Chapter 15: Skeletons in the closet.
-Region outside of Area 51.
“Incoming!” Rock shouted as he ducked his head from a plasma blast.
“Sarge! We need help, that flying dinner plate is too strong for us!” Sneaky shouted, not so much from not being heard but because he had agitated the burn on his back by ducking for cover and was still riding a neon wave of pain.
“I know! But I can’t reach Central!” Rock shouted while repeatedly pressing his hoof to his earpiece to get a signal.
The cyberdisc approached them slowly with a hum from its body as it jammed their signals. Sectoid 742 had no interest in allowing these interesting specimens to escape.
“I can’t fire this bucking cannon on my own!” Rock shouted to no one in particular as he moved the large green tube around to find the mechanism to fire it.
'Why couldn't this be a fuse like a regular cannon?' Rock grumbled mentally.
“Look out, grenade!” Sneaky shouted when the cyberdisc used its long tail that resembled a metallic spinal cord to lob an explosive at his position, landing in front of the rock he was using to keep safe. Sneaky jumped for cover, being showered with pebbles and sand just seconds later. The compression shock left his ears ringing.
“ Buck it all!” Rock said and looked at the rocket launcher, its green cylindrical form difficult for the pony to hold. Until he shouldered it and kneeled down on one leg, figuring it out little by little.
“I hope the arrow means this is where the cannon ball comes out!” Rock said as he came out from hiding and aimed at the cyberdisc, his free hoof feeling all around for the firing mechanism.
The cyberdisc was busy approaching Sneaky who was crawling away on all fours, his wings flapping hopelessly as he couldn’t focus on flying.
“Sarge! Shoot it!” he yelled as it came closer and closer.
Rock managed to finally find what he hoped was the firing mechanism and was rewarded when he was blown back by the force of the LAW launching its explosive ordinance right at the cyberdisc.
The alien machine had its compartments open making it more vulnerable as the anti-tank round slammed into the side of what would have been considered its ‘head’, blowing a sizeable portion of it to bits. The disc slammed into the sand below it with sparks flying free from it like fireworks as Sneaky cheered.
“Great job, Sarge!” Sneaky shouted as he ran over to his mentor and hugged him, panting heavily as well as squeezing Rock harder from the pain in his back and using him for support.
“Its over, boy.” Rock said as he then heard his earpiece click.
“Rock, Sneaky, can you hear me now?” Central shouted.
“Central, the area is secure, but the airship was shot down and we need doctors here now. Get doctor Mbutu to prepare the healing tubes.” Rock said and helped Sneaky crawl onto his back.
“Understood, the rest of the group on the road is too far away for you to be any help, another helicopter is on the way. Just stay there and keep the area secure.”
“You sure, sir?” Sneaky asked while Rock Fist carried him on his back over to the direction the crashed Huey was located.
“How are the others doing?” Sneaky continued.
“Don’t you worry about them, help is on the way.”
-Groom Lake Road, 16 miles from Area 51.
“Tangos, right!” Lewis shouted as two more Outsiders charged their flank, trying to get past Jack and the ponies.
“I got them!” Jack said and stood up, firing three round bursts while Trixie prepared to bring up a shield to protect him like she did in Brazil. But before she could a plasma bolt struck Jack in his unprotected inner thigh where there was no armour. He was knocked off of his feet and landed on the ground on his back, dropping his rifle and holding his injured leg instinctively.
Jack let out an agonized scream, the plasma round would have nearly burned completely through his leg, had it not been for the small nano-fibers sewn between the plates of his armour.
“I have you,” Trixie said reassuringly and transported him with a spell right to Derpy’s side with a bright flash.
“The great and powerful Trixie would never abandon an ally!” she said pride fully, accidentally poking her head out of cover for just a mere second as she held her nose up in triumph, but that was all the enemy drones needed to get a shot out.
Before Trixie could duck back into cover, her hat was blown off of her head when a green flash of light burned right through the hat and the feeling of something zooming over her caused her to fall down.
She cried out in pain as Lewis provided covering fire and lobbed a grenade at the outsider before ducking down next to her, quickly dropping a nearly spent magazine and slapping a fresh one into the receiver.
“Trixie?” He said and watched the pony get up and gasp as she saw her father’s hat smouldering on the ground with a gaping hole in it.
“No! Daddy’s hat!” she cried out and slammed her hooves down onto the hat to snuff out any embers on it. She then rubbed her forehead in disbelief, only to pause while her blue face to turn deathly pale.
“No, my hair!” Trixie shouted as she fell back and aggressively slapped at her head after she finally noticed the sizzling sound and eye watering stench of burnt hair. Not wasting time she pulled out her vanity mirror and screamed as she saw the tuft of hair that usually hung before her eyes was completely gone.
-Crow’s nest.
