X-COM: UFO Defense

Three

Four days later, the machinery needed for building a base was swinging into action. Materiel was being stockpiled, transports were being arranged, personnel were being wheedled or co-opted from other facilities. Mercifully—or perhaps it was just one of those cruel quirks of fate that sets you up for something really nasty—the number of alien craft spotted dropped off abruptly during this period. These odd quiet periods happened every now and then, for no reason that anyone could understand—though everyone had theories, ranging from biological reasons to sunspots. As a commander, Jonelle had long since learned not to question these quiet times—just to be grateful for them, and to take advantage of them to improve her base’s defenses. When you were building a whole new base, a few such quiet days were a godsend. Jonelle began to think there was a good chance of actually having Andermatt Base in operation within a month.

She had two main worries. First, she had seen her budget for the new base. There wasn’t enough money in it for a mind shield, a discovery that gave her a new case of heartburn every time she considered it.

The other worry was that her new day job was going to drive her crazy—if not because of the clientele, then because of the way the place smelled.

The new office of the United Nations Neutral Observer Project Central European Region had been opened three days previously in the main street of Andermatt, between the Hotel Krone and the Backerei Arens, in a building that had previously been a TV and stereo store. Just as soon as it opened, a stream of concerned Swiss began coming in the door, demanding to know who was running this place and what was being done there—they hadn’t been consulted. In a country where people take to public life the way people in other countries go for contact sports, and where all you need is a petition with a hundred thousand names to force a national referendum on anything, to “not be consulted” is an extremely serious matter, one that Jonelle heard about every five or ten minutes.

She did what one usually did when managing these PR “branches” of X-COM: she gave out glossy brochures that either explained nothing in particular, or explained something that purported (erroneously) to have something to do with why you were really there. These brochures were masterpieces of misdirection, and they usually fooled most of the people most of the time. To the rest of the people, Jonelle spent at least one shift a day listening patiently nodding a great deal, and exercising her no-better-than-college-level German. None of these helped particularly, since for reasons of both content and expression, she couldn’t understand much of what she was listening to. People kept complaining to her about things that weren’t her fault, like the European Union’s farm subsidies, and the United Nations’ interference in Switzerland. And they generally did their complaining in the local dialect of Swiss-German, a variant called Urnerdeutsch (Andermatt being located in the Swiss canton called Uri). It was very difficult to make sense of. People tended to either sing it or cough it—sometimes both. This made for more than usually interesting complaints.

Worst of all, her office was situated between the best hotel/restaurant in town and a bakery that produced bread so good it was rumored that angels came down from God first thing in the morning to get breakfast rolls and the sliced light rye. Jonelle had to sit there and listen to people going on about silage allowances and non-mandatory bomb shelters while her stomach growled, and at the back of her mind, the issue of where to get money for that mind shield kept gnawing at her.

Ari took one afternoon shift in the office, but Jonelle quickly relieved him of this duty when she discovered that his German was even worse than hers, and that he was completely tone-deaf for the local accent. Instead, she kept him busy up under the mountain, seeing about the installation of the initial space dividers for the living quarters and so forth. Fortunately, this was all modular, and would go in fairly quickly. There were other concerns, such as where the new alien containment facilities would go. Irhil M’goun had been getting short of space for a while now, and Jonelle was keen to expand their holding facilities so that live alien research could also be expanded, to two or maybe three times as much as was going on at Irhil.

During their first day’s more exhaustive inspection of the under-mountain facility, Ari had found just the place for this. Down on the third level was a series of chambers hewn out of an isolated, projecting spur of the Chastelhorn mountain: Wildmannsalpli, it was called. These fifty-meter-wide chambers, carefully isolated from one another, had originally been used for ammunition storage and were designed so that if something should set the stuff off, the blast would be confined both from the other chambers and from the rest of the base. Except for multiple baffled and booby-trapped ventilation holes, there was no way in or out of them except through a long, narrow “bottleneck” tunnel where security would be easy to maintain. The whole mini-facility was completely surrounded—above, below, and on all sides—by granite a hundred feet thick. It would make a most satisfactory holding space for even the most dangerous alien.

