Mobile 1, outside the Hotel Splendid
On hearing this, Penelope's heart leapt into her mouth...for the 'E' stood for Emergency!
"Holy shit, the Commander's in trouble! Assault & Rescue: RED ALERT! We're on our way, sir!"
She considered and instantly discarded the option of running into the hotel and taking the lift; it would take too long, especially if the hotel's security staff misidentified them as terrorists - as well they might, given that the team was kitted out in full body armour and armed to the teeth - and attempted to engage them. There simply wasn't time to disable them without using deadly force - but injuring or killing civilians went against the grain for SHADO personnel, for these were the very people they were supposed to be protecting.
So they drove Mobile 1 closer to the hotel, piled out and fired a messenger line of spidersilk/carbon fibre nanotube composite (the exact same material, in fact, as Jennifer's dress...) from the Mobile to the 10th floor; the projectile launched was a small but powerful pulley system which, on impact with the hotel's exterior, anchored itself via nanotech, bonding it molecularly to the masonry.
The instant it was securely anchored, it fired a second laser-guided thread back down to Mobile 1, both threads being automatically joined and spooled onto the pulley at each end. All Penelope and her team had to do then was to attach handheld runners to the return line and send a signal to the 10th floor pulley to haul them up.
They did.
It did.
"Kelly," Jennifer asked in a slow, careful voice, "is it too much to ask to inquire why those cards are smoking...?"
"Pressure-sensitive binary explosive in the plastic coating," was his terse, clipped reply, his gaze still locked onto them, "the trigger component is Natalia's adrenalin-saturated perspiration. If she turns the cards, the pressure of her fingers will cause them to explode," he finished as matter-of-factly as he could, as he was intensely anxious to avoid a panic, though he was all too aware of the gasps of horror from the players who'd heard him.
Claude looked as if he wanted to run, not that anyone could blame him, but he was frozen in place by a combination of fear and his almost instinctive obedience of Kelly's order - carefully pitched as it was to reach the most primeval regions of the brain, triggering automatic deference to the dominant male.
Jennifer then earned yet another plus point for initiative on her assessment: she armed her flechètte projectors without Kelly giving her any sort of order or signal to do so. Good girl!
"Now," Jennifer inquired further, "who would do a thing like that...?" As if I didn't know!
Natalia, trembling, met Kelly's eyes and pleaded, "Pozhalusta, help me..." The plea was genuine as far as he could tell; her terrified eyes kept shifting between his face and the smoking cards.
He suddenly knew she didn't know the entire plan - and was not a willing participant in whatever it was.
But what was the plan? Why were they - ?
And then he understood, in a blinding flash of command intuition.
He - and SHADO - had completely misread the entire situation.
Once again the Aliens had employed layered strategic thinking, wheels within wheels, to obscure their true purpose, and this time he hadn't seen through it.
Until now.
"Wait...this isn't about the money at all, or about Shostakovich, or even SHADO - is it?" he demanded of Natalia, his eyes wide with the shock of realisation.
"No," came a completely unexpected voice from behind the girl and off to one side, "it concerns the Construct."
The voice...echoed.
Jennifer cursed and turned to face the head waiter, not - quite - raising her hands, astutely figuring it would be best to reveal her little surprises only when necessary. "I wondered why you got my back up every time you spoke! Now I can see it - you're one of Their puppets, aren't you?!"
"Not quite," he dissented, "I was human...now I am what you might call 'one of Them'." He barely smiled, the expression looking utterly wrong. "We are aware of your habit when speaking of us."
"Why, then?" Jennifer demanded. "If you're not here to kill Kelly" - and if you try I swear I'll shoot you dead, you evil bastard - "or fuck up SHADO's plans, why are you here?!"
"Natalia," Kelly whispered, "this is all about Natalia!"
"We have suspected the Construct of somehow harbouring disharmonious, even rebellious thoughts, since its creation, though we are at a loss to comprehend how this is even possible; even the concept of disloyalty should be beyond its cognitive capabilities," the Alien intoned with apparent disgust, certainly contempt. "It has obeyed its orders, but often not in the way we specified. I am here to permit it one final chance to prove its loyalty to us."
"By killing herself?" Kelly snarled disgustedly.
"You expect no less of your operatives, Commander."
The other players couldn't possibly understand what was happening, lacking any context, but were stunned into silence. Trixie, perhaps, might have understood more, but said and did nothing, wisely recognising she'd be way out of her league if she tried to intervene somehow.
"That is not the same thing!" Kelly grated in a furious whisper. "And that's what you'll never understand about us! The difference is a matter of choice! More than that, it's a matter of humanity - something you lost a very long time ago!" he spat contemptuously. "It's why we're going to win this war!"
"You can win nothing if you are dead," the Alien coldly pointed out. "You, Commander, have been deemed a major threat to us. Having failed to capture and analyse you in order to determine why this is so, we will settle for your death instead! Construct: obey your implanted orders! If you somehow defy us, I shall destroy you, and your 'father' will be shown your destruction before we kill him, too!" Again he almost smiled, and again it looked utterly wrong. "Unless, of course, we elect to let him live with that knowledge for whatever span remains to him."
"That is...cruel," Natalia whispered, shocked by the Alien's casual sadism. "He does not deserve that."
