Cheyenne Mountain - November 7th

Peter Chen moved away from the lab table and turned angrily on a technician.
        "No. NO," he practically screamed. "I can’t believe I have to tell you again. You have to input the energy levels here, in sequence," he yelled pointing at the computer screen. The young man, a recent PhD from Boulder University and barely two days on the job, cringed at the scientist’s fury.
        "Hey, cool it!" said Carol Yeng from behind them. Chen whirled around. "I know we’re not getting results but that’s no reason to start shouting at people. We’re all on edge and we’ve been up all night, so relax. Okay?"
        Chen stared at her for a moment and then threw his hands in the air in disgust, leaving the room with a muttered curse. The tension in the room could be cut with a knife. Carol looked at the young man.
        "Sorry. He doesn’t normally act like this. It’s just that..."
        "Ah, forget it. It’s just not very helpful." Carol nodded and walked to the door.
        "Be right back," she mumbled to no-one in particular.

        Chen slammed his hand into the soda machine. He couldn’t believe it. Since his initial success with the lasers, his team had been unable to produce anything else. To top it all, Catherine’s group had made considerable improvements in understanding the UFOs and she’d even pulled off the alien deception. The whole base had been talking about the incident for days and she’d basked in the glory with a smug look on her face.
        And now, word was out on Internet of the OS hack and the results were flowing like the Niagara Falls.
        "Hey, Peter. What’s got into you?" He turned and saw Carol walking towards him.
        "Leave me alone, already," he said.
        "We’re a team, remember? When the team lead starts acting like a child, it hurts the whole team."
        "Really?" Chen could feel his face turn red, anger swelling in his chest.
        "Exactly," said Carol defiantly. "And you know it."
        "So who elected you as my mother?" said Chen tersely.
        "Fine," said Carol, turning her back on him. "My opinion," she called as she retreated down the corridor, "is that you should focus on what you’re doing and stop acting like an ass."
        Chen swore loudly and thumped the vending machine again. Focus. Jeez, what did she know about focus? He came from a poor immigrant family, his father sweating all day in his tiny downtown dry cleaning business, his mother slaving away long hours in a sewing plant. He had worked his way through college, attending class in the morning, working in the afternoons and studying at nights, sending half his salary to his parents. He had fought his family who had asked, pleaded and finally threatened him to enter the cleaning business, help his father out. But his destiny lay elsewhere. What would a little rich girl know about focus?
        Chen froze. Focus. Exactly!
        He raced into the lab, surprising his fellow scientists and rushed to the main computer console. He logged in and started scanning through files until he found what he wanted. The rest of the scientist followed his every move with raised eyebrows. Carol stepped forward.
        "Peter?" she said, cocking her head to one side. Chen ignored her and then gave a cry of triumph.
        "Here," he said stepping back. "take a look." He was grinning excitedly. Carol moved over and glanced at the screen. The lab results from CERN on the Elerium particles. They had studied them countless times, finding nothing.
        "Yes?" she said, shrugging.
        "Look at the other document." Carol clicked the mouse and brought up an atomic analysis of the Elerium found in the plasma weapons.
        "Identical," she said.
        "Look closer. At the directional vectors."
        "All of them?" she asked surprised.
        "No, not the vectors. The tendencies."
        Carol checked the results from the weapons. The vectors represented millions of numbers, each different from the last. She then brought up the CERN document. All the atoms were aligned, their vectors identical. She raised her head slowly and looked at Chen.
        "The laser igniter never fired because the mineral isn’t properly ramped," slowly, almost reverently.
        "Exactly." Chen crossed his arms over his chest and then uncrossed them, too exited to stand still. "What we’re dealing with are self-pinching plasma waves with laser igniters. The plasma should generate a pollodial field, upshifting the laser’s frequency. But the mineral isn’t ramped correctly so the field never generates in the way it should. Presto! The plasma fails to go bang."
        Carol regarded Chen with a smile dancing on her lips. She shook her head. The man, his intelligence - his brilliance - never failed to surprise her.
        "So," continued Chen. "How do we align the atomic structure of the Elerium?"
        "And why can the aliens fire them?" someone cut in.
        "An aligning mechanism or something on their ships?" offered another scientist.
        "Or maybe the mineral becomes disaligned in our atmosphere after an amount of time." said Chen. "But the real problem is how do we align it."