That afternoon, near closing time, Ari came down to the PR office to brief Jonelle on how things were going. They took refuge in the back office, where they could watch the front through a venetian-blinded window but not be heard, and Ari started his briefing. To Jonelle’s amusement, however, it didn’t immediately concern the new base. He had spent a long time outside the front door, carefully wiping his shoes on the mat.

“There are about eight hundred cows up at the top of town,” he said, examining his boot soles carefully. “Did 1 step in anything?”

“No.” Jonelle sat down at a small desk, which was covered ‘with paperwork and brochures and carefully written complaints waiting to be filed.

“They came right through the town. Have you ever seen anything like that before? It’s like the Wild West out there. And they had bells and flowers all over them. The bells I knew about. What’s with the flowers?”

“They’re awards.”

“What?”

“The cow that produces the most milk gets an award to wear.”

Ari burst out laughing. “You’re trying to tell me that was an awards ceremony!”

“Not as such,” Jonelle said. “But those cows and most of their herds have been up in the high pastures over by Gesehenen since May. This is when they bring them down, when the weather starts; to turn nasty and the grass growth falls off.”

“1 doubt the cows care much about the awards.”

“I don’t know… some of them looked pretty proud.”

“1 didn’t notice. I was looking at the big, mean guy at the front of the parade. Thought they gave him more flowers to keep him from getting jealous.”

“1 have news for you,” Jonelle said, grinning. “That was a she. Didn’t you look at the rear end? That’s unlike you.”

It was rare for Jonelle to get Ari to blush. She managed it this time. “You seem to know a whole lot about this all of a sudden,” Ari said, turning away and busying himself with a filing cabinet.

“I had a full mornings worth of briefings on the subject from the president.”

“The what?”

“The mayor, Ueli Trager. Präsident, the guy who presides—where do you think we got the word? It came from here, via France, I think. Anyway, that big cow up front, that’s the head cow of the herd, the pugniera. She’s the one who enforces the pecking order, since she’s at the top of it. She also scares off wolves and such.”

“I bet she does. Did the president give you a yodeling lesson, too?”

“He did not,” Jonelle said, pointedly ignoring the teasing. “Herr Trager did tell me, though, that there have been a lot of abductions and mutilations of cattle around here lately. People are getting very annoyed.”

Ari looked thoughtful at that. “I thought there had been a worldwide drop-off in cattle abductions.” He did not add, possibly because the rate of human abductions seems to have gone up so sharply in the last few months. That wasn’t public knowledge, and X-COM was hoping that the world’s governments were too busy at the moment to compare figures. The data raised some uncomfortable questions, such as whether the aliens had finished getting whatever data they needed from cows and other higher non-primate animals, and were now concentrating on the primates.

“Well,” Jonelle said, “I thought so too. But now it seems like something else is going on, and I don’t know what it means. In any case, I don’t like it. I’m going to get onto the data-processing people at the bases at Omaha and Tsingtao, and see what they can tell me. Whether this is just a statistical blip, or something else.”

Ari frowned. “There weren’t many cattle mutilations in Morocco. Then again, there weren’t that many cattle in Morocco.”

“There are enough.” Jonelle leaned back. “But those cows never struck me as anything special. These cows…I don’t know. In any case, the locals are very attached to them, and it wouldn’t hurt our PR effort here if we, as a ‘UN organization,’ can get someone, in some unspecified way, to do something to help protect their cows while also taking care of other business. You get my drift, Colonel?”

Ari looked at her. “If you mean you’re going to be sending me back to Morocco tonight or tomorrow,” he said, “that drift I get.”

