"We're at silent running now, Ed," Alec Freeman said.

Ed Straker nodded back but he didn't turn his head even as he held the control yokes of the wheel. "Good," he told his co-pilot. "We'd better be careful, though with the Russians being out there. Keep watch on the radar."

"Will do."

Henderson frowned. "There's been a lot of strange activity lately from our radar scans; intelligence here is sketchy, right?"

"Yeah, it is. And it is worrying since no information has been coming through to us, and nobody is sure what's going on. In the past three weeks, we have lost contact with the Ukrainians we've been speaking to and delivering weapons and intel, but hopefully, after we've made the drop we'll find out more. But the fact that after the radar blips, nothing else comes out of that region is worrying in itself. That's why we're here, Jimmy," Straker's eyes darted across to study Henderson, who nodded back in turn. But the thoughtfulness on his face was still there even if Straker couldn't see it. He knew Henderson well enough to know that he had more to say.

"And we're giving them our intel in itself, but what bothers me is that when the radar picks up something in the areas that just go blank and disappear," Henderson's voice was gloomy, "and yet there's little from the satellites."

Straker sighed. "No, you're right. There's something unusual about it all. I was there when the last blip was seen. For the last three months during this stage of the war in Ukraine, those radar blips have been picked up followed by weird flares on the radar screen. And in the aftermath, very little information comes out of those places. But something tells me the Ukrainians know nothing about it."

"What makes you say that?" Alec asked, overhearing the conversation and getting into it.

Straker was beginning to get bored with the whole conversation and he wanted to leave to his own thoughts as they travelled deeper into Ukraine's air space and he kept watch for any air activity. "Just a hunch I can't explain, yet. Anyway, when we get to our destination, we should find some answers," he said.

"We have contacts!" Paul Foster's shout echoed through the plane. "They are all around us."

Everyone in the cockpit was stunned by the sudden exclamation.

"What?" Alec snapped.

Henderson was just as confused about the contacts' sudden appearance as Alec was. "Where did they come from?"

"I don't know. They just appeared out of nowhere. There was no warning when they appeared. They're coming closer to us. The speed is fantastic; it's exceeding the highest speeds we know," Foster said.

Straker caught a number of sharp glints of light in the corner of his eyes. "I've got a visual. Oh my god!"

Startled by the unexpected cry of surprise from his old friend and colleague because it was out of character, Henderson looked in the direction of the glints of light, and he stood up from his seat and looked in the same direction as Straker, although it soon became clear it was not necessary since more glints of light like sparkling diamonds were the in the sky. It took a moment before Henderson realised what they were, but when he soon worked out what they were, Henderson muttered a few choice epithets under his breath.

"God," Henderson breathed when he saw the lights, barely noticing Foster and Freeman crowding around him and seeing what he was seeing. His mind was having trouble working out what he was seeing. He wondered if he was asleep or having a weird dream as nothing made any sense right about now, but he knew this was no dream. This was real, this was really happening.

"Son of a bitch, they exist," Foster breathed. Nobody said anything to the younger man about his use of language since they felt the same way, they were too astonished to say anything else. "They exist."

Flying in front of them were a number of flying saucers, UFOs.

They were close enough for Henderson and the small group to look out through the cockpit windows. From the distance they were, the men in the cockpit could barely make out any of the flying saucer's true features, but they could see that the mid section was rotating at extremely high speed, giving them the idea it was some kind of engine. But the flying saucers fired beams of light which stopped the USAF personnel in the cockpit from taking a closer look at the saucer and taking notes of its features.

Straker snapped out of his amazement to take evasive action…and just in time, as one of the beams came dangerously close to the plane's fuselage but it clipped one of the wings. There was a terrifyingly powerful explosion that severely damaged the plane, making every instrument in the cockpit go haywire before sending the plane down in a corkscrew down to the ground below. It was chaos and the US air force personnel on the plane were fighting to regain their sense of control over the plane, but it was fruitless; as he struggled with the control yokes, although he didn't know what good it was going to do since the plane was doomed, Straker swung his head around to glance out of the cockpit window to see just how bad the damage was and he gasped in horror as he saw the damage for himself.

Straker had assumed the blow had just slashed into the wing, but the reality was different. The damage was much worse. The laser beam had struck the starboard wing, destroying half of the structure. The twin-jet engines on the starboard wing were totally destroyed in the blast and burning the remnants of the fuel that had been left in the fuel tanks, sending plumes of black burning smoke spiralling around the plane like the swirls on a cake. The damage was too heavy; even if they didn't crash and the plane was crumpled to bits, although it was likely the plane would explode when they hit the ground, they could never repair the plane's wing and they couldn't do get the damn thing off of the ground.

