As medics rushed to the aid of Cpl. Smith, trying as they could to stanch the fountain of blood gushing from his mangled shoulder, Master Sgt. Williams and Cpl. Carson looked at each other and with matching nods of their heads hastily picked their way back into the broken hull. After what seemed like an eternity, really only a couple of minutes, a terse radio burst from Williams broke the silence. “CLEAR!”
Now more soldiers began clambering up the craft’s hull to the ripped gash. Squishing and sliding on various pieces of alien body parts, they disappeared inside.
“Recover Junior One," Grant barked.
“Problem, Sir. Junior One destroyed. UFO trajectory was right through it as the cowboy was attacked. It’s laying in pieces about 2 klicks NNE of our current position. Looks like Junior was targeted and destroyed as they zeroed in for the kill.”
Grant didn’t like hearing his eye in the sky was no longer there. The Observation Balloon called Junior One was one of more than a dozen put into service in the 1,000 square mile trap area. It had been lofted over a week ago to give a quick warning about unusual aerial phenomena. Made from a top secret silvery foil-like material that could stay up for months, each balloon carried a package of long range cameras, heat and sound sensors and recorders, radiation detectors, barometric and thermographic tracking devices and was in constant radio communication to ground units. These so-called weather balloons were like having a full-time squad of human observers on-site 24-hours a day. Tethered at selected locations, it was the analysis of reports from Junior and its siblings that had led to the positioning of the tanks that had blown the UFO out of the sky.
The whole operation had taken several months to plan and execute. World-wide reports of UFO sightings over sensitive military facilities in the U.S., Great Britain, U.S.S.R., India and South Africa, had caused quite a bit of concern at the highest government levels charged with protecting national security. People were still sensitive about military security following the aftermath of WWII. It was obvious that someone or something was determined to observe and to interfere with humans. The need to do something more than simply respond after the fact had been deemed absolutely necessary by the highest military and civilian governmental authorities. Was there a threat? If so, what was the threat? How could the threat be removed?
Trying to predict when and where to confront the unknown adversaries became priorities. Info from the Juniors was updated every 4 hours with any substantive info then being prioritized to hourly updates and eventually minute-by-minute updates. Location Chihuahuan03 had become very active over the past 2 days for whatever reason. The tank trap had been set.
“Captain Blunt. Send a team to recover all traces of Chihuahuan03. I want this entire area scrubbed. I want every bolt and nut, scrap of paper, metal shavings and body parts, everything bagged up and removed to the Nevada facility. Carry on!” Colonel Grant ordered.
“Sir," replied Blunt as he trotted away.
A hint of a frown and deep worry lines across his forehead were the only outward displays of emotion from Grant as he watched the silver body bags being removed from the broken, dark gray craft. Five of them human. Four others, including the tattered body of the creature blown to bits, were too large for body bags and so were wrapped in tarpaulins and dragged out.
“God help us," Grant thought to himself.
“Captain Blunt, we have a live one!”
“Say again, Alpha Team. A live what?”
“Sir, you have to see this to believe it! A real whatsit! Hiding under a cabinet of some kind!”
Blunt trotted out to the downed craft, clamored up the angled hull and moved inside the gaping hole. Just inside the ruined outer wall of the craft was a wide corridor about 9 feet high that appeared to circle its inner core. The artillery explosion had blasted through not only the outer hull but had breached the inner core wall as well. As Captain Blunt worked his way down the slanted deck toward the inner core, he could see three of his men surrounding a metallic cabinet-like object lying blown over against a table creating a shelter. His men had their weapons aimed at a smaller version of an alien iguana creature hunched down and trying unsuccessfully to hide as much of itself as it could under the cabinet. The creature’s size was not immediately apparent, but its eyes were not near as large as the one the tank blew up so the first impression was it had to be a young one.
As Jim Blunt stared into the black eyes, impressed by the size of the dark pupils, he felt a tugging in the front of his head seemingly right behind his eyes, and suddenly he had the distinct feeling, in fact, he knew there was no threat from the creature.