Now how did he…. Jonelle sat up straighten

“You’re not going to need me here much longer,” Ari said. “I’ve talked to the construction crews all I need to— their liaison with the army is in place now. The army people, all but the highest, think our people are going to be building some kind of new installation for the Swiss— so that’s settled. The basic installation schedule is just about set up. Temporary living quarters will be ready within a couple-few days, the rest within a week or so. After that we start bringing in the basic heavy stuff— that’ll take another week. All those production and delivery schedules are tight, and confirmed by the supply depots in the US and China. We’re lucky, this place is a natural hangar. The number-one level hangar space is almost all ready but for the doors—they’re working on that. Two, three more days—four, max. After that comes conversion of the second level for hangar space, which is in a similar state, but will take more time. The concealed entrance is going to have to be widened, while under cover, to take our bigger craft. Two weeks worth at least.”

“What about the conversion of the containment spaces?”

Ari looked self-satisfied. “My cubbyholes will be ready by the end of the week. They’re no use to you, though, without the environmental controls and the proper security in place, and the base won’t be ready for them until the third week or so. Sorry, Boss.”

Jonelle breathed out and leaned back again, looking at him steadily. Outside, on the street, dusk was beginning to fall, along with the first few flakes of a snow that had been threatening all day. “We have a problem,” she said.

“Local? Or back in Morocco?”

“Morocco,” she said. “Business is starting to pick up again down that way.”

“How many interceptions last night?”

“Six,” she said.

“How did they do?”

Jonelle shook her head. “Not at all as well as they should have.” This was an understatement, but she was determined not to contaminate Ari’s assessment of the situation with her opinions, forceful though they might be. DeLonghi, she thought, is looking like the worst idea I’ve had in a month of Sundays…but it might he that he’s shaken by the sudden promotion and needs a little help to steady down. I intend to see that he gets it. “Commander DeLonghi’s team assignments seem to have been most at fault. I want you to get down there tonight and take up a consultative role.”

“And I’ll be flying missions, too, of course.”

Jonelle paused. This was where she should have said, easily Of course. But she couldn’t get out of her mind Ari’s last mission. That one had been very close. His impulsiveness…. Yet the last thing a responsible commander in her position should do was try to shield one of her people from the correct exercise of their duties, for strictly personal reasons.

“Of course,” she said. “One thing: I require you not to expose yourself to what I would consider unnecessary danger while you’re in consultative mode. When you’re supervising a number of teams, which you may be for the next little while, you stay out of the front line.”

She watched Ari contemplating the wording of her order to see if there was some way he could squirm out of it. But Jonelle had been thinking about this for some hours. “I would do this myself if I had the leisure,” she said, “but I don’t. Though I can turn this office over to our PR people full-time tomorrow, there are other matters connected with getting this base running besides strictly construction-oriented ones, and I’ve got to deal with them.” That mind shield, she thought, still wondering where the heck she was going to find the necessary cash for it. A shield was so necessary, up here where there were so many more people living nearby than there were in Morocco.

“Yes, ma’am,” Ari said.

“Is that a wilco?” said Jonelle.

Ari looked at her for a moment, then said, “Wilco.”

“Thank you,” Jonelle said—something she did not have to say, and Ari knew it. “I’d be glad if you were on your way down there as quickly as possible. I can’t get out of my head the idea that the aliens may have some intelligence about what we’re doing…and I would very much dislike seeing our work here interrupted because of ineptly constructed and dispatched interceptions. I want my best pilot on site to advise the new commander at Irhil.”

He looked at her with a flattery-will-get-you-nowhere sort of expression, but an affectionate and respectful one. “I’ll be back there in a couple of hours,” Ari said. “There’s a transport leaving the mountain in fifty minutes—I’ll be on it.”

“Very well. Is there anything else construction-oriented I need to know about?”

“No, Commander.”

“All right. Let me give you the details about last night’s interceptions. You’ll want to look at the transcripts yourself when you get back, but I think you’ll find some patterns.”

They spent half an hour going over the fine points of whose team had been misassigned, who needed to be spoken to about weapons allocations and armor, who was carrying weapons too light or too heavy for their best use. Outside, the snow began falling more thickly, blowing golden-colored in the light of the streetlight by the door.

When they were finished, Ari saluted Jonelle and said, “Good night, Commander.”