Turning back to the controls, Straker stood up. "We've got to get off the plane!" He bellowed over the din of the rushing pressure. "The starboard wing is gone, we're burning through what's left of our fuel." He shouted as he made his way aft so he could reach the parachutes. "Grab what you can," he yelled when he got to the after-passenger lounge where he found Gabrielle 'Gay' Ellis and Virginia Lake already there. The two women both knew the plane was done for, and there was nothing else for it, they had to get out.

"I saw what was happening," Ellis said as they approached she strapped a parachute to her back and grabbed whatever intel there was that she could get her hands on while Virginia looked shaken. "Flying saucers attacked us; if I hadn't pinched myself and even splashed water in my face, I would've thought it was a dream."

Straker and the others knew how she felt, but right now the only thing on their minds was finding a way off of the plane before it crashed. They didn't have long left, and the motion sickness was making it hard for all of them to concentrate.

"Too bad it isn't," Foster replied grimly, strapping his own parachute to his back. But he reached out and picked up a couple of machine guns.

"How much time have we got?" Henderson strained as the plane continued to corkscrew down in a cloud of fire and smoke.

"I'm not sure. It can't be long to go now; when we jump out we should have the plane and the smoke from the engine and wing fires cloud us from the UFOs."

"But why attack us in the first place? There was no reason for it," Foster struggled to understand.

"I don't get it either, Paul, but now isn't the time to guess. We have to get off this plane," Alec turned to Straker, "Do you know where we are?"

Straker sighed. They were running out of time and they had to leave the plane now while they still could instead of standing around in their parachute packs asking questions. "Somewhere in Ukraine; I was going to take another fix by the time we were attacked. Now we have to go."

It was a nightmare leaping out of the plane and free-falling through the air. The UFAF personnel were trained in this kind of scenario of course, but the stomach-churning horror they were thrust into made the leap out of a nightmare. The twisting of the plane as it corkscrewed its way down to the ground in a cloud of hot black smoke made it impossible for the group, even the experienced airmen like Foster and Straker who had logged hundreds of hours doing work like this before, to judge if they were going to get out in time. It was decided they would leap out at the same time in order to enhance their chances of survival instead of hoping the fickle finger of fate was going to work if they jumped out and parachuted out separately. They timed it so then the plane had done at least one rotation before they leapt out at the same time so they were well away from the remaining engines.

By the time they opened their chutes they were a good distance from the plane and they were so choked by the smoke that they could barely see even each other, never mind the UFOs. They hadn't seen the alien flying saucers since the attack and they had no idea if the UFOs had followed them through the clouds all the way down. The plane smashed into the ground before they even landed. The chutes saved their lives and they ended up on the ground, or in Fosters' case in the canopy of a tree before he found a way to clamber down despite his clear exhaustion, but they were scattered like seeds all over the place, and they needed to find each other.

Straker was nursing a broken arm while Foster had a number of cuts to his face and his clothes were badly torn, but they were both alive. Henderson and Alec had managed to come down intact while Lake and Ellis had landed in a nearby pond. Soaking wet and disgruntled, but very much alive, the two women joined their fellow soldiers and after patching themselves up they took a moment to rest at the base of a tall tree. They had opened up their survival packs and were munching on some MREs.

The subject of the talk was about the aliens.

"We'd better get this footage straight to the authorities, of Ukraine and of America so they know of the dangers of the UFOs, especially if they attack again," Straker said decisively after Foster showed them the footage he had taken with his iPad; the superior camera quality of the iPad camera compared to that of a normal mobile put the attack into perspective.

"Do you think they might attack again?" Virginia looked up through the canopy of the tree which covered them like an umbrella but it was all so unnervingly peaceful.

Straker shrugged.

"We have heard some bizarre things are happening out here; are they all connected to the UFOs?" Alec asked.

"They must be," Gay said. "Think about it; blips on radar screens, no intelligence coming in through those areas. But why attack us like that? What was the point? What's going on?"

"Could it be the start of an invasion?" Henderson asked thoughtfully. "I heard on the internet a mathematician has warned about hostile aliens being a likelihood out there."

"Never imagined we'd meet one. When I joined the USAF, I was pretty sceptical about stuff like this," Foster observed.

"But did they plan on striking us or just the wing? You might have been turning the plane, sir, but they could have been doing anything," Virginia said.

