Disclaimer: FF:TSW characters belong to Square. X-COM is property of Microprose/Infogrames.

Author's Note: Things start to take a little twist…yes I know, I'm evil. Bwahahaha!

Turncoat

Mouth grimly set, Harper ducked through the open door and into the faint ruddy light that lay beyond it. She froze when her peripheral vision spotted a dark lump on the floor to her right and she approached it warily, then prodded it with a grunt.

"Got a dead gray here, guys. Looks like he wasn't wearing his seatbelt," she chuckled, straightening up. "Area is secure." She cracked open her helmet, slung her rifle over her shoulder on its strap and stepped aside as the others entered. The space wasn't too tight…there was enough room for all six humans to fit without jostling. To complicate matters, though, the floor lay at an angle due to the ship's final resting position and everyone had to compensate for this with an awkward stance.

Neil's gray eyes peered out of his open helmet. Then they went wide and he clapped a hand across his nose. "Jesus! What's that stink?"

His helmet open as well, Ryan wrinkled his nose as he got a whiff. "Huh! You can say that again…it smells like rotten meat."

"Or Neil's laundry," Jane remarked as she looked around. Banks of unfamiliar instruments lined the walls of the circular cabin. "So…this is what a UFO looks like," she murmured. The low ceiling was slightly domed but had none of those weird tendrils were in sight for a change. It was hard to discern where the overall illumination was coming from…everything seemed to be lit indirectly and the lack of distinct shadows was unsettling. Just barely discernible, on the edge of hearing, was a rhythmic sound; where it originated from she couldn't tell. She followed Ryan as he approached a pair of seats that had disturbingly inhuman contours, and these sat behind a console whose angled metallic-gray top was covered with cryptic symbols and divided by faintly glowing lines. Stationed against the far left and right walls were two more seats placed before more odd-looking consoles. "Neil, don't touch anything!" Ryan warned.

"I wasn't gonna." But the tech sidled away from the equipment just the same, joining the others. "Pilot and co-pilot positions? How do they fly this thing?"

Hughes was busy connecting his hacking hardware to the alien computer, and the compact device began scanning and downloading gigabytes of raw data. "The grays and other psionically-gifted aliens control their ships via telepathy, mentally synchronizing with their flight systems. The response times are almost instantaneous. It's much more efficient than wrestling with a joystick."

"Flyboy here wrestles with his joystick every night," Harper commented snidely, and even Jane was caught off-guard by the remark.

"Shut up, you sawed-off little piece of­–" Atwood bristled.

Hughes spoke without looking at either one of them. "Stow it, you two." But the order contained a note of amusement.

"I wonder what the science lab would think of all this?" Jane wondered aloud–she assumed that Ryan was visually recording everything (and a glance told her that this was so). She looked over at the dead gray and grimaced. Yech. Who would be the lucky one to drag that thing out of here? Maybe if she twisted Neil's arm a bit. Her scheming was abruptly interrupted by an exclamation from Hughes.

"Yes!"

Everyone looked up. Martin was scrutinizing the floor, appearing to be looking for something, and after another moment found a handgrip of some sort near the far wall. It was sticking up from a faint oval. He turned, eyes gleaming. "I got Elerium readings, right beneath us! I bet more than anything that this hatch leads down to the power core. Only one way to find out." He knelt, wrapped his fingers around the handle and pulled. The cover resisted for the briefest moment before pivoting up and over, revealing steps set into a cylindrical wall. It was not quite dark down there…there was a faint glow, pulsing in time with that omniscient background thrum.

"Atwood, I'll need a hand with the collection. Harper, give me your containers and have the Deep Eyes help you salvage any armament, hardware, whatever you can carry out of here."

"Wouldn't it be better just to take this whole ship back?"

Jane was flabbergasted. Of all the times for a wisecrack! "What kind of harebrained idea is that?" She rapped her knuckles on his forehead. "Hello, earth to Neil…in case you haven't noticed, this is a wreck! How's it supposed to get airborne?"

Her comment didn't faze him. "C'mon, we can call the base and request one of those big heavy-lifter transports."

"But we can't reach them with our suit radios, and­–"

"I know that. But once we remove that Elerium stuff, the UFO's main power should be offline, ergo the interference it's causing will stop, then we can re-establish long-range communications without having to walk back to use our ships' systems. It ain't exactly rocket science, ya' know." He grinned at her, appearing quite pleased with himself.

The three X-COM squad members looked at each other, then at the tech. Hughes raised a finger like a schoolteacher about to make a point. "By God, I like this guy. Good thinking, corporal. In the meantime, guys, see what you can still carry with you. And don't forget sleepyhead over there, either," he said, pointing at the alien corpse. He placed a cautious foot on the first rung, testing it before descending into the ship's lower section, gun at the ready. Tyler was close behind with the extra Elerium containers swinging from his waist. As they disappeared the others began poking around for something to take.

Helmet on the floor beside her, Eri squatted beside the open hole and armed sweat off her brow. The air didn't smell quite as bad anymore…she guessed she was getting used to it. The humidity plastered her hair to her forehead and the nape of her heck. "You guys are too quiet! Are you playing grab-ass down there, or what?" she hollered.

After a moment Tyler's voice floated back up. "You can always join us if you want."

She grinned, but it faltered when she saw the expression on Ryan's face. "What's up sergeant?"

