (which, interestingly, have had some kind of advanced medical procedure applied to them). Yet, carbon dating suggests that this specimen is less than 30 years old! It's possible that this specimen is an example of an individual in this species equivalent to the far side of "middle aged", and yet it hasn't even turned thirty. Either this species is much more short lived than our own, or this individual is the victim of a particularly nasty form of degenerative disease. Personally, I find the former more likely.
XENOPEDIA: "ELEMENT ZERO"
Commander, I regret to report that almost every piece of technology recovered from the aliens is unusable. Our foes seem to have a very high standard of information security, as upon the deaths of its occupants, tiny thermal charges detonated in all of the ship's core systems. All of the electronics and other complex systems on the ship have been sabotaged in this way. Even the aliens' small utility items, such as their weapons and their strange wrist-mounted computing devices, have been sabotaged. As such, while we can study and speculate a piece of alien technology's mechanical purpose, we cannot even begin to decipher how it works.
All is not lost, however. While we may not be able to salvage their electronics, we can salvage their materials, and what a material we have found!
At first we thought it must be some kind of alien superconductor, as everywhere we found it, it was rigged up to an electrical wiring framework. It's apparent lack of mass was a curiosity, and led to it being dubbed "Element Zero".
When we ran a current through it to test it, we discovered that it was much more than a conductor. It is instead a material that manipulates mass itself, increasing and decreasing an object's mass depending on what current is running through it.
The implications of this are utterly revolutionary, but what is most interesting to me is how many puzzle pieces fit together about our enemy's technology thanks to this discovery. Everything, from their ship designs to even their weapons is informed by this technology. If we had decades to study it, we would have barely scratched the surface of what can be done with it. Unfortunately, we don't have such luxuries, so I've tried to be more utilitarian in my research suggestions.
The files are on your desk, although I'm loath to put them there, as no doubt once our esteemed engineering department gets wind of this material they'll give it one of their insufferable nicknames. Something dreadful like "EmZo" or "E-Zero" or God knows what else.
XENOPEDIA: ALIEN WEAPONS
While the alien sabotage makes their weapons unusable, the actual mechanical structure and design of the weapons is still left mostly intact thanks to the underpowered nature of the small thermal charges used in the sabotage. Because of this, we can gain insight into our enemy's weapons through studying the remains.
From what we can gather, alien small arms are a magnetic accelerator in miniature. While such technology is hardly incomprehensible to us, we have never been able to make use of it thanks to the limits of our battery technology: no portable battery could ever hope to store enough power to magnetically launch a projectile at velocities fast enough to be lethal.
Oddly enough, it seems our foes have a similar problem. Granted, even just from the remains, we can tell that our enemy's batteries are-unsurprisingly-vastly superior to our own. Despite this, we don't think that the weapon would be able to fire at the rate and power we see from our enemy's weapons with the amount of energy available in their batteries.
This is where the element zero we discovered in the weapons comes in. Using the element zero to decrease the projectile's mass, the mass accelerator can throw the projectile at incredible velocities, easily beating out most of our infantry weapons of similar size and type. Despite this power, the projectile itself is actually incredibly small. The weapon's "ammunition" is actually a small shaving from a "block" of ferrous matter inside the weapon, no bigger than a grain of sand. It is the velocity that gives the bullet its power, not its mass. Another benefit of the tiny projectile is that ammunition is so plentiful as to be effectively a non issue. Just one "block" of ammo can contain potentially thousands of shots, a fact that I'm sure will make our Quartermaster green with logistical envy.
Unfortunately, we're nowhere near replicating a weapon this sophisticated. However, I have a few ideas for stop gap designs we can use until that changes. However, I'm going to need an intact example of an alien weapon to hammer them out. Which means that we'll need to take an enemy alive, to prevent its weapons fail safe from being triggered by its expiration. To that end, I have seen to it that several proposals for non-lethal weapons find their way to your desk. Tell our troops I wish them good hunting.