Straker flinched as his broken arm reminded him that he needed urgent medical attention and he needed it soon. "I don't know, but we'll rest here for a bit longer, and then we'll try to find a town or a village, anyone with a radio or a phone we can use to call the Air Force or the remaining Ukrainian authorities."

"I have to admit, that whatever the aliens are doing they've chosen the best time to do it; with Ukraine a shambles because of the invasion, the aliens picked the right time to do it in," Foster said.

"We'll soon find out," Henderson had had time to think things through and he realised that perhaps his invasion hypothesis was wrong after all and that the aliens were here for an entirely different reason.

The group rested by the base of the tree for two more hours. When they left they picked up their weapons. They didn't have anything substantial; a few handguns and some machine guns. The group hoped they didn't have to sue them since they weren't really in any position to fight a prolonged battle.

They were frightened and they were tired and their comfort zone had just been wrenched out from under them, and then it was pulped and shredded into little bits before being thrown out into the rubbish.

But as they made their way through the Ukrainian countryside, keeping their eyes peeled for any sign of Ukrainian or Russian forces to say nothing of the UFOs, the conversation was scarce as they fell back to their training to keep themselves alive. They were walking for a long time and they were walking slowly to avoid being tired too much, but it was hard since they were tired.

And then they came across a scene straight from a horror show. Coming across a stretch of land that was rugged and hilly with plenty of trees in the background, the group discovered the horrific sight of a large number of soldiers lying dead on the ground dead, but what made Gay give out a stifled scream while Virginia looked like she wanted to do the same thing but was too choked up on her horror to do so, and even the men of the party were standing there in horror.

The men were laying down on the ground with their bodies splayed open. Their bodies were gutted completely and they didn't have any organs left inside them at all, and aside from the skins and the fact they were wearing their clothes, all of the soldiers were practically skeletons. One or two of the bodies were in various stages of being skinned, coating the nearby grass with blood. Flies buzzed around the whole area.

"My God," Foster pulled out his iPad and started filming and taking as many pictures as he could.

Elis turned to him in disgust, but it was to cover her own nausea. "Paul, must you?"

"Yes, I do I need to get the full story back to civilisation. Everyone needs to know about these UFOs," Foster argued back.

In the meantime, Straker, Henderson and Freeman had been counting the Russian soldiers. It looked like an entire platoon had been slaughtered, and then brutally mutilated. Straker's eyes swept over the bodies as he mentally kept count of the ones he found, but he also had enough time to take note of everything that he was seeing and he formed one or two guesses about what had happened to them.

In the meantime, Henderson saw something on two of the bodies. He knelt down to examine them to take a closer look. "Look at this. It looks like a puncture mark."

Straker and Freeman came over at once. The marks were hardly visible and you would need to examine them really close to just be able to notice them at all. But they were there.

"What are they?" Freeman asked.

Straker shook his head as he tried to call up what he knew about surgery since this whole scene, grisly as it was, had been performed with the skill of a team of surgeons. And then it struck him. "They look like needle marks," he said.

Gay had by now gotten over the horrifying spectacle of the corpses around them, but she was still shaken horribly by what they were seeing. "Why these, though? None of the others seems to have them," she commented although she hoped and prayed Straker didn't force them to double-check. The scene was gruesome enough as it was.

Henderson was examining what was left of the mutilated remains and he felt he had the answer. But he hoped he was wrong. "Look at the body. What's left of the skin is pale which is consistent with blood loss, there hardly seems to be any blood left," he said without knowing Foster was standing behind them, catching every single word. "You don't think the aliens drained them like a vampire?"

"It would make sense, but I doubt they're vampires. The other bodies don't show the same symptoms. I'd say these soldiers have been completely drained of every single drop of blood. But why do this?" Freeman asked in frustration as he gazed around and only saw the lack of any real answers.

Virginia was looking around as well. "There's something else that's bizarre."

"What?"

"There's not a single sign of struggle. These are Russian soldiers and they're armed to the teeth, but there isn't a single sign of struggle, there are no bullet casings on the ground, nothing."

Straker looked down at the ground hurriedly and he realised she was right. "Yeah, you're right."

Foster came hurrying over. "I've just found patches of burnt grass and ground. There were three UFOs down here, just over there," he carelessly gestured a hand to a point not too far from where they were and the group saw it was close by, "but what I don't get is how the aliens overpowered a full platoon of Russian soldiers and they didn't have time to get a shot off."

Straker came to the realisation at that point. It was the only logical thing he could think up, but as Sherlock Holmes said in the stories "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

"Mind control. The aliens took control of their minds somehow," he said.

