X-Com – The Unknown Menace
Epilogue
October 12th, 1952
Area 51, Nevada, US
Looking at the B-29 bomber who was at the process of firing up its number four engine, a man wearing the uniform of an Air Force officer wondered at the amount of work that was still left to do. In the five years since the recovery of the first flying saucer he couldn't remember a day that he hadn't been working on the whole problem. By now he had been promoted from Major to a Colonel in the newly formed United States Air Force.
But no matter how much rank he climbed it only seemed that the challenges only increased. And the stakes had also risen. In the past months Washington had been the stage of an aerial display of UFOs and the media had picked up the story, giving too much work in debunking the whole matter.
The sound of the engine was nearly deafening him, so he moved back inside the newly built hangar were he was standing by the doors. At the same time the aluminum painted plane started to move in the taxiway towards the reinforced section of the dry lake that had been converted into a runway. That B-29 had brought the retrieved wreckage from Wright-Patterson AFB to the facility. It had been decided to keep it on a hidden military installation that the public had no knowledge of.
The German scientist came to meet him, his hands on his coats' pockets and with a thin smile on his lips.
"How do you find the facilities Doctor?" The officer asked more as a way to initiate the conversation since the man had personally defined what would be necessary to study the extraterrestrial craft.
"Excellent Colonel. I must say that I'm impressed by the few time it took for the construction of this base".
"Well, don't thank me only, send also your compliments to the US government". The scientist's attitude sometimes irritated the Colonel but there was nothing he could do about it. Millions of dollars were being poured every day into this special project and more were being spent on the other measures that were being taken by the White House. But the man's breakthroughs in reverse engineering the technology retrieved more than paid it off.
"The Brits are going to send one of their intelligence guys to take a look at the 'wagon' in a couple of weeks. You think you can have it reassembled by them?"
"It shouldn't be a problem at all Colonel. Do you wish also to show him the 'entities'"? The mention to the extraterrestrial bodies recovered from the crash site made the Colonel frown. Of all things they were presented the most problem: who were they and what did they wanted from Earth?
The live alien that had survived the crash hadn't been able to tell them very much or wasn't willing to. But unfortunately the thing had died weeks after it had been retrieved and the biologists were still trying to determine the cause of its death. "Yeah, get them out of the fridges when he arrives. We've been instructed to tell them the whole story".
"The English have been good allies in the war against my country, Colonel. I'm confident that they will fully understand the implications of this matter". The officer nodded, although he had heard the comment before from the scientist. They had engaged on long discussions about what should be made to deal with the extraterrestrials.
"They have stuck with us in the creation of NATO against the Russians. And everyone will surely follow our lead in case this situation leads into the unthinkable".
"Yes. Still we must be prepared for any eventuality". The Colonel wished that the whole situation in Korea wasn't so bad so that they could inform Stalin of what was going on. For him this was something that affected all of mankind and as such. Probably even the KGB had by now an idea that something else was behind the UFOs. But then again the possibility of war with Russia gave everyone an excuse to claim that an enemy was waiting to strike at them, making it easier to conceal the extraterrestrials' existence.
The scientist smiled in a sinister way. "We will Colonel. We will. In fact I have some ideas about what we might exactly do towards it".
March 9th, 2002
Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Earth
"Holy shit!"
It was late in the evening and scientists in charge of SETI's research effort using the late antenna at Arecibo had been busier lately in packing up their material before leaving back to the United States than in monitoring possible alien signals from outer space. The whole project was being discarded, not because some bureaucrat had deemed it a useless waste of money, but because the scientific community was more inclined now into believing that extraterrestrial life did exist and was right here on Earth.
Unknown to the majority of the population and unrecognized by the world's countries, for three long years a secret war against an alien invasion had been fought in the Earth's atmosphere and on the ground. After the first encounters with the aggressors from outer space, the burden of the fight to defend mankind had been placed upon Extraterrestrial Command. More known as X-Com it was a multinational force tasked with the mission of investigating the alien threat and defeat them, allowing humankind to survive.
The fight had been brutal: the aliens were planning to take over Earth and to colonize it and in the pursuit of their intentions entire cities had been razed and thousands of people abducted for use in genetic experiments or simply as food. Hundreds of aircraft and thousands of human soldiers had been lost in the confrontations between Earth's forces and the aliens. Only the research efforts made by X-Com's scientists had leveled the technological abyss between the weapons used by its soldiers and the alien's deadly ones.
And the same scientific discoveries had allowed Earth's victory: X-Com had sent a mission sent to destroy the Brain in distant Mars, who controlled all the alien forces, using spacecraft built based on the UFOs. The troopers had successfully forced their way into the main Martian base and had just killed the Brain, an organic being that possessed huge mental powers and used them to coordinate the alien's actions.