        Point Two-Two - Class Three Worm Hole

The fleet started to slow, executing separation maneuvers as planned. The Huge Nova class Destroyer at the head of the formation disengaged its engines and maintained station exactly one million parx away from the Hole. Behind it the rest of the armada stationed themselves at their assigned positions.
        First through the Hole would be the two transports and four escort gunships on route to the mining colonies of Planet Paars. News from the colonies bore ill tidings. The workers had rebelled and government facilities as well as personnel were in danger. The last transmission from the security staff had been cut half way through, leaving little doubt as to the gravity of the situation. Mineral shipments had also stopped.
        From the other side of Point Two-Two the small force would detour towards the Paars sector, arriving there shortly after.
        A longer journey awaited the rest of the Fleet. Once on the other side of the Hole, the trip would take several dozen cycles to complete. Half way to their destination, the Fleet would intercept the first of the cargo barges transporting the precious mineral ore from the Terran planet. The barge would be accelerated by the Nova Destroyer towards their home planet, a little push to abbreviate its long journey.

        However, extreme caution had to be exercised when entering the Hole.
        Worm Holes are essentially tunnels connecting points in space. A traveler entering through one side of the Hole appears instantly on the other side, normally hundreds of light distant. This is possible because space is not flat but rather curves around heavy objects, such as a large star or a black hole.
        Unfortunately, most Worm Holes tend to disappear quickly, so quickly in fact that only Tachyons, particles that travel faster than light, have time to cross through before the Hole fades. The effect is called ‘pinch off’.
        Nevertheless, many Holes have been discovered in the galaxy. Scientists began to speculate, and were later proven correct, that a certain kind of matter, so called ‘exotic’ matter, exercises enough tensile tension to counteract the energy density of the Hole. In other words, if the Hole contains enough of this so called exotic matter, it will remain open. The amount of matter needed is equivalent to the amount required to form a black hole with enough gravitational pull to keep the Worm Hole from pinching. A small problem arises from the fact that exotic matter is negative.
        When positive matter (such as a space ship) enters the Hole it tends to cancel out the negative ‘exotic’ matter thus reducing the tensile strength and the Hole collapses, causing anything inside it to de-atomize itself. An added problem stems from Worm Hole Degradation. Once positive matter crosses through the Hole, it takes a finite amount of time for the Hole to recover, for the tensile strength to achieve its initial setting.
        Which is why the Fleet would have to pass slowly, spacing itself over several million parx, in order to survive the jump.
        The Kraal Subcommander issued the pertinent orders and the first of the transports initiated the run.

        Lima - Peru

        The APC reached a corner and stopped. Ahead, the Robot lay crippled in the middle of the devastated street. Cars, house, trees lay in ruins, burnt or destroyed from the battle. The asphalt was cratered where mortar shells had landed.
        Two blocks away, a helicopter had crashed into the roof of a once beautiful villa, rotors protruding into the air like a deranged parabolic antenna.
        The APC’s hatch opened and a uniformed man emerged. After days of battle, routing out every single of the terror monsters, house to house, room to room and then dealing with the Robots and flying disks, the suburban area of Lima was a shadow of it’s past splendor.
        The man lifted a radio and informed his superiors that Lima was finally secure.