The others exchanged looks at the implications, but instead of dismissing what he had just suggested outright, they took a good hard look at the corpses surrounding them in this part of the countryside, where there was not a single sign of a struggle and all the bodies looked like they had just been splayed open in their sleep…they couldn't think of anything else to explain this.

"HALT!" A Russian-accented voice bellowed in English.

Straker and the others turned around and watched in trepidation as a group of soldiers wearing the same style uniforms as the unfortunates lying on the ground appeared. Russian soldiers had just cornered the American group. The Russian authorities were going to love this, as it meant their warnings to America were being ignored although they knew that, but the Americans had not been stupid enough to let themselves be taken prisoner by the Russians. That had changed. But Straker knew things were different now, though he had known a few days ago if the Russians did catch them, it would cause more troubles than America was willing to deal with. The Russians had come in quietly. There had been no sound of a truck or a car, so they had likely been moving on foot, and indeed the Americans could see how tired all of them were. They were like his own group.

But those thoughts were banished straight out of Straker's mind when he noticed the way the Russians were looking down at the ground. He could see the blame formulating in the Russians' minds, the horror which was giving away to mindless anger.

"This was not us," he said, hoping the Russians understood him. But he quickly realised that some of them did speak English, so it wasn't a problem.

One of the Russian soldiers hot-headedly shot forwards. "You expect us to believe that when we have captured you standing over the remains of our countrymen?"

Straker knew how this looked, he just hoped the Russian officer - a captain, by the look of it - was smart enough to listen. But it was hard for him to be absolutely certain. The Russian captain had a closed-off demeanour, but Straker could see the burning anger in his eyes.

"We didn't do this," Straker insisted while he ignored the other Russians. It might be a bad mistake, but he had to make his point and get it across.

The Russian captain snorted. "A group of the US air force," he began, slowly studying their uniform to make sure his guess was correct before he moved confidently on. "If the intelligence reports from our soldiers hadn't already given us warnings about events like this….," he shook his head before he raised his voice. "We have known there is something wrong in Ukraine for some time; bodies of Russian and Ukrainians, soldier and civilian, have been found, the bodies mutilated and gutted. It was not the Americans."

The other Russian soldiers raised their voices, their accented protests hard to follow, but it looked like some of them didn't believe their captain.

"Be Quiet! Use your intelligence, all of you; there isn't a sign of struggle, and these bodies are in virtually identical condition to other bodies that have been found like this." The captain snapped, and Straker was amazed by how they obeyed without any problems. This man was clearly well-liked and regarded by his men, but he was not afraid to make them shut up when the situation called for it, like a good soldier. The Russian captain took a deep breath, weighing up the options.

"You will come with us," he told the Americans in a way that made it clear they had no choice, and if they tried to refuse then they would regret it. "There's a town not far from here. We will stay there, and it will give me time to think about what we will do with you. Take their weapons," the captain ordered his men, and they stepped forward gladly. Out of reflex, the Americans stiffened, but the captain went on in a gentler tone. "If you don't resist, you will not be harmed. But if you think you can play a hero, like a cowboy, then think again. There are more of us here, and you are intruding on our affairs. Do not get delusions of grandeur thinking such acts will be tolerated."

Straker was tempted to take his own weapons and shoot them down, but he knew the Russian captain had a point and they were not in any condition to fight a trained platoon of soldiers. He sighed and he turned to the others. "Do as he says," he ordered quietly, meeting their eyes quietly and making it clear this was only a temporary surrender. Too bad he didn't realise how it would turn out.

X

The town was only a few miles away. For both groups, the walk was a long one. The Russians were hardier than the Americans, as they had been dropped into Ukraine, and made to live off the land as they gradually moved onwards with their mission. They were prepared for their assignment as a result, but the Americans were tired and it showed. Some of the Russians mocked the group under their breaths, but otherwise, they had Kindly allowed the American group access to their water supplies and even some food.

But when they arrived in the town, they discovered something horrific. All the people there were dead as well, mutilated in the same manner as the Russian troops earlier, only these people had been dead for days. Decomposition had set in and the bodies were rotting, with every scavenger and insect taking a bite. Straker quietly told Foster to not show the Russians the UFO they'd seen, he wasn't sure how they would react and he didn't want to try their luck. The two groups found food leftover, and they left the town to get away from the stink. As the two groups ate their meagre meals, the Russian soldiers openly talked about the mutilations they had seen so far.

"Are you sure we shouldn't tell them about the UFO?" Foster asked.

Straker sighed. He had been so sure earlier, but now he wasn't so sure. "If we tell them, what do you think will happen?" Straker countered.

