January 29, 2035

12:53 Central European Time

Avenger, French Countryside

"Yes, Shen, as soon as we have more information about the Thing, you'll be the first to know," Bradford said irritably as he limped around Mission Control trying not to let that spill over to the nearby crew. He was well aware that this energy thing was important to getting the Avenger up and running properly and trying to get the damn located. However Shen's daily checks on the status were getting really old.

"That's not why I'm calling you, Central. I wanted to give you a head's up that the Commander knows about it."

He stopped dead. "The Commander already talked with you?"

"Yeah and she saw Tygan before me."

The lighting of Mission Control turned red as alarms went off and the AI oh so helpfully yelled out, "Attention! Unauthorized presence detected!"

Shen wisely disconnected without saying a word. The staff fell silent at the alarm. Some putting hands on sidearms, but not quite drawing their weapons.

It was a relief to see that the "intruder" was the Commander standing in the doorway and held up one hand, "Commander. Give me a second.'

Vanessa didn't move from where she was, watching him thoughtfully.

Central stumped forward and said, "Execute Echelon Protocol."

One of the scanners focused on Vanessa then the AI spoke, "Attention: Senior Command Exchange Confirmed."

The lighting returned to normal leaving the Commander blinking for a moment and the staff went back to their duties. Which gave him a moment to study the woman before him and felt a moment of guilt. She looked like she'd been dragged face first through hell with her pallor and red rimmed eyes. And of course he'd been the one doing the dragging. Close to literally when he got her out of that tube the aliens had been keeping her in.

She gave him one of those quiet smiles that had always dazzled him as she began to slowly enter the room. "Thank you, Central."

"I was hoping for something a bit more ceremonious, but it seems that current circumstances didn't allow for that." Bradford really didn't like how carefully she was walking, or the way her breathing seemed labored. It seemed that stubbornness he remembered all too well was still there.

The smile broadened a bit, though she kept her voice down where he could only hear her when she asked, "When do they ever? This was actually better than the first time I was introduced to XCOM."

"You do have a point there." He raised his voice to his normal level as he said, "Welcome to this Mission Control, Commander."

Bradford wondered what she was thinking as those dark grey eyes took in the battered appearance of the walls and floor, the way the central hologram of the Earth flickered, the hodgepodge of tech used to set up the workstations. It was a far cry from the cutting edge technology they had in the first one even if the current tech they had was still superior.

One of the men at the at the main screen spoke up, "Sir, we've gotten a report from one of the resistance cells. They've located that power converter Chief Engineer Shen was looking for. They're engaging with the guards now."

Vanessa commented with a suspicious glint in her eyes. "I'm going to assume you have a squad prepped."

It felt strange to have a corner of his mouth twitch into a smile. When was the last time he had reason to do so? "Of course, Commander."

"Then it's time to send them off and scrounge up a headset for me from somewhere."

After sending the orders for Firebrand to lift off with Menace 1-5, he quietly cupped a hand under one of her elbows to offer her some support under the guise of showing her where to take a seat to monitor the feeds that would be coming in. She looked like she was about to pass out. Tygan would kill him if she gave herself a concussion from cracking her head open if she fell on something.

He didn't want to think about the blow to morale that would cause. He already saw a change of attitude in the staff in the room. Not only had they started moving a bit more briskly, there was just a bit more pride in the way they held themselves.

Bradford had to privately admit that he didn't want to lose Vanessa now that he had her back.

Handing her an earpiece that was similar to the old Bluetooth designs for smartphones she would have been used to, he said, "It'll take a couple of hours for Firebrand to get to the location. Maybe you should rest for a bit? I can make sure you're back here in time for the Op."

The Commander settled the small earpiece into place, made sure that it was working before muting it. "Quite sure. The moment I hit my bed I'm likely to sleep for a day and nothing will wake me up."

Given how busy she'd been in the past few hours, he wasn't surprised that she was tired. He also knew that it'd be a bad idea to try to press her on taking a break.

She continued. "If this isn't an outrageous request I could use a steady supply of coffee to keep me going instead."

Bradford snorted. He could feel that smile coming back again. "You mean the coffee flavored milk and sugar that you drink."

"Of course," she replied blandly, the twinkle in her eyes giving her away. "It's the only proper way of drinking coffee. Unlike how you drink yours black as sin."

"Hey, as my dad always said, it puts hair on your chest."

She grinned. "I'm fairly sure I don't need that."

He coughed a little. "Probably not. While you'll have to deal with the powdered creamer, we're not in such bad shape that we have to worry about restricting our coffee. Or sugar for that matter."

She smiled again, but this time, it was devoid of any humor.