Central watched the screens as the second half of Talon squad came under fire and it seemed that both Jack and Trixie had been injured. At the same time he was speaking to someone in Area 51.
“Don’t bullshit me! You must have all kinds of weapons there and my people are in danger, we need support,” he shouted into his phone as he tried to get the base to send something to the Talon Squad.
“We already gave you a van, a helicopter and two pilots. I am starting to believe aiding you is a bad idea. How many more resources are you going to waste?” an older voice said over the phone as he sat in his private office. The speaker of the council watched images of the ponies and humans on the highway being slowly approached by several groups of Outsiders. His hand tapping the table where the image was, his mind wandering to years gone by before he forced himself to return.
“Besides, we are more than capable of dealing with the threat now that you have decreased it,” the old man said.
Central slammed his fist down onto his desk.
“I don’t give a shit if you can handle the threat when it gets to you. If we don’t do something my troopers are going to die,” he said, gasping for air as he felt tired of arguing.
The man on the other line remained silent, the veins in his old, balding scalp pulsing with thoughts and memories as his mind flashed back to another era, long ago before the internet, before the moon landing.
“We need air support! Send us an airstrike or a helicopter, anything!” the man had shouted into a small mouthpiece that was attached to the radio equipment on the back of a man who had been under his command before his legs had been burnt off by a death ray from one of the enemie’s black obelisks. The obsidian colored machine hovering over head as it fired beams of energy all around the small town the aliens had decided to invade.
He and his men had were huddled behind an overturned car, his second in command firing a Thompson sub machine gun while his sniper applied a tourniquet to his own leg. The M14 in the man’s hands feeling heavier with each passing second.
“We cannot provide aid for risk of collateral damage. You and your men will have to eliminate the target on your own,” the overpaid bean counter in D.C. said before hanging up.
The old man rubbed his eyes as the memory faded away and his gaze remained on the holographic image of the strange horse with wings trying to seal off the bleeding wound from the man who had been struck in the leg. In a flash the man raised the cell-phone to his lips and with a different tone, he gave his response.
“I have changed my mind. I will have my men send up a drone to eliminate the Outsiders, tell them to stay in cover, the strike will be dangerously close,” the old man said and hung up before redialling the head of security.
Central quickly contacted Talon Squad.
“Talon Squad, get ready to take cover, were sending a drone to take out those rust buckets.” Central moved over to another screen to check on Rock and Sneaky, ironically a Super Stallion helicopter had gone to aid them, both pilots had been recovered, and they were currently all on route to Area 51 where the ponies would use the secret tunnel to travel back to the Crow’s nest.
-Area 51.
The old man watched from his office as the Predator drone took off from the base and flew en route to the combat zone, yet more memories stirring in the former soldier’s mind. Of a time when people thought they could sleep with their doors unlocked and let their children run free without supervision. When the boogey men feared the men in black, feared The Bureau.
The predator drone flew over the battle field like a large metal bird. Its mechanical eye spying targets for its controllers back at the base it had been launched from. Once the targets had been spotted and marked the predator operator aimed for the areas of highest enemy concentration before dropping three hellfire missiles on the Outsiders, who were far too close to each other for their own good.
The speaker of the council rubbed his chin absentmindedly as he wondered if it would have been better to make such things standard for all X-COM bases and not just the larger command bases, such as NORAD.
The explosions kicked up mushroom clouds of dust, the shockwave tossing the Outsiders like toys as the X-com team was obscured by smoke, the vehicle they had been given shaking on its wheels from the shockwaves. The sight of his old enemies being slaughtered, brought a smile to the man’s face. The man may have been old but his eyes were still sharp, he caught the form of an outsider running through the smoke at high speed and jumping over their van, turning its gun on the humans and ponies crowded together, but hesitating.
“Impossible,” the man said as he watched the machine pause for a full five seconds before someone hit it with a burst of electricity, knocking it down and making it revert to a crystalline form.
“Curious,” he said and watched the ponies and one uninjured human scramble to make sure the area was secure. The man crossed his legs while raising his cane to press a button on the screen, listening in on their transmission.
“Central, we uh, well we just stunned an outsider,” Lewis transmitted through his helmet radio.
“It looks like some of the gems we have back home,” Derpy said as on the screen the Pegasus walked around the glowing crystal and picked up a nearby stick to poke at it.
“Understood, pick up is on the way. Do not touch it, it may be radioactive or give off something that we don’t know about yet.” Central replied and gave an order to the super stallion to wait for his containment team to meet it and recover the artefact.
The old man smiled and let out a weak huff, a laugh of amusement. He then shut off the screen and rose to leave his room, making sure to collect an old fedora hat on his desk and to straighten the name tag on his desk. ‘William Carter’.