"They might not believe it," Henderson pointed out, keeping an eye on the Russian soldiers nearby.

"But even if we tell them, they would know the dangers of the aliens and the UFOs," Ellis pointed out. "We'd have an ally, and we need allies because whatever is going on we need all the help we can get and we shouldn't fight each other. If we can get back to the US, we can get in touch with the authorities-."

"No, no, it can't just be the US," Alec interrupted. "This concerns all of us; we need to work together, it can't just be the one nation who'll fight back. We need to take the evidence to the UN."

"There's not enough evidence, though," Virginia said. "We only have clips. We don't have physical proof of the aliens."

"No, but how do we get such proof?" Foster looked around.

"We don't have to look for anything," Straker was looking up in the sky, "they're going to come to us."

"What do you mean?" Ellis asked, sensing something was wrong.

It was Virginia who picked up on the signs."Oh my God! Can't you hear that?" She demanded, looking at the others. Everyone in the American group listened carefully and they heard the low whine which was growing louder and louder. The Russians began to pick up on the sounds as well. They looked up as well, and they saw the glowing forms of the UFOs as they glided overhead. They just hovered there above the two groups of humans, both enemies united as they stared at the UFOs.

"Run," Straker whispered.

"Where to?" Alec stopped the others from doing just that. "They'll catch us."

No sooner had the words left Alec's mouth before they jumped at the sound of gunfire. One look confirmed their thoughts. The Russians were opening fire on the UFOs. Realising they wouldn't get a better time ever, the American group ran away from the UFOs who were distracted by the blazing guns. Racing back to the town, they looked quickly for a car or a truck they could use, and they found one that was open with several corpses lying nearby. Trying really hard to ignore the putrid smells, the group of Americans got the truck started but before they could get inside, Foster yelped in shock when he felt hands grip him in a vice-like hold and tear him away. Foster cried out in pain as he felt the impact send shockwaves of agony through his spine, but as he stared through bleary eyes, he felt his pain melt away when he took in his first alien.

Tall and shaped like a man wearing a red spacesuit with gold and silvery mesh covering it with a large silver helmet, the alien loomed over Foster, who was trying to get a look at the features of the alien inside the suit, but the light was bad that he could only make out a few features of the spacesuit and nothing else.

Suddenly the alien lurched as two shadows Foster recognised as Henderson and Straker threw themselves at it. The creature lurched around and tried to escape but Straker was holding him too tightly while Henderson was gripping the alien in a sort of bear hug. The alien tried to punch the two men desperately away when someone else rushed over and there was the sound of a gunshot. As the alien's body collapsed to the ground, Foster was helped back onto his feet by his friends.

"What happened?" Foster was still a little breathless after being yanked around and thrown about like that.

"I shot him," Gay Ellis' voice was cool and professional like the trained soldier she was. "Well, you guys had better pick the alien up and dump him on the truck. We have the physical proof we need. Now I think it's time we left."

She was right. They could hear the gunfire in the distance but it was dwindling. There couldn't have been that many Russian soldiers left now, and they could hear in the distance there were fewer of them out there now than there had been before. Quickly the three men picked up the aliens' strangely light corpse back to the truck and dumped it in the back. It took only a few minutes without the key being anywhere they could find quickly, but luckily Straker's father had taught him how to Hotwire a car and a truck, and it only took a minute.

X

Once they were driving away from the town slowly so as to get some much-needed ground, they got more confident and they drove away faster and hurriedly. In the back, they could hear the sound of the aliens' space armour as it echoed after being hit by the sides of the truck. Straker and his group would eventually get back home with the body of the alien, which the American authorities kept under lock and key.

But Straker and his group would never give up. It took them three years. As the months passed, and the months turned into years, they gained further ground before they took the proposal and the warning to the UN before they leaked the footage of the atrocities of the alien attacks in Ukraine on the internet.

The US had already studied the alien corpse and the spacesuit, discovering the oxygenated liquid used for breathing and the strange and unearthly metals and alloys used in the spacesuit itself, so they knew aliens did exist and were committing such mutilations, but they decided to keep it under wraps. Their attempts to persuade the UN failed utterly, as the UN didn't want to believe in the UFOs. But there was too much proof and it was leaked online because, on their way back home, they had encountered several other UFOs and got even more footage of what they were doing.

Panic!

The whole world was calling out for a stop, and despite their trial, the group got off thanks to public support and the proposal for SHADO - Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organisation was put into effect at once, begrudgingly.

After 10 years, SHADO was ready and able to fight back. With the full backing of the whole Earth, the aliens soon found themselves fighting back against the humans, who had fortified their world.