“Lower your weapons. Stand down,” he ordered as he moved to get a closer look at the lizard.
All the men slowly lowered their weapons on his command, but quick as a wink, as if it had been waiting for the opportunity, the lizard flipped up what looked like a toy ray pistol you might buy your kid at Woolworth’s as a Christmas present and proceeded to kill each soldier with practiced ease. A beam of silvery light about the size of a fat cigar swept across the middle of the nearest man and neatly sliced him in half at the waist. The creature then moved on to the next soldier. Almost instantly two men were down, and the beam was moving toward the third.
Jim Blunt had never moved so fast in his life. He dove at the iguana, grabbed the creature's hand holding the ray pistol and forced it down right on top of the creature’s foot. The silvery beam had the same effect on the iguana’s foot as it had on the now dead soldiers. It neatly sliced off half the foot, and Blunt was inwardly pleased to hear a keening wail coming from the iguana as he wrestled the ray pistol from its grasp.
Blunt pointed the ray pistol at the creature, but again made eye contact with it, noticing the size of the thing’s pupils and how completely black they seemed. He again felt the now familiar tugging in the front of his head, seemingly right behind his eyes. But this time he was both scared and prepared. He broke eye contact and quickly pressed what he hoped was the activating stud on the ray pistol. The silvery light beam erupted from the pistol barrel, neatly and immediately slicing the other foot, the whole foot, off the iguana. The creature flopped to the deck writhing in pain. There was no blood where the silver light touched the soldiers or the iguana. It appeared the beam cauterized the flesh as it sliced through. The tugging feeling in Blunt’s brain ceased.
“Stings like hell, doesn’t it?” he shouted toward the lizard creature as it rolled around on the deck.
Blunt quickly pulled off his jacket and threw it over the head of the now docile, whimpering lizard, tying the arms of the jacket tightly around the thing’s neck to make sure its eyes stayed covered. Only after he finished tightening the knot did he pick up his walkie-talkie and order in a medical team.
“I want this thing wrapped in duct tape like a mummy. Do NOT remove the covering from its eyes under any circumstances! Put it on my plane for the trip to the Nevada facility!”
Taking the ray pistol with him, Blunt exited the craft and moved quickly to his jeep. The trip to the airfield with the iguana youngster seemed to take an eternity.
***
Hisspat Zeck reclined on his flight couch watching a monitor where glowing blue dots showing the global positions of his five scout craft on the planet below danced around the screen.
"Soon," he thought with great satisfaction, "I'll be able to start the journey home. It has been many years since any exploration team returned with news of success. I will be famous!"
Grinning smugly, Zeck imagined how he would describe planet HG-281 to the fawning press.
"Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, HG-281 is a grand find. The planet is imminently suitable for habitation with a relatively weak race of odd beings infesting it. The animals call themselves humans. They are easy to control or kill. In fact, the humans are actually quite tasty when ground into a nice, gritty paste." At the thought of eating, Zeck's stomach growled with a petulant murmur.
Six months of local planet time his research team had observe
d and measured, captured, tested, killed and eaten the planet's bipedal humans as they called themselves. The humans were no match for the physical strength of his men and were easily subdued and captured. In fact, his soldiers had to be very careful when handling the beings since they were so easily injured. There were only a handful of the humans who had been able to resist mind control, and those had been eliminated quickly. Various weapons had been used to measure effectiveness for easy kill. The directional heat emitter and the cutter ray were particularly effective in this regard. The humans had no space flight capability, and what aircraft they had were so primitive they might as well have been paper toys flung into the air. Their power production was limited to burning a mineral they called coal or a liquid they called gasoline. Large military weapons were limited to explosive devices. The misguided humans had banned chemical weapons for some odd reason. The only real danger was from their Level One atomic explosives. The Chrysallamans had surpassed Level Fifty in atomics over 200 years ago. This planet was already part of the Chrysallaman Empire. Its inhabitants just didn't know it yet.
