Operation Trembling Star

Cassandra couldn't have said, exactly, when she noticed something was wrong. For weeks she'd been feeling nervous. Waking up in the middle of the night with a panting heart. Whirling around in the street, trying to remember what, exactly, she'd seen out of the corner of her eye that'd been so terrifying—while at the same time hoping to forget it entirely. She found herself pausing near windows, staring out at… nothing. The light was too bright, sounds were too sharp, and there was an odd taste in her mouth that she couldn't seem to get rid of.

Tuesday on the monorail, perhaps. There'd been a woman staring at her. There was something wrong about her face. Cassandra couldn't say what it was, exactly, she didn't want to stare back. She just buried her face in her datapad and tried to think of something else until she got home.
But she couldn't stop thinking about the woman, even at home. She kept mishearing Carl, and had to ask him to repeat himself three or four times. She asked him about the hissing sound, either, but he didn't know what she was talking about. It took her forever to get to sleep, and she found herself starting awake at 2 am, with the disturbing sense that the woman had been standing at the foot of her bed.

Wednesday, the woman was there on the monorail, again. Maybe it was her imagination, but she seemed to be sitting closer, now. There was definitely something wrong about her face. Cassandra tried to figure out what it was, just so she could explain to Carl, but for some reason, some part of her rebelled every time she tried to focus on the woman's face. The face wasn't blurry, certainly—if anything, Cassandra would call the face too detailed. Every pore was visible, every eyelash, every tooth. Once, when she was looking at her, the woman's mouth moved, but over the rumble of the monorail, Cassandra wasn't sure what she said.

Thursday she decided to stay home from work, and that nearly made her more frantic. She paced from room to room, trying to remember what she was looking for. Her husband was gone for the day, and so she couldn't understand the creaks, the hisses, the noises she kept hearing. She tore up a few floorboards, certain that the sound was coming from there, but all it earned her was a ripped fingernail.

She was washing the dishes—a useless and old-fashioned task, now, but she hoped it might calm her—when suddenly the woman was there with her in the kitchen oh god the teeth…

CRASH

Nothing. The kitchen was empty.

Carl came home to find a kitchen full of smashed plates and living room with torn cushions, with Cassandra hunched over in the closet, crying. He made her promise to go to the gene therapy clinic tomorrow.

The first doctor was a human nurse, and warm and friendly. "What are we seeing you in here for today?" she asked.

"Ah… just a… nervous condition." Cassandra rubbed her wrist. "I've been having some episodes lately, I thought if maybe I could get some sort of prescription…"

"We can probably do that." There might have been an odd look that the nurse gave her. Cassandra wasn't sure. "What kind of nervous condition?"

"Uh… whispering… creaks…. Just… sometimes things get to be a bit too much." Cassandra tried to smile. "You know? Too much… detail."

The nurse jotted something down. "I see. One moment."

She came back in what seemed like no time, with an older doctor. "This 'whispering' you describe," said the new doctor. "Could you explain what it's saying, at all?"

Cassandra shook her head. "Not any words. Just a sort of call. Sometimes it just sounds like hissing." She hesitated. "It… um… you guys don't have a gas leak or anything here, do you?"

The doctor and nurse exchanged glances. "So you're hearing it now, even?"

Cassandra sank back in her chair. "Yes." She looked at them. "You can't hear it?"

"You told Nurse Ransom that things tend to get a bit much, like you were overloaded with detail," the doctor said. "Were you talking about visual hallucinations? Where certain objects seem to have more detail than should be strictly possible?"

"Wait, you know about this?" Cassandra sat up straight. "So you can prescribe me something?"

The doctor and nurse again exchanged glances. "Nurse Ransom will wait with you here," said the doctor, moving to the door. "Just remain calm."

She blinked at him. "I am calm. Why are you telling me to be calm?" The door closed and she looked at the nurse. "Why is he telling me to be calm?"

The nurse gave a smile that somehow didn't look as reassuring anymore. Maybe it was the number of teeth. "He just doesn't want you to worry. There's a specialist I think he's going to bring in."