But the two scientists back at Arecibo didn't know anything about what was going on distant Mars. The few reports of UFOs and military confrontations that reached the media had convinced the major research institutions to look for extraterrestrials not elsewhere, but here on Earth. Some of the major universities and corporations had already gotten into possession of claimed alien artifacts, put upon the black market by unknown sellers.
That had been the dead blow on SETI: the whole project was being axed and the two engineers present were only a clean-up crew. And more frustrating was the fact that it never had been able to pick up a signal from the aliens even though they existed.
Hearing the exclamation, the other scientist took his eyes off the magazine he was reading but he kept his feet on top of the desk, preferring to ignore the computer monitor in front of him. "What? Aren't you tired of looking at that?"
"Lucas, get over here! I think we have picked up something!" The first scientist was clearly excited as he suddenly got out of his position and started to click up switches, performing system checks. Lucas reluctantly threw the magazine to a wastebasket on his side. "Cool down, Pat, you must have picked some military recon bird".
"Yeah? Then listen to this!" He flicked a switch and the speakers mounted on the top of an electronic panel went live. The vibrations of a grave sound filled the room stopping Lucas, as he was about to get up. "What is that?!"
"I don't know, but it's being transmitted over the entire radio spectrum, not confined to a single frequency. I think it's some sort of outburst that is bleeding so much energy that it actually is affecting the radio frequencies.
"A supernova just went active?" The first scientist asked as both of them started performing equipment checks and going through their checklist of actions to perform in case an unidentified signal was detected. "I've just confirmed, the signal is not coming from any Earth source. It's not a reflection!"
"And it must be artificial: I'm picking modulation and a pattern although with heavy distortion. I think we just hit gold Lucas!" The second scientist suddenly frowned as he looked upon the monitor.
"Wait a minute! I've just picked its source: this signal is coming from Mars!" Pat looked at him is dismayed. "What?" Then both of them were left in a stupor as the sound suddenly ended, leaving only the static of the stars.
Unknown to both men, the X-Com troopers who were raiding the alien base on Mars had just killed one of the last aliens who was standing over a console, apparently activating some source of beacon aimed back to Earth.
They had been successful: the death of the Brain had brought the alien's forces on Earth into a chaos, the same way as a beehive dies as soon as the queen is killed. In the next months the news of the alien's existence and X-Com's victory were announced to a world that already knew part of the story.
X-Com's scientists tried to dechypher the message contained on the tachyon beacon but it proved impossible to make any sense of the alien signals. Finally, they decided that it was a call for reinforcements from Earth to defend Cydonia. Since by that time the remaining force on the planet had been defeated, the whole transmission lost its value and was quickly archived.
March 17th, 2002
Chryse Planitia, Mars
Illyuschenko would always remember the flight line of the Avengers who had survived the fighting. Most of them showed signs of damage, with weapons pods missing or patched holes in their fuselage. And less than half of the men and women are coming back.
As he kept walking in a more smooth terrain, his gaze turned instead to the burial graves that had been dug up on the Martian ground for the bodies of the X-Com soldiers. They didn't have space left on the Avengers to bring them along to Earth, so they had buried them on the soil where they had died.
So many died but it wasn't in vain. The voice was still tormenting him but now he could finally deal with it, giving him a new resolve. I've done my mission as a soldier. Now I need to do my final one.
Colonel Boronin had approached him from his left on that day. "General, the loading is complete. We are ready to go home". He waited for Illyuschenko's command but the Commander simply stood looking at the red Martian plain. "General?"The easy way out, some might say. "Go Colonel. I'm staying. You have command of the force now".
But of that Illyuschenko knew nothing now. He had been walking for five days on his flying suit. He had brought his heavy plasma in case he ran into any alien that might have survived and one of inflatable tents on his back. He had decided to die as far as could from Cydonia and had also to avoid the aerial scans made by the Avengers for one Martian day, in a fruitless last-minute attempt to find him before they left the planet's orbit bound to Earth.
He had been waiting exactly that.
When he saw the lights of the Avengers taking off from Mars he had searched for a hole where he could hide and had found a crevasse on a nearby dry river bed that where he could fit together with his equipment. Once he was inside he had disconnected all power to his suit besides the minimum to maintain the oxygen recycling. He made it so that they couldn't detect him by tachyon emission from the small Elerium engine on his suit. The glacial coldness of the Mars landscape started to be felt inside the suit but he ignored the cold. He had lived in worse conditions that this on Afghanistan.
After he had gotten himself out of the hole he continued to walk. It wouldn't matter to Illyuschenko anyway where he died.