Jonelle saw a great deal in his eyes that he was not going to express, even here when they were alone. Concern for her—and a great eager desire to get back to the things he loved best: flying his Firestorm and leading ground assaults. “Good night, Colonel,” she said, returning the salute, “and good hunting. I’ll expect a report first thing in the morning on improvement of the teams’ results.”

“You’ll have it.” And out he went into the snow, stopping once to look up and down the street—not for traffic, Jonelle saw, but to tell whether he was likely to step in anything bovine and unexpected.

She smiled and turned back to the desk with a resigned look, thinking about that mind shield again, and eyeing the piled-up filing.

Many miles north, in Zürich, dusk was also falling, though not snow. It was rush hour, and the rain had been coming down gently for about an hour now, drifting from one of those low-ceilinged overcasts in which the city seems to specialize in the fall. From the stone front steps of the Hauptbahnhof—the main train station—the view up the long, wide Bahnhofstrasse—the main street downtown, known for its shopping—was much shortened by the misting rain. A few blocks up, the street disappeared in swathes of silver-gray only the stores’ illuminated signs and windows blooming through the wet, drifting fog. Mist was tangled in the upper branches of even the youngest of the lime trees lining the street. The logos of the big banks facing into Paradeplatz three blocks down were mere ghosts of themselves, phantom aspirin-tablets or crossed keys glowing through the gray. Far below them, the blue and white Zurich city trams glided and hummed along the Bahnhofstrasse tracks, single headlights glowing brighter through the gloom and double taillights vanishing as they went. On either side, bundled-up people hurried along the gray and white sidewalks, heading for the tram stops or the escalators at the corner of the Strasse and Bahnhofplatz, which led down and over into the train station.

The high whine that started to become audible made some of the passersby look up, and some who were closer to the Hauptbahnhof looked back toward the train station, though dubiously. Sometimes one heard the occasional screech of wheels from the train yards, but it wouldn’t be so prolonged a sound. Others glanced up the road to see if a tram was coming that possibly had an engine fault. But the trams were making no louder a hum than usual. Maybe it was just the fog. It could seem to concentrate the sound, sometimes.

But no fog could make anything—tram, train, or jet— sound like this. The whine scaled up into a scream, and the scream got louder and louder.

That was when the shape came slowly, gently bellying down out of the mist over the Zürich train station. It looked like two very large octagons stacked on top of each other, with four octagonal pods underneath. Slowly and with seeming care, it sat itself down on the stately neo-Baroque upper hall of the station—and down, and farther down, until huge blocks of stone burst out of the structure under the pressure and flew across the plaza, smashing into the hotels there and rendering some of the guests’ stays unexpectedly permanent. Other fragments shot into the fairy-tale towers of the Swiss National Museum behind the Bahnhof, knocking the greened-bronze conical tops off them and leaving them like stumps of broken teeth.

At the same time, a Terror Ship settled down out of the fog onto Paradeplatz, crushing a tram underneath it. The driver of a second tram, turning the curve out of the plaza and heading north toward the Bahnhof, saw what had happened to that building and decided it might be wiser not to continue his run much farther. He stopped the tram, opened all its doors, and held his post while his passengers fled. Then he powered the tram down, checked it to make sure no one had been left behind, and jumped out himself, turning by the front door to put in the key that would let him shut the doors and lock the tram from the outside. It was the last thing he ever did as a human being. A. second later, a Chryssalid’s venom was blasting through his body, and the tram key fell ringing gently onto the cobbles, unnoticed.

The screams in Paradeplatz, as Floaters and Reapers poured out of the Terror Ship and descended on the terrified crowds of commuters, were echoed from the Hauptbahnhof. Not even the bulk of a Battleship was able to completely crush the iron skeleton of the great railway station, Jakob Wanner’s masterpiece; but destruction of mere landmarks was secondary to the aliens’ purposes.