"A specialist?!" Cassandra drew a breath in. "What kind of specialist? Please, they're just some nervous episodes… I'm sure if you just give me some pills…"

"Ms. Bennet." The nurse laid her hands on her placatingly. "We've been seeing a number of cases like this recently. Please, just let the specialist examine you."

The "specialist," as it turned out, was a Sectoid, though of course they wore a full facemask to obscure the ghoulish teeth and empty cheeks. The white labcoat hung awkwardly off its frame, and though the way it bowed to her was clearly meant to be placating, there was nothing soothing about the way purple energy shot out of the creature and entered her oh my word it was in her thoughts she could…

…she saw the woman, just behind the Sectoid specialist. But now she could tell, it had never been a woman, never even been human. That had just been her mind, refusing to accept what she was truly seeing.

Teeth smiled under wispy blonde hair. Töte sie jetzt, mein Kind.

Purple energy exploded backwards, knocking the Sectoid specialist against the back wall. The nurse and doctor had only a second to gasp before they were caught in a wave of psionic energy and were frozen, their bodies stiffening in a horrible rictus.

Danke schon. The smile was everywhere, the hair filled the entire office. Folgen sie mir, bitte.

Another blast sent the hospital door flying off its hinges and Cassandra Bennett stepped out, stiffly, following the figure with the grinning teeth.

"The Templars have named it 'The Call,'" Director Jane Kelly said, wearily. She scrolled through a few more images of the carnage at the hospital. "As you can see, those inflicted gain powerful and uncontrollable psy powers which induce paralysis in surrounding organisms. They've also noted berzerker rage, hyper-reactivity, and explosive telekinesis. No word yet as to whether it's activating latent psychic powers or..." She shook her head. "...we don't know much about it, basically. The doctors have a long term for it which I can't be bothered to remember. The news—you've probably heard them on the news, they call it 'Ruby Madness.'"

"Terrible name," said Whisper, frowning. "The adherents aren't mad. It's obvious, when you watch footage of them—they're coordinated. They seem to have some sort of hive-mind consciousness. The way they took out that team in New India…"

"What's it got to do with XCOM?" Godmother asked, crossing her arms. The dark-skinned woman stood at the head of her squad in the Chimera Squad briefing room. "I get that we might start seeing some cases in City 31 soon—but you say the Commander called?"

Torque hissed. "Forget your precious Commander," the Viper said, her long tongue licking in and out between her teeth. "What's it got to do with us?"

Kelly nodded, allowing her gaze to dart over the members gathered in the conference room. "Unlike most of the Reclamation Agency's more recent hires, those of you in this room are veterans of the Earth occupation. You were soldiers."

Cherub raised his hand. "Technically…"

"You were bred to be a soldier, Cherub, they just never activated you," Kelly answered. She sighed. "You've done well at helping me get Chimera Squad off the ground, turning it into the best goddamn strike force in this or any other city.. Now, all we have to do is hope like hell it can stand without us."

Godmother raised an eyebrow. "Without us?"

"XCOM has been reactivated," Kelly answered. "As of this moment, everyone in this room has been drafted to serve. Your combat experience is considered an invaluable resource for dealing with the new alien threat."

"Oh shit." Axiom muttered. The Muton did not look happy.

"I think I missed a few points," said Patchwork. "What's the alien threat? The Call?"

Shelter sat up suddenly. "Wait." His eyes glowed with sudden understanding. "You mean…"

"It is the Commander's position," Kelly said, speaking slowly and deliberately, "that The Call is a psychic attack of a new alien threat, an unseen terror from beyond our planet. A threat that, moreover, they believe the Elders themselves were terrified of, and had tried to unsuccessfully hide from here on Earth. A threat that was at least partially responsible for killing most of the Elder's race." She took a moment to make sure they were all absorbing the fact that they were up against something that had wiped out the godlike Elders. "And," she said, bringing their attention back to her, "the commander also thinks we may have encountered this threat before."

She could see them all thinking, trying to figure out what her words meant. Only Godmother seemed to have an inkling—she and Kelly had talked about this too many times to count.

"The Shrike Incident," Kelly said. "The Commander thinks the Call may have played a role in the rise of Sovereign, five years ago."