Four days after he knew that the Elerium fuel was almost exhausted. Hours ago he had taken his last reading of how for much time his suit would work out and provide him with energy to move itself and with oxygen to live. He had abandoned all his gear at the base of a rockier terrain where several boulders and creaks could be seen and had started to climb into the irregular terrain.
As he entered it more and more a mist started to form by his legs and he actually noticed that the atmospheric temperature had gone up although it was still below the water icing level. He ignored it after a brief seconds.
By his calculations he didn't knew how much time he had still left. As he walked from boulder to boulder and crossed cracks on the ground he tried to cover as much terrain as he could.
The mist had gotten itself thicker, with large clouds floating a few feet over Illyuschenko's head and obscuring the rocks. The dark shapes made him stop a couple of times as it looked to him that he had seen alien or human figures hidden in the mist.
A part of his brain tried to warn they couldn't be real but he was already lost in remembrances of dead faces spread all over his past, from Afghanistan to his wife and X-Com. He knew he would die of hypoxia in a dead suit that didn't allow him to move much because of its weight. He wondered how painful it would be.
Making him miss the ice that now was filling the ground as he kept running. As he stepped with his left foot near a giant crack on the terrain, the metal of his armor made it slip. He felt towards the crevasse that only revealed darkness. One of his arms outstretched and grabbed a piece of rock but it was loose that he felt into the hole.
The fall lasted for several seconds through the crevasse. If Illyuschenko hadn't been wearing the flying suit he would have been killed. As it was he felt his body and head hitting the walls several times before he finally landed in pain.
As he stood on the floor of the place where he had felt the pain told him that he must had broken several ribs by the fall and also his right ankle and left hand. However as he tried to move his uninjured limbs he found that that he still had power left. In spite of the pain he tried to straighten himself up. As his right hand started to get a position on the ground to support the whole body, he found that the ground here was extremely irregular. Moving his head towards it he activated the lights mounted on the helmet's sides.
A golden light that was coming from every direction suddenly replaced the darkness. Illyuschenko had apparently fallen into an underground chamber filled with gold colored crystals on every wall.
There was no exit present that trying to climb back up but he wasn't thinking about it. Instead, he just sat down and stood watching the show before his eyes of the light of his suit being reflected millions of time and embedding with in a photon web.
There's beauty even here on the planet that represented the god of war. Maybe there was also some beauty in my life after all.
That thought lasted with him as the lights went dead after all of the fuel had been used and there was no more Elerium left on his suit to power it.
March 9th, 2012
Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, United States
On VC Day, the anniversary of the X-Com attack at the alien base on Cydonia, Captain Hunt usually made an excuse to take off the afternoon. However this year he simply drove from his house near Quantico Naval Base and rode to Arlington to see the graves of the X-Com soldiers buried there, and in particular Johnson and Markovitch's.
But there were so many others. None of the initial US team was alive anymore. But sometimes he would encounter one person who had also served under Johnson at Area 51.
However most of the US troops that had participated in the attack had died there or had retired. The few still in the military were now serving in separate military outfits scattered around the country and Hunt was the only one left at the Pentagon.
When he first arrived at Washington he had been looked upon with respect. Now it seemed that most of the personnel tended to ignore his service in the war and only show a slight interest if the matter was brought up.
He had been the commander of the North American area of operations until four years ago, when the remaining facilities had been dismantled and the personnel shipped off to positions more necessary. It had been for more than nine years since anyone had seen an alien on Earth or elsewhere and in the midst of the world's greatest financial crisis there were more pressing needs than to fund a useless and costly military operation.
X-Com was just not needed anymore, after all the blood it had given to Earth, Hunt still complained and rumbled. And he wasn't needed also.
As he walked around the corridors of crosses he found out that two men were standing already by the Colonel and the Captain's graves, with their backs to him. He joined them and kept a distance, while trying to see who they might be. The man closest to him was the tallest and looked to be on his thirties and wealthy as well.
He suddenly recognized some features that were mistakenly familiar, like the blonde hair and the shape of the nose. But only when the other man moved around to greet him was that he knew whose ghost he was looking at.
"Good afternoon, Captain Hunt, I presume that you recognize me?"
Hunt shook his eyes in disbelief. "Williams? Is that you? You were reported dead ten years ago!"
The other man's voice dropped considerately. "Captain, I go by a different name now by many necessary reasons. However, may I present you my brother, Frederick Williams". Hunt now understood the similarities between both men. "He's the Mr. Williams now. You might have heard of him". The former CIA and X-Com analyst added.
The officer stood for a loss for a couple of seconds, but came about to what the man in front of him was getting at. "You mean 'the' Mr. Williams, the computer billionaire which made a fortune with computer built using alien technology?" He nodded. "Well, that explains some things, err, what should I call you now?"