----ooOOoo----
Well, that was definitely an update. Strangely enough, I find this to be one of the more difficult stories to write. Maybe it's just that it's still new, but either way it has made finding a rhythm more difficult. Hence the length between updates. As always, please share your thoughts in the comments, and thank you for reading.
Extra Xenopedia Entries 2: Electric Boogaloo
Hey all. The next chapter is going to jump forward in time slightly, skipping some of the "early game" of Xenonauts. By the time we seem them next, the Xenonauts will have already had several missions to learn from, and even attempted to take an alien captive. The skip was necessary because I'm planning to diverge pretty significantly from the narrative model of the games in the next chapter, and thus that's where the "meat" of the story will really be. These Xenopedia entries are just a few quick paragraphs to fill in the blanks for a few things. If you haven't been a fan of the Xenopedia aspect of the story fear not, the next chapter will have significantly more non-xenopedia substance to it.
---
XENOPEDIA: ALIEN SCOUT CRAFT
The alien UFOs we have seen so far do not seem to be dedicated military craft, but neither are they dedicated scouting or reconnaissance craft. Indeed, they don't seem to share a uniform design at all. Thus far, we have encountered two distinct "categories" that we can place the various designs into. We call them "dependent" and "independent". Dependent UFOs are craft that are almost certainly operating from some sort of mothership, judging by their on board equipment and accommodations (or lack there of). They have only a small set of mass-effect assisted engines for propulsion, which, while vastly superior to anything we could hope to build, are woefully inadequate for any kind of significant interplanetary travel (nevermind interstellar). We suspect that these UFOs travel from lunar orbit to Earth, perform their mission, and then immediately return to their mothership to refuel.
Independent UFOs, as the name implies, are much more robust and flexible in their mission profile. These craft seem to be essentially a light utility vehicle, ferrying passengers and cargo to any destination necessary. For the handful of direct military actions that the aliens have attempted thus far, all were done using troops ferried in UFOs of this type.
Regardless of category, the tactics utilized by every UFO we've seen have been essentially the same: They travel at extremely high altitudes, well beyond the range of any interceptors, descending only when they are nearing whatever point of interest they are observing. This descent gives a brief interception window, one that we have exploited several times to reasonable success, though their admirably paranoid sense of information security means that every one of the wrecks had its core systems sabotaged.
Unfortunately, the enemy has stopped underestimating our air combat capabilities, and their increased caution has caused the interception window to shrink more and more. Once our new "Foxtrot" design rolls off the assembly line, we will hopefully have the raw speed necessary to grab targets of opportunity more reliably, but until then we're stuck playing it by ear.
XENOPEDIA: ALIEN AUTOPSY-"GEEK"
The unfortunate nickname of this subject is an extrapolation of the previous nickname for the subject's species: "Four-Eyes". This was itself a play on words of the most obvious fact about this species: it has four eyes. While the cadavers your men left for me leave much to be desired in terms of how intact they are, I can still conclude with acceptable confidence that this species is one of the two encountered during the Iceland incident.
Other than its eyes, the species is relatively unremarkable, physically speaking. Indeed, it is almost uncannily similar to a human. If we include the Frogman, these are two species surprisingly similar in basic shape and skeletal arrangement to our own. Hypotheses for convergent evolution among alien species gain more legitimacy with every cadaver we encounter.
The eyes themselves are somewhat hard to decipher. It's unclear what the purpose of the second set of eyes is. An initial hypothesis was that they enabled Geeks to see in some other visual spectrum, such as infrared. However, there doesn't appear to be any significant physical differences between the two sets of eyes that would be indicative of that (other than size, of course). Other hypotheses have been forthcoming (Increased Redundancy? Enhanced Depth Perception? Non-verbal communication?) but evidence for them is difficult to accrue. Were we to capture a live specimen, it would potentially both satisfy my team's curiosity and allow us to develop specialized tactics for fighting this species.