Snakemen and Chryssalids poured out of the Battleship and made their way down the stations three levels underneath the old main building. Sirens were beginning to howl outside, the police beginning to respond, but the shrieks and cries of those in the station—both those maimed or dying under its wreckage and those being torn apart or taken alive by aliens—were louder still. On the street level, at the end of the Bahnhofstrasse, people ran desperately in all directions, looking for somewhere to hide, but there was nowhere. Stores locked their doors, but Snakemen crashed in through plate glass windows to find their prey. Cyberdiscs blasted their way through hastily dropped security shutters and racketed around inside the breached premises like psychotic Frisbees, killing everything that moved, shooting everything that didn’t. Plasma-weapon fire began in earnest out on the streets, and stun bombs and grenades could be heard everywhere. Unconscious and wounded humans were carried into the waiting ships to be experimented on later. Others, more fortunate, died quickly, burned or blasted or torn apart. The gray and white pavements began to acquire a new color: red.

And in the Bahnhof, that temple to punctuality, the trains stopped running on time.

A few hours after he left Jonelle, as he had predicted, Ari landed at Irhil—and he could hear the buzz from the hangars before he ever got near them. People were running in all directions, some with pleased expressions, others with looks that suggested they felt more like the denizens of a kicked anthill.

The last thing he wanted to do was head away from the hangars, but he did that regardless, making his way to the commanders office as quickly as he could. It was very strange to knock on that door and not hear the familiar “Ngggh?” which was Jonelle’s standard response. DeLonghi’s voice said, “Come!” from inside, and Ari was astounded to feel a pang at it not being Jonelle. No time for this, he thought.

He walked in to find DeLonghi sitting in the middle of a desk piled high with reports and God only knew what else. The sheer weight of stuff, on a desk that he had only seen clean before, made Ari pause in amazement.

“You wanted something, I take it?” DeLonghi said, looking up and frowning. “I’m rather busy at the moment.”

Ari saluted and said, “Sorry, sir. The commander—”

“Yes, I know, sit down and let’s get on with it,” DeLonghi growled. Ari sat down, not feeling entirely comfortable. DeLonghi had never been the easiest man to get along with. There was not precisely bad blood between them, but DeLonghi had never been that accomplished a fighter, or pilot, or strategist. There was a feeling in ranks that he was one of those who had accomplished his climb strictly “by the numbers,” because he couldn’t have managed it any other way. Ari suspected that DeLonghi knew perfectly well about this opinion of his peers, and that it rankled him. Privately, Ari—regarded on the base as one of their best pilots—wished that Jonelle had stuck him with almost any other job than that of having to advise this man, who would almost certainly take any advice as something meant to make him look dumb.

“What’s the situation at the moment?”

“Thought you would have checked on the way up,” DeLonghi said irritably.

“I did, sir,” Ari said, “but much may have changed since then.” He glanced at the ceiling, as if calculating, and said, “One Interceptor is in Kenya, having splashed an alien Scout Craft. Two dead, equipment and resource recovery uncertain. It appears to have been a feint. The other Interceptor is in the Péloponnčse, scrambled just after the first one. Chased a medium Scout into the water between islands. One dead, and the Interceptor is on its way back here, having suffered damage. This too may have been a feint of some kind. Our Skyranger is en route to an alien landing site in the Canary Islands. The first ship we sent in, a Lightning, has been destroyed with loss of all crew. It was carrying a full load of twelve soldiers.” Who do I know who is ashes or a corpse in the Atlantic right now? Ari thought. “Another Lightning is en route to a landing site near the old diggings at Çatal Huyuk in Turkey. ETA ten minutes. The third Lightning is in Burkina Faso, cleaning up an alien terror site. Heavy casualties: the captain on site reports two-thirds of his assault team dead, along with fifty-odd civilians. The fourth Lightning is still finishing maintenance, should be ready tonight. Two of three Firestorms are out, one on an interception over the Mediterranean, heading toward Egypt when last reported. The other is heading up the French coast toward Brittany, in pursuit, reporting that the alien craft, a Harvester, seemed to be making toward Great Britain but has now doubled back and may be bound for Paris or the Benelux region instead. As of my last check, anyway.”

