UNXCOMFOR: Volume 1, "Enemy Unknown"

[Jake Grey]

"My fellow Americans... My fellow human beings. On April 12th 2016, humanity became aware that we were not alone in the universe. This should have been cause for celebration.

 

"Unfortunately, the circumstances of our introduction to another sentient species were... less than ideal. We suspect they've had us under observation for a long time, though they seem to have taken a much closer interest in the middle of the 20th century. They've been pretty successful in keeping a low profile; as far as we can determine they've made very few actual abductions, and for every genuine case that we've nailed down there are a couple of hundred hoaxes. Between the as yet unidentified energy source they're using for propulsion and highly advanced radar-absorbent materials, they've had nearly a century observing us without being caught. The National Reconnaissance Office believes they may have some satellites in orbit, probably synced to stay on the day-side and built out of the same RAM as their spacecraft so we couldn't spot them by accident.

 

"They've probably been watching us for the last three generations. They've listened to our radio, watched our TV, accessed the Internet; they probably know everything there is to know about human culture.

 

"And they have chosen to announce their presence by hovering over four cities chosen apparently at random and reducing them to rubble, killing four hundred and fifty thousand people. They have not deigned to explain why. There was no conceivable provocation on the part of the United States government, nor any other nation on Earth; not even the veneer of justification that a fanatic would-be dictator might use to twist the minds of embittered young men towards acts of terrorism. We did not even know these people existed until they descended from the skies to commit an act of mass murder.

 

"Perhaps they feel superior to us. Perhaps in some ways they are. But we will not take this atrocity lying down. As of the hour of this statement, our nation is now at war. A motion will be passed before the emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to establish the means by which the nations of Earth may present a united front against this new threat.

 

"They want to come down with the heavy mob to find us scared, confused, unprepared and unready. They're going to find us scared, confused, as prepared and ready as we can possibly be... and mad as all hell."

-- President Bartram Wilkes, speaking from Air Force One in the aftermath of the first strike of the war.

 

The much-maligned United Nations can work fast when the morals of the situation are sufficiently clear-cut. By June 1st, funding and personnel allocations and a detailed mandate had been drafted for the United Nations Extra-Terrestrial Combat Force, which the press soon shortened to X-COM. Response teams were deployed at strategic locations, fighter squadrons were detached to X-COM command, and the world held its breath and settled in to wait.

 

It did not have to wait long.

 

***

Somewhere over the North Sea, June 8th:

"Voodoo Five, this is Spaceball. We have a bogey bearing zero four one, angels six zero and descending. Range, approximately three hundred miles."

 

Paydirt. "Spaceball, Voodoo Five." Flight-lieutenant Richard Bartlett put his Eurofighter Typhoon into a steep climb and switched frequencies. "Spread formation, go card," he ordered his wingman.

 

"Copy that." The second fighter dipped a wing and put a few hundred yards between them, the better to make violent manoeuvres. "Something's putting out a hell of a lot of infrared in that direction."

 

"Looks like he came down in a hell of a hurry," Bartlett agreed. "Thought they were supposed to have anti-gravity drives or some Buck Rogers bollocks like that."

"Engine trouble, maybe?"

 

"Or bait. Spaceball, Voodoo Five Zero. Something's not right about this; are you getting the same thermal readings as we are?"

"Affirmative. Backup's on the way; two Gripens, callsign Ramit. ETA fifteen minutes."

"Copy that, be glad of them."

They made visual contact with the UFO a few minutes later. Bartlett's eyes narrowed as he scrutinised the bizarre craft through the Typhoon's long-range camera pod. "Odd-looking little bastard," he mused. The vessel's construction was blocky and, well... alien, a thick round-cornered rectangle about the same size as a two-car garage, with a low dome on the roof. It had no apparent means of propulsion, and no windows visible from this angle. "Spaceball, Voodoo Five Zero. Tallyho, visual contact on alien vessel."

 

"Copy that. Close to weapons range and attempt radio contact."