No-one there knew it at the time, but this was the very same Alien who had tortured Phoebe Klein to death, seventeen years before being assigned to command the Chernobyl base - just as well, because either Kelly or Jennifer might have shot him out of hand had they known.
He had also taken trophies from Phoebe...viz. her heart and thyroid gland. Purely out of a sadistic desire to punish her still further for the 'crime' of exposing them to Earth's authorities, he'd had a companion transplant the stolen organs into him whilst their helpless, unwilling and slowly dying donor - already on the brink of insanity - was forced to watch in utter horror.
It was the last straw. Other than her final, agonised death rattle, the only sound Phoebe ever made again, until what little remained of her strength drained away and she expired almost with a sense of relief, was her piercing insane shrieks as her beleaguered mind - tortured and strained far, far beyond human endurance - snapped utterly.
Aliens seldom smiled, but that particular memory always made him do so. His orders (simply to kill her) notwithstanding, he'd thoroughly enjoyed every moment of her suffering, both physical and mental.
"Spare him that, then, and we may be merciful to him instead. OBEY!"
"Nyet...pozhalusta...I - I want to live..." Her hand was shaking violently - it was clear she was trying so, so hard to resist the command and keep it still.
At that moment Jennifer made a major contribution towards saving the day, with a speech that would later go down in SHADO (and long, long after they were all dead, in human) history.
"You can, Natalia. You can choose, don't you see? Whatever They made you to be, you don't have to be it," she urged the terrified girl. "You want to be free, but you already are! You're not a 'construct'! You're human now! You became that from the moment you decided to rebel - you crossed the line! Bridged the gap between Construct and human! So make the human choice," she cried, "and don't turn those cards!" Her voice dropped. "Please don't," she entreated quietly but earnestly, "Sophie still needs me. She needs her adoptive father, too...and how are you going to achieve your ambitions if you're dead, darling?"
(Am I imagining things, or are there a lot more people in here than there were a few minutes ago?)
"We will preserve your memories if you obey," the head waiter claimed.
"Don't believe them, Natalia," Kelly warned sharply. "They can't possibly retrieve memories from a pulverised brain, and you'll be right at the centre of the explosion!"
"OBEY!" the Alien screamed.
Wait - if they want me dead so badly, why doesn't he just do it himself? Kelly puzzled, but then he saw the answer: the Aliens wanted, needed, to understand how and why their Constructs seemed capable of apostasy, else it would be counter-productive at best and dangerous at worst to create them at all. The only way they could be sure of them was to test them in extreme situations...such as the current one.
The same logic obtained in selecting SHADO command officers: the proof of the pudding's in the eating. The only way to truly assess an officer's ability to command, as in any military body, was to grant them command and then see how well they performed...or how badly.
Natalia surely had to be the Aliens' field test of their latest version of Construct, clearly a highly advanced and sophisticated one designed to blend in with humanity, indistinguishable from it and able to simulate - or perhaps even experience - such utterly human things as passion.
The Aliens must, he mused disgustedly, have learned from the many humans they'd abducted over the years, before butchering them.
Certainly Jennifer hadn't had a clue she was making love with something that wasn't truly human, not until Natalia told her...and even then, she hadn't even cared, believing with her boundless compassion and big heart that even if the girl wasn't really human, perhaps she could be, potentially. Jennifer would, he knew with pride, give Natalia the benefit of the doubt, proving once again what a noble, worthy example of Homo sapiens she was - one of the many, many reasons Kelly loved her more with each passing day.
But the Constructs' ultimate purpose was all too obvious now. The only thing it could possibly be, the only reason they might go to the enormous trouble of designing and creating such perfect facsimiles, was:
Infiltration!
The Aliens intended to create Constructs to replicate senior SHADO officers, replace the real people, and...oh, dear God, it might actually WORK, he thought, terrified by the very possibility. The lower calibre of Construct which Straker and Foster had first encountered in the underwater base, the earliest models, could never have pulled off an infiltration as they lacked human warmth - but Constructs like Natalia were a completely different matter. If they could fool someone as shrewd as Jennifer, they could fool anyone.
But if Natalia could successfully rebel somehow, the Aliens would surely abandon the plan; they always discarded strategies once tried, successful or not - the one time they didn't (viz. the Bower Incident), it cost them three UFOs, a base and a large number of effectives and agents. The last thing they needed was to implement the infiltration plan only to have the Constructs subsequently turn on them. Therefore they required Natalia to obey her orders and kill him, to prove her function.
So it's all on Natalia...!
"Please," Jennifer begged one last time, near tears herself now, "not for us...for Sophie...please...!"
Natalia raised her teary eyes to Jennifer's, saw her warmth, compassion and all the myriad possibilities of humanity in them - possibilities in which she was slowly realising, with a dawning wonder, she could actually share - and in that instant made her choice.
Her hand moved - but not to turn the cards. With a tremendous, literally inhuman effort she slid them rapidly along the table away from everyone, towards the vacant end of the table.
The cards whizzed along the table's entire length with incredible speed, shot off the end (as they rose into the air with the wind of their passage, the Queen of Hearts was briefly visible!) - and only then did they explode.
And the entire scene dissolved into chaos.