XCOM Base Star Jump had only been completed a few days ago, and supplies and personnel were pouring in by the literal carload. Everywhere, human technology was grafted into Elder alien tech, from consoles to weaponry to the familiar Elder Psionic gateways on the floor below. Restoring the Elders' ancient crypt had been difficult, painstaking work. It would be barely enough for what they needed to win.

If they hadn't lost already.

"Holy shit!"

"Language, Claymore," Godmother said. "Try not to embarrass the rest of us."

Claymore barely paid her any attention, staring all around him. "Going through the portal was weird enough, but this… this is… where even are we? Underwater? Somewhere in Lake Michigan?"

"No…" Verge said, his large eyes following a whale on the other side of the glass. "No, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."

Claymore blinked and punched him. "Lake Michigan isn't in Kansas, moron."

"And we are in neither. Unless I miss my guess, we are in the reconstructed crypt of the Elders. Yes?" Verge looked over at the Director. "Where you and the Commander fought them, years ago?"

She looked uncomfortable, but nodded. "They've only managed to restore a portion of the base. They're still working to unearth the rest. Really difficult to engineer things at this depth."

"Why bother?" Axiom frowned at her. "Why aren't we on a spaceship instead? We have spaceships. They're lots easier to build than underwater cities."

"That's enough," Godmother snapped at her soldiers. "If you need to know the reasons why, and I suspect you don't, you'll be told. Until then, keep your thoughts to yourselves. Don't forget, you've all been drafted. You're back in the army. All of you are old enough to remember what that means, but if you've forgotten, there's lots of unpleasant penalties to remind you. We may be underwater, but latrine duty is still a thing."

Axiom snorted. "Latrine duty. That's your human idea of discipline?"

"Enough."

"Excuse me. Director Kelly?"

As one, the team looked around to see the speaker, a tall human with glowing eyes.

"The Commander would like you to see you and your team." She indicated the door forward. "In the Portal Bay."

"The SPARK's back. We're processing the images now." Chief Engineer Shen was no longer young, but she was still a few years from her first grey hair, barring any unusual stress—and after surviving an alien occupation, it seemed unlikely that any fresh stress would measure up to that.

"Good. And the generators?" The Commander tapped a few keys on their tablet.

Shen sighed. "Still… working on those. We need more Elerium."

"Of course. Well, if this works, we should be able to get a lot more, very soon." The Commander stowed away the tablet. "It's impressive, nonetheless, the amount of stuff you've managed to squeeze in here—barracks, equipment, a workshop and laboratory… like the Avenger all over again. Even a few airplanes."

Shen offered a grin. "Hey. Firebrand is chomping at the bit to fly again. I wasn't gonna tell her no. But to be clear, most of the heavy vehicles are purely going to have to be in stowing for now. We don't have the space to haul them out and keep them maintained regularly. For that, we're going to need to expand some portions of the base that…"

"…are still crushed. Yes. A familiar problem." The Commander nodded. "I would prefer to start with more resources, but as Dr. Tygan has been telling me, we may already have waited too long to start. We'll just need to take the first step and hope it works."

"Sir." A Templar bowed quickly. "Director Kelly is here, with her squad."

"Jane!" Shen dropped her tablet with a squeal and ran at the Director, grabbing her in an embrace. "It's so good to see you again!"

"You too, Lily," Jane chuckled, returning the hug.

Lily released her and rounded on Godmother. "And Okoye! You're looking so well!"

"Lily, please…" grunted Godmother, as she was enfolded in a crushing hug. "I just told my squad about following proper protocols…"

"Oh hush."

"Don't mind us. We're not seeing anything," Patchwork said, grinning.

"I'll just delete everyone's memories of this after the fact. It'll be fine." Verge gave a smile.

Lily let go of Godmother and looked at the sectoid.

"I'm joking." His smile widened. "Ha."

"We're working on his sense of humor." Godmother pushed herself away. "Commander." She gave a sharp salute.

"Okoye." The Commander fired it back at her. He looked at Kelly. "I hoped to have some time to talk to you but it looks like time is running shorter than I'd planned. There's a leadership meeting happening in the command center; I'm going to have to ask you to leave your team here while you meet with the others."