Zeck's mental musings were interrupted when one of the glowing blue dots suddenly turned orange, expanded slightly and reduced itself to a slightly pulsing orange tinted cinder.
Jerking erect, Hisspat's fingers flew over his entry pad, keying symbols that flashed reports across his monitor indicating one of the scout craft had been severely damaged. He quickly tried to contact DrrTrr Zennk, commander of the scout ship, UurBereck, but just as the comlink built into Zennk's combat vest linked up, showing him outside his craft reaching for what appeared to be a uniformed combat human crouching near him, a flashing explosion destroyed the communicator and temporarily blinded Hisspat Zeck with its intensity.
The look of stunned disbelief on the countenance of Hisspat Zeck was almost comical. After pushing the communicator activating key several times without success, Zeck became convinced the impossible had happened. DrrTrr Zennk was dead or at the very least his communicator was destroyed. The only way Zennk would have been outside the UurBereck was if he had landed to pick up more samples, or if somehow the humans had disabled the UurBereck, and it had crashed. Logic indicated the explosion shown by the communicator in its final transmission meant a planned attack by the humans.
Impossible! DrrTrr Zennk was one of his best commanders. Dedicated, ruthless, cunning. How had the humans known where to find the UurBereck? They had no known technology capable of locating a Chrysallaman craft let alone the power to disable one. Yet there before his eyes was the proof.
Hisspat Zeck pushed the toggle that recalled all his remaining scouts from the planet back to his mother ship's docks. His monitor showed the glowing blue dots begin rising from the planet's surface in response. Only the orange tinted cinder remained in the western area of the land mass called the United States by some of the captured humans. Wrinkles formed in Zeck’s brow. He keyed a sequence of commands on his entry pad to search for crew life signs onboard the UurBereck. Comlink data indicated no survivors. The young son of DrrTrr Zennk, WrrNrr Zennk, wasn't equipped with a comlink since he was not officially military. Since all other crew members were dead, Hisspat decided WrrNrr Zennk was dead as well.
Planetary exploration protocol dictated that the loss of any scout craft required immediate recall of all remaining scouts to the mother ship, shutdown of any reconnaissance and return to Chrysallaman home base. The whole point of the stealthy reconnaissance explorations was to discover new planets for possible colonization without alerting the planetary inhabitants.
Zeck was truly upset as he pondered the awful events of the last few minutes. "No scouting mission in the history of Chrysallaman lore had ever suffered a loss. Curses be heaped upon these humans!" he thought to himself as his large black eyes narrowed.
He could just imagine the report that would be issued for all to see. "Never in the history of the glorious Chrysallaman Empire has a scout ship been harmed, let alone destroyed, and Hisspat Zeck was the commander of that ill-fated mission. Hisspat Zeck was stripped of all rank and privileges just before his humiliating death."
Revenge against the human worms for their atrocity would be so sweet, but Hisspat knew his duty, and he must obey his masters. The need to obey your masters was ingrained in the psyche of all Chrysallamans. He would return to home base and report. There was no choice. A slight shudder ran over his torso and his normally dark green skin turned a shade lighter.
"At least," Zeck thought, "Stasis during the 30 year journey home will be a welcome reprieve to avoid thoughts of the ingenious ways the Emperor will attend to my death."
Glancing down at his indicator board and seeing the four remaining scout ships had completed their docking maneuvers, Hisspat Zeck flipped the warning lights and 10 seconds later, a blurry, glowing fog enveloped the Chrysallaman mother ship, VrrSilliac Xur, and it flashed away from the planet Earth toward its home world 30 light years distant.
Chapter 2 - Disclosure
Springtime in Washington, D.C., is really quite beautiful. Major General Matt Collier sat at the head of a large conference table in a wood paneled room staring out the large windows. Off in the distance across the Potomac he could just make out the Washington Monument. Getting up from his chair and walking to one of the windows, he stared absently off into the distance. Matt Collier was a 5 foot 8 inch tall barrel chested fireplug of a man. He looked as strong as a bull despite the silver-white color of his crew cut hair. His assignment for the last 5 years was officially classified as Army intelligence, but his real job was Head of the SIP Department. SIP stood for Strategic Invasion Planning.