He tilted his head to the side. "What's wrong?"

That's when he saw the white knuckled clasp she had her hands in. She glanced away and asked in a whisper he could barely hear. "Are you sure you can trust me with this?"

He gritted his teeth for a moment so he wouldn't yell when he finally asked, "What the hell? I thought we went over this earlier?"

"No one seems to know what the aliens have done to me. How can you be sure that they didn't leave something floating around in my subconscious?"

Damn, he'd forgotten how paranoid she could be. Though she was perfectly justified in this case. "We do have ways of checking for their manipulation so a repeat of the raid on HQ won't happen again."

Vanessa just stared at the screen before her with her jaw clenched against whatever it was she was going to say. He leaned near her. "I might be a broken, old man compared to the man you knew, but you can still talk to me."

She cast her gaze about them. "This isn't the best time or place for a conversation like this."

The Commander took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "We're going to need to get our game faces on for the op and you only have two hours to get me caught up to date on how to actually use your current tech." She hesitated, then grimly said, "Keep an eye on me, just in case. Especially since it seems the guard you had on me isn't in here."

Sighing, he ran a hand over his hair as he reminded himself for what seemed like the thousandth time that day that she hadn't had really much time to process what happened to her. How could he convince her that she was still the person he remembered? Time of course. The one thing they probably didn't have enough of. "All right, if it makes you feel better, I'll make sure that you're kept under observation."

She closed her eyes and let her breath out slowly. When she reopened them she softly said, "Thank you. That's a greater relief than you know."

Bradford shrugged a little uncomfortably, not sure what to say. Vanessa looked away for a moment, then back. "I wanted to thank you for the protein shakes that were left for me in my quarters. I don't think I would've been able to get around like I did without them. Even if they have a rather unfortunate taste."

Protein shakes? What? Oh. Those. Oh for fuck's sake. Who was the moron who gave those to the Commander of all people? He rubbed the back of his head. "I'd say you're welcome, but they were supposed to be put into the emergency stores because of how they taste. We're not in such dire straits when it comes to keeping our people fed that we have to give them those."

"Oh. Well. I'm glad they were there anyway."

He just shook his head. Only Vanessa would see something like that in a positive manner. Instead of addressing the blasted shakes, he said, "You asked about being shown the systems and I sidetracked you."

When she pulled out the tablet that had been left for her use and she started to take notes on it, he wondered just how much anyone actually needed to teach her. It turned out to be a bit more than he'd expected, but there'd been more changes over the years than he'd realized. Still, most of the time until Firebrand arrived at its destination was spent introducing her to the support staff than having to teach her how to use a computer.

By the time Firebrand approached the drop zone, the Commander was on her feet with a large insulated travel mug with her vile concoction and regarding the terminal with the light of battle in her eyes. She took in what could be picked up of the area in one quick glance. The convoy with the Thing was stopped on what appeared to be a muddy backwoods road covered in snow. In fact there were still large fluffy flakes of the stuff still coasting to the ground.

He eyed one of the side monitors worriedly. It looked like the Thing had been damaged when the Resistance attacked the convoy to halt it in its tracks. Central had the information routed to Shen to see if she had some idea of how to stabilize it remotely.

When he turned his attention back, he saw she was already starting to direct the squad.

"Before you advance any further Menace 1-5, can you tell how fresh those tracks are?" the Commander asked.

There was an eloquent silence from the other end. Bradford tried not to wince, he was used to working with the barely half-trained troops XCOM got these days. These weren't the highly trained and experienced soldiers that she'd be used to. Vanessa just rolled her shoulders slightly. If she were upset, her voice didn't give any hint of it. "Are the tracks mushy or half frozen? Fully frozen? Half filled with snow?"

"Still mushy, ma'am," came Jane "Shieldmaiden's" response. "The falling snow looks like it's melting into the tracks."

"All right, keep an eye on those tracks then. Looks like there's a patrol that comes down that way and they aren't taking any pains to hide their presence."

In her calm, patient way, the Commander had them carefully leapfrog from cover to cover to hide their presence for as long as possible while making sure they made good time to get there before their objective blew up. He kept quiet, except for when new intel came up from the sensors they had in the area.

He hoped the squad would be able to handle her style. She was a much more hands on person when it came to directing them than he was. She wasn't a micromanager by any stretch of the imagination, but she did a lot more than just mere suggestions.

The only time she paused in her instructions was when she saw the sectoid. Like many of the other modern day aliens, this species had human DNA mixed into it so no longer looked like what she knew. Another thing to add to list of stuff he had to go over with her.

Shieldmaiden suddenly clutched her head with one hand and snarled, "Get the fuck out of my head!"