XENOPEDIA: ALIEN CAPTIVE
While I must commend your men on their success in capturing a live specimen for our labs, I fear it was mostly in vain: the subject has expired. We'd scarcely begun to establish rudimentary communication before the subject suddenly fell dead. An autopsy discovered the cause: an incredibly advanced biological machine embedded in the alien's neck had completely overloaded its nervous system. Once we knew what to look for, we were able to find these incredibly tiny "biochips" embedded in every cadaver we've recovered so far. It seems our foe is even more ruthless about information security than we thought.
Most interesting of all was the subject's demeanor prior to its expiration. While its difficult to be certain when it comes to an alien psyche, it did not appear to be alarmed or anticipating the chip in any way. I would hazard a guess that it wasn't even aware that it had the chip in the first place. Of course, it is an alien, possibly with a completely different psychological behavioral model to our own, so it's not impossible that it was aware of the chip, and simply didn't care. Personally, I find this unlikely. Regardless of the answer, one thing is certain: until we can find a way to circumvent the chips, any captives we take will have their brains turned to mush before we can extract any useful information from them.
---
Just a few quick entries, like I said. Next chapter we will diverge from the game's story beats significantly, uncovering the aliens motives, plans, and possibly even their identities within the context of the Mass Effect universe. Until then, thank you for reading!
A Sudden Turn
December 12th, 1979
As the vibration of another explosion shook the base, Vasily fumbled with the fastenings of his equipment. Never in a million years had he expected to see combat guarding a nuclear facility. What could the Americans hope to accomplish in this, other than starting a war that would end the world? The actions of his enemy seemed to defy reason. Which was why, as he donned his helmet and checked the ammo in his rifle, a voice in the back of his mind brought forth an unwelcome thought.
What if it's not the Americans? What if the rumors are true?
Clamping down on such intrusive thoughts, Vasily followed the rest of his squad out, ready for battle. Vasily arrived with them at the section of the facility they were ordered to prevent the enemy from entering at all costs. The troops took up defensive positions. Behind them was one of the several sets of ICBMs contained in the facility. If the attackers got past them, they could sabotage the missiles. Or worse, they could somehow find a way to launch them.
Vasily heard gunfire coming down the hall in front of him. It was gunfire the likes of which he had never heard before. A terrified trooper came running from the direction of the gunfire, before suddenly freezing where he stood. Around the corner came...a woman. Or, at least, it looked like one. She was clad in some kind of armor, form fitting, black as midnight, and made of strange materials. Her helmet covered her face completely, and had some kind of strange protrusion coming out the back of it.
The woman rounded the corner with her arm raised. Then, she waved it to the side, and in that exact moment the frozen trooper went flying to the side, slamming against the wall. The woman lazily waved her arm back and forth, once, twice. The poor trooper was crushed against the wall both times. She dropped her hand, and the trooper crumpled to the floor.
Vasily and his comrades stared at the impossible sight in horror, dumbstruck by the absurdity of it. The sergeant snapped out of it first.
"Shoot her, you idiots!"
The squad snapped out of it at once, and a hail of 7.62 x 39mm rounds was sent towards the nightmare standing before them. A purple screen appeared around the woman, the bullets bouncing harmlessly off of some kind of perimeter around her. In one motion, she sent a mass of purple light at the Soviets, and sidestepped back behind the corner. The ball of purple light was slower than a bullet, slow enough that Vasily could see it for a scant few moments as it sped down the hallway, turning slightly as it homed in on its apparent target. The unfortunate trooper was splattered against the back wall.
"Cease fire!" the sergeant shouted, not wanting his men to waste ammo on a target that wasn't even in sight now.
The troops waited for several heartbeats. Then, the woman returned, this time with two companions following her. The Soviet troops opened fire on the group, but the one in the middle raised her hands and summoned a veil of purple light to rest over the group. The bullets bounced off of the veil, and the other two women opened fire. Vasily had gotten back into cover to reload, and from there he saw all of his comrades gunned down by expertly-placed shots from the invaders.
