Harry sighed as he ran a nervous hand through his close cropped hair. He'd spent the better part of the past two years with the military crew cut, yet the feel of air on his naked scalp still felt oddly out of place. The din of the newly arrived recruits could be heard from the cargo bay, one hundred people shuffling about wondering what to do with themselves after being dropped off at a secret location that officially didn't exist. One hundred new fresh meats to be thrown into the grinder. One hundred people he was supposed to find some way of rallying and leading against the alien invaders.

Seeing no point in putting off the inevitable, Harry straightened his spine as Colonel McCoy had chided him for so many times before marching into the skyranger bay. The crowd of unfamiliar faces milling about staring around with obvious interest was an even mix of people of all ethnicities. These soldiers had been drawn from a pool of the best candidates from around the world. Some of them had been chosen because of their extensive training and commendations for action taken in the field. Others had been picked because they had fought the aliens first hand and survived to tell the tale.

Heads immediately turned when Harry walked through the automatic doors, the hiss of the parting entryway announcing his presence. The clamor died down as two hundred eyes turned to look at him, and the newly minted lieutenant had to fight back the urge to run. Somehow he managed to keep his expression bland despite the pounding of his heart.

He wasn't ready for this. The commander was wrong, there had to be a better option. Sure, Harry had survived some horrific battles. Hell he'd taken the fight to the aliens on their own turf more than once. That didn't qualify him to lead people, to pick and choose who lived and who died.

The expressions that faced him ranged from mildly curious to slight shock. They were disciplined enough not to begin whispering to one another, but more than one uneasy glance was shared between the recruits.

Harry couldn't really blame them. Most days he looked in the mirror and had to fight back a flinch at the reflection that stared back out at the world. Facial scars were hard to ignore, but perhaps what was more startling about his features were his eyes. He'd been complemented for his emerald eyes for as long as he could recall, but now they were mixed with the telltale gold flecks that indicated ocular meld modification. In dim enough light, his eyes seemed to almost glow unnaturally.

While Harry tried to find some reason to turn back, someone finally noticed the bars on the shoulder of his new officer's uniform. The silent landing bay echoed loudly with the thud of a duffle bag being dropped to the floor in their haste to snap to attention.

"Atten–hut!"

Drilled into them like reflex, the other men and women all snapped into rigid positions and saluted him, their faces instantly losing all expression and becoming eerily blank. It seemed the commander had been right about one thing, whatever misgivings they had about him was carefully being kept behind a wall of military discipline. Hopefully that would make life easier on Harry.

"At ease," he finally ordered after a long moment.

The rough rasp of his voice was the legacy of inhaling too much thin man toxin, his voice box horribly scared from the unfortunate ordeal. Even with the advanced healing technologies employed by Dr. Vahlen and the medical staff, it had taken months for the hemorrhaging to clear up enough for him to speak again. Being unable to speak above a whisper had been annoying, but it certainly hadn't stopped the commander from deploying him on missions.

The soldiers relaxed from their rigid postures into wide legged stances with hands clasped stiffly behind their backs. Even after having spent a year in XCOM, Harry wasn't used to the harsh disciplinary nature of most military organizations. Colonel McCoy had been rather lax about salutes and proper address of superiors outside the field given the small close nit groups they operated in. But with over one hundred new members and probably even more coming in to replace losses, Harry probably couldn't afford to use the same lassiez faire approach to command.

"Welcome to XCOM recruits," he began, his scratchy voice echoing to all corners of the landing bay. "As of the moment you signed onto our clandestine military structure, you have agreed to leave both nationality and ideology behind. You now fight for a cause greater than any one organization or country. You are fighting for the very survival of humanity."

The preplanned speech he had written and rewritten flowed off his tongue smoothly. Harry had never thought himself a natural orator, but having faced down a charging berserker armed with only a combat knife, talking in front of a crowd suddenly wasn't as bad as he had once imagined.

"Cast aside any prejudices you have against your fellow man, whether it be for their nation of origin, the color of their skin or the gender of their birth. These men and women around you will be your brother and sisters in arms. You will eat with them, sleep with them, train with them, and when the time comes, die for them."

In his own mind Harry saw a glimpse of the friends and comrades he had lost. He had to bite the inside of his cheek to prevent the flashbacks that threatened to overtake his psyche. They had died for the cause; the least he could do was honor their memory by carrying on the banner they had given their lives for.

The head shrinks told him it was normal given how much he had gone through, but he hadn't told them about the flashbacks. They'd take him out of the game if he did, and as of now he could still function. How long he could keep that up was yet to be seen, but damned if he wasn't going to try.