Vanessa's eyes widened when saw it step into view to hiss at the squad threatening it.

Bradford couldn't identify which member of the squad said in an almost panicky voice, "Shit! A sectoid! It's trying to grab Shield!"

Even though she still had a slightly bug eyed look, her voice remained unruffled. "Easy, trooper. Bullets will kill them like anything else. Shieldmaiden is holding fast."

It raised a fist sending a flood of psionic energy into one of the nearby ADVENT trooper corpses. With an eerie groan the thing rose to its feet.

Central shook his head. "Christ, they can't even leave the dead alone."

The Commander didn't say anything, just looked grim as she quietly directed one of the nearby troopers to stabilize the Thing with the fix Shen had uploaded to their tablets, while having the remaining three position themselves to catch the sectoid in their crossfire. It went down in a spray of amber colored ichor as Shen's fix kicked in and the energy readings went to what he'd been told were normal.

Thankfully the dead went back to that condition. Vanessa just nodded slightly to herself.

"Commander, Central," one of the staff spoke up, "the sensors aren't picking up any other hostiles in the AO."

"Excellent work, everyone." She tapped the headpiece to turn it off before removing it and rubbing her ear. "They're all yours from here, Central."

It felt good to fall back into those old habits of wrapping up an op. Especially one that was so successful.

Wanting everyone to hear the report, he transferred the line to the comms in the main terminal. A woman's voice crackled in the air. "Avenger, this is Firebrand. The package is on board with the squad. There are no casualties. Repeat, there are no casualties. We're on our way back to base. ETA 1 hour 53 minutes."

A quiet cheer broke out in the room with applause. The intercom wasn't needed to hear Shen's gleeful whoop in the distance.

Tygan was much more sedate, but still encouraging, in his words. "Great work, Commander. This is an auspicious beginning."

As Bradford had half expected, she'd quietly accepted the congratulations, but had let the majority focus on him since the soldiers weren't there to receive it. She'd never been comfortable taking praise for what she considered to be so routine. Scratch that. Vanessa had a hard time accepting any kind of praise for the success of any mission. She always insisted that all of the recognition go to the soldiers who did the actual work.

It may have been a small operation, but it was the first one in years that had gone like clockwork. No matter what he did, it always seemed like something would go disastrously wrong. The op usually succeeded, but at a terrible cost. It always seemed that the Commander had a clear eyed vision of just what to do. Bradford had always wondered how she'd been able to keep her composure the way she did. He supposed her childhood probably contributed to that.

That's when he noticed Vanessa slumped in her chair. At first he thought she'd fallen asleep, which she clearly needed, until she tilted her head and he could see she was frowning at something.

When he got closer, Bradford saw a still picture of the sectoid on her tablet. "What's wrong, Commander?"

"They called this a sectoid. Only it's not a meter high humanoid with weird burnt orange eyes and no mouth. It's still pink and hairless." Her voice took on a tone of disgusted fascination. "But it's like they fed it steroids then replaced its head with a human skull complete with creepy grin then slapped eyeballs into the sockets and covered the whole thing with skin."

Bradford rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand so he wouldn't laugh. He thought she was joking, but it was a little hard to tell. "Yeah, they're a bit different from what you dealt with. Over the last couple of decades the aliens have been mixing in human DNA into their forces."

For a moment her face seemed to blanch of all blood, but then she blew out her breath and her color returned to normal. Almost normal. She was still too pale.

"Hm, so maybe more like human growth hormones then plain steroids. In that case, they clearly didn't pay attention to how that can go horribly wrong."

A quiet chuckle escaped him. The way her humor manifested itself in comments like that were one of the things he'd missed most. Behind him the staff went quiet causing her to peer around him into the room. "Yes, you can freely spread word about my commentary on the sectoid. I really do have a lot to catch up on."

Bradford almost laughed again at the expressions on their faces before the techs went back to work. He could almost hear the gossip going into high gear. They hadn't expected her humor. He should have remembered it, it had always been a part of her charm.

She turned back to him with a sly grin, but she kept voice down so only he could hear her. "Damn, Bradford, you turned into a hard nut to crack."

He shrugged a little. "There hasn't been a lot to laugh about."

Vanessa looked away. "I'm sorry, that was thoughtless."

Bradford took the chance to lightly place his hand on her shoulder. This XCOM may not be the military, but he still kept a certain amount of decorum and he didn't want to give anyone the wrong impression. Yet, in this case they both needed the reassurance of friendly contact. "Don't be. We both have a lot to learn."

One pale hand came up to touch the back of his. She didn't say anything, but at that moment nothing needed to be said.