Vasily abandoned any illusions of him emerging victorious and threw his rifle out over the cover. Ever so slowly, he stood up, hands raised in the air. It was a ridiculous notion. They weren't even human, they could very well have an entirely different gesture of surrender. Hell, they might not even have a concept of surrender at all. That idea nearly made Vasily freeze and crouch back down, but his desire to live overcame that. He slowly raised himself up to his full height, hands in the air.
Before he could get his bearings, he was suddenly unable to move. The sensation that washed over him was something he'd never felt before. It was as if the air itself had been wrapped around him and turned solid. His panicked cries were strangled down by his forcibly-closed mouth.
The right-most woman of the trio had her hand held in front of her, and approached him. The other two followed behind her. The woman approached him, getting right up close for a good look at his face. Vasily stared back (not that he had much choice in the matter), and noticed the pair of Indigo eyes that watched him behind the visor. The color was unnatural, and Vasily couldn't help but be fascinated, despite the horror of his situation. I am looking into the eyes of an alien.
His awe was cut short as she flicked her hand and he was flattened against the wall. He sucked in a ragged breath, the restriction placed around his body making it difficult. It was far from pleasant, but he knew that had the alien wanted to kill him it easily could have. She stood guard over his frozen body, while her two companions went into the room at the end of the hallway. Vasily remembered his mission then. The missiles! They must be after them.
The two aliens worked in tandem to rip the massive door off of its hinges, tossing the pieces aside. They disappeared into the room. When they reappeared, they were each…"carrying" several warheads, the weapons floating in bundles behind them. The pair approached their companion and set their burdens down. She turned to face them, and the trio began to gesticulate. Are they having a conversation? They must have radios in their helmets, it would explain why I can't hear them.
The alien guarding him got more animated, as if the conversation was getting heated. The one closest to her, who Vasily was sure was the very same alien he had seen first, crossed her arms and cocked her head at Vasily's guard. Her head moved slightly as she (presumably) spoke, and then she turned to leave, her point apparently having been made. The pair picked their burdens back up and made their way back down the hallway. The last alien hung her head slightly, then she drew her weapon and pointed it at Vasily. He was a quarter of the way through the Lord's prayer when she pulled the trigger, once, twice. The pain that lanced through him was relieved slightly by the release he felt as the restriction around him vanished. As he crumpled to the floor, his failing lungs sucking down a few last desperate breaths, he watched the alien turn to enter the room and pick up her own burden of missiles. As his vision began to fade and the cold overtook him, a thought struck him.
Had her hands been shaking?
----ooOOoo----
December 20th, 1979
Commander John "Jack" Miller ran a hand through his hair, sighing in frustration. The daily department heads meeting was well underway, and ideas of all kinds were thrown around. Yet, they still didn't have the faintest idea what the aliens were up to. That didn't mean people didn't have their theories.
Ted Green, Chief of the Air Wing, was sharing his. "They're the most powerful weapons in mankind's arsenal, what possible purpose could the aliens have in targeting them other than to eliminate our ability to retaliate?"
"As I keep telling you, none of our missiles-NATO or Soviet-could have come anywhere close to hitting one of them in orbit. They don't have to eliminate our capacity to retaliate, because we never had it to begin with. There has to be some other purpose, one we don't understand yet." Chief Scientist Edward Brown replied.
"Maybe they just want to study the missiles, or something. Perhaps is…curiosity to them?" The Chief Engineer Adrian Federov speculated.
Doctor Brown rolled his eyes. "I highly doubt that they crossed interstellar distances with an armada of warships just to study…curiosities."
The Intelligence Chief, Todd Sterling, added to that. "I agree. If even half of the reports I'm getting about these…things are accurate…"
Eric Wilson, the commander of the Xenonaut combat teams, gave a shudder at that. He had no idea how he was supposed to train men to fight…well, witches.
"...then they're not the sort of troops you send to secure a minor objective."
"Per-...Perhaps I should point out, gentlemen, that these beings are not human. We cannot guarantee that they operate under the same motives and logic that we do. To us, these soldiers seem like overkill. That does not mean they think the same way." The Quartermaster, Denisa Kvasnicka, interjected.
