The truth

[Aralez]

Had that cool idea after watching the end of Starship troopers yesterday and wrote this short story as a result. Please remember that english is not my first language, i will correct and update my story if you have any corrections, though

Ok here it is:

 

The Truth by Aralez (2007)

 

 

He was the first.

 

The first human which could read minds without the need for a PSI-Amplifier. He was the child of two former Xcom soldiers. PSI-OPs to be more precise.

 

His father, Dave Bradley, had controlled whole squads of sectoids in battle with his thoughts and had led them to their doom, in some cases they captured them, in most cases they simply killed them.

 

His mother, Larissa Bradley, had been able to withstand the fiercest alien PSI-Attacks without the slightest problems. She was the hero of the infamous Detroit Terror mission, where all of her team had been controlled by Ethereals and shot each other, and she alone had survived. Back then she had fought the whole mission all alone and won, the Ethereal soldiers attacking her telepathically and physically each step she made. Larissa even had been able to control some of them and made them commit suicide, but unlike Dave her strength was her PSI-resistance rather than her PSI-force.

 

Peter however had both their strengths, even surpassed them. And he had some truly special gifts: He didn't need the PSI-Amp, it even handicapped him. And he was the first PSI-OP that could actually FEEL the enemies thoughts. All PSI-Ops before him had only be able to control the moves of their enemies, which was enough to capture or kill them. But noone had ever seen what the aliens thought. With Peter this had changed.

 

He remembered a situation in his childhood, his first big PSI-sign. He had been 3 years old, his parents and his two slightly older brothers had been on a trip through the Rocky Mountains, the war was still going on but his parents had been given some free weeks after being in battles for 6 months without the slightest break. His father always carried a big hunting rifle with them in case something would happen. And on that day it did.

 

A huge Grizzly suddenly appeared before them. It stood on his back feet, roaring loudly and Peter could feel the fear and the terror in everybody around him.

 

It had been like this from the start, even as a baby he could feel what Mama and Papa felt. He couldn't understand the babbling noises they made, but later learnt what those were: Words. He also felt his brothers' thoughts, Joe being hungry most of the time, Charly always being curious and noisy. He thought that everybody had the same gift and never told or showed anybody about it. Simply because he had thought that the others were the same.

 

PSI-OPs weren't allowed to take their PSI-Amplifiers with them into their civilian lifes and Dave Bradley really missed it in this moment. "If i had it with me i could simply make it walk away" he thought. Slowly he reached for the big gun on his shoulders, the Grizzly still roaring and standing, but who'd know how long it would stand still...

 

He aimed directly for the brain. "I better take no risk, a wounded Grizzly will be even more dangerous". Charly, Joe and Larissa hid behind him. Only Peter stood at his side, looking rather puzzled.

 

"Ok, now you die" he thought and pulled the trigger. Or at least he had tried.

 

Peter suddenly screamed: "Don't shoot, she is only worrying for her babies behind us"

 

Dave and Larissa could suddenly feel a PSI-Wave forming, something they had felt a lot of times during battle. Usually they had been on the receiving end of such an attack. But to their surprise it emerged from Peter! And how strong and pure it was!

 

The grizzly female stopped to roar and slowly got back down to four feet, then it moved to the side and ran away, her childs following her as good as they could.

 

Oh well, this was the day everything started to develop. Peter's "old life" had ended, now that they had seen his

abilities his life changed. "They" changed as well. His brothers avoided him now most of the time, they hadn't any

PSI-skills. His parents would begin to block their minds from him.He still could read them if he concentrated, but he tried not to. He learned to respect the need of others for their privacy. And he learned to live with his gift.

 

Of course XCOM learned of his skills and they took him into a PSI laboratory, where he was being trained and

educated. This was almost two decades ago. The doctors that examined him said that he was unique and that the usage of PSI-attacks in battle by his father and mother had somehow reactivated some long-forgotten human PSI genes in him. They weren't able to locate the according genes, though.

 

Peter was thaught to fully use his powers and, which was more important, to use them responsibly. Sure, he had done some pranks during his adolescence, but he had a strong enough character to not misuse his skills.

 

And so he developed into the main lading PSI-OP of XCOM and became a legend.

He never fought a battle, though, he was too important for mankind to be used as cannonfodder.

 

His task was the interrogation of captured Aliens and he excelled everything.

The alien thoughts and feelings came as a surprise and even dissapointment to everyone: Each Alien on his own was rather dumb, some of them even being as simple as a slug. The more intelligent Aliens like Sectoids and Ethereals always had only a very narrow knowledge about themselves and about the alien world. To make things short: The Alien minds were useless!

