The signal found the boost antenna on the Nova and bounced itself towards the cold confines of space, searching millions of miles away for its destination. It blasted past the central bodies in the Terran Sector, past the largest of the revolving lifeless spheres, crossed the orbit of the ringed planet and sought out the largest of the arriving ships, the massive Command Destroyer, sister to the crippled Nova in Lunar orbit.
        It reached its destination and entered the computer system, identified itself, cleared the necessary pass codes into the correct security systems and confirmed execution of the command.
        If it had been blessed with intelligence, it would have been alarmed at the multitude of warnings that erupted in systems all around it. But, that was not its nature. It ignored them.

        The sun rose slowly over the horizon, lazy rays cascading over the horizon. Shadows reached out across the sand of the Nevada desert towards where Keller stood silently gazing at the horizon. A cold breeze blew about him and he shivered involuntarily. It all seemed so serene, as if a new world was being born on that precise moment. His brain rebelled, thoughts of the previous hours clashing into his mind.
        The techs, the Cole guy, had stumbled on a lucky move and had single-handedly destroyed the arriving Fleet, thereby depriving the orbiting bugs of the much needed reinforcements. The Pentagon and Area 51 listening posts had intercepted the alien’s distress calls from the arriving ships and had then followed the reckless flight of the dying spacecraft as they collided spectacularly against the Moon a week later.
        The rest of the orbiting spaceships had retreated to Mars with the severely crippled Nova in tow.
        But the dying Fleet had managed to pull one last desperate action. It had released fifty three pods, circular objects that were still traveling at medium speed towards Earth. The pods were due in under one hour and the alarm had gone out. All around the scientific community speculation arose as to the nature of the objects, explanations ranging from ejected lifemodules from the Fleet to lost Ion Torpedoes and many wild hypothesis that simply added confusion to uncertainty. In any case, precautions were being taken and all personnel would remain inside safe bases, NBC containment fully on, until the danger was assessed and over.
        Keller remained staring at the early morning view, thinking about Katie. She had been hastened to Los Alamos to supervise some revolutionary kind of ceramic composite they had synthesized, her name already creating a buzz in high class circles. He felt a mixture of pride and fear. Would she continue to love him? Would she have time for him now that she was fast becoming a name in the business?
        Alarms came on, blaring loudly three times, followed by the hollow voice of an announcer: ALL PERSONNEL. BASE WILL SEAL IN TEN MINUTES. RETURN INSIDE INMEDIATELY.
        Already? He inhaled the cold air deeply one more time and turned his back on the rising star.

        On the eighteenth of February of Nineteen Ninety Eight, fifty three T-1 gas torpedoes entered Earth’s atmosphere. Those who looked up saw the traces as they streaked red hot from above. What they failed to spot was the ghostly shape of Death, as containment fields released the deadly cargo dozens of miles above the surface, in different locations throughout the globe.
        On the eighteenth of February of Nineteen Ninety Eight, the Human Race died.

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X-COM: UFO Defence is copyright 1996 by Microprose Software, Inc. All rights reserved.