"Understood." Kelly nodded to her subordinates. "Behave while I'm gone." She walked off with the Commander and Shen.

"Wow." Torque's long tongue flicked in and out as she glanced all around. "Always heard legends about this place, back in the day. Never thought I'd be standing in it."

"There's something faintly familiar about it." Zephyr was staring at the floor.

"XCOM fully refurbished the place, but the floor and a lot of the peripherals are still the same." Godmother crossed her arms. "They melted down a lot of freaky statues, I hear."

Axiom just grunted. "I think I know that technician over there," he said. "I'm going to go say hi. See if any of them can shed light on what's so mysterious that the director needs to handle it alone."

As the group broke up, Godmother looked at Verge. "You all right? That was a really bad joke, even for you."

Verge offered a quick smile. "I'm sorry. I'm… nervous, I guess."

"Nervous? You?"

Verge shrugged. "I… have been here before. Was here, before the war." He gave something like a shiver. "I didn't like it then, either. There's just something… wrong about it."

"Thank you all for coming here," said the commander formally, taking a seat at the table.

"It is a great pleasure, and a momentous occasion, to gather like this in the tomb of the false gods." Betos grinned from her chair. Several tubes ran into her arm, and a mask had been fitted over her face, but her eyes were bright and eager. "No more fitting location could have been arranged for the revival of XCOM."

"You have no idea how right you are." Geist looked both much healthier and much more miserable than Betos. He was hunched over in his chair, his face twisted in a scowl. "Commander, the Call is very strong here. Almost overpowering."

"Can't be helped." The Commander shook his head. "Gentlemen. Over the past few years you've all been managing things in your home districts. You've gotten used to leading things your way. On that note, you have my appreciation for returning to XCOM and my command, along with the most talented veterans in your departments, at a time of crisis." He rubbed his hands together.

"The Reclamation Agency has been entirely focused on preparing for this day since its inception," said Kelly.

The Commander grunted. "Now we find out if it was enough. We've known that a confrontation with the Elders, or with the darkness that they spoke of, was coming for years. You all have the reports of the incidents worldwide, some of you have hands-on experience of dealing with it. I'm here to tell you XCOM's strategy; the plan that we've been working on non-stop since the Elders fell those years ago." He folded his hands. "We take the fight to them."

There was a chorus of approving murmurs around the table. Only one seemed sceptical. "Sir, with all due respect..." Marcus Raburn, a scarred ranger, grimaced. "You haven't really explained what makes you so sure this 'Call' is the same thing that the Elders were afraid of, much less explained what it even is or what the hell kind of xeno we're talking about facing."

"XCOM's always been about fighting the unknown." The Commander shrugged. "The only real change is now, we're seeking it out." He indicated the room they were in, and by extension, the compound. "This reconstruction project far predates the current crisis with the Call. We've been devoting time and resources to rebuilding the Elder compound for years simply so we could reconstruct the psionic gateways the Elders had here. It was a bit of a gamble, but we had intel that the ones here, at least, were keyed into former planets, former worlds that the Elders had conquered—and then fled." The Commander took a breath. "We were never going to wait for the Elders' ancient enemy to waltz up to our world. The plan always was to attack them first."

Now some heads were nodding, but expressions were still nervous. "Sir, we're under attack, here on our planet," said another leader, an Australian woman with close-cropped hair. "XCOM's Chimera Squads have never been in higher demand. Attempting a planetary counterattack is…"

"…is our only option, at this point," said the Commander. "In order to fight our enemy, we need to know our enemy. And in order to know them, we need to seek them out, or at least seek out their origins." The Commander pointed at the screen. "Behind one of those portals out there is the homeworld of these bastards. That'll tell us what they are, and how to fight them."

"This is an enemy that killed the Elders, sir."

"No, just one that scared them. We killed them. They should have been scared of us." The Commander smiled, and even though Kelly knew he was 90% bullshitting, she couldn't help but feel her spirits lift a bit at the line. "And before long we'll make these new assholes wish they'd left humans alone too."

There was a pause, and then Marcus nodded. Everyone was nodding. Everyone, Kelly noticed, except Geist.