The base had changed greatly since his old days in the Bureau. Where there was once concrete and lead there was now metal and steel. Where once there had been carbon tubes were now microchips. Where before the latest weapon was a gun, missile or better radar system, there were now viruses, lasers and stealth craft.
Things changed all around the old man all the time. But there were always constants that were rooted firmly into the ground, and secrets rooted under it.
Carter walked past several personnel who said not a single word to him. They knew of his reputation and of the rumours around him, which seemed to be truer now with current events.
The running joke among the staff, which they thought the old man did not know about, was that the Men In Black series had been inspired by true events. Oh how right they had been, Carter was part of a squad that later became called ‘The Majestic 12’, because it went through 12 highly trained operatives through the course of the hidden war. Twelve of the best men Carter had ever had the honour of serving with.
The man moved past the many off-the-record projects being built, he could not care less at the moment, ignoring even the usual salutes and greetings from his staff as he travelled to the most restricted section of the base. He entered a long hallway that looked like a time capsule to the late 60s, early 70s. everything preserved and untouched since its original use, save for the two heavily armed guards standing near the end of the hallway on either side of an elevator door with weapons trained on him, even though he had done this before.
'Good, they always follow protocol.' Carter thought and continued to walk down the hallway, his shoes echoing on the linoleum floors as his own reflection followed him down the path to his past. He spoke his secure command phrase to the soldiers before they allowed him passage. He pressed another code into a keypad behind one soldier and waited until the door opened. He entered an elevator that travelled down with a loud groan, like a bear in pain as it went down one more floor to a large basement full of furnaces, and an old acquaintance.
He walked past many old furnaces that had rusted away and left little evidence of their purpose so deep into the ground, pausing for a moment at one that held a long destroyed bicycle inside of it. He ignored whatever thoughts where in his mind and continued on to the very end of this other hallway, to a large metal door, similar to the kind one would find in a bank. He produced a single key and after inserting it, began turning it in specific ways, awakening the old mechanisms inside until there was a final click and the large door gently opened.
Inside the vault was a large glass cage perpendicular to the door, built into the wall several feet from the entrance. Its entire front side had a curtain that covered all but the middle portion, for the prisoner inside to see who it spoke to.
On the other side of the room was a guard who stood at immediate attention, knocking over a chess table next to him.
“Sir,” the guard said as the old man entered.
“You know there is supposed to be no contact with the prisoner,” he said, but smiled. “But if I were stuck here I would probably do the same. Leave us, soldier.” Carter said and waited until the guard was outside the door to pull it closed and walk to the table the guard had been. With a loud screech he pulled the old metal chair over to the glass cage that would have held Hannibal Lector in a Hollywood movie.
The man sat down in the chair and stared at the glass as whatever was inside had broken the light source in the cell long ago.
“It has been a long time, hasn’t it?”
The unknown being did not respond, nor did it make any noise. But Carter knew it was there, he sensed it.
“We need to talk, Robby.” He said, using the nickname the being inside hated.
“Do not call me that, you filth.” A voice echoed from the cage, sounding as if they were speaking into a metal soup can while underwater.
“Oh I’m sorry, Robby. Forgive me old fleshy brain. It gets so hard to remember that a freak like you has feelings, Robby,” he said and did not flinch when the being inside slammed against its cage.
“I will outlive you and every other organic bacteria farm on this planet,” its voice echoed and it returned to moving around the cage.
“Yes, I know. But listen, unit 24601.I have evidence to believe that you are the last of your kind.”
“You told me the same when you first defeated us, you stupid short lived bag of puss.”
“You know they say that profanity is the product of an unsophisticated mind ,” the old man said and smiled, holding his smile when 24601 did not reply.
“But this time it is for real. You see, we are under attack again, but not by just your kind. In fact they seem to be serving others.” He said and remained silent to let the words sink in and be processed.
“You body temperature, tone and other signs say you are not lying.”
“I know. Your kind appears to be used as cannon fodder, wholesale slaughter. It’s almost like we use your kind for target practice now,” he said and felt his ears ring when unit 24601 slammed violently against his cage, creating an uncomfortable screeching sound as its claws scrapped hopelessly against the glass.
“Who!? Tell me you, damn human! Tell me so that I may rend them to pieces and salt their world a thousand times over so that it may never support life!” it yelled.
“We are not exactly sure, but they seem to have enslaved other races and done the same. Turned them into mindless drones to do their bidding.”
The alien inside the cage remained silent for a time until it tapped an old talon three times against its glass.
“You humans have a saying, about the enemy of your enemy. I find it quite appropriate for the moment. If you would just release me, or give me access to a laboratory, I would be glad to aid you.”
“No can do. You are staying here, a consultant only. End of discussion,” Carter said and rose from his chair as the last alien he ever captured shouted and lobbed endless curses and promises of death at him. He did not care and simply left the room to return to his office, knowing the desperate creature would cooperate, one way or another.