November 4th, 1979
A pair of F-17 Condors cruise along on the path towards their target, a UFO detected a few hours ago. It's moving fast, too fast for them to overtake it. Home base had been about to recall them when the UFO suddenly veered hard to the West, enabling the pair of planes to take on a new intercept trajectory.
Condor-2 spotted the UFO first.
"UFO sighted, preparing to intercept!" she called out to Condor-1, her accent very thick and very Russian.
"I'm with you." came Condor-1's reply, sounding for all the world like an American radio host or TV personality, rather than a fighter jet pilot.
The pair went on their intercept trajectory, and Condor-1 felt his whole body tense up. He had felt the same way in the dog fight in Stockholm a few weeks ago. There was just something unsettling about that laser the aliens used. No chance to dodge, you either went down with the first shot, or you survived it and went in for the kill while their power cycled. It was combat reduced down to simple math.
The math was in the Condors' favor today, and as the UFO unleashed its lasers on the pair of planes, it failed to bring either of them down. Condor-1 was sure he could feel the heat from the weapon when it hit, even if the engineers swore up and down that the cockpit was insulated and he couldn't possibly feel it.
Sporadic projectile weapon fire came at the planes from the UFO, but it was too late to stop the barrage of autocannon fire that buckled the craft's shields and sent it into an uncontrolled descent. The wreck that the Swedes had managed to drag out of the Baltic Sea had been a pile of useless (albeit scientifically interesting) scrap. The missiles, it seemed, were overkill for the tiny scout craft like this. So, the science team had requested that the air team utilize autocannons when tactically permissible, to minimize destruction of useful salvage. The damned energy shields made things difficult, but they could be overcome by holding down the trigger for longer than standard.
The planes followed the UFO for several minutes, before watching it crash into the Greenland Tundra.
Condor-1 spoke over the radio. "Base, this is Condor-1, splash one. Flight 1 returning to base."
"Acknowledged, Flight 1." came the reply.
Condor-2 spoke to Condor-1. "That was easier than last time."
"Yeah. I just still can't shake the feeling that we're shooting down the alien equivalent of a civilian prop-plane. We shouldn't get used to it being this easy."
-ooOOoo-
November 5th, 1979
Charlie-1 made its way to the UFO crash site, its cargo of Xenonauts huddling together in its hold. Charlie-1 was a Chinook helicopter, heavily modified by the Xenonauts to get as much range as physically possible, and even then it still needed frequent mid-air refueling from any local governments the Xenonauts could get to cooperate.
The modifications had come at a cost, as the generous troop complement of the Chinook had been shrunk down to just eight people. For the chronically personnel-hungry Xenonauts, however, this reduction wasn't too big of a blow.
Their leader, call sign "X-1", got a signal from the pilot on his headset.
"Coming up on the crash site now, X-1. Not a lot of cover down there." the pilot said.
"Can't have everything. How close can you get us?" X-1 asked.
"A lot closer than I'd like, considering we don't know what, if any, anti-aircraft abilities they might still have. There's a hill to the south of the site. I'm going to put her down behind it, that way you can recce the area from an elevated position." the pilot replied.
"Appreciate that." X-1 turned around to face his Xenonauts. "Alright boys, get ready. He's putting us down."
The assembled men, veterans of special forces from both sides of the Iron Curtain, voiced their acknowledgement.
-ooOOoo-
Charlie-1 set down on the Icey terrain, behind a hill. The Xenonauts exited it with precise, well-drilled movements, making sure every angle was covered. X-1 made a hand signal, and the squad moved up the hill. At its peak, X-1 took a knee, his squad doing the same.
"X-5, set up for overwatch here." X-1 said. The squad marksman complied, going prone in the snow, trusting his thick winter-camo overcoat to keep him dry.
X-1 stood up, and signalled the others to move out. The squad made its way down the other side of the hill, trying their best to make use of what little cover there was as they made their way to the alien ship over 100 meters away. The lack of incoming fire suggested that the aliens (if they were alive) must be huddling in the sealed wreck. Understandable, given the cold. As they approached the entrance, and still no contact came, X-1 ordered his men into read positions around the craft's entry hatch. X-3, the LMG operator, took up a position in front of the hatch, lying prone. Another Xenonaut set a breaching charge, and, after a brief count, X-1 pressed the detonator.
The explosion was instantly answered with shots from the alien weapons flying wildly out of the entrance. As the smoke cleared, a strange, alien face briefly appeared, before being destroyed as X-5 splattered the contents of its head against the wall.
X-3 laid down suppressive fire, and one of the xenonauts stacking up around the hatch tossed a flashbang into the ship. The alien fire silenced for an instant, and it was all the Xenonauts needed as they rapidly stormed the craft and gunned down the inhabitants. They'd been trained to "double up" on a target, to compensate for the defenses of the alien energy shield. Thus, the aliens were dispatched by at least two xenonauts each, with the human soldiers firing at them on full automatic, rapidly buckling the aliens' shields and perforating their torsos.
A quiet settled over the ship as the brief fire fight ended.
X-2, the second in command, turned to X-1 and spoke. "That was too easy."
X-1 nodded. "I don't think we were facing trained fighters here. I'm guessing that the Doc's theory is right, and this is just a scouting craft. We need to take advantage of things while it's still relatively easy. Learn as much as we can before the hammer drops."