Assault & Rescue Team, clinging to exterior of Hotel Splendid
The Assault & Rescue Team heard the explosion via their laserdropping gear and tensed for battle. On Penelope's orders they'd waited until what she judged to be the right time to intervene; as her sensei once told her, "In politics, in combat, in comedy and in love, TIMING IS CRUCIAL. Watch your timing, and the rest will follow."
And that time was -
"NOW!" Penelope commanded, her voice as hard as the armour she wore. Luanne Vickers, her number two, triggered the shaped breaching charge and an entire exterior wall was blasted inwards, giving the team access to the 10th floor. Relying on the advantage of surprise, they went in firing as they were trained to do.
It was as well they did; Constructs disguised as hotel staff were coming to engage them. Some had been injured - or was that 'damaged'? - by the blast, some killed (deactivated?). But there were others.
Many others.
The clientèle's reaction to the cards' explosion (to say nothing of the much louder one triggered by Luanne) was both understandable and predictable:
Utter panic.
People screamed, clawing their way out as best they could or milling about in confusion. Only three people in the room reacted with any immediate degree of calmness or control: Kelly, Jennifer and the Alien.
A gun (or something) suddenly grew out of the Alien's hand and fired at the Commander.
Who was no longer there.
He had reflexively dived under the table, arming his own flechètte projectors - and popped up on the other side, shooting at but missing the Alien, who'd reacted with literally inhuman speed and reflexes the instant he realised the Commander had moved. The new arrivals Jennifer had peripherally noticed were similarly armed - and also, Kelly deduced from the way they moved, lower-calibre Constructs, the kind SHADO operatives generally nicknamed Expendables.
Not that the Aliens themselves ever thought of any Construct as anything but expendable, of course.
His head whipped around rapidly, searching desperately for Jennifer, briefly forgetting his duty when he should of course have been gunning for the Alien. "JEN!" he screamed in fear for her. For all her training and talents she was still, basically, a housewife/single mother, not yet a trained SHADO field operative and certainly not any kind of soldier! God, what was I THINKING, bringing her into this?! Oh, Jen...!
But he'd sorely underestimated her courage and self-possession; she'd somehow managed to upend a section of the table and had taken cover behind it. Apparently she was now methodically picking off anyone who wasn't a poker player, reasoning with lightning-fast intuition that the majority of the casino's occupants were their enemies and only their fellow players were definitely human - and hence hopefully trustworthy.
(Even in the midst of a fight for their lives he was still the Commander, and Cadet Harrison's evaluating officer on this mission, performing his duty in that capacity by noting with approval his cadet's superb performance and mentally revising her final assessment score...upwards. Way upwards, and it was pretty high already. He concluded she could take care of herself and refocused on the Alien as his primary target. Now where was the bastard...?)
Jennifer did experience a brief moment of doubt and dread at what she was about to do before firing her first shot - she was proud of the fact that she had never, never knowingly taken life, even a small life like a fly or whatever. But now...now she had to. Now, for the first time in her life...she had to kill.
Could she? Did she have the nerve? The guts? "Training is one thing," she remembered Denise and, later, Penelope Terry saying on the firing range, "but the real thing is something else. Always remember that, Cadets - or you'll most likely end up dead."
But it was only a brief hesitation. She quelled her doubt by telling herself: They are not human. They aren't even alive, really. It's them or us! So DO IT, WOMAN!
She took aim, newly resolute, and fired.
The Construct she was aiming at took the lethal flechètte in his/its neck, jerked and collapsed, expiring before he/it hit the floor.
She felt a rush of something, she couldn't decide whether it was excitement or relief, but either way it felt good.
"Combat adrenalin is a good thing, providing you rule it and not the reverse," Penelope, a noted and often-commended combat veteran, told the cadets hanging raptly on her every word, knowing all too well that their very lives might depend on it someday. "Use it, but never let it use you."
I remember, Penelope. Thank you. Okay, that's one down. Now do it again!
Anyone about whom she wasn't sure received an anaesthetic flechètte - if they were human, no harm done and at least they'd be out of anyone's line of fire; if they weren't, they would at least be out of the picture for a few hours and could be taken prisoner later. But anyone/thing with a weapon she would damn well kill, or deactivate, or whatever the hell the proper word was when dealing with those bloody Constructs!
Once, just once, she had a brief but entirely understandable stab of SCS during the firefight, and allowed herself to think: Wait, what the hell am I doing? I should be taking cover or whatever, I'm no bloody soldier - I'm scared shitless and way out of my depth! Plus I'm - oh, God, I'm killing people! Well, sort of...
But she'd developed a practical streak of pragmatism from the moment she first took a newborn Sophie to her breast in the New Forest; just as Sophie latched on, it fully dawned on her for the first time that she was a mother now, with a responsibility that went beyond herself. Now that same pragmatism kicked in when she most needed it, and she answered her own question: I'm doing what I have to do. Remember Denise's advice during combat training:
Let your training and reflexes do the thinking.
DON'T THINK.
DO.
Act fast and don't give yourself time to be afraid. It's not about not being afraid - that's not what courage means. Only a fool doesn't feel fear in a life-threatening situation, but letting it take hold of you is even more foolish. Acknowledge your fear, but do your best to put it aside and concentrate on your duty, on doing what has to be done.