All heads turned to her in mild surprise, and Denisa looked like she was visibly restraining herself from hiding behind her clipboard at the stares. Jack gave her a small smile at that. Whether because she was just naturally shy, thought her "simple" job made her opinion unwelcome, or because she was almost always the only woman in the room (or all three), Denisa was always hesitant to give her opinion. Jack had tried his best to be as encouraging as possible (it would be very bad if the head of logistics was unwilling to voice their opinion), and he was glad to see it had paid off.
Doctor Brown gave the woman a smirk and a polite nod, the equivalent to a bow of respect from him. He and the Quartermaster had built up a professional rapport, and he seemed to enjoy debating her.
"Your point is fair, but such thoughts are still speculation, in the end. We have no reason to assume that deductive reasoning would not develop in the same way in another equally intelligent-or better-mind. If given the choice between assuming the enemy is rational and assuming the enemy is irrational, I think the former is the more reasonable choice."
Denisa gave a smirk of her own and shrugged.
"If we assume that our enemy is rational, then that begs the question…" Commander Jack said.
:..What the hell are they doing?"
----ooOOoo----
January 3rd, 1980
Throughout Earth, every government with the technology to observe space was in a frenzy.
The alien fleet was moving.
The Xenonauts were in a scramble of their own, their sub bases standing at full readiness, pilots sitting in their jets waiting for interception orders. Within the main base, buried deep beneath the Earth, the Commander of the Xenonauts was speaking.
"Do we know how many?" he asked.
"At least one hundred, at a minimum. Almost every one of the larger heat signatures, the ones we suspect to be proper warships." Doctor Brown replied.
"You said they weren't going to bomb us, so what the hell are they doing?" the Chief Green asked frustratedly.
"I said I believed they weren't going to bomb us. Why bother with reconnaissance, troop deployment, research missions, if you're just going to bomb it all into dust anyways? There has to be another reason, something we just haven't figured out yet."
"Commander, instruments reporting multiple nuclear detonations!" the terrified voice of one of the detection officers cried out.
Every heart in the room stopped beating for a moment, and then began again at an accelerated pace.
"No, not nukes. Almost certainly kinetics…" Doctor Brown mused.
The Commander ignored him. "Can the satellites confirm the targets? Scratch that, just send them to the display board as the reports come in."
The glowing map of the world turned on, and one by one locations began blinking red.
"My God. So damn many…" the Chief Green whispered.
The Commander narrowed his eyes as he watched. "Almost exclusively military targets. They're trying to eliminate our capacity to resist"
Doctor Brown nodded, but looked perplexed. "I don't understand why they wouldn't just do this immediately. It's not like those bases have any realistic chance of doing them harm, so why all the prepwork? And I still don't understand what they wanted with those-"
"Sir, nuclear launch detected!" the beleaguered detection officer shouted.
Chief Green swore loudly. Doctor Brown's eyebrows rose in genuine astonishment. The Commander's head snapped to the officer.
"Who's launching?"
"Everyone, sir. Soviets, Americans, British, French, Chinese."
"Display it." Blinking dots depicting the speculative locations of the missiles and bombers in the air appeared on the board.
"That's…significantly fewer than I thought. Most of the missiles are sub-based, judging by their trajectory. And with the airbases destroyed, I'd bet those bombers are just the ones that were already in the air. They really did a number on our arsenal, didn't they?" Chief Green said.
He grimaced. "Not that it'll matter much."
The Commander scrutinized the board. "There's no way they can hit them. Not in space. Those trajectories… idiots. They're not launching against the aliens, they're launching against each other!"
Chief Green gave another, even more colorful swear. Doctor Brown, who had been scrutinizing the map up to that point, suddenly shouted.
"Of course!"
All eyes turned to look at him, and the Doctor explained with the energy he always got when he finally solved a particularly annoying problem.
"The raids, they weren't for protecting themselves, they were for protecting us. They anticipated us nuking ourselves in a panic when they started their bombardment. Whatever their motives, they must involve us, humanity. It's not the planet they're interested in, it's the people on it."
