X-COM General Meeting
Eyes Only Top Secret
At all five X-COM bases, the newly installed VirtCom rooms were abuzz with hushed conversation. Each room was identical, with four large wall panels linked via satellite, one wall displaying each of the other bases. Everyone—from distinguished vet to inept rookie—was present. Even the agents on the waiting list were called in to USA COM. At AFRICA COM and SAM COM, you could see the pimply, nervous troops on the beginning legs of their guard duty stints. At the other three bases, there were the tough, scarred vets with the silent eyes—eyes that had seen too much death, eyes that had lost too many friends, eyes that held horrific stories of heroism and anguish. In the back of USA COM, there were a handful of nervous civilians—the new recruits not yet called into action—either too nervous to speak or too nervous to shut up. One in particular seemed to have an enthusiastic comment about everything and anything, until finally Wade Moore gave him a sharp stare that shut him up. But at each base there was a tense curiosity in the air: never before had all X-COM troops been called to a general meeting.
At exactly 11:00PM CST, Godzilla Blitz, Head Scientist Crappy, Chief Engineer Sterling Ice II, and Commander Kodos came into the room at USA COM. Everyone snapped to attention. The four men made their way to a table at the front of the room and sat down on the chairs lined up behind it. Godzilla Blitz began.
“X-COM Agents. At ease. Be seated.” He paused to let everyone sit, then began. “For ten months we’ve been fighting a defensive war against the aliens. We’ve scrambled to meet every threat. We’ve held our own and we’ve fought well.” A few men grunted approvals. “But the supply of aliens has been endless, and UFO attacks have increased greatly over the past month. There is every indication that the volume and strength of UFO attacks will increase in the near future. No matter how many we kill, there are more that step up and take their place. We have to outkill them ten-to-one just to break even, and every agent we lose is an irreplaceable loss.
“A few months ago, it became apparent to X-COM Command that we would never win the war the way we’ve fought it to date. In the end, we would simply get overrun by numbers, and the Earth would fall to the alien horde.” Several loud boos fill the conference rooms. Godzilla raised one hand, palm slightly down, to quiet the men. After a moment, he began again. “We realized that we needed, somehow, someway, to take the fight to the aliens, to go on the offensive, to hit them on their home turf.
“To be honest, we feared that this would be impossible. We thought we might need hundreds of agents and dozens of ships capable of distant space travel in order to take any kind of an offensive fight against the aliens. To be brutally honest, we feared we were doomed to die, and doomed to lose this valiant yet hopeless war.
Godzilla paused a moment, eyed the men, then resumed. “I am thankful to say that recent events have proven us wrong in this regard, and I stand before you this evening to tell you that last night Crappy and his dedicated researchers achieved a major breakthrough with their interrogation of “Poindexter”, the Sectoid Commander captured during the German base raid. We have every reason to believe this intelligence is accurate, and the significance of these findings will become apparent once you hear Crappy’s story. Men, I present to you, Head X-COM Scientist, Doctor Craptacular.”
Craptacular stood and picked up a slide clicker. A side display panel descended in each of the X-COM VirtCom rooms. Crappy began as the panels settled into place. “Men, you all know that the interrogation conducted late last month told us that the alien attacks have originated from Mars, our nearest planet. This was, at the time, extremely good news for us, as one of our greatest fears was that the aliens were coming from a star system too distant for us to ever reach given our level of technology. But we needed to know much more for this information to be of any use to us. How many aliens are on Mars? How many alien ships are there on the planet? Where on Mars are they located? What kind of defenses do they have? Who leads them? How could we penetrate their defenses? Are they beatable? How the hell could we get there?” Crappy paused again. “The questions seemed endless, but nevertheless, we persevered.” Crappy paused for effect. “I am pleased to say that we now have the answers to most all of these questions.” A buzz of hushed excitement runs through the five rooms. Men leaned forward in their seats.
“Men, we now know that the alien presence on Mars is a controlling force that coordinates their attacks on earth and throughout their entire attack sector, which spans several solar systems. This controlling force is stationed at a base on Mars code-named Cydonia. Long a riddle to many astronomers on Earth, this face-shaped area was most often dismissed as a fluke of nature. I show you a photo taken of that area taken two weeks ago.” The side panel displays a black-and-white photo of the surface of Mars.
The surface of Mars, showing the alien Cydonia base. October, 2003. X-COM Archives Photo
“In the top right of this photo, you can see Cydonia. Let me zoom in.” The slide expands, showing a blowup of the section.
Cydonia, up close. October, 2003. X-COM Archives Photo
“Men. This is our target. You can see that there are distinguishing construction features on this photo. Note the several pyramid-shaped mounds.” A red pointer highlighted the structures on the map. “These mounds and features you see here are just the surface portion of the base. One of these mounds leads to a subterranean base in which the alien command center lies. Inside this command center is our prize. We have learned that therein lies an alien ‘brain’, if I can call it that, that relays commands from the aliens’ home planet and in turn communicates with all the aliens involved with the attacks on earth. And this brain, men, is the one thing that we have been hoping to find for the past five months. This brain is the weak link. We knew that the aliens have been using some sort of telepathic, PSI-enhanced communication method, and this is what controls all of that. Our interrogations of Poindexter have convinced us that if we can knock this brain out, all communication to the aliens our system will cease, and all communication between the aliens in our system and the aliens’ home planet will cease. In essence, this brain does much of the thinking for the aliens, and if we take it out, the aliens here will cease self-function. Hell, it wasn’t until we brain-shielded Poindexter to prevent communication from the master brain that we were able to extract information from him. Left to their own, the aliens in our system will go into a form of cryonic state, turn around, and begin the long journey back to the mother planet. We will have won, and attacks on Earth will cease for at least the next hundred years.”