 

"Spaceball, Voodoo Five Zero." Bartlett armed his Meteor long-range missiles and inched into range. X-COM were playing things by the book for now; they knew slightly more than sweet Fanny Adams about the species they were up against, and a fine mess they'd be in if they shot down some opposing faction's diplomatic delegation by mistake. The interceptors would make three attempts to raise the craft on radio, and if the UFO got to ten miles from the coast, they'd open fire.

 

"Unidentified aircraft, this is RAF 55 Squadron interceptor Voodoo Five Zero. You are entering NATO protected airspace, please alter your heading by ninety degrees and identify yourself." The UFO sped onwards. "You are behaving in a manner that implies hostile intent, alter your heading and identify yourself or I will bring you down. If you are unable to respond by radio, turn on your navigation lights for three seconds."

"Think he can even understand us?" Bartlett's wingman wondered.

 

"Fifty years of crop circles and gang-probe sessions is long enough to pick up the lingo- Bloody hell!" The strange craft reversed direction so violently that it should have torn itself apart, heading straight towards the two fighters. The dome rotated towards them, revealing something that looked a lot like the muzzle of a gun. "Evasive!" Bartlett snapped.

 

He saw the flash and reacted on pure instinct, kicking the rudder as he threw his Typhoon into a barrel-roll. A glowing mass of something hurtled past his wingtip, trailing vapour. "Voodoo Five is under fire! Engaging bandit!" It was closing too fast for Meteors, so he selected AMRAAMs and sought a lock as it targeted his wingman. "Locked on," the bland female voice of the computer informed him. "Fox three!"

 

He'd fired at forty miles, close to the edge of the AMRAAM's effective range. It paid off, indirectly; the UFO jinked as if momentum was someone else's problem and came in for another pass at Bartlett's fighter at lightning speed, but he was ready for it, diving under the reach of its dorsal turret and squeezing off a burst of twenty rounds from his fighter's 27mm cannon. There was another turret underneath, but the alternating depleted uranium and high-explosive fragmentation shells reduced it to a smoking ruin and tore a line of jagged holes in the fuselage. Bartlett threw the Typhoon into a violent bank to line up for another shot, but the UFO was out of cannon range. Its remaining turret fired again whilst he was trying to get a lock with ASRAAMs.

"I'm hit-!" There was a flash, and the radio cut out. Bartlett swore under his breath and pulled the trigger. "Fox two!" This time he didn't miss. The UFO lurched drunkenly as the fragmentation warhead exploded a hand's breadth from the dorsal turret, and began spiralling downwards.

 

Bartlett released a breath he hadn't realised he was holding. "Mayday, mayday, Typhoon down!" he called out, looking around for the parachute he knew full well wasn't going to be there.

 

***

UFO Crash-Site, Northern Germany:

The Shorts/Antonov Skyranger VSTOL transport bounced once on its wheels and rolled to a halt in a field of stubble a few hundred yards from the crashed UFO. "Not much smoke," one of the recovery team remarked.

 

"Looks like they were right about it coming down under control," agreed the team leader. "So that means it's probably manned, and at least one crewmember lived long enough to get it down."

 

They left the transport by the numbers, both four-man rifle teams sprinting for cover at all four points of the compass. The heavy weapons team came out last, less able to run with their greater load of firepower and ammunition. There was no particular reason to suppose a medium anti-tank rocket launcher or a 40mm repeating grenade launcher would be necessary, but then again there was no particular reason to suppose they wouldn't be necessary either; X-COM's main problem at this stage was a complete lack of intelligence on their opponent.

 

The UFO had come down in near some farm buildings, leaning at an awkward angle on half-collapsed landing gear. The air shimmered as heat radiated away from its hull, and wisps of steam curled from the scorched earth surrounding it. Whatever this thing was made out of clearly had some issues with heat-retention, which was playing merry hell with the thermal-imaging scope. The team leader scowled and stuffed it back in a pouch in his beltkit. "We'll have to do it the old-fashioned way," he declared. "Sweep the outbuildings first and then see about getting into the ship itself."

 

They split into pairs and began encircling the crash-site. The two heavy-weapons teams found suitable vantage points to provide fire support if a ruck kicked off, whilst the rifle teams methodically swept the cow-byre and barn, both of them half-derelict. "Do we know if anyone still uses these buildings?" one man murmured into his throat mic, wincing as his boot caught an empty paint tin.

