"This is the place, then?" "Yes." "Then were is the girl?" I stand facing the blond man, perspiration beading up on my face, weaving rivers here and there, tickling my scars. My suit is already dusty from the short walk from the Phoenix. My hand rests by my right thigh. Around my black trousers' leg is my low holster, a type three plasma resting in it. Six clips are strapped to my belt. I put it on in the car. The blond man glances down at my pistol, the tip of his snake's tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth. He wants to reach over and take my weapon. I smile warily at him. If he tries, I will break his arm. He is sharp-faced and pale like I might have been at one time. He grew up with English-speaking parents in the Midwest, just as I did. He is American, and, now, for once, I am ashamed that I am too. "Where is the girl?" I ask, allowing a trace of impatience to seep through. I volunteered four Phoenixes, two Valkyries, and a sufficient crew for this direst of missions, and every minute we stand here in the doorway of this abandoned warehouse is costing me a small fortune. The toughs take my cue and push the man inside. I would have liked to bring my own men, trained in operations such as these, but Sakurai insisted that only his four go with. They have already seen and heard much. The fewer who know of this shame, the better. "I can walk," he slurs, his lips fat and his right eye still a black and purple mess. Blood is caked underneath his nose. He staggers in a few steps, and then points across the cavernous interior to a gaping hole in the cracked concrete flooring. "She's down there," he says. I poke my head into the calm darkness of the building. A nasty tangle of structural support beams and collapsing roofing are about three stories above us; by the signs of the loading docks behind us, this must have been a customs warehouse before the economy took a hit. Well . . . before Sakurai sprayed aerosol gasoline into downtown Atlanta and lit a match. "I don't like this," I say, this being the code phrase for the Valks to move in to minimal possible distance without giving away their cover. The blond strides out into the warehouse, his scuffed-up shoes crisply smacking the buckled concrete. "You gonna help me?" he shouts back. "Come with me," I order the two biggest bodyguards. These are just hired men, their only loyalty coming from the hefty paycheck Sakurai is sure to provide them. Hired men--not like I was. We step into the building and catch up to the bastard in our care. He hasn't seen a phone or a computer terminal for the last three days, and Sakurai claims that he captured him totally by surprise--but I still can't help feeling very bad about this. The warehouse is too large, too empty, the slow roll of contorted concrete being the only cover within. It is very nearly dark in the far corners . . . The crater in the center of the floor is lit somewhat, a gash across the ceiling allowing scant sunlight to fall upon it. The blond stops some three meters from it; he points. One of the bodyguards approaches the pit, cautiously, but only in the manner of a great bull elephant. His big feet throw up small clouds of dust and sand. He peers over the lip of the great hole. "Nothing," he states, and then the back of his head explodes. The prisoner drops to the ground, his head already between his knees. I also dive, mine being more of an instinctual roll that will take me away from where I was last and yet grant me a glimpse of the whole situation. The other bodyguard leaps aside, a hail of automatic fire ripping through his light body armor and mashing his ribs, his lungs and heart. I spot the two of them, grease-painted faces peeking up over the rim of the crater, their assault rifles swinging towards me. My pistol is out faster; they fire high but I nail each with a collated double- tap. One for you, one for you. Another, another. I roll onto my back; the firing has not stopped. The blond is up and running, madly, for an exit on the far wall. I almost sight up his back, but a flurry of lead rips up the floor beside me. There are more in the rafters. I spot a muzzle flash and reply with an aimed burst that takes all my concentration--to not roll again, to avoid the bullets. The old human instincts are still strong in me. I take a round low on my right side; I think my vest deflects it, but it still hurts like hell. I automatically file away the pain. A man dangles by his legs from the ceiling beams; I have taken