"Smith. Mr. Smith, please Captain".
"Mr. Smith, right. So, ten years afterwards you decided to come out from whatever place you've been hiding since the end of the war". He looked at both graves. "Just paying your respects to Captain Johnson and Captain Markovitch?"
The other man made a weak smile. "Yes, and also to make sure that their blood wasn't spilt on Mars in vain. For a number of different reasons, if I stayed out in the open I would have been unable to act…or even be killed".
Hunt raised an eye. "You might as well have stayed dead. If you don't know, X-Com was nearly dismantled. The only things still operating are the underwater bases but even those do nothing more than try to retrieve UFOs that crashed on the water. But even that is likely to change, since the costs of running the operation are becoming more expansive than the value of the tiny amounts of Elerium retrieved".
One of the consequences of the alien's defeat had been the almost complete depletion of the Earth's Elerium stocks, since the element wasn't natural to the Solar System. Hunt knew this well.
Three years ago he had stepped again in the surface of Mars, leading the last operational Avenger into a mission to examine the remains of the alien base and look if there were any aliens or Elerium left on the planet. Then he had made a visit to the chamber that had housed the Brain and seen its dead carcass, dry from being exposed to the Martian atmosphere. He wished that he had been there but his platoon had been hold up against the aliens preventing them from reaching the room. When the fighting at the City had subsisted he had discovered that he was the senior officer left on Tiger team.
The entire search for Elerium on had been fruitless and there wasn't even enough of it now to power plasma weapons. With no power source available and the economy in shambles, all research into interstellar travel had been abandoned. The only Elerium available on the planet seemed to be the alien engines that had survived the crash into Earth's oceans.
"You are right Captain, but some things won't change".
"Yeah? Do you know how many people and planes we lost to mechanical problems after the war before I quit? Gosh, after I'm done here I'm going to make a stop at the marker for the Cydonia veterans that died when their Skyranger crashed into the North Atlantic three years ago. Not a single body or trace of the craft was ever recovered. And do you know what caused this and other accidents?"
"Lack of necessary funding!" He spat out. "Anyone cared? No!" His words came out in disgust.
"Or what about the war crimes tribunals everyone was talking about after the war, to punish those who collaborated with the aliens? Did anyone cared when the politicians worked out a diplomatically acceptable solution for that? Hell, for me they should even have put Vaughn on stand, but instead he just quits and nothing else is done".
"I share your thoughts about Vaughn. He was one of the worst presidents this nation ever had and I'd wished that there would be a way to mend things up".
"Mend things up!" Hunt felt outrage. "Like the talk about the planned memorial for all the American servicemen who died on the war. All of this time afterwards we are still discussing if the names of the X-Com troopers should be placed next to the regular servicemen, since some consider that we defected the country when we decided to stick to X-Com instead of going with Vaughn's plans. Bah! At least their names are written on the General's Crater!"
The General's Crater was the unofficial name for the Moon's new surface feature that had been caused by the impact of the alien Mothership on the satellite. The Moon's craters were usually named after famous astronomers but on this case the International Astronomical Union had accepted that it would be known as Illyuschenko's crater. The naming had even included a ceremony where a memorial stone was placed on precisely on the center of the crater by the last Avenger craft on its last flight. It contained the names of every X-Com man and woman that had died on the war.
Williams put a hand on Hunt's shoulder. "You are right Captain, but right now these are minor battles compared to the task ahead of us to ensure that this will never repeat itself and mankind will endure".
Hunt looked at the face. "What do you mean? X-Com closed down bankrupt at the beginning of the year. It's dead, expect for material for blockbuster movies and for companies to market their products. The X-Lady is gone and no one cares for it. I'm not even a part of it anymore. How can I possibly help?"
"I can see that you are a man that shares our worries and I've seen you file, Captain. You were a Navy Seal before joining X-Com. And, it is a known fact that you were publicly instated as the Seal's Commander Officer afterwards when you returned for some years to the regular military. You left for, quote, personal reasons, unquote. However it was also the result of your personal frustrations towards how X-Com and its personnel were treated. Since you resigned your commission you had had a couple of positions at security companies but you have also left them after sometime".
The statement shocked Hunt for its ability to "Mr. Smith, how do you known all of that? Are you keeping a watch over me?"
Williams's brother turned to him and said. "My brother is being quite melodramatic here. Mr. Hunt. Let's just say that I prefer to get the most possibly qualified man for the job. And, for a strange fate or luck, you're just what we need. Tell me, have you ever considered joining the private sector? More precisely, in the aquatic business?"
**********The End
André Galvão, 2002