For the X-COM agents present, who have long assumed the war would last the rest of their lives, this was a gift of hope beyond their wildest dreams, and the buzz in the rooms was tangible.
Godzilla Blitz looked at Crappy and cut in. “Thanks, Crappy.” He then faced the men and again paused for effect. “Men, we aim to take this brain out.” Cheers welled up in the five rooms. Several of the men were standing. A number of men were clapping. A chant of “X-COM, X-COM!” welled up in the room. Godzilla calmed everyone with both arms raised. “Over the next few months, we will be focusing our operations on this final goal. We have many things to do before we can launch such an attack. First, we need a craft capable of space travel and capable of delivering a payload of personnel and equipment sufficient to get the job done on Mars. Crappy and 100 of his best researchers are working around the clock to develop a prototype model of a craft capable of making just such a trip. Once they’re done, Sterling Ice II and his engineers will begin immediate construction of the craft. Second, we need to determine the composition of strike force to make this attack. We are currently looking to have a strike force of 17 agents and 2 hover tanks, although this may change as things progress. Along these lines, we need to discover who of you are best suited for this attack. The fighting on Mars will be against the best the aliens have, and there will be hordes of them. The strike force must take control of the surface of the alien base, find and enter the passage to the underground command center, eliminate all resistance there, find the alien brain, and destroy it. Our intelligence tells us that we will come under intense, repeated PSI-attacks, and we need to find out who of you here today can sustain such attacks without cracking. To that end, we have more than doubled our PSI-training stations, and our focus for the months of November and December will be to evaluate every one of you that we think has the potential to be a member of the attack force. Third, we need to develop and construct better armor, tanks, and missiles for the attack force. Captured Floaters have led us to believe we can make armor that will allow us to fly in battle, and armor that will be more durable than our existing suits. A few of you have seen our new Hover Tanks, and we need to bring those on line as well. In short, there is much to do. But we will do it, and do it fast.
“There are huge risks in all of this, men. We need to get our ship to the surface of Mars. This may or may not be easy. Poindexter has revealed numerous passwords, codes, and ‘safe lanes’ through the alien defenses that should allow us to avoid anti-aircraft missiles and defenses on the way in. I say ‘should’, with some uncertainty, as we simply don’t know to what degree these codes will have changed by the time we get there. We do know the aliens know that we took Poindexter alive, and we have to assume that they will modify some or all of these codes and lanes at some point. Still, it’s a chance we’ll have to take, and we’ve ‘leaked’ a story about the untimely and premature death of Poindexter to the press to fool the aliens into thinking that we don’t know enough yet. Also, we’ll probably launch a diversionary attack on the alien base in Britain, with claims leaked to the press that we are frantically trying to capture another alien commander. Hopefully, this will keep the aliens from making all-encompassing changes to their defensive network.
“There is one more risk, though, that makes the risk of approach tiny in comparison. Our interrogations have revealed that if the alien brain on Mars is threatened in any way, it will send out an urgent call to strike at the enemy perpetrating the attack. The result will be that every UFO in this sector—and we believe there to be current alien operations against several star systems in this sector—will make a beeline for Earth once the first shot is fired on Mars. Men, we estimate that there are nearly 1,000 UFOs currently active in the system. The Earth would be overrun in a matter of hours. Every man, woman, and child on the planet will die.
“We’re only going to get one shot, men, and we need to make it a good one.”
The silence in the rooms was deafening. Men, fighting without hope, had suddenly been given hope. And each man in the five rooms silently asked themselves the question: “Am I to be one of the chosen ones? One of the few who will stand for humanity and determine the fate of mankind?”
An agent in the back of the USA COM room raised his hand. Godzilla acknowledged it. “Captain Patman, yes, go on.”
Captain Patman stood. “Sir, any idea when we’ll be making this attack?”
“Making a craft to get us to Mars will be our greatest engineering challenge to date. We estimate that even with a 100% effort, it will take us more than two months to build the craft, and we can’t start that until Crappy gets the prototype done. Best guess: two to three months from now. With UFO attacks increasing dramatically—we’re picking up almost one UFO each day now—we expect that we still have a hell of a lot of fighting to go before we can attack. To be exact, 62% of UFO spottings have resulted in ground combat missions. With about ten weeks before we can launch our Mars mission, we should have somewhere between 40 and 50 more missions. There is hope for everyone here, if they perform admirably and if they have the talent, to be one of those 17 agents to fight for humanity.
“But remember, men, all of this is moot if we’re dead three weeks from now. We need to survive until we launch the attack. Keep givin’ ‘em hell, and be ready to defend your bases. We know the aliens know where we are, and it’s vital that we not lose any bases as we prepare for the final assault. It’s no longer an “if they hit our bases”; it’s now a “when they hit our bases”. Expect them to come knocking on your door. And if we lose a base, our entire operation could be jeopardized. If we should lose EU COM or USA COM, we’d most likely lose the war. There is
no room for error at these bases.
“That’s all, men. Get back to work. Dismissed.”