        Area 51

        After a week of hacking the world had produced results.
        The program, or at least a beta version, was ready to run on an alien computer. Before hand, the scientists of the Dinosaur Pen had erased the ‘hard drive’ on the target machine, leaving it clean. The task had not been a simple one, considering that the alien’s mass storage devices were radically different to the magnetic disks of Earth. Alien computers used optical storage devices, bubbles of light created in a holographic cube by intersecting laser beams.
        But the scientists had been studying the alien machines for years and the system was well understood. A difficult and risky task but accomplished nonetheless.
        The next step was interconnecting the two computers. Two years ago, the techs had developed a system to monitor output from the machine, receiving an unintelligible stream of data every time they hooked on. A network specialist disconnected a cable from the machine and re-connected it to one of the terminals. He shrugged. It had never worked before.
        "All set?" asked Cole.
        A group of computer experts quickly re-checked the setup and then gave him the go ahead.
        "Cross your fingers," said one of them.
        "Why?" said Cole, surprised. "Not sure of your work?" he said nonchalantly.
        He lifted one of the BPE - the emitters Catherine and her group had designed - and flicked the ON switch. The alien computer came to life. The disk clean, it theoretically had no place to read its startup sequence from. The screen flickered and then came to life abruptly, a diagram of a UFO appearing in the center, large red dots revealing inaccessible locations. The correct startup sequence.
        "Yes!" exclaimed Cole. "The alien computer is reading off our hard drive. Piece of cake." The rest of the group held their collective breaths.
        "Now let’s go for broke." Cole sat at his terminal and typed a series of commands. The screen on the alien machine went blank and instantly a new message appeared. It read : SUCK ON THIS, BUGMAN.
        A loud cheer erupted in the Dinosaur Pen.

        Cheyenne Mountain - November 9th.

        Keller entered the infirmary and greeted the nurse. She smiled back and held his gaze longer than necessary. Rumor had it that one of the scientists had him hooked. Pity.
        He walked over to Room One and rapped politely on the door. A muffled answer told him to ‘grab and twist it’.
        "How you doing, TopCat?" The medical facilities, including patient rooms would make any hospital around the world green with envy.
        "Fine, boss. You heard?" his voice had a somber ring.
        "Yeah." The doctors had said that the Elerium slug had left his shoulder useless, ripping through bone, tendons and muscle, causing great destruction. After the operation and a long week of tests and rehab, the medics had finally given in. TopCat was automatically out of Special Ops.
        "Invalid. A useless invalid." TopCat moved his head to one side. Keller could sense his desperation.
        "You’re alive," said Keller softly, hardly able to hold the man’s stare.
        TopCat snorted. "Fat load of good that is." He paused. "Yeah, yeah, I know. It ain’t that bad. I’ll be able to do all those things I’ve never had time for. Just have to figure out what they are."
        "I want you in Training." TopCat moved his head towards Keller. "Listen, we just don’t have the time, you know it. And there’s a load of bases around the globe that desperately need first hand combat knowledge."
        "I can’ remember asking for compassion," he said icily.
        "And I’m not offering it," replied Keller. "New York, for instance. A bunch of Delta pukes with zero experience in alien warfare. If you don’t go, I’ll have to assign someone else."
        "So send the cripple, that it?."
        "Uncalled for, TopCat."
        The commando closed his eyes and blew a sigh. "Roger that. I’m angry. Not really at my best."
        Keller stood. "Think about it," he said as he walked to the door.

        "How’d he take it?" asked Catherine.
        Keller intercepted a passing waitress and ordered a beer. It had been a long day, and he was happy unwinding in the bar with a pretty girl. A stunning lady, he corrected himself.
        "Not well. Understandably. It’s his life."
        Catherine reached over and grabbed his hand. A tingle of electricity shot through his arm.
        "I’m sorry."
        "At least he made out better than Pachi, the Spaniard," he said heavily.
        "I’ve never lost a friend, just distant uncles and grandparents. I can’t imagine what you’re going through."
        Keller leaned closer. Damn, this was difficult. His heart thumped in his chest like a regiment of Sectoids were aiming plasma rifles at him.
        "Uh," he stammered.
        Catherine gave him an amused look and raised her eyebrows. Keller winced.
        "I’m pretty pathetic right now, but I’m better with a large gun."
        "Does that mean you’re not going to kiss me?" she asked sweetly.

