Eagles Over Earth
Chapter 13: Code Black
May 3, 2020
En route to Bangalore, India
"Can't someone explain what's going on?"
Michael McNeil wished he had an answer. He also realized it was impossible that the answer could be good, and looked back at Torres' face of near-panic. Several hours ago, he'd said farewell to one of the newly arrived Special Forces squads, departing XCOM HQ to defuse an alien bomb detected in Bangalore. McNeil had assumed that was that and went back to sleep, but less than two hours later, he'd been suddenly called up, ordered on the second Skyranger and flown to the same site. Never before had two XCOM squads gone in piecemeal like this.
"Absolutely nothing good," Kwan said from across McNeil, frowning in the same way as she had in their first mission in Kansas. "In fact, they're probably all dead."
"Kwan…" McNeil chided her as Torres winced, clutching a medkit tighter.
"She is almost certainly right," replied Zhang, seated in the back. "If Martlet Squad needed conventional assistance, GDI could mobilize other assets in India faster than we could arrive."
McNeil had just gotten to know Martlet Squad's names yesterday. The thought that they were all dead was too awful to comprehend.
"Squad. Please wait," Solovyova interrupted, holding out her hand in a halting motion. "We don't know yet." With provisional command of this squad, Solovyova must have felt it her responsibility to keep them calm – and not think too hard about what might have happened. But the squad here screamed that something had gone terribly wrong.
Firstly, McNeil and Solovyova, XCOM's two Meld-modded squad leaders and arguably best all-round soldiers. Secondly, Torres and Sidorov, the teams' combat-seasoned medics. Bringing the heavy firepower was Kwan, with her MEC combat suit, and Zhang, perhaps the most experienced killer of them all. If the XCOM had an A-team for recovery operations, to retrieve whatever remained of a doomed squad, this was it.
Kwan sighed in concession. "Right. We don't know, yet."
"No, we don't," Zhang readily noted. "Commander?"
All eyes went to the little intercom in the troop bay. A long pause followed.
"I lost contact with them shortly after they defused the alien bomb," his voice came in, eerily calm. "Presently, most of Martlet Squad is assumed to be killed in action."
Torres' jaw dropped. Sidorov buried his head in his hands. McNeil tried to straighten up, but a chill of fear froze him in place. Killed in action.
"I'm forwarding their last recorded moments to you now. This section is from squad leader Bianchi."
"Yes, sir," Solovyova said with a note of injected confidence, but her voice caught. Helmet camera footage appeared on the Skyranger's video briefing screen: a densely-packed train yard full of empty cars and A laser rifle, hurriedly sweeping back and forth as the soldier – Bianchi, McNeil remembered – kept himself at a fast jog, pointed at every possible angle of ambush; heavy, rapid breathing indicated massive stress. He seemed to be repeating something under his breath – a prayer, perhaps?
"Move it up, we're out of time!" he suddenly shouted. "Taylor, to the bomb, now!"
"I'm trying!" Taylor, their sniper – what was he doing, so far ahead? – rushed up to a tall green cylinder, about two meters tall and clearly of alien origin that McNeil assumed was the bomb. He pressed a hand to it, and stood back as a flicker of energy went through. But as the bomb began to de-power, Bianchi twisted around to see Thin Men dropping all around on the train cars.
He got off two shots with his laser rifle before a stream of plasma struck him and he fell, his helmet falling away and offering one last view of Bianchi, clutching his chest before a cloud of dark green gas enveloped him and his helmet, the feed dying the next second.
"That was one hour ago," the Commander noted. "While they successfully completed the mission, Taylor and Bianchi are assumed dead, while Wood, Imler, and Zaitsev are already confirmed as killed. However, I'm still receiving life signs from Lewis. If he's still alive, find him."
"Consider it done, sir," Solovyova replied. McNeil wished he could share Solovyova's confidence, or even the veneer of it, but instead kept silent.
Less than an hour later, the squad walked out to a noisy ambience; the city of Bangalore had apparently ignored the aliens and warfare less than a kilometer away. If only McNeil could, too. The sights and smells here were all too familiar, though, of vehicles riddled with fire and the ground strewn with the dark burns of plasma. McNeil swore. It looked just like Paris and Saint Petersburg – their aftermath, to be precise.
"Lewis?" Torres called over the radio. "Can you hear us? We're here now."
"Strike One, Lewis' life signs have just flatlined," the Commander called in. "Consider this a recovery operation now. Don't expose yourselves to more danger than necessary."
"Understood, sir," Solovyova said.
"Blyat," Sidorov swore. Torres shuddered, and McNeil put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, which seemed to ease her a little bit.
"Come on, squad." Solovyova's face had solidified into a mask of cold duty. "Follow me."
McNeil noted that some of the blood stains were fading to brown. Whose blood was it, he wondered? Harry Wood, the assault trooper who had wanted to open a pawn shop his entire life? Symon Zaitsev, sniper by day, amateur photographer by night? He could not shake the feeling he was invading something deeply personal, a place he didn't belong.