one sniper. There is another, but he concentrates on the doorway, where one bodyguard--the other lies face down in blood-soaked sand--has managed to pull his plasma. I pull myself up into a crouch and sight up my pistol. The hired man dodges a burst by hiding behind the corrugated metal next to the doorframe. Idiot; the sniper pumps round after round into the wall there, punching through. I hear a high, girl-like scream. It is the guard dying. With this sniper, I take no chances, firing a half-dozen times before he can turn and engage me. He is kicked off the high steel, his Russian machine gun clattering off the concrete a half-second before his skull cracks. He doesn't move; even if my barrage didn't finish him, he certainly broke his neck. "Sir! Sir, report in!" shouts a female voice into my earpiece. I glance around for the blond. The doorway he was running for dangles open, the harsh sunlight pouring though. I glance down. My Armani is sticky to the touch. I stand up, not bothering to brush myself off. "Seal the block. Drop cover and seal the block, he's escaped." A gruff old voice gains my ear. "Did you find her? Who has escaped?" I sigh, looking down into the hole, the dead bodyguard and the two gunmen crumpled atop a heap of rubble. "No. She never was here." I stare at the open door again. "And we lost Hawthorne." So that is the full weight of these memories! In this great jigsaw puzzle with no borders, precious few pieces have I linked, hunting for the great theme that drives MegaPrime, that drives my destiny. Rawlings and his madness are half the picture; I have been unconsciously searching for the missing portion. Now his stowaway memories yield answers. Now I see why he chose me to find, to observe, and finally to save one of the very few things he holds any value to in this twilight of his life. Wrong; I still don't understand what character he sees in me; but at least I can totally comprehend the importance of my mission. I shiver awake. These are the lies he has seeded my mind with! Lies that justify the gross misdeeds of my recent life! I am just a puppet, and knowing that I am merely the tool of greater powers does not soothe my conscience. I close my eyes again. No matter the reasons, I stared her in the face, told her I wouldn't harm her, and then I shot her, out and out lied and betrayed her. I watched her spasm and squeezed the grapple's trigger harder. I kicked her to see that she was down, and I laughed. I laughed because I enjoyed the whole grim procedure, from the flash of realization in her eyes to the last twitch of her lean, delicate hands. There is a sadist buried, but not dead, within my psyche. I sit up and pull on some clothes. I can not right what I have done--and maybe Rawlings is correct, she is safer here--but at the very least I can offer an explanation and allow her to flog me with those dark, accusing eyes of hers. After what she has done--after what has been done to her--trust must be a precious commodity for her, and a great deal of her reserves must have been soured by my vicious behavior. I step out of my bedroom. Leah is on the couch, wearing a tailored jumpsuit as always. She types on a military PDA, a single dreadlock of cables and power cords, its sinewy length draped over a chair and plugged into the back of the HDTV. She minimally acknowledges my presence, but I know that she keeps a close watch on me. As she should. After what I have done, only the naive and the rash could possibly trust me at their backs . . . But I always wax melancholic when I'm hungry. I grunt a "good morning, ma'am" to Leah and exit the apartment. It is high on the east side of Rawlings' Sanctuary, the bamboo-choked garden that is the heart of the Marsec building. Two stories beneath us, a small executive cafeteria looks out over this jungle. The guards let me in because I'm so disheveled looking that I must be very important. I take a table alone and stare out over that massive sea of greenery while the overworked waitress gets me a menu. The low hill with the barely-visible hut is closer to this side of the cavern wall. My office under Kaleta must have been on the extreme west; my face twitches with the memory of that bastard. I don't wish him dead; slimeballs like him serve some greater plan. I think. But if he lives, it won't be out of anything I did. Good luck, Lara. You can only scheme so much before your plots take root on their own. A overgrown forest of social maneuvering, favors, and lies must be Kaleta's