The missiles and bombers were tracked by the incredibly advanced and extensive (to the point it would have been panic-inducing had the sponsoring governments known of it) hidden Xenonaut radar network. On this network, the weapons began to go dark, one by one.
"What the hell is happening? They were way too short of any meaningful target. No way those were the detonations." the Commander thought out loud.
"Maybe the powers that be all grew some brain cells and self-detonated." Chief Green snorted.
"Isn't it obvious? The enemy is shooting them down." Doctor Brown said.
Before the hour was over, every nuclear weapon in the sky had vanished.
"They must have been concerned about their ability to eliminate every warhead from play. Hence the raids on our land-based silos." The Doctor continued.
Chief Green turned grim. "Presumably they'll be broadcasting demands for our surrender soon. They'll probably get it, too. Every military in the world just got crippled. No way our sponsors will keep the fight going now."
The Commander's face took a hard expression. "We'll hold out here. They haven't hit any of our bases, which means that our efforts to conceal our main base and construction efforts have been successful. We'll be the knife up mankind's sleeve. We can't fight the aliens without support, but we can at least keep them honest. If they prove to be…ungracious rulers, at least we'll have something we can hit back with."
A light began blinking on the display board. Gasps and strangled cries went out throughout the command center at the sight. The blinking light was Washington D.C.
One by one, more lights blinked. Moscow. London. Paris. New Delhi. Tokyo. More and more lights appeared, some hitting lesser cities, others hitting vital infrastructure.
"Why? Why? Why go to all the trouble, if you're just going to bomb us into ruins anyway? If they're trying to get us to surrender, why are they destroying our seats of government. Who the hell do they expect to get a surrender order from if not them? It makes no sense." Doctor Brown was utterly distraught, looking like a man who was completely at a loss.
"Those sons of bitches! I'll make them pay, if I have to go up there and shoot them all down myself, I swear by God those bastards will-" Chief Green's tirade continued on.
The Commander stared at the board, rage burning like a furnace in his chest. That furnace instantly went ice cold when it abruptly stopped. The alien ships broke off, just as suddenly as they had engaged. The bombings had lasted for barely five minutes, but human civilization would spend decades recovering from it. Yet, perplexingly, it hadn't been completely destroyed.
"Why leave the job half-finished? What was the point of all that, if they're just going to up and leave without finishing us off?" the Commander's voice was deadly calm.
"It's…nonsensical. What could their objective possibly be? Even if they're complete lunatics sating their bloodthirst, why stop at all? It's absurd." Doctor Brown had recomposed himself, but his voice was still shaky.
Chief Green added nothing, he just stared at the board, his breathing still heavy.
The board changed to a crude display of the base computer's approximation of the situation in orbit. It gathered together all of the observation data and made a simple graphical illustration. A good third of the ships in orbit were accelerating away from the main fleet.
"Where the hell are they going?" Chief Green finally spoke.
The small detachment continued on its burn, reaching the moon in a distressingly short amount of time. Then, just as suddenly, they stopped accelerating. They drifted for a few more seconds, and then began decelerating, burning their way back to the main fleet.
"...I don't get it." the Commander said, the cold steel that had been in his voice had gone out, replaced with only a dejected confusion.
The alien fleet reformed, and then burned as one unit back toward Luna, parking in her orbit.
With that, the most devastating ( and perplexing) three hours in human history came to a close.
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Sorry for the painfully long delay. This story was delayed for the same reasons all my other stories were delayed: some major changes in my life meant that hobbies had to go on the back burner for a while. I wanted to update all of my more "developed" stories that people were more heavily invested in first, so this little black sheep of a tale was last in line. As with every other story I'm currently writing, I am fully committed to finishing this one, no matter what the delays may make it seem like. I already have a plan for how this story will end, so it's just a matter of getting there. And I will, eventually.
I can't express how much I appreciate everyone who has been kind enough to read, enjoy, and engage with both this story as well as my other work. As always, thank you all for reading, and please share your thoughts in the comments.