We all have to die sometime, but it needn't be now.
So she followed Denise's advice, wrestling her fear into submission with the greater fear that she might die here when Sophie still needed her.
When Kelly needed her.
For both their sakes, to say nothing of her own, she wanted to live.
But her only, terse response to him was:
"Shut up and SHOOT, you daft twat, I've got this!"
As she yelled it, she was nailing a Construct firing at a member of hotel security trying to help; he yelped and fell, clearly injured but thankfully alive - the creature dropped even while shooting and thus its shot nearly missed its target, hitting the man's side just above the hip instead of nearer his heart. Luckily for him the bullet passed through soft tissue instead of lodging in his body and paralysing him with agony as she knew Alien bullets were designed to do.
Others hadn't been so fortunate. Their screams were discordant, almost deafening - she shot one or two with anaesthetic flechèttes out of compassion, but to her distress they seemed to have no effect. Then she remembered what Kelly had told her about the Alien nanotech and how it negated anaesthesia and painkillers. Well, I tried...
Lucija, where's Lucija?! Oh, God, darling, please, please stay down, stay safe...
She briefly debated forcing the issue by locating the girl and shooting her with an anaesthetic flechètte (or even two, to make doubly sure), but then she spotted Lucija, resolutely staying low as Jennifer had advised and making rapidly for the exit, which is exactly what you should be doing, you smart, sensible young thing! Not cowardice, just hard sense!
The Alien had taken cover, secreting himself behind a support pillar; he was shouting to the Constructs, "Kill them! Kill the Commander and the woman! KILL THEM NOW! THEY SHOULD DIE IN PAIN!"
"You wish," a cold voice was somehow heard over all the noise as Penelope, for whom the A.R.T. had managed to clear a path, viciously clubbed a Construct about the head, levelled her favourite weapon at the pillar - and fired through it. The Alien shrieked and died, part of the ceiling collapsing onto him as the pillar - and his body - split apart under the ravening fury of the concentrated blast of gold ions.
"Well, where the hell have you been?!" Kelly couldn't help quipping, continuing the long tradition of battlefield humour which, in future times, historians of other civilisations would recognise as one of the defining traits of human military affairs. "Some 'protection' you are!"
"He's such a grateful bastard, isn't he?" Penelope yelled in the same spirit to Jennifer, ignoring the blood flowing from her head wound in the rush of combat adrenalin, as she took up a position behind her commanding officer to cover his back. "That's all the thanks I get for saving his ass!"
Jennifer somehow managed a laugh.
What happened next, however, was impossible to construe as amusing.
Alien fortress, Chernobyl
At the instant of the Alien's death
He is dead!
I know, came the reply from the immediate subordinate of the Alien in the casino; in that instant he assumed command of the base and of the operation. The plan has failed; the higher-level Constructs are untrustworthy and thus non-viable! But the secondary base needs time for orderly evacuation before SHADO forces discover it - we cannot afford to lose those resources!
A distraction is required, his own subordinate suggested.
Yes. Level that building! Kill them all!
I obey. Launching.
With that, a UFO of unique design, partly designed by Ivan Shostakovich and constructed on Earth, launched on its lethal mission.
It did not go unnoticed.
Moonbase, Control Sphere
RED ALERT! RED ALERT! UFO on positive track! SID reported urgently.
"Trajectory? Range?" Gay rapped, puzzled that it hadn't simply told them. "Interceptors: imm -"
MOONBASE INTERCEPT NEGATIVE, SID interrupted, to her shock, UFO already in atmosphere! UFO ascending rapidly!
"WHAT?!" Gay nearly screamed, unbelieving. Joan and Nina gaped at her; it was utterly unlike Gay to lose her cool, but given current events..."How?! How did it get past -"
Predicted destination/target, given relative vector: Montenegro! COMMAND ALERT OVERRIDE - Commander McAllister is in danger! COMMAND ALERT OVERRIDE!
"SID, where the hell did it come from?!" Gay persisted.
Takeoff point: Chernobyl, the satellite informed her. Altitude now 20,000 feet and still ascending, velocity Mach 3.1 and accelerating - ETA eighteen minutes!
Oh my God, IT TOOK OFF FROM THE GROUND! Gay comprehended, stunned and horrified. But there was no time to consider the implications of that, not now. Instantly she reassessed the situation, decided there was also no time to contact HQ and snapped, "Nearest Skydiver!"
Skydiver Five on station in the Baltic Sea - opening channel.
Skydiver Five
50 fathoms beneath the surface of the Baltic Sea, 1 nautical mile due east of Gdansk
"Moonbase Control to Skydiver Five: immediate launch! Repeat: immediate launch!"
Captain Alessandra Bower shared a startled look with her XO, Pamela Fleetwood. Launch orders normally came straight from SHADO HQ; what the hell was Moonbase doing giving one? "Skydiver Five Actual to Moonbase: request clarifi -"
But it was no longer necessary. The sonar/radar operator, Odu Akembe, raised his head abruptly and interjected: "Skipper, I have a trace! It's airborne, heading - oh my God, it's heading for -!"