lot. The waitress returns. "What will you be having this morning?" "Gohan," I reply, not quite remembering where I learned the word. "Pardon me?" she answers. "Rice. Get me a big damn bowl of rice. And make sure it's hot." She leaves with a frown. There's nothing so ugly as a frown on a pretty face. It's like a perfectly sunny day--clear blue skies--with a dark low pressure front marring the horizon. A hint of bad shit to come. The waitress lands a salad mixing bowl, really much too large, on my table. A fork, spoon, and knife wrapped in a napkin land next to my hand. "Can I get a pair of chopsticks?" I ask. "Sure," she curtly replies. Well, there's one thing worse than a pretty girl frowning--and that is a pretty girl crying. That's when that stormfront you saw coming has rolled in fast and cold, propelled by Arctic winds and your own reluctance to go indoors. It's a freezing, soaking downpour that is mixed with hail, high winds, and lightning, that uproots trees, relationships . . . I receive my hashi and commence eating, obviously looking very foolish but not really giving a damn. This rice has obviously been microwaved, not steamed. It's also too damn soft, the individual grains smashing to a sticky paste against my hashi. I vaguely wonder how I'm supposed to pay for this meal, as my cards are still within some Marsec lockbox. I suppose I'll just have to bluff my way past the staff. Not that I should have to; this is some of the worst rice I've had in a long time. "Good morning," states Rawlings, pulling out the chair opposite me. "I'm glad to see that you're still here." I continue eating my rice, oblivious to him. "I'm sorry about everything I said yesterday," he says. "Is it true?" I ask. "Yes, but-" "Then don't worry about it," I order him. "It doesn't surprise me that much." Rawlings thinks about this for a moment, and then shrugs it off. "The only reason I'm retaining control of your funds at the current moment is because, well, your parents had a lot of projects going. The accounts need straightening out; my bean counters are hard at work on them." "Thanks." I don't want to talk about money now! Hell, I don't want to talk. "The bulk of their funds should be cleaned up and transferred within the week. I think you'll be rather pleased; you'll receive their estate in more or less one piece. I insured that the Senate received as little as possible." "Thanks," I mutter again, vaguely hoping that he will go away. "You owe that much to your parents." "What?" My eyes focus on him. He shrugs. "They left you a very wealthy young man, Karl. It was more than I could say about my folks." "Money," I begin, repeating a favorite mantra of mine, "doesn't improve one's character. It merely magnifies it." Magnifies it in proportion to one's wealth. And if one happens to be ungodly rich, then one's character is similarly projected in grandiose proportions. It is thus with Rawlings and his Marsec; the conservative nature that mimics cowardice, the quiet confidence that is so easily mistaken for arrogance . . . and finally the killer's audacity and ambition. If he had lived the myth and died over the Caribbean, Marsec would have grown differently. It is his child, sprung from his mind. Its weaknesses are his weaknesses. I glance out the window, a small bamboo and thatch hut in the distance. This time, I don't open my mouth. Rawlings abruptly glanced down at a heavy, antique wristwatch on his left hand, thin lines of green text flowing across its face. "The hyperwaves are jammed again," he stated, bluntly. "How can you tell?" I asked, pushing back my chair. "My watch is direct linked to the Building's supercomputer spine. It just lost contact." And so we walked, an urgent note in our strides, to the nearest transit gate, a platform for the minitubes that orbit the Sanctuary. Only four people wide, they are downsized versions of the big people movers that MegaPrime is famous for. We rode ours to the lobby. His watch was still bad, flashing green when it really meant red. We ride down that massively long gravlift to the Marsec Internal Security Front Desk. I don't feel like getting verbally pummeled by Rawlings, so I don't say a word. Plus, I'm actually curious as to what is causing these hyperwave blackouts. Rawlings is sweating when we hit bottom, despite the damp atmosphere of this dungeon. His watch is not entirely dead; its display reads a large 5:27, apparently the number of minutes and seconds since contact has been lost. "This is not good," he