        CERN Laboratory - Switzerland. November 12th

        The stream of electrons traveled at the speed of light around the circular path of the 26.67 kilometer in diameter tunnel of the Large Electron-Positron Collider’s Main Ring. As they raced by the 128 five-cell copper cavities that constituted the heart of the acceleration system, sixteen one megawatt Klystrons powered them on.
        The electron beam had been in operation for the past twelve hours, typically the time needed to fill the LEP with particles for a physics run. Each of the particles had traversed the complete distance of the chamber about 500 million times.
        Over one hundred and sixty computers distributed over 24 underground areas and 24 surface buildings, controlled each of the critical aspects of the operation.
        Electron guns and Positron converters blasted the subatomic particles via two Linac 200 MeV and 600 MeV injectors into the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron, the 20 GeV electron-positron injector for LEP. In order to keep tabs on the beam, 504 monitors are evenly distributed around the circumference of the tunnel, the signals sent to the complex computing system and then relayed to the Main Control Room.
        It was here that Dr. Jean-Claude Morin and his team, including Pierre Rousseau and Enrico DeCesare, sat closely studying the computer screens. Only one more minute until they could shut down the LEP and commence studying the results. One minute to success or failure.
        The call had come from Dr. Richards of X-COM two days earlier and pulling strings and pushing influence, they had managed to setup the experiment in record time. Their theory certainly was interesting.

        It took the massively parallel supercomputer four hours to calculate all the position vectors of the atomic structure of the Elerium core that had been subjected to the EP stream. Jean-Claude Morin clicked on the screen and watched as the program printed the final process complete message. He held his breath as he brought up the results, with Pierre and Enrico hovering like vultures over his shoulders.
        "Fantastique," he cried. "The core is aligned!"
        Behind him the two young men high-fived in a very unprofessional manner, eliciting a deep scowl from the Director of CERN standing behind them.
        But the experiment was a complete success. The core would be loaded into a plasma rifle and tested. Then it would be dismantled and checked regularly for vector disalignment to determine the instability frequency. In essence, they wanted to know how long before the Elerium stopped firing.

        Somewhere in the Mediterranean.

        The USO glided to a stop silently under the sea. Once again, the Sectoid Commander approached the Data Link station to receive his orders. He knew the Fleet to be close and assumed that hostilities would commence in earnest very soon. Several sites had already been mined, most undetected. The first one had been an exception and a disaster. Seven of their precious fighters had been lost to the puny Terran Forces.
        He hooked the underwater vessel to the retractable link and waited for the message to download.

        Thousands of miles away, Cole jumped a foot in the air.
        The alien computer had suddenly come to life. They had been testing a couple of new routines, but without interfacing the alien hardware. He lifted his hands off the keyboard.
        "Is anyone doing anything?" he asked. A few blank stares, some hunched shoulders and a chorus of nopes as answer.
        "So what’s happening?" He rose and strode to the alien device. A three dimensional map of the Earth was displayed in the center, symbols racing down one side of the screen.
        "Everyone sure? Nobody is accessing the computer, right?" he said louder. His hands stayed up in the air, as if he were being mugged. "Damn, we gotta tape this."
        A young man grabbed a hand-held video camera and rushed over. The globe rotated several times and then centered on Australia, zooming in on the northern regions, incredibly detailed. A spot flashed brightly, more symbols scrolling next to it.
        "Oh, man," he said slowly. "I do believe we’re eavesdropping."
        "What?" asked a man in jeans.
        "Looks like a bug is sending a pal a message and we’re picking it up."
        The man in jeans snorted. "We never included a data transmission routine in the code."
        Cole paused. "Well, it’s in there somewhere. We just haven’t found it yet."

        Cheyenne Mountain - November 13th.

