Chapter 1: SAVING WALES

Shuji Akira watched Kojima quickly check the grenades on his belt, then brace himself, without thinking, against the Skyranger's restraining straps. "Just move fast and get behind something," he said in Japanese, "and don't worry about your rear. Crossett and Gaudin will cover you with the heavier stuff." The trooper and heavy weapon specialists recognized their names and turned to give Kojima the evil eye and a smile. Kojima said Crossett had cut her hair shorter on each mission and was going to get out when she went bald.

Akira studied Kojima's every move, wondering which were important to mimic for his own survival. Kojima was the Far Squad scout, and a veteran by X-COM standards, with four missions and four confirmed kills. "Mostly floaters," he would say, "they're sneaky, but they sometimes go down with only one shot. I let the Heavies take care of the Heavy bugs."

Akira could tell the Skyranger was descending - England somewhere - but he was surprised to find he wasn't frightened. Everything had happened so fast. He was still trying to catch up. Part of him was still back at the underground base in Arkansas and hadn't even boarded the Skyranger yet.

Had it been only five days ago that the officials in suits had visited his Defense Force training camp on Hokkaido? They had casually reviewed everyone in his platoon, and quickly chose him. His commander offered him a chance to not only serve Japan, but the whole world. He was not given any details, but the mystery appealed to him, and the chance to be in a group of elite warriors, samuria from around the world. He accepted and was on a plane to America in three hours.

He suspected he hadn't been selected for his abilities as much as for the fact that he had no wife or children and only limited family contacts.

He soon regretted his decision. He and Marc Bouton, a recruit from Europe, were quickly inducted into X-Com, the highly secret international Extraterrestrial Combat unit. Over the course of three days they were bombarded with information about new weapon systems and what little was known about the alien technology they were up against. And to prove the mission was serious, Captain Marcelle took them into the refrigerated storage areas to see the bodies of dead, autopsied aliens.

But most disconcerting and surreal part were the mission reports and battle camera footage taken in previous raids. Most of the aliens were mysterious and far off, and the footage was poor, but there had been one taken off a dead troopers body at Santiago which terrified him. The image was shakey, the trooper running along beside a building, continuously glancing to the open street on his right. Then there was a dull thump, thump, and when he turned back to the left a reaper stood on it's two stalky legs, towering over him and staring right at him. The trooper stopped and got off one wild shot before the reaper jumped him and smothered the camera. After a few seconds of crunches and screams, and wild camera panning, the camera lay on the ground, recording just the dead trooper's hand and a pool of blood.

Then this morning the alarms had sounded, they all boarded the Skyranger, and Akira was told he was to be the scout for Near Squad, meaning he would help secure the area near the Skyranger.

The Skyranger hit ground and jerked Akira back to reality. The rear ramp began to lower. Kojima crouched down and motioned for Akira to do the same. "Bouton's a rookie," he said, "you don't want him to blow your head off if he sees an alien right away and gets excited."

After that, Kojima was all business, completely focused. It was the last time the two would talk.

As the doors opened, Akira saw they were in a small country village with a few fields and a large building to the right. Kojima stepped forward onto the ramp and scanned the area. "Far squad left," he yelled in english and jumped off the left side of the ramp.

Akira had been through a few hasty disembarkation drills. He took a few steps onto the ramp and jumped off to the right, dropping four feet to the ground, crouching and scanning the area. He felt light on his feet, carrying just a laser pistol, a few grenades and a stun rod. He wasn't sure why he had the stun rod and was tempted to drop it. Kojima had told him it was for stunning aliens at close quarters, but that had to be a joke - some kind of initiation thing.

He heard someone drop to he left, probably Crossett. He could see an empty field to the right and the building off to his left, but most of his view was blocked by a stone fence straight ahead.

He was the scout, so the rest of the squad was waiting for him to move. Finally his sense of duty, his desire to have it over with, and his curiosity were enough to get him to his feet and up to the fence.

As soon as he reached the fence, he saw it. A man-sized crimson spectre stood at the edge of a small orchard between him and the building. But it did not stand, it floated just above the ground, gliding along slowly. He lost a second or two getting over the surprise and remembering the spotting signal. It was enough time for the floater to see him. There were crackling sounds and yellow beams streaking silently past him. One hit the wall in front of him and blew out chunks of rock.

Akira fell back on his training. He quickly gave the signal, the international sign language symbol for bug, pointed his laser pistol, and squeezed the trigger hard for automatic fire.

His training with high-powered rifles led him to expect a serious kick, but it never came. The pistol fired off streaks of golden-orange destruction in rapid succession, sending dirt and branches flying, and destroying one tree completely. He also thought he hit the alien at least once. It was a beautiful display, and it lifted his confidence for a second or two.

Then the wall ten feet two his left exploded in a green flash, peppering him with rocks and mortar chips. He heard the crackling of laser fire and human screams behind him and then a woosh, followed by a deafening explosion and an unearthly, piercing shriek. He started to turn and drop, then remembered Kojima's advice. Someone would cover his rear.