X-2 nodded, and the Xenonauts proceeded to sweep the rest of the small craft.
-ooOOoo-
XENOPEDIA: ALIEN AUTOPSY-"FROGMAN"
Well, Commander, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that X-3's aim ensured that I had at least one cadaver that hadn't had its insides turned into ground meat, so he has my thanks for that. The bad news is that, based on the evidence available to me, this alien is not the same as the aliens that attacked Iceland 20 years ago. Without any physical remains from the Iceland Incident to examine, it's hard to be certain, but I'm reasonably confident that we can add this as a third, entirely new species. The implications of this are many and varied. Is this new species affiliated with the previous ones, or is it independent? If affiliated, does this suggest that our enemy is some kind of multi-species polity? If independent, does that make them a competitor to our prior foes, or merely a third party? This corpse proposes many such questions, but it offers no answer to our most important question of all: Who is our enemy, and why are they here?
The specimen itself is quite interesting. Indeed, "Frogman", the title bestowed upon it by our troops, is an apt description. It bears strong similarities to Amphibian species here on Earth, even possessing similar reproductive organ structure.
It is incredibly lean. Its entire body seems to be perfectly structured for raw efficiency. Without a live specimen, it is difficult to give exact numbers, but we speculate that its metabolism is many times faster than that of a human. This efficiency appears to come at a cost, however, as we see many signs of what we presume to be aging damage, such as noticeably decayed joints (which, interestingly, have had some kind of advanced medical procedure applied to them). Yet, carbon dating suggests that this specimen is less than 30 years old! It's possible that this specimen is an example of an individual in this species equivalent to the far side of "middle aged", and yet it hasn't even turned thirty. Either this species is much more short lived than our own, or this individual is the victim of a particularly nasty form of degenerative disease. Personally, I find the former more likely.
XENOPEDIA: "ELEMENT ZERO"
Commander, I regret to report that almost every piece of technology recovered from the aliens is unusable. Our foes seem to have a very high standard of information security, as upon the deaths of its occupants, tiny thermal charges detonated in all of the ship's core systems. All of the electronics and other complex systems on the ship have been sabotaged in this way. Even the aliens' small utility items, such as their weapons and their strange wrist-mounted computing devices, have been sabotaged. As such, while we can study and speculate a piece of alien technology's mechanical purpose, we cannot even begin to decipher how it works.
All is not lost, however. While we may not be able to salvage their electronics, we can salvage their materials, and what a material we have found!
At first we thought it must be some kind of alien superconductor, as everywhere we found it, it was rigged up to an electrical wiring framework. It's apparent lack of mass was a curiosity, and led to it being dubbed "Element Zero".
When we ran a current through it to test it, we discovered that it was much more than a conductor. It is instead a material that manipulates mass itself, increasing and decreasing an object's mass depending on what current is running through it.
The implications of this are utterly revolutionary, but what is most interesting to me is how many puzzle pieces fit together about our enemy's technology thanks to this discovery. Everything, from their ship designs to even their weapons is informed by this technology. If we had decades to study it, we would have barely scratched the surface of what can be done with it. Unfortunately, we don't have such luxuries, so I've tried to be more utilitarian in my research suggestions.
The files are on your desk, although I'm loath to put them there, as no doubt once our esteemed engineering department gets wind of this material they'll give it one of their insufferable nicknames. Something dreadful like "EmZo" or "E-Zero" or God knows what else.
XENOPEDIA: ALIEN WEAPONS
While the alien sabotage makes their weapons unusable, the actual mechanical structure and design of the weapons is still left mostly intact thanks to the underpowered nature of the small thermal charges used in the sabotage. Because of this, we can gain insight into our enemy's weapons through studying the remains.
From what we can gather, alien small arms are a magnetic accelerator in miniature. While such technology is hardly incomprehensible to us, we have never been able to make use of it thanks to the limits of our battery technology: no portable battery could ever hope to store enough power to magnetically launch a projectile at velocities fast enough to be lethal.
Oddly enough, it seems our foes have a similar problem. Granted, even just from the remains, we can tell that our enemy's batteries are-unsurprisingly-vastly superior to our own. Despite this, we don't think that the weapon would be able to fire at the rate and power we see from our enemy's weapons with the amount of energy available in their batteries.
This is where the element zero we discovered in the weapons comes in. Using the element zero to decrease the projectile's mass, the mass accelerator can throw the projectile at incredible velocities, easily beating out most of our infantry weapons of similar size and type. Despite this power, the projectile itself is actually incredibly small. The weapon's "ammunition" is actually a small shaving from a "block" of ferrous matter inside the weapon, no bigger than a grain of sand. It is the velocity that gives the bullet its power, not its mass. Another benefit of the tiny projectile is that ammunition is so plentiful as to be effectively a non issue. Just one "block" of ammo can contain potentially thousands of shots, a fact that I'm sure will make our Quartermaster green with logistical envy.
Unfortunately, we're nowhere near replicating a weapon this sophisticated. However, I have a few ideas for stop gap designs we can use until that changes. However, I'm going to need an intact example of an alien weapon to hammer them out. Which means that we'll need to take an enemy alive, to prevent its weapons fail safe from being triggered by its expiration. To that end, I have seen to it that several proposals for non-lethal weapons find their way to your desk. Tell our troops I wish them good hunting.