states, somewhat to myself. We march into the I. S. Front Desk. Hageny sits at the receptionist's desk, flanked by a pair of guards. His nameplate reads "Master Sergeant M. Hageny" and he looks like he's been filling out a maintenance schedule on his PDA. He looks up with unknowing eyes at Rawlings and myself; the guards wave us through to the door to the left. Another glowing column of air greets us. It is red. Down this chute is a dull metal cavern ringed by automated plasma enclosures and gas vents. An improvement over the Kansai Base of Rawlings' dreams and nightmares? Maybe. Machines are all that he trusts now, their mechanized precision and endurance everything that he seeks in the soldiers he now commands. (But then, I ask, are computers and automatons as prone to battle-turning heroics?) But that is a philosophical question, completely irrelevant in this situation. This is pragmatism. This is last line of defense. This is the killing floor. "Welcome to Crisis Command," smiles Rawlings, the back of his head towards me. He walks toward a wall, no different than the others. A panel in the wall slides aside. I jog up behind him as he steps through. Another massively heavy cydonium door presents itself, snapping to attention and disappearing upwards into the ceiling. We enter the tactical room. The red light is diluted in here, run through with the scent of sweat and adrenaline. Techs scurry here and there, but most are shackled to their consoles, dozens of flatpanels pasted everywhere, the smell of coffee hitting my nose like the stench of urine in an untended restroom. The far wall is entirely devoted to a massive holographic projection cube. It is a smoke-gray snowstorm of static, the only decipherable item the chronometer readout in the upper right corner marking the dread passage of time. 7:56 Karwoski stands in a raised platform in the middle of this mess, a small steel circle ringed with railings. Beneath his steel toes are his brothers, the chained supercomputers that run everything Marsec from their accounts payable ledger to their Eagle Space Superiority Platforms. He stands there vocally directing a chaotic chorus of computer techs, I. S. officers, and public relations personnel. "Jack!" he yells, sensing our entrance through means arcane. "Have you initiated combat prep?" Rawlings shouts at his back. "With the hyperwave down-" "Have you?" "Through our ELF backups, yes." "Good." Rawlings bounds up to the ladder behind Karwoski's feet. I begin to follow him, he waves me off. "Where do I go?" I ask. "Just stay out of the way." He hauls himself up, his manservant making room for him. The Crisis Center is disturbingly quiet throughout this entire exchange, the hushed whispers of techs and the muffled clatter of BATs and standard keyboards the only background static. Even the familiar throb of air ducts and coolant lines is absent; I assume that the Crisis Center is "buttoned down"--at full war readiness, running on its own air and power supply. Thus, I can hear Rawlings and Karwoski noisily argue. "The ELF wavefront is still five minutes out from Mars, and it will be another fifteen before we receive an answer, sir." "What does that mean? The dimension gates are here, not at Cydonia." "This phenomenon needs no alien interference as an explanation, sir. A sufficiently powerful hyperwave generator could feasibly create static on all bands." "That's nonsense. The energy required to scramble the whole spectrum would be prohibitive--and for this length of time?" "It can be done. It has been done." "You know how much juice we needed to pull that." "Yes--and today our primary facilities have easily magnitudes more at their disposal." "You're saying that we're the ones behind this? Why the hell would-?" "Not us, sir. Our facilities." Karwoski pauses for a moment. "Sir, have you considered the possibility that Nova Cydonia Command has been captured?" Rawlings sputters with indignation. "Christ, the communists? Sure, they've got a few Elerium warheads here and there, but what, a full-scale takeover?" "A rebellion, sir." "We have one Marsec employee for every ten Solmine, UN, or independent workers up there! There is no way we could lose Nova Cydonia in the space of . . . thirteen minutes! Either they're dumping this fuzz into the bands on their own, or this is another alien incursion." The temperature in the Crisis Center drops noticeably. In a quieter voice, Rawlings continues. "Bring our low orbit and lunar crews to full readiness. Strictly