Ari watched DeLonghi go increasingly red, and he could understand why: his information was no more than three minutes’ old—possibly fresher than the commander’s own.

There was no question, apparently, that the commander knew this. “Colonel,” DeLonghi said, “I hear the sound of a man looking to catch me in a mistake. Are you bucking for my job?”

Ari blinked. He had realized on the way there that Jonelle had sent him to Morocco in the hopes of forestalling this situation, but the aliens had had other plans. “Sir,” Ari said, “if you think—”

“Because don’t think that I don’t know, as does everyone else here, the nature of your relationship with the regional commander. And if you think that her position will protect you when you make your move, then you’ve—”

“Commander,” Ari said, “permission to speak as freely as you have already begun to.”

DeLonghi blinked—a dreadful expression, like a cobra blinking while it had a slow, cold thought—and then said, “Granted.”

Ari sat back in his chair and said, “Sir. Your materiel is spread dangerously thin. You have scattered a large force, which would otherwise have been in a position to lend itself assistance, as it were, internally, over two continents.” DeLonghi’s face was a study: whatever he had been expecting Ari to say, it wasn’t this calm assessment. “I understand the cause of this, and indeed you had no choice. You reacted to each crisis, and logically, as it arose. But these crises show signs of having been designed to do precisely what you have—spread us out. Someone knows from experience what resources we have here. Someone may also know that there has been, shall we say, a change in management. Whether they knew before, or not, the actions of the past few hours have convinced them. Now, you find yourself with few resources left to deal with any large incursion. I would expect such an incursion to happen any minute. I’ve seen this happen before, when the regional commander first took over here, and the pattern—”

The klanger went off somewhere down the hall, and after it the pilots-to-hangar shouter, a melancholy hooting like an elephant sorry it ate that last tree. At the same time, the commander’s phone went off. He snatched up the handset and almost yelled, “What?”

Ari stiffened, knowing what it was. It’s been three days since I’ve flown, he thought. Not that that was precisely a lifetime. But three days could remove enough of your edge to kill you.

DeLonghi slammed the receiver down. “Zurich. They’re in the middle of Zurich. A Battleship and a Terror Ship.”

Ari was up out of his chair and had already yanked the door open. “I’ll scrape the rest of a team together and get moving.”

“Colonel,” DeLonghi said, his voice oddly strained. “The regional commanders orders to me were quite clear. You are not to—”

“What was it you said,” Ari said softly, “about protection, Commander? And positions? I’m still speaking freely By permission.” DeLonghi blinked again. “You have no one else to send. Our people are all over the place. I just came in, I have half a crew with me, the other half can be assembled in about three minutes, and my Firestorm is in the hangar prepped and ready where I left her. Not that she’s likely to do any good in this case. I’ll have to take the Avenger…and you might need that Firestorm for something later. Meanwhile, I can at least do some good while you get the teams freed up to back me. Pull the Canaries team back when they’ve finished their intercept, and the Greek team then send them along.”

“I said it was a Battleship and—”

“Commander,” Ari said, “screw them. Screw them right into the ground. Which I will, if I get the chance. You mentioned protection? I’m going to get out there and do some. Thats my job, and yours. You have no other options, and neither do I…orders or no orders.”

He grinned, and only for a moment the ferocity showed. “You wanted command,” Ari said. “Enjoy. And when those other intercepts are finished with Zurich, get them back here and load them up again, because our cuddly friends out there aren’t finished with us. Call Medical and get them ready, too—we’re going to need them tonight. And before the others come back, whatever you do, don’t send out that last Firestorm! Because….” He

stopped himself from saying “she”; sometimes a pronoun could be too loaded. “It would not be typical of previous command…and besides, they’d know then that you’re empty.”

“Sir,” Ari added after a moment.

They simply looked at each other.

“Go,” DeLonghi said.

Ari nodded and went out the door, noticing—with, another odd pang—that, as he slammed it shut behind him, the old half-a-second-later thump of the dartboard was missing.

