"Chief? Chief, wake up."
Colonel Benjamin Angel opened his eyes and looked up. Seeing as how the view above him seemed to be full of a shapely woman in uniform, he decided that it was time to get up as well.
"Who're you?" he mumbled as he reached around for his gun belt.
"My name is Lieutenant Nyota Uhura. I'll be taking care of you while you recover here." The woman stood up straight and gave him a stern look. "So recover fast. I've got more important things to do than play wet nurse to some psycho who can't handle cryosleep."
"Jeez, touchy, touchy…" Ben groaned. "Why such sharpness for such a dashing soldier?"
"Oh, you don't fool me, soldier boy," Uhura said coldly, "I know you XCOM types. You do what needs to be done, and half of you don't make it through that process with anything approaching sanity."
"Hell, girl," Ben laughed, "I've been approaching it for quite a while, but I suspect it's from the wrong direction! Now, why'd you wake me up? Is my squad up yet?"
"No the second," Uhura answered crisply, "it's a long story to the first. The short way of telling it is – Klingons."
Ben looked at her for a second, pausing from his routine armor check. He blinked. "… The hell's a Klingon?"
Uhura rolled her eyes as she moved to a nearby station. "God, I forgot how OLD you all are… We hadn't really encountered them yet. Look, long story short, everyone left Earth alone after the agreement – especially after we conquered Vulcan when they tried a second attack, and Ferenginar when they tried cheating on their deal. Everyone got the message: don't mess with Earth."
"Do they know about psionics yet?" Ben asked.
"Thank God, no," Uhura replied, "we've managed to catch all the gifted before they become too… obvious… and send them off to a section specifically tasked with training them. Which is good, because if this whole Klingon things shapes up like it's looking, we're going to need those soldiers, and soon."
"You still haven't told me what these Klingons are," Ben commented, "but since I assume you will one of these days I'll just laze around here instead."
Uhura scowled. "If your eyes go towards my tits one more time I swear I'm venting atmosphere. Now shut up and listen. Three years ago, the XCOM Fleet encountered a new, extremely hostile alien race. Their entire culture seems to be predicated on warfare. The greatest respect is always given to the warriors, yadda yadda yadda…"
Ben shrugged. "Seems all right to me."
Uhura grabbed his chin. "That's because I haven't finished yet. Two years ago, relations with the Klingons reached an all-time low, mostly because the idiot who initiated first contact with them was the epitome of a womanizing, undiplomatic, goddamn idiot of an XCOM operative."
"He couldn't have been that bad," Ben said, "after all, it's not like he just started shooting when he saw them."
There was a nasty moment of silence.
"… Oh," Ben finally said, "oh, WOW. That's … that's actually kind of spectacular. Whoever this guy was, he must've had balls of titanium."
Uhura pulled up a datapad. "On April 19th, 2151, the XSS Kelvin discovered a Klingon warbird inside of Earth Alliance space. The commodore of said vessel, one James Tiberius Kirk, immediately ordered his ship to open fire, because – and I quote – 'it looked spiky.'" She lowered the datapad.
"As you can well imagine, this was a bad beginning towards human/Klingon relations. For the last year and a half, they have been constantly preparing, readying themselves for war. Three days ago, they finished preparing and made a direct assault upon Earth."
For the first time, Uhura looked genuinely uncomfortable.
"We were… not ready. The fleet was elsewhere, ensuring safety on the Neutral Zone of the Romulan Empire – don't even get me started on them – and the Klingon fleet killed over twenty thousand military personnel and sixty five thousand civilians. Among the worst of the casualties was the Vulcan/human ambassador, who had been successfully working towards a new alliance with us, where Vulcan rights would be restored in part… in exchange for ancient Vulcan psionic technology."
It was not well known, but every member of Black Squad was psionically gifted. It was just that they did not wish it to be well known. Ben Angel was not the strongest of the psi-positives on the team, but he had enough skill to tell that Lieutenant Uhura had some special connection here.
"What was his name?" he asked softly.
"Spock," she said, "his name was Spock, yes, I loved him, and yes, I'm going to kill every last Klingon I can get my hands on for this."
Ben grinned. "Killing things, ma'am, that's what I'm good at. Just point me in the right direction…" he made a little finger gun, "… and pew! Gone."
"Here's the catch," Uhura said, "officially, XCOM is pursuing a less… vigorous response to this than is actually going to happen. We can't afford to alienate our other supposed allies right now after taking a hit on Earth like that. So here's what's going to happen: We're going to hit them right back in the mouth, but it has to look like it wasn't an official operation at all."
She reached behind her body, the curves providing a brief distraction for Angel, before turning back holding a sleek black datapad.
"I represent a division of XCOM designated Section 31. We do the jobs that XCOM considers to be too dirty for public viewing."
A broad smile spread across her face.
"And you know how much XCOM cares about public relations."
Ben snorted. "So what do we do here? Just run in, drop a red matter bomb, and run off?"
Uhura shook her head. "No, no, no. You think consuming their planet with a black hole is going to intimidate these guys? They're a warrior race. We're going to beat them at their game. You and Black Squad are going to sneak aboard the Mars Shipyards, and steal the new flagship of XCOM. Piloting that ship, you're going to head off to the Klingon homeworld, and once there, you're going to kill their leader. Then blow everything up with as many traditional explosives as you can find."
She tapped out a few commands into the datapad.
"When you're done and you've had your fun, you'll find that there will be several rather… non-traditional torpedoes aboard."
Ben raised his eyebrows. "What do they contain?"
Uhura kept an absolutely straight face as she responded. "Live Chryssalid specimens. Fertile."
Although she managed to keep her expression calm, she inwardly gave a little jump at the feral smile that appeared on Angel's face. For someone who seemed so laid back – or perhaps because of it – it was terribly disconcerting to see an expression of such absolute delight at the pain and suffering of others.
"Agreed," Ben said, and took the datapad eagerly from her hands. "But I want to make one thing clear. After we're done, and after those buggery bastards are done with their work… THEN we use the red matter bombs."
Uhura frowned. "The plan does not call for the annihilation of the Klingon homeworld itself," she said slowly, "only its people. Section 31 does not require…"
She flinched as Ben grabbed her shoulder and whispered in her ear.
"You ever seen a Chryssalid, Little Miss Lieutenant? No? Then kindly keep it to yourself. One thing XCOM taught me, is that more dakka is good dakka. All we need to do is make sure that there's a diplomatic meeting going on when we carry out the attack, and that there's plenty of cams on the ground."
Finally he released her, leaning back and giving his trademark devilish grin.
"Now, then. Let's discuss the bonus situation."