an unscheduled rehearsal. Then, if we don't get the appropriate responses from Nova Cydonia, loose the reins. Tell them, and then put them on full war speed for Mars." "Communications will deteriorate quickly, sir, if that is the case." "If worst comes to worst, I'll go there myself." Rawlings and Karwoski stare at the blank screen for a number of seconds, the PR people's consoles starting to light up. "Commander, the Synthmesh Security VP is on the groundline. He wants to know why he can't raise their orbital factories." "Tell him . . . " Rawlings is at a loss for words. "Tell him that we don't know who it is, but someone's primary hyperwave broadcaster unit is malfunctioning," declares Karwoski. "A broad-band random pattern, definitely of terrestrial origin." "Oh, and make sure that he knows it's not us," adds Rawlings. Rawlings and I eat lunch in the Sanctuary. Marsec and the bamboo of Kansai have been symbiotically linked since the Second Alien War. The nuclear annihilation of Japan insured that the Land of the Rising Sun was off-limits forevermore, and not just to mankind. A "dead" Jack Rawlings had returned to those blasted isles days after the devastation. He remained there for three years, picking through what remained of the biosphere and transplanting all that he could find of the Old Japan to the safety of a thousand Marsec cargo crates. Those crates and what few plants and animals had been packaged within marked the beginning of a new era of interior design at Marsec facilities. I eye the tatami mat beneath our shoeless toes and continue eating in silence. Silence. Rawlings makes only minimal conversation, instead focussing on chasing down the last grains of rice in his third bowl. So little traveled that fresh machete scars mark where the bamboo has grown in, a narrow dirt path weaves into the depths of the Sanctuary from the base of a tremendous maintenance gantry laden with air ducts and sheathed fiber optics. Down this is the squalid, one- room hut that Rawlings calls home. A futon bed, a pair of cushions, and a low table are all his furniture, the flooring a finely laid thatch of tatami. On the wall is a single picture frame, black, almost careless calligraphy upon white rice paper. Only two characters of kanji are within--a horizontal line, above a more complex figure . . . an eight- pointed asterisk immediately over a crossed square within. And beneath the Japanese is the shield-spear of Mars, an orbit of deep crimson, the jutting arrow at the one-thirty ready position. "What does that mean?" I finally ask. Rawlings looks up--he has been thinking. "When we got back from Cydonia, we had to bury the dead. Which was pretty much everybody." He pauses, and pours water from a tall pitcher. "By everybody, I meant everybody. Every squaddie in every team in every base in the whole damn world. Everybody was dead." He drinks from the glass, his Adam's apple bobbing slightly. It's gone in one long pull. "Most of the crews died together, all buried in their bases. Together . . . so the memorials for them were easy to make. Just pile up a heap of rocks over the wreckage and carve the entire base roster onto a slab of marble." Rawlings sets down his glass, still avoiding my gaze. "But we, the lucky few who made it to Cydonia, didn't really come from any one base. When I went back in thirty two, on the Lazarus, the first thing I did was cut the plaque and put the names on it. Until I did that, nobody knew their names--Rokkaku and Kates and Schancer. Now, a hundred million years could pass . . ." He glances up at the framed kanji. "That final team needed a name. We called it-" The table crackles to life, Karwoski's voice loud in the heavy solitude of the Sanctuary. "Hyperwave link is reactivated, sir. Nova Cydonia reports nothing unusual." Rawlings is immediately snapped out of his breathless trance. "The confirmation codes good?" "Very, sir. I have returned all lunar and orbital units to normal status." "Well done, Glen." Rawlings pauses, and then continues, "Now that we're sure that this wasn't caused by us, I want to know who in hell was behind this mess. Get everybody on the horn--Transtellar and Megapol especially. If those idiots have been playing around with some sort of new hyperwave jammer, they're going to hear from us about it. Deep cover units, also. Get me reports, the sooner the better." "If these phenomena are revealed to be the actions of another corporation, sir, I am sure the Senate will be greatly