The Commander looked around the table to ensure he had agreement before clicking a button to enable the screen at the front. "Here's the plan, gentlemen. As of five minutes ago, this base is under quarantine. We have as little contact with our own world as possible. We're not looking to become a beachhead in Earth's own invasion. Everything goes through the Portal room, and THAT will be guarded 24-7 by a platoon of SPARKs, supported by 3 rotating fireteams of XCOM personnel." He clicked on the screen, demonstrating schematics. "The Portal chamber itself can be sealed off from the rest of the base, and as we get multiple portals online, we'll work to put each one in a hermetically sealed environment. Also, each 'gate' has been designed so that it can be remotely detonated in case of incursion." He gave a grim smile. "Worst case scenario, we'll detonate all the portals leading out and trap the enemy invaders here with us at the bottom of the sea."

"A glorious battle." Betos murmured. The rest of the command staff looked less enthused about the idea.

"A worst-case scenario," the commander repeated. "And even then, it would be possible to rebuild portals back to the surface. The only thing holding us back currently is a shortage of Elerium, but that—hopefully—will not be an issue for long." He stared around the room. "The important point I want you all to understand is that this base is, for all intents and purposes, Earth's invasion front against the Elders' former conquered worlds. We'll deploy infiltration teams, and ideally, locate pockets of native resistance. We'll offer what support we can to them, naturally, but our chief goal is understanding the Elders and, more crucially, what they were running from."

"If infiltration is the goal," Kelly spoke up, "shouldn't we be consulting with Volk? Or at least Dragunova?" She'd been meaning to ask where they were.

There was just the smallest pause in the Commander's manner, undetectable, possibly, to anyone who'd known him less. "Volk is dead," he said, his voice flat.

The room was silent.

"Dragunova killed him," he continued. "She showed up at an XCOM outpost three months ago, with his head. She hoped we might be able to study it and discover what had made her mentor suddenly go and gun down half a Reaper commune."

It didn't need to be elaborated. Everyone understood, just as everyone understood, too, why Dragunova was not there.

The Commander moved on after a moment. "We currently only have access to one trans-stellar portal," he said, clicking the device in his hand, bringing up a new set of images. "And the sheer amount of power necessary for it to run means that we're going to need some serious Elerium generators before we can get any other gates up and running. Fortunately that one portal seems to be sending us into a place with a lot of Elerium." He pointed at the images. "These pictures were taken by a SPARK we sent through the portal. There's some sort of superstructure on the other side—made out of Elerium, most likely. We'll get our supplies, and our answers, there."

"But… what is it?" Marcus said, leaning forward, studying the superstructure. Metallic hexagonal forms were rising in impossibly tall shapes, with bridges and wires and catwalks between thin, needle-like towers against a dark background.

"Presumably, it's the equivalent of Ethereal's Temple on another world, except our SPARK didn't meet any resistance over there." Shen shrugged. "But XCOM archives did come up with a match. There was an invasion by a race called the Zudjari in the 1960's. They fought off an alien leader by the name of Axis. Pictures of his space station look a lot like this right here." She brought up another series of grainy photos to compare the two..

"The Zudjari weren't known to be in league with the Elders, so we're not sure why they had this portal. But right now it's our best bet." The Commander put his hands on his hips. He looked to Godmother. "I want Verge and Axiom on a team going through that first portal."

"Than I'm coming with them." Godmother shrugged. "Sorry, sir, but I don't trust those two not to embarrass themselves."

"Let me send one of our brothers also," Betos urged.

"No." The Commander shook his head. "If our intel is right, we're going to want a Templar along with us." All eyes latched onto him and he nodded. "By all our sensors, there's an insane amount of psychic power in that room."

A/N: Why am I starting another multi-chapter fic? I don't have time for this.

Ah well. I recently finished XCOM2, and had yet again to contend with the sad reality that XCOM3 is unlikely to ever happen. So I did what any self-respecting fanfic writer would do. I decided to write my own, based on some theories I have.

This fic is, partly, a CYOA Quest from Spacebattles. I post the chapters a week early there and take polls on what should happen next-in this case, who should go on the team. If you want to read these early, and maybe weigh in on story decisions, sign in there and follow the story.