By the time he turned back, Crossett had moved up and was kneeling, aiming and firing at the floater with her laser rifle through the newly-formed breach in the wall. Akira knew instinctively that this was his chance. He raced along behind the fence, head and shoulders exposed, out beyond the point where the Skyranger would block fire from his rear. He made it to the end of the fence and got down, scanning the orchard.

The floater was there. He didn't know if it spotted him, but it began to move toward him. As it glided from behind the cover of a small tree, a single laser shot streaked across and opened the side of the alien in a burst of steam and burned tissue. It gave a short scream as it dropped.

"Thanks Crossett," Akira whispered to himself.

Akira made his way cautiosly across the orchard. For the most part, everything was very quiet, with occasional, but intense bursts of battle sounds behind him. Obviously behind him. There was no one in front of him, no troopers anyway.

He reached the near corner of the building and scanned along both walls before ducking around to his right. No obvious doors to the right, and one large service door to the left. He would leave that one to someone else.

He moved along, hugging the wall, glancing to the right into the orchard. The images of the helmet-cam and the reaper threatened to break his concentration, but he managed to stay focused.

He peaked through the first window he came to. Most of the inside of the building was one huge storage area with a twenty foot ceiling, probably a warehouse of some kind. In the far corner there was an enclosed office area which merged with a mezzanine level running all across the far side. He saw nothing unusual, no movement.

He checked each window as he went, and glanced behind and saw Crossett covering him from the end of the fence, and Gaudin moving up with a heavy cannon.

He moved to the corner of the building and dropped to one knee. Nothing there. Screams and another large explosion far off sent shivers up his spine and reminded him how spread out and vulnerable the squads were.

Straight ahead and to his right were open fields, devoid of aliens and beyond the required security perimeter. All that was left was to check out the building.

He saw a small wooden door near the far end and made for it quickly. He wanted to be done with it and back in the air in the Skyranger. No, he wanted to be back in Japan.

He knelt by the door and listened for a few seconds. He heard trooper footsteps behind. What was he listening for anyway, he wondered. What sound did a floater make? Then he heard a door open inside, probably on the first level and nearby.

Time to kill one myself, he thought, and charged into the door, dropping down again, ready to fire. He was in a small office room with another door open into the warehouse and a set of stairs going up. He glanced out the door, saw nothing and concluded that the whatever opened it must have gone up the stairs.

There were two grenades on his belt, and he decided this would be as good a time as any to use one. He plucked one, primed it for a very short fuse, and moved quickly up the stairs.

The stairs opened into a room the same size as the lower office, but open to the wide mezzanine. It was a bad location to emerge, and any alien up there would have had the advantage of cover, and probably surprise. But Akira was lucky - the area was empty.

Then he heard laser fire directly below and loud thunking sounds from the warehouse. The room he was in had a window facing inside, so he moved to it and looked out over the room.

A floater hung near ground level, half-way across the floor. Someone, probably crossett was shooting up his cover through a window below.

Before Akira had a chance to react, the floater saw him and took two rapid shots up at the window. The first was wild, blowing a hole in the outside wall of the warehouse to Akiras left, but the next hit the thin wooden wall below the window, shattering the window and destroying most of the wall around it.

Akira turned to take cover and found himself facing another floater near the stairs, no more than twenty feet away. The floater got off a shot. A glowing yellow sword shot from his pistol and stabbed through Akira's left shoulder.

Akira dropped the grenade and fumbled to bring up his own pistol. He squeezed off one shot, missed and decided the grenade was too dangerous to stay. He turned and jumped through the hole in the wall.

He fell ten feet onto a pile of crates. As he fell he saw the warehouse streaked by the fireworks of an X-Com heavy laser. When he hit he remained conscious long enough to hear the exploding grenade and the screams of a dying floater, much longer and more dramatic this time.

"... had us worried there, Squaddie," Captain Marcelle said. His face filled Akira's still-cloudy field of view.

"Can you hear me Akira?" Marcelle was in his uniform, covered in blood. Mine, Akira realized.

"Did you hear me? You're going to be fine."

They were in the Skyranger, engines running, in flight.

"Kojima?" Akira said.

The Captain looked distressed. "Didn't make it son. Neither did Sergeant Buchard."

The Captain propped him up against the wall, and he glanced around. The Skyranger was full of artifacts, dead alien bodies, and stacks of metal sheets like Akira had seen at the base, roughly cut from a UFO. Six other troopers sat silently against the walls. Crossett was there, smiling at him and cutting her hair with a bowie knife.

"I didn't get to see a UFO," Akira said to the Captain.

"You will. You're Far Squad scout now."

Akira noticed the pile of floater bodies toward the rear of the plane. I got one of you, he thought. Then he saw two more bodies, wrapped carefully in blood-soaked white cloth, one barely recognizable as a human form. One of them was Kojima.

Akira searched around on his knees for his equipment, checked it over and sat patiently back down.

"Damn you," he said out loud.

THE END