Frown lines nurtured by years of worry were permanently etched across Collier’s forehead. The last 8 months since the Roswell incident had been particularly stressful. He had stopped counting the number of sleepless nights spent worrying about intelligent alien creatures colonizing Earth and wiping out its human population. In the next few minutes, a handpicked group of individuals were going to set in motion a series of events designed to make sure the people who lived in the land of the free and the home of the brave would not perish from this earth. Taking a deep breath to try and ease the tension he couldn't escape, Collier heard the door behind him open.
Men and women began filing into the conference room. Six people chosen for their educational background, youth and emotional stability. Although they didn't know it at the time, their emotional stability was about to be put to the test. "Nothing like baptism by fire," Collier thought silently as he watched them take seats around the table.
Lt. Mike Jenson was fresh out of West Point with the youthful, eager look of a young and inexperienced officer. Lt. Jerome McPherson was a weapons expert currently assigned to the research labs hidden in the Virginia Mountains. Captain Thomas LeBlanc was an electronics whiz drafted straight out of Cal Tech and currently assigned to a top secret research facility in Nevada that reverse engineered foreign technology. Dr. Diane Hoffman was a civilian liaison from Johns Hopkins University and a published researcher in a new field called BioGenetics. Dr. John Heinbaum was an Astro-Physicist from Harvard University and a leading theoretical scientist on the unified field postulated by Einstein. Dr. Lucretia 'Lucy' Smith was a Xenobiologist with numerous published theoretical research articles on extraterrestrial life.
Everyone took their seat, and the room became silent, expectant. Collier flicked a switch near his left hand and black out curtains quickly closed over the windows. Recessed lighting began to glow, creating a soft, pervading light for the room.
"I would like each of you to give a brief introduction of yourself to the group. You will be working closely together for some period of time so we all need to know each other. Include some personal information as well as education."
Miss Smith was the first to speak. She had pretty facial features, but it was obvious she spent much of her time glued to a microscope. Her hair was black and the style reminded you of your mother. Her horn rimmed glasses, lenses as thick as th
e end of a coke bottle, magnified her eyes. "My name is Lucretia Smith, but my friends call me Lucy. I have a Doctorate in Biology from Yale and a medical degree from Columbia University. My specialty is biologic survival in toxic environments. I'm especially interested in how alien life may have evolved under conditions that might kill a human being instantly."
Smiling shyly, she said, "I'm single, and I love cats."
Lt. Jenson spoke next. He had the clean cut, fresh face appearance of a fraternity president. Every brown hair on his head was combed in place with precision. His mouth was wide and a smile seemed to come easily to his face. Other than his smile, his military background was quite evident. If his back was any straighter, you might think there was a steel rod clamped to his spine. "My name is Lt. Mike Jenson. I graduated from West Point in September of last year with a major in military tactics and planning. I was assigned to the Pentagon where I have been working with advertising."
Nodding at the questioning looks, he explained. "Yes, advertising for lack of a better word. With one war ending and the new Korean War heating up, people around the country are tired of constant fighting and need encouragement to get into a new war. I'm one of the guys who plans and organizes the campaigns aimed at keeping the U.S. Citizens feeling good about their military."
Turning his head towards Lucy, he added, "I'm single, as well, Miss Smith, but I'm a dog fancier, myself."
McPherson took his turn next. "I'm Lt. Jerome McPherson, proud of my Scottish fighting ancestors, and bearer of the red hair!" he exclaimed with a slight Scottish brogue as he stroked the top of his head unsuccessfully trying to smooth down his curly mop. His skin was very light as if he had never been exposed to the sun. "I can disassemble any weapon or bomb known to our military boys and shoot the eye out of a turkey at 1,000 feet. I just have a knack for working with things that make other people bleed."
The Origin of F.O.R.C.E. Page 2