"Mankind is at war. For years it has been a game played in the shadows, fought away from the eyes of the public and kept secret from all but the highest echelon in the governments of the world. You have all been briefed on the enemy, and a few of you have even faced them on the battlefield. But understand this, the rules have changed. No longer is the enemy content with striking where they can't be seen; no longer is the enemy hiding behind a veil of secrecy."

The scales of the firefights XCOM strike forces had been dealing with had indeed slowly morphed from quick strikes to all out battles of attrition that lasted for hours, even days. Enemy numbers grew with each engagement, faster, stronger, and better equipped.

It had been outskirt places at first, rural farm areas on the fringes of civilization no one would even notice was missing for weeks on end if it's inhabitants were taken. Then came the invasions of small towns, where a couple thousand people lived. The scale of the alien invasion got to the point that even with governments tamping down on the media people were beginning to notice that something was wrong. And of course there was the battlecruiser their probe had found lurking out behind the dark side of the moon.

"I will not lie to you. Many of you will die. Those who survive may very well wish they hadn't."

The image of Corporal Lee lying in the hospital bed with both legs and a left hand missing came to mind. Poor bastard had been one of their fastest sprinters, lightening on his feet. It hadn't been enough to outrun the powerful guns of the first cyberdisk they encountered, although anyone else probably would have been brought home in a zip lock bag.

"You will be supplied with the best weapons that mankind can field. Protected with the best armor that has been produced. Your very bodies will be modified to give you an edge no other human soldier in history has ever enjoyed."

The breakthrough Vahlen had discovered with meld had been a game changer. Incorporating an unknown alien substance with humans had been beyond risky, but the payoff had allowed XCOM troops to keep up with the ever increasingly powerful aliens they were running into. The process was far from perfect, more than one soldier died or had their career cut short after a stay in the gene tanks. Even now the chance of death resulting from rejection hovered at almost ten percent and another fifteen percent of participants would step out as cripples rather than super soldiers.

"And yet still, it will not be enough. Even with the best equipment and genetic alterations, what will see you through battle is what comes from within."

Harry had thought long and hard on the points he wanted to hammer home to the new recruits. It was easy to get overconfident when you could swagger onto the battlefield decked out with ultralight armor that could deflect bullets, guns that could reduce targets to ashes and the ability to kill with your mind.

Against any conventional force found on earth it probably would be more than enough. But their foes had access to better technology, better resources. No, research breakthroughs gave them a leg up, but at the end of the day it wasn't what allowed them to win.

"Courage."

Lance Corporal Reed, rushing alone through a ship full of chrysalids with nothing but a shotgun and six rounds left in the chamber to reach the transponder that would see the horrific creatures halted before they could spread beyond the harbor. It had been a death sentence and he knew it going in, but instead of cowering when his team had died around him he had made the impossible happen.

"Commitment."

Sargent Reeves, leading a strike team to disable the bomb that would have torn a major city apart even though orders had been to retreat. It had been a near thing; Shen had calculated that given the energy readings building up in the location, they had been minutes, perhaps even seconds away from losing Chicago. It had cost the Sargent's life and half of her team, but millions continued breathing because of their sacrifice.

"And the willingness to give your life so that others may live."

Colonel McCoy, struggling through mind control in order to kill himself to give Harry the chance to disable the Sectoid Commander on the bridge of the alien ship found behind the moon. With the never before seen species of sectoid pacified, Harry had trashed the bridge with gunfire and explosives, lowering the battlecruisers formerly impenetrable shields.

Nuclear strikes carried out by hurriedly retrofitted interceptors that were barely space worthy had taken down the gargantuan vessel. Thirteen lives given to the removal of one threat. In the grand scheme of things, a cost well worth paying. For Harry who had been the only one to step off that ship, it was hard to see the truth past the mounting pile of bodies made of friends and comrades.

"Am I understood?" Harry asked quietly.

A hundred voices answered in zealous agreement.

Somehow he doubted they did. Harry certainly hadn't when he had first been recruited. But they would in time, just as he had. Enlightenment purchased at the cost of blood, tears and lives. And pay they would.

The fires of war would separate the capable soldiers from the dead ones. From the pool of hardened survivors, he would build the new Red Team. Like a dark phoenix rising from the ashes, the spirit of his dead comrades would be avenged.

AN: Finally got around to fixing up chp 2. Let me know your thoughts. Can't wait for XCOM 2!