Chapter Three: Not Alone
Once he arrived back at the base, Emett still couldn't get the image of that retreating ship out of his head. He had seen a good number of aircraft in his time, and none of them looked anything like that. Maybe it was like his squadmates had said: maybe it was some sort of experimental prototype, or maybe it was a Homeworld ship. Whatever it was, though...why was it there?
Without his helmet, Emett had darker skin and short, dusty-brown hair. He sat in front of his locker, hearing the chatter of his teammates coming from the next room. Before long, they entered, Tailspin leading the group. "Something the matter, boss?" he asked. "'Nother notch on the belt, you're usually the one leading the celebrations."
Tailspin, real name Leon Manning, was almost the exact opposite of Emett in terms of appearance. He was tall, blond, fair-skinned, and almost always wore a grin in contrast to the more business-minded Emett. "No, nothing's wrong," Emett lied. "Navigating that storm just took a lot out of me."
"Well, it's not like you haven't done something like that before," said Rattler, aka Sara Park. She was short but well-built, and her black hair was buzzed extremely short. "Remember Turkey?"
"I think everyone here remembers Turkey." This was Vladimir Lechkey, callsign Mayhem. He was the largest out of any of them, both in height and muscle mass. He was covered in scars, one of which was over his eye, giving it a glassy glaze. Some of these scars continued over onto the back of his head, on which he had no hair at all. "Hard to forget a day like that."
"Especially since it was my first mission," said Emett. He got to his feet, closing his locker. "You never forget your first mission..."
The five of them were silent for a moment, until someone changed the subject. "I've never seen a Gem like that before." Rounding out the squad was Jump, real name Oscar Wright. "What do you think it was? Aquamarine? Larimar? Chrysocolla?" Oscar was shorter than Leon but taller than Emmet, and had very stiff features.
"Who cares? It's done for now," said Sara. "Leave that for the nerds in the lab to figure out!"
"I'm just glad everyone got out of there in one piece," said Emett. "It seems like the corrupted Gems are getting more and more dangerous every year."
"Tell me about it," said Vlad. "It's almost like the less of them there are, the angrier they get!"
"Which is why we need to have each other's backs, now more than ever," Emett continued. "BAINE's list of enemies continues to grow, and the only way we can defeat them is if we stick togeth-"
"Ah, save the impassioned speeches for the battlefield, boss!" said Sara. "Come on, let's head to the mess hall, I'm starved!"
The team began to file out of the room, with Leon staying behind for Emett. "You doing alright, Vortex?" he asked.
"I'm not Vortex when we're on the ground," Emett replied. "And yes, I'm doing just fine."
Leon wasn't so sure. "It's that plane you saw up there, isn't it? I can tell when someone's been rubbed the wrong way, and that's definitely something that would do it."
Emett sighed. "I don't know what it is about it," he said. "I've never seen a vehicle like that before. I know it's probably nothing, but I just can't shake the feeling that it's a bad omen somehow."
"You should tell Command about it," Leon suggested. "If it's nothing, then it's nothing. But if there really is someone out there watching us, then they need to know about it."
"I'll let somebody know," Emett said, as the two followed the others. "Hopefully, though, this was just a one-time thing."
June 7, 2016. BAINE Headquarters, undisclosed location.
"So, how are things with you?"
Agent of BAINE Ichigo Nakayama looked up at the voice. His fellow agent, Hester Albrecht had entered the room unseen. He was seated at a desk in the dimly-lit room, looking at a file filled with several photographs. "Not a whole lot," he said. "What about you? I thought you were still training."
Hester grinned. "Not much point in training when you've been doing this as long as we have. Besides, Bridge said you might need some help."
"Help?" Ichigo chuckled. "I'm sorting pictures. It's not exactly heavy lifting."
"What exactly is he having you do here?" asked Hester, leaning over his shoulder to get a better look at the pictures. Most of them were hard to make out, but they shared one uniting factor: they appeared to be pictures of UFOs.
"Well," Ichigo said, "you remember what Daniel told us about those fly guys last week? How one of them saw some sort of unidentified craft during a mission?" Hester answered in the affirmative. "For some reason, it's got the higher-ups spooked. From what I hear, they're taking this really seriously. I have no idea why this one sighting has them all riled up, but they're beefing up investigations towards non-Gem extraterrestrial sightings. Alleged sightings, I should say. And that is where I come in."
