PROLOGUE: THE XENONAUT PROJECT
The year was 1958 when humanity made first contact with extraterrestrial lifeforms. NATO forces in the Icelandic and North Atlantic regions picked up an unknown flight signal headed towards North America from the east, prompting a DEFCON 1 response in less than ten minutes. The object was headed towards an empty field in Ohio; its trajectory towards a single non-vital area likely being the only thing that kept America from launching its weapons at the USSR in preemptive retaliation. NORAD put all of its efforts into tracking precisely where the object had been launched from and what it was when the signal immediately jackknifed towards Iceland- a physical impossibility for a rocket.
Fighter jets were scrambled all over the eastern seaboard. Military command assumed the signal to be a soviet jet of some sort as both Ohio and Iceland were under NATO protection, and launched aircraft to investigate. A mixed-wing squadron from the Eglin Air Force Base approached the aircraft eighty miles off the coast of Iceland. The craft was shaped like a yellow bullet the size of a US Battleship and its speed easily rivaled the fastest jet planes of the era. Attempts were made to hail the craft with every method from radio frequencies to crude Morse code, but the craft remained unresponsive to all communications. When F-8s approached the craft from the sides, the unidentified craft opened fire.
Bursts of light incinerated aircraft before the pilots could even respond. Eyewitness reports of the lone surviving craft likened the damage done to the tail of the jet to that of an angle grinder; the top half of the tail was simply sliced clean off. Command stations scrambled for an answer, and it came in the form of nuclear warheads. Six Thor warheads were rearmed for air burst and launched over Iceland to disable the hostile craft. Nuclear explosions lit up the Atlantic sky, damaging the crafts navigation systems and forcing it to land relatively intact. It wasn't long before Eisenhower and Khrushchev were in direct communications over the unauthorized nuclear explosions so close to soviet territory. Initial scout craft reported the ship to be intact and President Eisenhower asked for Soviet assistance, mostly to prevent nuclear war by turning the operation into an act of cooperation, and admitted all details of the skirmish to the General Secretary.
The "Iceland Incident", led by Lt. General Thomas Palmerston and Commander Mikhail Kirov, was a joint NATO-Soviet operation involving the 95th Airborne and the 202nd Infantry with half a dozen Patton tanks supported by lead elements of the Soviet Fourth Army with a small collection of Soviet T-54s. The UFO had crash landed with heavy damage but the frame was entirely intact. The crash sight had charred the surrounding area black, burning the nearby trees and scorching the earth. NATO-Soviet forces encircled the UFO and approached, receiving orders from dual command stations to breach the UFO and capture any survivors. As ground forces approached the one kilometer mark they were engaged by hulking robotic monstrosities wielding massive weapons that shot beams of energy or concentrated bolts of superheated light. Tanks and men alike were devestated by the weapons fire and it took the combined ground forces a half hour of concentrated tank and heavy machinegun fire to down the man-shaped metal behemoths. Reports of surviving soldiers suggest the machines were able to survive direct hits from Patton shells, but concentrated T-54 fire combined with their robotic movement patterns and lack of taking cover brought the metal creatures down.
Surviving forces approached the UFO and were met with a second, much more coordinated, wave of defense. Creatures described as having pallid gray skin and bulbous black eyes emerged from the craft and opened fire; using defensive tactics, nearly impenetrable body-armor, and militaristic skill to hold off the advancing forces for hours of extended fighting. Soldiers who weren't sliced apart at the bone or had whole limbs seared off reportedly collapsed on the field in fits of paranoia and panic, some even turning their firearms on themselves in fits of what scientists assume to be the psychological pressure of coming face to face with a superior alien lifeform. The gray-skinned aliens displayed cunning and tactics equal and possibly superior to those of their human counterparts, but were eventually forced back into the UFO vessel to avoid combined mortar and tank fire on their positions.
It was at this point that humanity came face to face with its second form of extraterrestrial life. NATO-Soviet forces were ambushed by a second type of alien life as they approached the craft. The creatures, reportedly reptillian and taller and broader than even the strongest soviet soldier, used close-quarters tactics and ambush maneuvers; destroying the remaining Tanks and devastating squads of personnel. Reports by survivors pulled away from the fighting relay that the beasts would take to playing dead; being struck by what appeared to be a lethal wound and laying dead on the ground for a few moments before rising back up relatively unharmed and continuing to fight. Their armored scales withstood most forms of conventional weaponry and they fought with brutal savagery, some soldiers were even reportedly torn apart by one of the creatures bare hands after its strange alien weapon ran out of ammunition.