 

Each of them had only enough knowledge to merely survive. Nothing could be traced back to anything. Even the base commanders the Xcom troops captured were basically only huge Excel spreadsheets with legs. Or at least Peter called them that way.

 

However, Peter and the other Xcom commanders realized that there MUST be someone "in charge" of those alien

forces. Someone must have the REAL alien knowledge. Peter stated: "In the movie "Starship troopers" they had a Brainbug, we have to find ours yet". And they tried.

 

Months for months Peter interrogated the highest ranked Aliens he could find, always looking for information about their origins, their leaders and their world. Every alien race, every alien rank. Nothing.

 

Two years had passed and nothing had been acchieved. The war was still going on, neither aliens nor humans gaining the upper hand.

 

That's when they found the new ship.

 

Three Xcom interceptors on patrol had collided with some kind of huge invisible ship and made it crash in Greenland. The pilots didn't survive, so it took some time to find their remains and the black boxes of their crafts. Once the recordings showed that there was a new alien ship and where the wreck could be found a huge task force was assembled to gain control over it.

 

Peter had heard from these events and wasn't surprised when they called for his assistance. He assembled a small squad of the best PSI-OPs in Xcom and they travelled to the crash site.The wreck lay in a huge snowy valley with a thick forest. The alien ship was huge, it was even slightly bigger than the alien Battleships that had attacked and sometimes destroyed several Xcombases. It was absolutely fetureless, it looked like a big rectangular metal box, except for three holes in his side and some dents. What was amazing was the fact that the ship's cloaking device still sometimes would work for fractions of a second and the whole thing went invisible.

 

Peter proved to be invaluable, still in his Skyranger he could tell the scientists that this cloaking device is a simple

mobile version of the Mind Shields some Xcom bases had, simply by feeling the PSI-waves it emitted.

 

Once the Xcom troops landed an enormous battle started, hundreds of Ethereals and Sectopods poured out of the ship, each Ethereal with PSI abilities beyond anything Xcom had ever encountered. Luckily XCOM had brought thousands of vetern troops itself and the Special PSI-Squad of Peter helped enormously during the battle. Both sides had their best troops here and it showed.

 

Hundreds of men and aliens died during one of the most bizzare fights ever. Soldiers were taken over, retaken and re-retaken, Aliens would shot their troops and humans in the same second, a huge chaos everywhere. That was when Peter felt something special: The aliens were defending something extremely valuable!

 

Like the Grizzly female in his childhood memory they wanted to protect it no matter the cost! He could vaguely hear the alien word equvivalents for "mother" and "controller" in some of their minds. But at the moment he had to focus on the fighting around him. Even some of his best PSI-Ops had died and the battle was almost lost, but under deafening cheers Xcom reinforcements arrived, lots of them! It seemed as if all Xcom soldiers of the world were here.

 

Still the fighting went on and on. It took almost three full hours to take down all the aliens.

 

Thousands of Xcom soldiers went into the UFO, Peter leading them all. They wanted to see the big Alien inside, they wanted to learn its secrets. They wanted to have their BRAINBUG!

 

The centre of the UFO was a big hall, electroflares were used to provide light and then say saw it, Peter even feeled it before that: They finally had found what they were looking for all the time!

 

Al the time the PSI-OPS telepathically sealed off the control-aliens' mind control attempts to protect the other

soldiers. There were thousands of them in the room all staring at that huge bug green mass in the middle, all of them keeping a respectful distance. Peter emerged from that group slowly walking towards the face of that thing, he could fell the PSI attacks of it and the intensity of his mind. This was what he had been looking for! Now he and the rest of the world would finally know everything!

 

He felt all the soldiers staring at him, all wanting an explanation, all fevering for a triumphant answer! They wanted the Victory!

 

Peter approached the ugly face and reached out with his hand to touch it. He was the strongest PSI-OP on the whole world and still he had to fight with everything he got to get through the mental barricades the alien had built. And he even would not have made it if some other PSI-OPs hadn't helped him at that moment!

 

Suddenly he was through, he was inside! He felt all the eyes of the world resting on him as he searched through the memories of the alien and then...

 

He stopped.

 

He broke the contact.

 

Some of the PSI-OPs felt a huge uneasiness in him, but they were suddenly blocked out of his mind. The whole crowd was totally quiet, they literally begged for his words.

 

And he spoke: "It's afraid... It's afraid" The whole crowd exploded with cheer. Shots were fired in the air and everybody was celebrating. The alien quietly died at that moment.