"No idea; doesn't look like it though- Contact! Top floor of the barn!" Half a dozen carbines were trained on the hayloft in an eyeblink. "Weapons tight," the team leader instructed. "Team One, we're going up there; the rest of you provide cover."

 

They entered the barn cautiously. It was empty except for drifts of old straw and a rusting plough that looked a hundred years old. A rickety ladder led up to the hayloft, and with some reluctance the team leader slung his carbine and drew his sidearm. He would ideally prefer to toss a stun grenade up there first, but it had been a warm summer and the straw was dry as kindling; a flashbang was liable to set the barn on fire-

 

Something metallic and spherical thudded into the dirt at the base of the ladder. "Oh, shit-!"

 

There was a blinding flash, and a cloud of dust billowed out of the barn doors. The remaining soldiers immediately loosed panicky three-round bursts into the upper floor, "What the hell was that?" one of them yelled.

 

"Grenade or something-" There was a whiplike crack, and a soldier's upper body was bathed briefly in a painfully bright glow. His comrades had a scant instant to stare in horror at the charred stump that was all that remained of his head, then training kicked in and they threw themselves down behind cover. Another blast gouged a smoking crater out of the ground inches from where one of them had been standing a few moments earlier. The grenadier launched a high-explosive round through the window of the hayloft, taking a good chunk of the front wall off and starting the fire the team leader had been hoping to avoid.

 

"So much for minimising property damage."

 

"Oh, you're fucking hilarious."

 

A brief glance inside the ruined barn confirmed that Team One were all beyond help; the bodies were barely even recognisable as human. The remaining soldiers shared a short moment of silence for their dead comrades, then began circling the craft in search of a door. They found it on what appeared to be the front of the craft, a nearly-invisible seam with a flat black panel beside it. "Stack up behind me," ordered the ranking survivor, pulling the pin from a flashbang. He touched the panel, and the door hissed open. With a quick underhand throw, he tossed the flashbang through the doorway and made to pull back before-

 

Every part of him above the waist exploded in a gout of smoke and blood and charred fragments of bone, superheated instantaneously to somewhere beyond the vaporisation point of iron.

 

The soldier manning the rocket launcher had finally had enough. With commendable accuracy and presence of mind but a complete lack of thought for the consequences, he placed a rocket neatly through the open door. His colleagues just barely had time to dive for cover before fifteen pounds of thermite and wire wool detonated in the heart of the UFO. The explosion took the roof clean off, bent its sides outwards like a bizarre Cubist chrysanthemum and toppled the now merrily-blazing barn.

 

Crash Site 01: Secure.

 

X-COM HQ Europe, somewhere in the Ural Mountains:

 

Colonel Edouard Leclerc watched the wreckage being offloaded from the German Air Force C-27 and resisted the urge to grind his teeth. "The word 'inauspicious' comes to mind," he muttered. X-COM Europe's first encounter the enemy had resulted in a total of seven fatalities, three more men benched with ruptured eardrums, one interceptor destroyed and nothing to show for it but a gutted hulk and a lot of barely-recognisable corpses.

 

"Not as bad as it might have been, sir," pointed out his immediate deputy, a Major Van Kessler of the Dutch Marines. "If nothing else, we've learned valuable lessons in how not to engage these things."

 

"And we'd better bloody well apply them. What do R&D have to say about what we've salvaged so far?"

 

"Plenty, sir. In fact, they've asked you to come down to the test range for a demonstration of the weapon we picked up."

 

The Research and Development lab was somewhat rough-and-ready, a repurposed munitions storage bunker being used on a temporary basis whilst a dedicated research complex could be established at some neutral location. The mostly civilian personnel had been seconded from a variety of universities and defence contractors, under the nominal command of a Warrant Officer whose role was primarily to authorise the distribution of their budget and translate their findings into layman's terms. Said warrant officer saluted smartly and showed Leclerc and Van Kessler to the improvised firing range at the back of the building, where a young man wearing safety goggles and a lab coat over rumpled civilian clothing was waiting with what looked like a cross between a hair-dryer and a very large revolver in his hands. "Colonel? I'm Dr Petersmith, head of the Weapons Section. I don't believe we've been properly introduced," he said in British-accented but otherwise very good French, offering his hand.