Ryan was standing by one of the flight seats, drumming his fingers the back of it. Lips pursed and eyes narrowed in concentration, he presented the appearance of a man who was trying to figure something out, but just couldn't put his finger on it.Then he blinked as if emerging from a dream and gave a little apologetic smile. "Guess I zoned out for a second, eh?"

"He's probably daydreaming about Lita again..."

"Quiet, Neil!" Jane snapped, scrounging for anything she could easily carry from the wrecked control cabin.

Unfazed, he swaggered over and threw an arm around her shoulders. "Well, now…what's with the black expression, sunshine?"

"I'm trying to decide if it's you or this ship that's giving me nausea." She turned to Ryan. "Can we get out of here now?" she implored. "This place is giving me the creeps."

Down below, Martin and Tyler had entered the UFO's engine room, a hemispherical chamber about ten meters across. A soft sulfur-yellow glow shone from seams between the dark gray walls and floor, and in the center of the room sat the dome-shaped power core. A translucent column as thick as a man's waist rose from its top, joining with the low convex ceiling and connecting with countless energy waveguides that radiated outward like spokes, their far ends piercing the walls. The rhythmic pulsation was much louder down here, and every time it occurred, an amber wave swept up through the central column and dissipated away through the ceiling channels. Martin checked his readouts, opening his helmet and swiping some of his dark blonde hair away from his face as his hazel eyes searched for some sort of access panel. He slowly walked around it and finally noticed first one faint line that met another at a right angle, then another. He crouched and traced the rectangular shape of a loading port in the side of the reactor.

"Her Nibs will be pleased. Tyler, prep those containers, and let's get cracking."

Neil shifted the load of alien hardware in his arms to a more comfortable position. Inwardly he breathed a sigh of relief; at least the sarge hadn't ordered him to carry that body; the alien was now draped over one of Ryan's broad shoulders. "That oughta' do it. You guys ready?"

"I'll feel better once we're outside. Get your butt in gear." Cradling some of her alien loot, Jane nudged him towards the open doorway with Ryan close behind her. Eri was last, toting a pair of plasma rifles she had discovered in a weapons locker and wondering just what in God's name Neil possibly saw in that grouchy woman.

The trek back seemed shorter. The afternoon sun streamed through the exit, and the shadows outside had lengthened a little. Neil emerged first, setting his plunder on the ground and taking a moment to stretch. He inhaled deeply. "Much better!"

"Yeah, it's an improvement alright," Ryan agreed, his helmet open as well. He knelt and carefully laid the dead sectoid on the ground. But something was still bugging him. He stood and looked around again …nothing out of place here. Hands on hips, his fingers drummed out a broken rhythm, just like they did inside the ship, only out here he wasn't standing by one of those funky seats–

Seats.

Seats.

There were four seats inside…but three aliens accounted for! There was the sniper, the second gray that Harper wasted (it still lying where she had shot it), and the third one that he had brought out himself. Could that possibly mean…? Pulse quickening, Ryan switched to an open channel. "Hughes! These UFO's…are they usually fully crewed?"

"Almost always, sergeant? Why?"

"Because there may be another one that we somehow missed. We're not out of the woods yet." He thumbed the safety off his laser rifle and squinted at the landscape. "Be on alert, people. Neil?"

He was off to the side and in front of the others. "Uh, negatory on that, sarge."

Standing behind them, near the open hatch, Harper scanned the area as well. This sucks, she thought to herself. Why is it that recovery operations never go by the book? She noted that the corporal had her rifle up and ready, standing in her "Jane-knows-best" pose. Well, since she did kind of detect the sniper, maybe she already sensed this one. That would make the job much easier.

"Jane?" Ryan approached her, still looking around cautiously. "Anything ye–"

His words were cut off as the heavy stock of her rifle jerked backwards and slammed into his chest plate. The armored plastron took the brunt of the blow, but Jane was quick and had the advantage of surprise. Before he could recover from his astonishment, she pivoted and swung the gun around in an arc. The barrel caught him in the jaw, sending his unfastened helmet flying and he toppled, crashing to the ground amid a cloud of dust. As the bells in his head stopping ringing, he could hear Neil's exclamation and Eri's explosive string of expletives. Utter disbelief began to edge over into simmering anger and he started to get up, but stopped as the wide bore of a heavy laser rifle was pressed, none too nicely, against his forehead. Moving only his eyes, he looked up at Jane, who stood over him. The low sun illuminated a face that was as lifeless as a mannequin's, and eyes that were no longer human.

They were black, completely and utterly black.

The racket over the com system made Atwood jump, but Hughes, carefully extracting the priceless alien mineral from the off-line reactor core, did not so much as twitch. "What's going on up there? Harper, report!"

"Corporal Proudfoot is under alien control and she has the sergeant at gunpoint. There's still a gray at large–"

He capped of the a cylinder. "Shit!"

"And I'm gonna' find him!" She signed off without waiting for a reply, leaving him gritting his teeth. Tyler bent and scooped his weapon off the floor. "I'm heading up."

"Negative. Stay here."

He gaped, dumbfounded. "What? You can't be serious! They need assistance, and there's a life at risk–"

"I'm aware of that, but there's little you could do by the time you reached them. Eri knows what's at stake...she may be a pain in the ass but she's no dummy. Trust her. Besides, I need you here. The quicker we can finish this operation the better." Hesitation and uncertainty played across the younger man's face before he knelt back down and fixed Hughes with an flat gaze. "I hope you're right, man," he said grimly. "I really do…"