"- Montenegro," Alessandra intuited grimly; it was surely the only destination that mattered right now. That explained it: presumably a UFO had somehow gotten past Moonbase and Colonel Bradley had decided there simply wasn't time to report the fact to HQ. So it's up to us! "Roger Wilco, Moonbase! Helm, bring us about, right standard rudder, bearing Two-Two-Nine!"
"Coming about, Skipper," Mikhail Smyslov echoed from the helm, "right standard rudder, bearing Two-Two-Nine."
"Optimum interception point?" she requested while pulling on her flight jacket.
"Given its heading and altitude, I'd say...just over Budapest, Skipper," Odu decided after a rapid consultation of the map of Europe. "But it'll be close," he warned urgently, "it's moving like the proverbial bat out of hell!"
"Copy that. Launch stations!" she ordered; Junior Rating Dana Vincent was holding out her flight helmet even as she finished giving the order. Good girl! Alessandra approved, accepting it; somehow the kid was always ready with her helmet. Time I promoted her, I reckon.
The standard prelaunch orders and responses rang out:
"Clear One!"
"One clear!"
"Clear Two!"
"Two clear!"
"Liftoff stations! Check boosters and relay circuits!"
"Checking...relays good to go!"
"Good luck, Skipper," Pamela wished her as she slid into the launch tube. "Helm, elevate to forty degrees -"
"Belay that!" Gay interjected urgently over the still-open channel. "Raise to minimum angle and LAUNCH, for God's sake! UFO ETA less than fourteen minutes and it's still accelerating!"
Since Lieutenant Colonel Bradley outranked everyone aboard, including Captain Bower, Pamela acknowledged, "Copy, Moonbase - elevating to ten degrees. Skipper -"
"I heard. She can do it, Pam, Foster did it once. Launching in five!"
SHADO HQ, Control Room
Five seconds later
"Colonel Freeman? I have an unscheduled launch indication from Skydiver Five, sir," Keith Ford reported, puzzled. Then an alert signal sounded from the radar operator's station, and he immediately added urgently, "Positive trace, Colonel: we have a UFO in atmosphere! Attention all defence systems, this is a Maximum Security Alert. Attention all defence systems, I say again: this is a Maximum Security Alert - Condition Red!"
Alec dashed in from the Commander's Office as Keith was announcing the alert, growling, "Three guesses where it's going, as if we needed them!" He was about to order him to inform the Assault & Rescue Team, but Keith was already doing so:
"SHADO Control to A.R.T.: you have incoming - UFO inbound at Mach 4, ETA thirteen minutes!"
"Copy," was Penelope's only, brusque response. "A.R.T. currently engaging hostiles." As she said it, she blew off a Construct's head with her beloved Heavy Assault Ion Beamer. God, I love this thing! Wish I could just mow 'em down, but with all these civvies in the way...ah, the hell with it, girl, just pick 'em off the way Jennifer's doing! Wow, she's a good shot, too!
"Where the hell's the Commander?!" came the strident, urgent query from Alec Freeman.
"Here but busy, Alec!" Kelly responded sharply, shooting a Construct taking aim at the woman he loved - try to shoot my girl, will you? Fuck you, asshole!
Another Construct did get a shot in, but Jennifer's dress did its job and the bullet failed to penetrate, inflicting no more than a minor bruise on her left breast. Her response was a pained yelp, a reflexive ouch-that-hurt-you-bastard snarl of anger - and a lethal flechètte.
The Construct took it right in the eye and expired instantly.
Did that hurt, motherfucker?! You bruised my tit, you dead twat!
SKY 5, launching
"SKY 5 airborne," Alessandra reported as the Skyfighter cleared water, "UFO on positive track. Boosting at max - Odu, how close can I get?"
"Sorry, Skipper, but it's accelerated to Mach 4.5," Odu reported incredulously, "direct intercept before Montenegro now impossible, and you'll be up to five seconds behind it all the way," he informed her regretfully.
"In other words, it'll get in at least one good shot before I can intercept," she concluded grimly. "Altering course direct to Hotel Splendid."
Moonbase, Control Sphere
"Colonel, there's something odd about the UFO," a puzzled Nina informed Gay as she analysed the Utronic sensor readout relayed from SID. "Its Utronic sensor profile is nothing remotely like the usual."
Gay frowned and turned to her. "Specify."
"For a start it's a lot smaller - I doubt it could hold more than one Alien, maybe two at most. Also, it doesn't appear to be spinning - it's shaped more like a missile, or a fighter. But the most telling difference is that I don't think it's radar-reflective - or if it is, then it's closer to a U-2 Stealth Bomber than anything else."
"You mean it's using human stealth tech?" Gay asked, startled.
Nina nodded. "Even conventional radar might be able to pick up at least a minimal profile."
That was totally unlike any UFO SHADO had ever encountered since 1982, when they'd started using some sort of advanced stealth shielding, rendering every UFO virtually invisible to all EM-based radar. They'd learned from the Sheringham-Bosanquet Incident, in which the Royal Navy vessel tasked with dumping the nerve gas had managed to detect incoming UFOs via military-grade radar. Thus their presence in the Falkland Islands during the conflict went unnoticed by all, bar a sighting by Prince Andrew (who was of course ordered by his superiors to keep quiet about what he'd seen).
Which meant...what?
"SID," Gay requested impulsively, "what do you make of it?"