 

Leclerc shook, moderately impressed. "Good to meet you," he replied, in English for the benefit of the non-speakers present. "So, what have you discovered about that little toy?"

 

Petersmith's eyes darkened behind his goggles. "It has the recoil of a cheap pocket revolver and the lethality of a piece of light artillery. Watch." He pointed it down-range one-handed and pulled the trigger. There was a crack that reminded Leclerc of a Jacob's Ladder, a faint smell of ozone, and a large cloud of smoke and steam burst from the hillside. He looked down the range and drew in a sharp breath; a metre-square patch of earth had been fused into black glass. "My God!" he said to himself. "Some kind of directed-energy weapon?"

 

"Sort of. You know what plasma is in the context of physics?"

 

"Superheated gas that can be affected by magnetic fields, if I remember correctly."

 

"Indeed. And by some process that as yet we don't understand, this weapon seals a quantity of it into a frangible capsule and fires it at considerable velocity. Lethal range seems to be something on the order of two hundred yards, after which it loses cohesion and bursts; it can reliably make centre-mass shots at a little over half that if you've got a steady hand, possibly more if fitted with better sights. We've tested it on a couple of sets of body armour from the stores, and if anything they make things worse; Kevlar will melt and the trauma plate will soak up enough heat to give you fourth-degree burns. And judging by what was left of that poor bastard who tried to lob a stun grenade into the UFO," Petersmith concluded grimly, pronouncing the acronym 'you-foe' the way some of the British did, "this is purely a sidearm. They've got infantry weapons that are even worse."

 

"Wonderful," Leclerc growled. "Can you reverse-engineer it?"

 

"Given a few months, and a lab set up inside a reinforced concrete bunker at least fifteen metres underground lest we do something wrong whilst taking it apart, very probably. I can't make any promises on being able to manufacture copies, though; the energy required for that little fireworks display would power this entire complex for a week."

 

"Very well. In the meantime, concentrate on finding alternative body armour."

 

"Every manufacturer of firefighting equipment on the continent is shipping in test samples already, sir."

 

"Good."

 

Leclerc returned to his office and busied himself making coffee; his aide was British, and therefore probably wouldn't know real coffee if someone spilled a cupful in his lap, and in any case he found the simple ritual somewhat soothing. Once the water had been added to the cafetiere, he switched on his computer and began reading his email.

 

The news was mixed. A total of five alien craft had been detected and engaged, four of which

had been brought down. Unfortunately, in all three other cases they had either been hit with enough force to leave only fragmentary wreckage or had gone down over the open ocean, where recovery would be almost impossible. Perhaps that was for the best at this stage judging by the European recovery team's experience. A fifth craft had evaded interception and set down somewhere in the Australian outback, taken off again before a response team could reach it and disappeared back from whence they had come, having completed whatever mysterious errand they'd been on.

 

The enemy's objective was tentatively agreed to be reconnaissance, and also to test the readiness of Earth's defences. What conclusions they'd drawn from the experience was a matter for conjecture, though eighty percent losses was a stinging defeat by human standards.

Not that losing three interceptors for four kills is much to brag about, Leclerc reflected. The US Air Force's much-vaunted Lockheed Raptor had turned out to be somewhat less stealthy against alien technology, though apparently their target had led them to believe otherwise until the last minute; it seemed they had been trying to engage with cannon in the hope of forcing an emergency landing.

 

He spent the next half-hour condensing X-COM Europe's experiences of the opening salvo of the war into a few short paragraphs, added his own conclusions and recommendations and attached copies of the after-action reports of the personnel involved, then despatched the result to the inboxes of all other X-COM regional commanders. Courtesy copies were sent to various military intelligence agencies for an outside perspective.

 

That was that out of the way. His next task was technically a voluntary one, normally delegated to the commanding officer of the unit the response team had been drawn from; GSG-9 in this case. Nevertheless, they had been seconded to his command and died in the execution of orders he had given, so Leclerc felt he owed their next of kin a letter from himself as well.