        "Awright, gents," bellowed Gator. Keller winced. In the confined space of the commando’s ready room, his voice rocked the airwaves.
        "Yah attention, if y’all please. This heah is Mr. Josh Deaver, TopCat’s replacement." The young ex-SEAL lifted himself off the desk and raised a hand in greeting. Squat and strong, Deaver was a native of New York, Brooklyn by his accent. A chorus of greetings rose from the rest of the team. Keller leaned leisurely against a table, a large object covered under a large blue cloth.
        "The boss has asked me to explain our military philosophy." Gator raised a crude drawing of an alien, as seen through the eyes of a child. "This heah is an a-lien," he said theatrically. He raised his other hand, a paper with a toy gun drawn on it. "This heah is a gun. Y’all see this," he said shaking the alien stick figure, "use this," the drawing of the rifle. Laughter erupted. He turned to Keller and winked.
        "And Christmas comes early this year," said the Captain. "Let me introduce you to your new friend." Keller grabbed the edge of the cloth and lifted it. He hefted the plasma rifle and smiled.
        "Ho, ho," said Gonzalez, laughing. "Say hello to Mr. Plasma."
        "Correct-o, my friend. The is the first unit produced by our valiant grease monkeys." Keller showcased it in front of him. "Standard issue plasma rifle - standard as of now, that is - with a 40mm single shot breach loading grenade launcher attached underneath. Rate of fire a whopping 650 blasts per minute maximum."
        "Destructive power," added Wales, "a veritable shitload."
        "Telescopic laser night sight with infrared, thermal and range finder. Works for eight hours and then degrades and leaves you in a tight spot. Unless kept in a special chamber. Something to do with zero temperature."
        "Run that by me again," said Ridge.
        "Once you grab one from the chamber, you got eight hours to bag yourself some bug," said Gonzalez. "Who’s making the core?"
        "Well, from what Richards told me, the cores that the aliens leave behind have to be re-aligned in a lab in Europe. They send them over at zero degrees and we store them until the time is right. Or the bugs shown their ugly faces. Means, we have to pick up all the rifles we can find. And, the piece de resistance, which isn’t here right now. Catherine Clark told me this morning that the Stage Three Suit is ready for production."
        "Yeah?" said Gonzalez.
        "Supposedly, it’ll stop a direct plasma shot. At least once."
        Smiles broke all over.
        "Hey, hey. Mr. Bug you’d better watch out!"
        Gonzalez raised his hand. "Did Miss Clark tell you all this, like, over breakfast?" he asked with an innocent face.
        "Very funny," said Keller. Damn, the word was out.

        Point Two-Two - Class Three Worm Hole

        The Kraal SubCommander was about to order his destroyer into the Hole when the Defense System on his right console lit up.
        "Ship approaching quadrant Five-Two-Zero," said an officer. "Scanning indicates it’s an Ethereal vessel." The SubCommander cursed violently.
        During the past dozen years, since travel outside their solar system had become possible, the Kraals had ventured upon many different life-sustaining planets. Most were uninhabited or bore primitive life forms and were left alone (once it was established that they were mineral poor).
        Over the years, they ventured upon four different intelligent races. Two were still in the early stages of evolution, the third were the Terrans and the fourth the Ethereals. Contact had occurred on a routine transportation run towards one of the mining colonies two years ago. Euphoria over the new contact had dwindled when the Ethereals were revealed as a mercenary and dishonorable race. As parasites, they appeared whenever the Kraals opened a route to a new planet, destroying indigenous inhabitants for no apparent reason. A whole planet had been systematically wiped out over the past year. No-one knew their sinister purpose. A treaty of sorts had been signed by the Kraal High Command that gave the Ethereals the right to accompany Kraal Fleets to their destinations. Why the treaty had been signed was a mystery to the SubCommander.
        "They’re requesting contact, Commander," called an officer.
        The SubCommander flicked a hand and opened a channel to the Ethereal’s vessel. An ugly, dark red face appeared on his 3D viewer, floating in front of him.
        "Greetings," said the hideous face, black unfathomable eyes sunk deep under a crimson, scaled forehead. Double orifices acted as mouths that slobbered when they spoke. "We request passage."
        The reason why they tended to tag behind Kraal Fleets was unknown. Speculation had it that they were a cowardly race, seeking the protection of the Fleet to venture past Hole barriers. Nothing could have pleased the SubCommander more than blasting their puny vessel apart with a Photon Torpedo.
        "Granted," he spat. "You will go last." The communication suddenly vanished, not a word of acknowledgment or thanks. The SubCommander snarled. Briefly, he felt sorry for the Terrans.

Thanks!

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