She hadn't really expected a definitive answer, but to her surprise SID responded, Tentative extrapolation from current data suggests local manufacture. Sensor readings indicate presence of titanium alloys, composition similar to outer hull of Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.
With that, a number of things abruptly became clear to her, weaving together in her mind:
Russia was one of the world's major suppliers of titanium (in a twist of historical irony the country had, to its government's chagrin, supplied the titanium for the SR-71 Blackbird, the aircraft tasked with spying on that very same country!).
Chernobyl, the UFO's apparent launch and/or construction site, was situated in Russia.
Shostakovich owned a Russian aerospace component manufacturing plant...namely, AIC. It did pursue other lines of business, but its primary focus was the aerospace industry.
He was also a major stockholder (through various fronts) in the Ruchar titanium mine.
Chernobyl and Pripyat had been essentially deserted since 1986, for obvious reasons (there had been a few elderly residents, but these were forcibly evacuated in 2020 following a change in Russian government and a subsequent policy revision - more of an overreaction, actually - re disaster management), tourism was now discouraged and so no-one but the occasional brave and/or foolish researcher ever went there now, usually as part of the UN's Chernobyl Recovery & Development Programme.
One woman who'd done just that, Gay now recalled, had gone missing nineteen months ago; SHADO was always routinely copied on missing-person reports, because any such disappearance might be Alien-related. Supposedly Dr. Olga Tsiolkovski had been mauled and eaten by a bear; her torn anti-rad suit, bloodstained clothing and a few mangled body parts, showing signs of mauling consistent with a bear attack, had been recovered - but those remains could have been faked, planted by the Aliens to conceal the abduction.
Gay now knew how Shostakovich had dropped out of sight of SHADO for a month - also nineteen months ago - and where he'd gone...and, to some extent, what he'd been doing.
She also knew how and why his net worth had dectupled.
Even Natalia's existence could now be accounted for.
On a (Moonbase) hunch she called up photos of Dr. Tsiolkovski and Natalia. The resemblance was far too close for a familial relationship (and the scientist was known to be an only child and sterile in any case) - no, Natalia was clearly Olga's clone, or almost. Finally she checked all recent gold ore shipments and discovered one recently received by AIC...which was owned by Shostakovich. That clinched it.
"Get me Colonel Freeman," she ordered Joan grimly.
SHADO HQ, Control Room
"So Shostakovich is a traitor," Alec growled when Gay explained her theory, "he's been helping them design and build a UFO that can survive in Earth's atmosphere - and can be built using Earth-based materials and tech!"
"That's SID's and my theory, sir," Gay confirmed. "I suspect Natalia is an advanced Construct - most likely that missing CRDP researcher, Dr. Olga Tsiolkovski, provided the female DNA strand and mitochondria. Facial recognition software can't tell the difference between them."
"And the gold ore?"
"I'd be very surprised if it didn't contain iron-60, sir."
Alec turned to Keith and snapped, "As soon as we have the time, I want an arrest warrant issued for that Cossack!"
The UFO's stealth shielding was a necessary compromise; it had proven impossible to duplicate the requisite shielding materials with the available facilities, and the Homeworld could not spare them. Shostakovich had therefore suggested utilising human stealth tech instead - while not as efficacious, it would at least shield the UFO from almost every type of radar except SHADO's. The Aliens manning the bases sited in Russia concurred.
He had done his best. Natalia was his reward.
Mostly hidden from all but SID, the UFO flew on.
Casino Royale
UFO ETA: less than 2 minutes
With the lethally effective combination of Kelly, Jennifer, Penelope and the A.R.T., it wasn't long before all the Constructs were down, either anaesthetised or 'dead'. Nicholas Holt, too, had helped; it turned out he wasn't exactly unskilled with weapons (on realising that, Jennifer had wisely refrained from shooting him). Kelly finally called out, with a tremendous sense of relief, "Cease fire, I think we got them all!" He wanted to gather up Jennifer and hug her, he wanted it almost more than life itself, but right now he could not spare the time; it wasn't over yet, as was soon confirmed:
"None too soon, sir," Penelope panted urgently, dabbing at a forehead scalp wound from a near miss, "that UFO will be here any second!"
Kelly tapped his jaw in such a way as to put his transceiver in 'loudspeaker' mode and called, "SKY 5, report!"
"I'm right on its tail, sir, but I'm still 2.7 seconds behind it," Alessandra responded tensely. "I can't get it before it comes into range of the hotel! It's coming in from the north on bearing Zero-Two-Six relative to your position!"
Kelly reflexively glanced towards Penelope, who was already positioning herself at the hole they'd blasted in the wall, bracing herself against a stanchion with her Ion Beamer set to maximum power. Clearly she was hoping to hit it with a long-range shot, maybe disrupt its point of aim - and thus give SKY 5 a better chance to intercept. By pure good luck (or ESP? Penelope wondered about herself yet again - she really should go for testing), she'd chosen the north wall as their breach point, and thus she had a clear line of fire through the hole along just the right heading.
Unfortunately, so of course did the UFO.
It was now a question of which had the greater range: Penelope's Ion Beamer, or the Alien energy weapon. If the latter, they were all doomed.