 

Peter hastily left the UFO, some soldiers wanted to thank him, some PSI-Ops wanted to talk to him telepathically, but he blocked them all and hurried back to his Skyranger, tears in his eyes. He locked himself in the cockpit, sat down and breathed deeply. All the Xcom operatives were busy with celebrating and laughing, nobody thought about him for the moment.

 

Now he was able to sort through all he had seen in the aliens' mind.

 

"My god", he thought, "how could i have told them what i had seen? All our fighting, all our research, our hopes, even our whole world is lost. For each of us humans there are several billion aliens ready and coming. All we had fought so far and barely held back where mere scouting troops, no not even that, we were so unimportant to them they haven't even considered us a threat! The whole arm of the galaxy we live in, billions of worlds, all held by each billions of those aliens and we are the only one world left.

 

I simply had to lie."

[Aralez]

Comments allowed and wanted

 

The idea behind this was: I liked the action in Starship Troopers, but the story and the actors themselves are terrible, all their Yay-future-faces and their Yay-future-acting and the Yay-future-story. If that film was real we would all turn slowly into always-grinning-Uber-soldiers with the intellectual capabilities of an orange.

 

I don't know if i'm right but i'd guess Robert Heinlein is the head behind this story? I've read some of his Sci-Fi stories and never liked the hidden fascism in his books.

 

 

Anyway, i thought: What about a similar story with the same ending, but a slight difference? Life does not always lead to a Happy-End....

[zaimoni]

Comments allowed and wanted

 

The idea behind this was: I liked the action in Starship Troopers, but the story and the actors themselves are terrible, all their Yay-future-faces and their Yay-future-acting and the Yay-future-story. If that film was real we would all turn slowly into always-grinning-Uber-soldiers with the intellectual capabilities of an orange.

 

I don't know if i'm right but i'd guess Robert Heinlein is the head behind this story? I've read some of his Sci-Fi stories and never liked the hidden fascism in his books.

Anyway, i thought: What about a similar story with the same ending, but a slight difference? Life does not always lead to a Happy-End....

Regarding Starship Troopers: Keep in mind that this film not only has next-to-nothing to do with the book, but the film's politics are pretty much exactly opposite to the book. It's a pretty blatant case of "rewrite everything for political correctness".

 

And yes, the book doesn't have a happy ending.

[chocolatemouse]

When i read starshiptrooper for first time i was still a teen and not saw the facism behind his texts.

Now yes i am more cautious about him ( being now a librarian helped me a bit hehehe)

You done a nice text aralez, what is your native language ? Are you from armenia as aralez is a mythologic hero from here ?

 

Nose kiss

[Aralez]

I am living in a town close to Heidelberg and like you i once was a librarian (and a bookseller). I chose Aralez as my nick some years ago when my dog died, as Aralez's are ~heavenly dogs that lead the dead to paradise (or at least that's what i remember).

 

Anway, Heinlein has some fascistic ideas in his books, like being only able to vote in an election if you served in the army etc.

 

Most people don't realize that, because it is cleverly hidden.

 

You simply have to trust your gut-feelings here. When i read my first Heinlein book i felt that something deeply disturbed me, something made me dislike it, but i couldn't say right away what it was. It was a sci-fi, story, great! It was full of action, great! It was clever, great. But why did it leave such a bad taste in my mouth?

 

I re-read the book and paid extra attention to things that felt odd, and yes, there it was: Militarism, Dictatorship, Eugenics. In one word fascism.

 

Same for the film. Take e.g. a closer look at the uniforms that the officers have. SS anyone? Take a look at the pro-military flair. Noone in the film dares to question authority, being in the army is all they can think of.

 

Like the Propaganda films of the third reich this is packed in a very nice and seductive manner. You won't realize the message in those film and books unless you pay extra attention. They try to influence you with unnoticable things.

 

Ahem, sorry for drifting off

 

Nose kiss and that!

[chocolatemouse]

A country not have to be facist as we usualy imagine it to always support troops and think that all glory is in army or it reveal that even democracy can be close to fascism. Wr have actually some exemples of self claimed democratic countries where not being agree with what army do and go , or being against a war is not patriotic.

Perhaps the message was this one, facism like ideas not need brown or black uniforms to pollute our minds.

 

Aralez are armenian shepherd dogs named as from an armenian mythic heroe who could take shape of a dog .

Are you the aralez who done the mod for dawn of war ?

 

nose kiss to you

 

We are then near neighbours i am from france .

[Aralez]

PM'ed you, choco-mouse!

[chocolatemouse]

Seems i not received it sniffff

Or is there by default a block pm option i not seen ?

 

Nose kiss

 

Edit just got it