"Something else is wrong," Zhang said. McNeil thought so too, but couldn't quite place it. The laser burns and plasma scorches were all here. So were the bullet holes of machine gun and sniper fire, and blood stains, yellow alien and red human mixed about. "Where are the bodies?"
"Shit," McNeil gasped. Zhang was right – no alien corpses were present. Or human, for that matter. "Torres. Kwan. Remember Cairo?"
"Oh…" Torres said. She was sounding more and more scared by the moment.
Kwan was more direct. "Nod is here."
"Or was," McNeil suggested, his grip tightening on his rifle.
"Strike One, report," the Commander called. "What have you found?"
"Go ahead, McNeil," Solovyova said. "Tell him."
"Sir, there's plenty of battle damage but no bodies here. I think it's Nod. They could have gotten here first, maybe scraped the area of anything valuable."
"Are there signs of current alien or Nod activity?"
"Negative, sir."
"Noted. Keep advancing."
At one punctured train car, Zhang detoured to inspect the damage. Ignoring the massive blast hole from a rocket, his attention instead went to a series of little bullet holes.
"These are 9mm caliber," Zhang said. "Probably fired from a submachine gun or machine pistol, based on the spread."
"Not a XCOM weapon, then," Kwan said, her MEC suit servos lightly whirring as she looked too.
"Likely not," Zhang confirmed.
Every scene took at least a minute to fully clear. While they didn't expect to find their soldiers, they had to be certain that no equipment was left behind either. But just as problematically, there was also no sign of the laser weapons or carapace armor – not even fragments, as might be expected from a violent battle. It had been picked bare.
Several dozen meters ahead of their initial drop point, at one rail track that was relatively clear, Solovyova called the squad to a halt, ordering them to disperse and take up positions as if preparing for a fight. McNeil wanted to ask why, but from the way everyone else shut up, he decided to follow her lead. She raised her rifle, her golden eyes darting back and forth. McNeil began to search, too, but couldn't pick up anything.
Suddenly, Solovyova's sniper rifle hissed – striking nothing. McNeil observed the steaming little hole she'd burned into a rusty train car with interest, wondering if something would emerge, but the smoke faded away, leaving only a neat little hole and nothing else.
"What are you doing, captain?" Torres spoke up first.
"Quiet!" she snapped. A moment later, she fired again.
Still, nothing died save for a gnat that happened to be a little too close to the beam and was instantly vaporized. Even Sidorov began giving weird glances back, but if she was bothered at all, she didn't show it: she kept her eye glued to her scope instead.
McNeil's attention had wandered to a passenger airplane flying low overhead when Solovyova's rifle spoke again – and then an explosion and cries of alarm from his squad snapped him back to the present.
"Seeker!" Torres identified the sprawling alien on the ground, still twitching before Kwan shot it multiple times.
"Contact!" Solovyova barked as two more Seekers de-cloaked near the first. McNeil beamed one, and the other fell apart to the thunder of Zhang's machine gun.
"Are we clear?" Pavlova asked.
McNeil heard it before he saw it, and he whipped around to see a fourth Seeker about to attack, metal tentacles flared outwards to choke him. He fired once, blowing a hole clear through its main body, but it managed to ensnare him anyways, forcing him down as its tentacles squeezed around his neck and a suffocating gas completely clouded his vision and filled his lungs.
What surprised him most wasn't how painful it was – the Thin Man poison attack in Canada had been worse – it was how quickly it had disabled him. He had prided himself on being one of XCOM's best soldiers. He'd been picked to succeed Aerts as squad leader and chosen by Dr. Vahlen to receive the first Meld augmentations. But in the blink of an eye, he was at the mercy of this monster.
So this is what Parnell and Torres felt… he thought.
Then his vision cleared and he was freed as Zhang shot it off, causing the ruined alien to flop off into the ground, sparking for a moment until it went still. Just as quickly, the train yard settled back into silence as the squad took up a perimeter, scanning for more of the infiltrators or any other aliens. McNeil fell to one knee, trying to restore his senses, taking huge breaths as he did.
"Are you all right, McNeil?" Torres said, rushing over to check on him.
"I'm fine," he said, but Torres pushed his hands aside, freezing him in place as she conducted a quick checkup. As far as McNeil could tell, Torres was more worried than he was. He'd been out for only a few seconds, tops.
Yes, you only stopped breathing for a few moments, he thought. Don't be such a baby.
"Hey, McNeil." Torres took a hold of his face, making sure they locked eyes. "Don't die on me, okay?" she whispered.
"I'm trying not to," McNeil mumbled.
"Try harder, please. Now," she said, her voice back to its usual volume. "He's good!"
"Are you fine, McNeil?" Solovyova asked directly.
"Yes, ma'am, I'm fine." McNeil frowned. Didn't Torres just say so?