But as it turned out, the UFO came into Penelope's range before firing, slowing slightly as it did so - the pilot clearly hadn't expected an armed response from within the hotel and was taken by surprise as the Ion Beamer roared, nearly overheating and burning Penelope's hands despite her gloves. The angle was wrong and thus her glancing shot seemed to inflict relatively little damage, but the UFO did veer off slightly -
- and Alessandra gave it no chance to recover.
Before the Alien pilot could correct his point of aim and fire, SKY 5 was on him like a stooping peregrine falcon, but swifter than any bird; Penelope's shot had bought Alessandra the 0.7 seconds she'd needed to close to attack range. Her single salvo hit the UFO dead on and it plunged out of the air, exploding on impact just outside the hotel as she banked sharply to port - just barely in time to miss the building. Casino Royale's clientèle - and the crew of Diver 5, monitoring via SKY 5's telemetry - gave a great cheer.
"Great shot, Alessandra," Kelly called, then he sobered. "So where did that come from?"
"Chernobyl, sir," was Gay's answer when he inquired.
"So presumably they've built a base there." It made perfect sense: the one place on Earth people usually avoided, thus guaranteeing secrecy and also explaining where Shostakovich had vanished to. Even SHADO wouldn't have had any reason to look there; surely the Aliens were no fonder of radioactivity than humans, though of course any such base would obviously incorporate radiation shielding. Though I wonder just how long it's been there, he mused, the radioactivity might've created a radar blind spot for a while. So if it's well-established, the bastards will be firmly dug in by now.
So how best to destroy it...?
"Two, sir," she corrected, "there's a second, smaller base in Pripyat - most likely that's the facility where they create the Constructs. We managed to tap into a Russian surveillance satellite feed to locate them, enhancing the feed via Utronic scanning," she continued, "and the Chernobyl base looks to be partly underground, disguised and heavily fortified - almost certainly heavily armed, too."
"Plus it's smack-bang in the middle of a major radioactive contamination zone," he growled, "which makes sending in ground forces problematic at best - they can't be expected to fight while wearing anti-rad gear. We can't hit them from the air, either; Ukraine will ask too many questions, none of which the UN will want to answer. Besides, SKY 5's an interceptor, not any kind of bomber; she's not designed for ground attacks, those are best carried out by Mobiles."
Moonbase, Control Sphere
"There's also ambient temperature and weather conditions to consider, sir," Gay pointed out, delivering further bad news, "it's currently fifty below and there's a snowstorm developing. Ground reports indicate zero visibility."
"A ground attack's out of the question, then," he concluded, seeing the only possible solution...and liking it not at all.
It would be wrong to suggest, as some historians later did who should have known better, that Commander McAllister's decision in this matter was hasty, ill-thought-out or arbitrary. It was simply that his thought processes were so much swifter and clearer than those of ordinary men that it only seemed as if he made an instant - and easy - decision.
Nothing could possibly be further from the truth.
Excerpt from Commander's Journal, Entry #18
It seemed to me as if I agonised over this for at least a millennium, though of course it was only a few seconds. As best I can recall, my internal debate went like this:
I can't. I can't! It's completely contrary to treaties which have helped keep the peace - mostly - since before I was even bloody born! The Russians aren't fools, they'll know as soon as it happens - God only knows what they'll think before we have time to contact them and explain...
I'll be putting Janine in a hell of a spot, too. She might dismiss me...at the very least. Hell, I wouldn't blame her.
Plus...nukes aren't discriminating, they can't be. If I hit the bases then I'm necessarily hitting everything around them, too. Dammit, Pripyat belongs to its people, what right have I to...
Then again, didn't Ed mention this kind of decision on his last day as Commander? Yeah...he did. "Kelly, if you ever find yourself giving a terrible order, first ask yourself: Is it terribly necessary? What's more terrible - the order's own consequences...or the consequences of not giving it?"
Put that way, the answer's obvious.
Still a hell of a thing to order Gay to do, though...
So finally I did what had to be done, and let history be my judge.
Or Janine...
Moonbase, Control Sphere
None of the people around Kelly were privy to any of his internal debate. All they saw and knew was what he said next.
"Only one thing for it, I'm afraid: launch the Interceptors and order an orbital strike on each base."
Gay's jaw dropped; Nina and Joan gasped in shock. Kelly McAllister had given his share of controversial orders in the course of his career, just as Ed Straker had - but this was going beyond the pale.
"Sir, you can't be serious!" Gay protested.
"Well, what are we supposed to do - just leave 'em there, free to launch who knows how many home-made UFOs and create who knows how many Constructs? And why are they even there at all, if not to serve as on-planet logistical and tactical support for the eventual invasion? No - they have to be destroyed!"
"Sir," she pleaded, "the Moscow Treaty -"
"- was never intended to deal with our situation, Colonel! Besides, it doesn't apply in wartime, and we are at war with them! Launch the Interceptors, on my authority - NOW!"
Dear God, the Secretary General will crucify him, Gay thought despairingly, she'll never agree with that interpretation, it's pure sophistry...
Then it occurred to her that he surely knew that, and accepted it...and he was right, she numbly realised; the bases' destruction had to be the top priority here. They'd have to deal with the inevitable repercussions later.
So she ordered: "Interceptors: immediate launch. Repeat: Interceptors, immediate launch."
God help us...