interested," Karwoski replies in a sardonic tone. "Glen, you're a bastard. Go get 'em." Rawlings closes his eyes and leans back on his pillow, his short legs crossed underneath him. "Hmm," he snorts. "Do you know what this means?" "No," I reply. He shakes his head and stands up. "They're coming soon. And by the length of this blackout, they're bringing quite the force." "Who?" I ask, already fully knowing the answer, but still afraid to think it. I'll let Rawlings enunciate the dread word. "Bugs." A squad of Centurions walk me to an armory. They hand me a light armor vest, and after about thirty minutes of tweaking its straps, I'm ready for a streetfight. The vest is only comfortably padded cydonium plates placed strategically over my heart, lungs, and stomach. But it will stop shrapnel . . . I should be proud--it takes me all of thirty seconds to pull it on over my head, tighten it around my ribs, strap down the flaps over my groin and posterior, and secure my spanking new plasma type two to the belt holster. The Centurions grunt approvingly and mutter how I'd better avoid getting hit with anything stronger than a lawpistol round. I ditch the armor. I keep the gun. And I go back to my apartment. Leah's still inside, primly perched in a lounging chair. "Suspected? I want proof! Phreak his bank accounts--no, check his funds transfer schedule for anything unusual. If he's taking their money, that's what we need. Not some bloody allegations." There must be five, six Race of Man operatives in here, khaki longshirts emblazoned with the crooked black cross over the white halo of hate. They wear berets also; but these are not black. They are green, made out of some rough material. "Who's this?" asks the Race guard that unholsters a lawpistol behind me. Leah looks up, as do the rest of her little brood. Caucasian faces, pale and emaciated in the florescent light. Driven faces. Faces of zealots and terrorists and killers. Their eyes punch through my clothing, through my skin, and attack my DNA. They examine it, turning over every combination, searching for any shred of xenobiological contamination. "I'm home, honey?" I weakly mumble. "Who's the chink?" asks an old man, his white hair cut short under his beret. "My better half," answers Leah. The room goes deathly quiet as the Race soldiers turn their eyes on her. "You didn't-" the old man starts, his breath sucked in. "I'm just toying with you!" she shrieks back. "What led you to believe that?" "I just thought-" "Nonsense! He's a bloody half-Jap mongrel! And a former communist!" "But-" "But nothing! I'd sooner lay with a genefreak grey bastard than that frail twig." "Was it as good for you as it was for me?" I ask, loudly. The room is silent again. Leah glares at me. "Go to your room and wait for me," she orders, "with the door locked." "Yes ma'am!" I salute, marching to my bedroom. "You were serious!" exclaims the old Race officer behind my back. "Are you insane?" screeches Leah. I hide in the far corner of my room, my plasma on the floor at my side and my PDA in my lap. My former cards, belonging to Karl Williams prior to this massive complication known as Rawlings' Last Ride, are spread over my bed. I glance quickly from my lapcomputer's screen to the plasma and then to the door. Race of Man, huh? Never can be to careful when dealing with born-and-bred racist psychopaths. I plug into the network via the wall. It takes me a few minutes to get my old mail account to recognize me. I have upwards of two thousand items in my mailbox. I groan and open the first one. 12:30 4/12/2084 The Mars Union got him. Dragged him off of the tube in broad daylight. But don't wash your hands of this shit. You had as much a role in Vice President Kaleta's fucking murder as the goddamn Mars fucks did. You could have done something. You could have helped him. You could have saved him. But no. You had to leave him in the gutter to die. Tomorrow morning, look in the mirror. I hope your face is shredded by acne, you traitorous asshole. Why? Because: You killed Kenny. You bastard. In-sincerely, Lara Beecroft, a loyal employee. P. S. I hope you burn in hell. Good! I love you too! Asshole! Since when am I supposed to start loving the people that abuse me? I mean, Kaleta fucking drugged me . . . Didn't he? 7/25/98
X-COM (and XCOM) are trademarks of MicroProse Software. Get yourself a copy!
X-COM: UFO Defence is copyright 1996 by Microprose Software, Inc. All rights reserved.
X-COM is based on characters and design by Mythos Games.