"Need to hear that from you," Solovyova said. "Strike One, form up. Let's keep moving! McNeil, Sidorov, go!"
McNeil dashed up to the next set of train cars, where he caught a glimpse of the alien bomb, thankfully still inert, but skidded to a halt once he saw what else lay ahead.
"Guys…" McNeil said. "I think it's them."
He didn't have to elaborate as the squad came forward. In front, there was a single pale shroud, covering several bodies laid together side by side. The sight reminded him of war crimes documentation: people massacred by the dozens, then lined up as their mass graves were dug up by grim-faced investigators. But those victims were always civilians, powerless against hatred and firepower. He never expected to see elite GDI soldiers like this.
"Are they booby trapped?" Kwan asked. Leave it to her to ask the most paranoid question possible.
"Doesn't look like it," Zhang replied, nudging the edge of the shroud with his machine gun. When nothing happened, Solovyova pushed her way ahead, even through Zhang's imposing stature.
"I'll do it," she said. "Squad, stand back." She then took a deep breath and pulled the shroud away in a single motion. If she had meant for people to look away, nobody listened.
Six stripped bodies laid side by side. All had been killed by plasma: the gouging burns and explosion-like effect on their bodies was indisputable, and all of their eyes were closed, save for one who was missing his head.
"Holy fuck," McNeil whispered, but the swear couldn't come close to conveying his horror. For a moment, he saw his own squad and closest friends in their place, chests blown open and arms torn off. Navarro's dying stare assaulted him again, deep eyes screaming for help he couldn't provide.
Solovyova froze, her fist still clenching the shroud. Sidorov's jaw dropped. Kwan shook her head. Torres appeared to faint, and McNeil stopped her fall just in time.
Then Zhang stepped ahead, kneeling next to one of the bodies and setting his machine gun on the ground.
"Many of them took multiple plasma hits. See this one?" Zhang pointed to one man who'd been nearly shot in half, with only some scraps of charred flesh and a visible spine keeping the body together. "If they were wearing carapace armor, then it must have absorbed some hits, enough to keep fighting. Until they were destroyed."
"Then why are they naked?" Sidorov asked, almost too quietly to hear.
"That could not have been the aliens. Someone else stripped them of armor and weapons," Zhang replied, his even voice not a smidge changed from every other time McNeil had heard the Triad hitman speak. "I assume whoever covered them is the culprit."
"Nod," Sidorov instantly concluded, clutching his rifle tightly.
Zhang nodded. "I agree. This is a message to us."
"This is their idea of a message?" Torres desperately gestured at the corpses. "What kind of fucking message is this? Huh?"
"It says they'll take full advantage of us, but maintain some basic respect for fellow soldiers. Otherwise, they would have left the bodies in the open." Zhang rose, his impromptu investigation concluded. "That explains what happened to Martlet."
They searched the site for several more minutes, just in case, but found nothing else. The train yard had been scrubbed clean. With no other options, they were forced to bring the bodies one by one back to the Skyranger. Nobody said another word on their grisly work or during the long flight home.
For his part, McNeil tried to avoid looking at the faces. Somehow, their torn, plasma-ridden bodies were an easier sight to bear than their unchanging expressions.
Code Black: a squad wiped out.
The Commander had called such a code, once, in the Tiberium World War. Ever since taking charge of XCOM, he knew it could happen again; indeed, he expected it.
The expectation didn't lessen the blow, though. Six soldiers, people under his command, all dead at once. His soldiers saw the remnants of their bodies, heard their names called out and answered with silence. They did not know that he wrote a letter to each of the deceased's families, offering some remarks on their character, the last reassurance he could possibly offer.
For instance, he had written to the family of Arthur Aerts that their son was a lionhearted leader; Francisca Navarro's that their daughter always brought, then shared, smiles to her team. Of course, the letters were also sealed as top-secret, only deliverable if the XCOM Project itself was declassified. All the families knew at present was their child was dead in an unspecific "training accident" or "classified operation". The Commander guessed that to cover up this mass-casualty event, GDI would announce a helicopter crash or other vehicle disaster.
Still, he had six letters to write. Six names to record, six families to think about, six burdens to bear. Each letter took much longer than he normally needed, despite there being little to say about their characters or contributions to XCOM.
He could only finish them by asking what he would want his family to know in case he were killed in combat against the alien foe. That he had fought bravely. That nobody could have asked them to do more. That while it was little immediate comfort, humanity would forever be grateful for their sacrifice.
"Never again," he whispered after signing the last letter. "This will never happen again."
He wasn't the type to make promises he couldn't keep.
Author's Note: What a XCOM method to reduce character clutter. Did anyone wonder if I was really going to introduce two new squads in a single month? If you're wondering what exactly *happened* to Martlet Squad, well, I figured it was some combination of aliens landing improbable shots and mass panic. Combined with the time pressure of a bomb defusal mission, and well… squad wipe.