Before long the Interceptors were spaceborne and Harmony was requesting, "Okay, where's our target?"
Gay fed through the coordinates.
Interceptor One, holding in high Earth orbit
As Harmony received them she began to input the data...and then she realised just where the targets were. "Um...Interceptor One to Control: Mum, no way can these coords be right - these are ground targets!"
"The coordinates are correct, Interceptor Leader," Gay answered flatly, for once dismissing Harmony's usual disregard for comms protocol as there simply wasn't time to chastise her. "Fire on my mark - one 'Fox Two' from each Interceptor to each target, staggered for simultaneous impact. SID will handle guidance telemetry for maximum strike precision."
Confirmed, SID put in, missile guidance telemetry locked in.
"Hold on - we can't! The safeties -"
Harmony was of course correct; every Interceptor warhead incorporated a fire control cut-out which would automatically disarm the nuke if the missile was fired, whether by accident or design, towards Earth; it took its bearings from SID and Earth's magnetic field to determine its position and heading relative to Earth. The FCC could be overridden, but only with the correct command codes - which, in theory, were supposed to be issued only by the Secretary General.
In practice, the Moonbase Controller did in fact possess them, by Henderson's order.
Dear God, Gay thought despairingly, this goes against everything SHADO stands for; Ed would be ashamed of us, using our weapons against our own people and planet, to say nothing of the furore that'll erupt when we violate the Moscow Tr -
Her train of thought was abruptly derailed by a new idea. Wait, maybe we don't have to...
She typed furiously on her keyboard, calculating distance, velocity, mass...
"Interceptor Two to Control: I'm picking up one of those weird UFOs!" Sabrina reported urgently. "Wait - there's another one!"
"Three to Control: I've got two more!" Debbie Bellringer, Ingrid Svensdöttir's successor flying the new Interceptor Three, chimed in. "Reading three total! I say again, three UFOs airborne!"
Second UFO launch indication confirmed. Third and fourth UFO launches confirmed. Course for Montenegro confirmed. ADVISE IMMEDIATE ACTION!
"Holy FUCK! Interceptor One to Control: Mum, if you're gonna give us the codes it's gotta be now!"
There was an alternative. It could work. If it didn't, well, they'd have to violate the treaty after all...
"Interceptors: open fire!"
"Say WHAT?! Without the codes the warheads won't detonate!"
"They won't need to!" Gay returned sharply. "FIRE! THAT'S AN ORDER!"
Interceptor One
Holding in geostationary orbit above Pripyat and Chernobyl
Has she gone strange? Harmony wondered incredulously. What's the point of firin' a nuke if you don't arm the damn thing? Sure, it'll be goin' like a bat outa hell when it hits, as it'll be comin' down from orbit, but...wait a sec...half mass times velocity squared...!
She suddenly understood her Mum's logic. "Roger that! Interceptors: FIRE!"
They did.
The Alien bases detected and attempted to intercept the missiles as best they could, but they'd never expected an orbital strike from SHADO - the Aliens were as keenly aware of the Moscow Treaty as SHADO was. Their defences, designed to counter ground and/or aerial attacks, were inadequate to perform a task never anticipated, and so they failed; the missiles were unimpeded. All six, far too fast to be intercepted, got through.
The Alien commanding the Chernobyl base had just enough time to think, in despair and anger, Damn you, SHADO! Damn you all to your human hell! All we want is to surv -
All six missiles struck simultaneously at several kilometres per second, precisely on target, in a display of exquisite fire control on SID's part.
Pripyat and Chernobyl each disappeared in a fireball. The flash was seen as far away as Moscow.
The three UFOs, of course, didn't stand a chance.
Casino Royale
After the mushroom clouds have dissipated
"Moonbase Control to Montenegro Mission: kinetic strikes...confirmed," Gay reported tiredly. "Direct hits on each target." She paused. "Sir...Pripyat and Chernobyl are - gone. Just...gone. No trace of the UFOs; they must've been caught in the Chernobyl blast, as you intended."
"Acknowledged, Moonbase. Well done, Gay - pass that on to Harmony and her squadron, and bring 'em home."
"Will do, sir. Commander...I, uh...I have to report this action to the Secretary General, sir. I'm sorry," she added, as if pleading for his understanding or forgiveness, "I have to - regulations require it, and -"
"Of course they do," he gently interrupted her, "you're quite right. I'll handle her, Gay; you and yours can't be held responsible - you were acting under my orders, on my authority. If there's any official flak -"
"'If'?!" Gay couldn't help blurting.
"- I'll take it."
"Good luck with that, sir," she returned worriedly. "Moonbase out."
Sutton Place, Manhattan
Ten minutes later
"They did WHAT?!" Janine Allenbach screamed in utter incredulity on hearing the incredible, outrageous report relayed by a trembling and very young subordinate, the mouse chosen to bell the cat, for he knew all too well how the Secretary General would take the news. Her complexion was now vacillating between red with rage and pale with shock. "Oh my God! Call - call an emergency meeting of the Security Council immediately! And GET THAT CRAZY RECKLESS BASTARD HERE - by force, if you have to!"
Her staff knew exactly who 'that crazy reckless bastard' was, of course.
The executive order was transmitted less than a minute after the Secretary General called for it.