The fighting had begun in the morning and dragged on til the afternoon. The reptilian and humanoid aliens were pushed back into their craft and a small group of combined NATO-Soviet soldiers assaulted the craft from within. No one knows what happened when soldiers breached the UFO- its power core detonated and vaporized human and alien forces alike for a ten kilometer radius. Only the command staff and those wounded in the fight and dragged away from the fighting survived humanities first contact with the aliens, but the United States and Soviet Russia vowed that they would be ready for the next. The incident was hushed up; official records showed that the Soviets had attempted to invade Iceland and were stopped by Nuclear Weapons, practically ending the Cold War on the spot and entering a new era of Soviet-American cooperation.
The Xenonaut Project was created and implemented within months. Hundreds of the best troops from around the world were spread around dozens of underground bunkers with one mission; protect the world from the alien threat. Aircraft were refitted with materials proven resistant to alien weaponry, soldiers were drilled night and day in anti-alien combat tactics, the most powerful radar technology was employed to track and find any UFOs that might enter the Earths atmosphere. The Xenonaut Project had been given the best equipment, the highest funding, the greatest soldiers, and every nation of the world pledged their full support to fight the inevitable alien menace, granting the secret defense force access to their airspace and territory with no questions asked.
For twenty years there was no alien contact.
With no unified threat to keep the disparate nations together, the Xenonaut Project was dismantled bit by bit over the course of two decades. First the Soviet and American branches were terminated, then bunker after bunker were shut down to allocate money elsewhere. All but token funding was withdrawn from the project. It was only through shrewd negotiations and more than a bit of clever diplomacy that the Xenonauts were able to retain cutting edge Soviet and American technology in small quantities. The project was entirely forgotten; nothing more than a laughing stock reduced to a name on government funding charts and the butt of many jokes between elected officials.
It was August 1st 1979 before humanity re-encountered the aliens. With the Space Race long over and both Star Trek and Star Wars fresh in cultural memory the appearance of dozens of unidentified saucer spacecraft enthralled the world with hopes of peaceful contact and cooperation. Once the combined airforces of the world began being shot down en masse and blatant alien abductions began taking place, the world panicked. No country could defend their airspace; state of the art F-16 jets were torn apart like tissue paper and the craft shot down nuclear launches with ease. The earth seemed doomed until an aircraft with an unaffiliated call-sign successfully shot down a UFO over the Red Sea. Governments of the world began being contacted by long forgotten phone lines with a simple declaration and request. The Xenonaut Project claimed responsibility for the destruction of the craft and asked for operational authority in all airspaces and nations, monthly funding, and access to the latest in military technology in exchange for one thing; repelling the alien menace from earth.
The Xenonaut Project was officially reinstated on September 1st 1979 with grudging support from all major nations of the world. Only a single active bunker in Saudi Arabia remains active after their mass budget cut, currently staffed by a handful of American researchers, Soviet engineers, three functioning aircraft and less than a dozen trained soldiers from all over the world. Most governments believe they can refit their military to fight off the alien menace and are only willing to grant the Xenonauts support for as long as they delay the aliens, others are supporting the now publicly revealed group solely as a means to keep their populace calm, but no nation can deny the simple truth; the world is being invaded and only the Xenonauts have successfully struck back.
It's now up to the hard working men and women of the Xenonauts to fight back against the alien menace, learn why they've come to earth and what they hope to accomplish, and drive the invasion back or die trying. They're understaffed, underfunded, and hopelessly outnumbered, but they don't plan on letting the Earth be conquered without a fight. They are the Xenonauts.
Next time: Sandtrap
Authors Note:
This is a story dictating the events of The Xenonaut Project. This story will be written off of an evolving save file of a moderately-modded version of the game 'Xenonauts' by Goldhawk Interactive. The way this works is that I'll be playing the save file a mission or so ahead of the story and transcribing the events as they happen. Even I won't know if the Xenonauts are ultimately doomed to failure or whether they'll gloriously succeed in thwarting the alien menace, and each individual soldier will have their own fate decided by the whims of the games AI and my own skills or incompetence as a commander.
For those curious I'm using the following mods to enhance the storytelling potential of the game: Khall's More Portraits, Skitso's Ultimate Megamix Map Pack 2000, kabill's Armoured Assault Vehicle Rebalance, kabill's Hold the Line Psionics and Morale mod, Skitso's Sleek AI Turn mod, Jsleezy's Real Armors mod, The Lore+ project, and of course the Xenonauts Community Edition mod. I have a few other 'quality of life' mods such as a rank changer and a mod that allows extraction from the highest level troop transport. I'm endeavoring to keep the game as close to the original as possible while fixing a few of the issues I had with it; windows being unjumpable, vehicles not getting machineguns, psionics being undefendable, and other such issues.
To those of you who play Xenonauts you'll likely see a few differences pop up in my story, but the main changes are just to where I'll be fighting the aliens, how my soldiers will be reacting to morale and psionic attacks, and minor differences in vehicle combat and small tweaks made by the community edition mod. I highly encourage you to browse the Goldhawk Interactive forums for all your game modification needs.
Feedback is highly welcome as this is my first attempt at such a story.