"Let me guess, you're sorting through them?" Hester said. "Alright. What do you have so far?"
"So," Ichigo said, rubbing his hands together, "here's how I've been breaking it down. I separate the pictures into three piles: ones that are obviously fake…" The pile contained a number of badly-edited pictures, UFOs that had visible strings or were made of cardboard, or were simply misidentified objects, like a weather balloon or a plane. "...ones that are obviously real…" This pile consisted only of three photos: a sleek starship that Pearl had constructed from scrap, the hand-shaped craft that had brought Peridot, Jasper, and Lapis to Earth, and the small red pod that a squad of Rubies had arrived in. "...and that just leaves the ones that can't be verified. These are the ones that'll require a more thorough investigation."
This last pile was the largest, though only barely. Many of the pictures were blurry or dark, showing only small blips of what could very well have been some sort of spacecraft, but equally could have not. A very small number of these were recognizable as a vehicle of some kind, but whether Earthly or not, it was uncertain.
"Seems easy enough," Hester said. "Just put those in the first pile."
Ichigo looked up at her, confused. "You're just gonna dismiss them, just like that?" he said. "What if they are real?"
"Trust me, they're not," said Hester. "No way an alien would want to come out to a place like this."
"Kind of an odd sentiment for someone who deals with aliens on a regular basis," Ichigo pointed out.
"Yeah. Gems," Hester said. "Throughout my time here at BAINE, I've never dealt with an alien that wasn't a Gem. I'm sure they're out there somewhere-just not on Earth."
"But how can you be so sure?" said Ichigo. "Homeworld showed up here to invade thousands of years ago. Maybe some other race wants to do the same."
"Yeah, I doubt it," said Hester. "Given what the CGs have told us about Homeworld, I don't think this theoretical other race would want anything to do with a planet that's on their radar. Here, let me help you."
Hester picked up a handful of photos, and began sorting through them. After a quick inspection, each one ended up in the 'fake' pile.
"Photoshopped. Weather balloon. Too blurry. Too dark. Okay, this one's just from a video game-they even left in the watermark." One by one, the pile of photos dwindled.
"Okay then, how about this one?" Ichigo said, holding one up. A bright yellow craft hovered above the desert, three fins floating behind it. "You can't tell me this doesn't look like a Gem ship, right?"
"Ich, the Gems were on this planet before," said Hester. "It might just be left over from the war, or one of the CGs built it, something like that."
"Fair enough...but what about this? You can't tell me this one's fake!" His next picture showed a dagger-shaped craft next to a large building in a crowded city. "Look at the definition! There's no way that one's a weather balloon!"
"See, that one's too good to be real," Hester said. "Literally. You don't think if an alien ship went for a spin through a city there'd be no news coverage of it? Even if it was covered up, we'd have heard about it, right?"
"I guess..." Ichigo said. "But, aliens are...I mean, who knows what sort of crazy technology they have access to? Like radar jamming, or cloaking that makes them invisible to our eyes but not our cameras?"
"Sure, who knows?" Hester said. "Now, are we done, or are there more?"
"Oh, this was only the first group," Ichigo said, pulling another file out from the desk. "There's at least five more of these."
Hester sighed. "Alrighty...better get started, then. Split 'em up evenly, we'll go through 'em faster that way-"
Before they could begin sorting through the sightings, another figure entered the room. Rather, he leaned in through the door, his feet still in the hallway. "There you are," said Jonathan Vargas. "We're heading out, Captain's orders."
Ichigo put down the pictures and stood up. "Where are we headed?" Hester asked.
"Gem sighting not far from here," Vargas said, heading off towards the barracks. "Let's move!"
"Eh, that was boring anyway," Ichigo said. "Come on, what do you say we go deal with a real alien?"
"Sounds good to me," Hester said, as the two of them followed after their teammate. As they left, one of the pictures on the table fell to the ground. Taken from a seat inside a passenger jet, it showed a dark object hovering near the wing, with what seemed to be a pair of narrow wings sticking out behind it in a 'V' shape.