Odd, how such little things hurt.

In the darkness around the Hauptbahnhof, silence came and went. Every now and then it would be broken by gunfire, but the sound always stopped quickly. Where there was organized resistance, it soon ceased, as armed aliens came upon it and stopped it. No city police force was equal to this kind of onslaught.

On the Bahnhof itself, the alien Battleship squatted low and menacing, while smoke from electrical fires in the station and steam from broken pipes rose around it and wreathed it in fog. Down by Paradeplatz, civilians culled from other streets were being loaded into the Terror Ship, some stunned unconscious, some dead. Snakemen and Floaters came hurrying like worker bees, bringing more and more of the human cargo.

The Bahnhofstrasse holds some of the world’s most expensive real estate. There is not much residential housing there, the street being occupied mostly by stores, hotels, and banks. But in the little side streets between the Bahnhofstrasse and the Limmat River on one side, and the smaller river Sihl on the other, many apartments were tucked three and four stories up in buildings hundreds of years old. From these back streets, slowly, the sound of gunfire began again. The guns did not belong to the police.

The tempo of the aliens working in Paradeplatz began to quicken. They were used to some level of resistance, but normally this fell off quickly as the humans realized it did them no good. These humans, though, seemed slower to realize this than usual, and their gunfire was finding some marks among the less well-protected aliens who ventured down the winding back streets. As if in obedience to some overriding will, the percentage of better-armed and armored aliens foraging down those side streets began to increase. The ones servicing the ships, picking up more humans and stowing them, slowly came to the aid of the less well-defended aliens. They were safe enough—and no humans had yet been mad enough to try to approach the ships.

All this was as the aliens had predicted. Their food supplies would be well-augmented from this raid—and experimental supplies, as well. Their plan would continue unhindered.

Two hundred miles away to the east, a single Avenger was plunging through the night sky over Fribourg, heading for Lac de Neuchâtel and the Jura Mountains. It was taking advantage of the low clouds, and of being low— and it was giving Ari the willies.

“Where do you want me to turn, Boss?” said Rosie, the pilot. “Basel?”

He sat himself down in the spare chair, the fire-control position next to the pilot in the main cockpit, and shook his head. “No sooner than Colmar. Hang a right there. We’ll head straight over the Black Forest, come down on the other side of it near Schaffhausen, and then low and fast, straight for Zürich.”

“You got it. You want to take the hot seat then?”

“No,” Ari said. “Gunnery.”

“Gunnery?”

“We’ve got a sitting duck at the moment. If someone misses, I want it to be me. Don’t want to have to blame it on any of you guys.”

“The trouble with you, Boss,” Rosie said, “is that you don’t know how to delegate.”

Ari closed his eyes and laughed, just briefly He could remember Jonelle saying something like that, and not just once, either. “You may have something there. But this one’s mine. You just fly, and be glad I’m letting you do that.”

“Gosh, Boss, you gonna let us fight when we get there, or will we be stuck standing around and cheering?”

“Don’t get cute,” Ari said, but he was grinning. “My first interest is catching a Battleship just sitting there on the ground. I don’t intend to let them just waltz off with that thing. Get on the horn—tell the captain and the sergeants I want them up here for a fast briefing.”

“Yes, sir.”

Within five minutes, they were assembled in the cramped cabin, and those who couldn’t fit inside were at least standing within earshot. They looked at him somberly. “Is it true,” one of them said when Ari called them to order, “that we’re going to be the only craft responding to this call?”

Ari nodded. “Until the commander back at Irhil manages to free us up some backup. So I’m going to have to drop you people sequentially, and you’re going to have to work your way in from the perimeters. I know this is not our preferred method of working, but we’re short of options at the moment.”

He brought the city map up on the screen. “OK, here’s the scoop. We are, I believe, fully loaded.”

Captain Hecht nodded. “Four heavy weapons platforms are loaded,” he said, “and we’re carrying twelve soldiers. Six in armor.”

“OK. Take a good look at this. Here’s the central part of the city—it runs down either side of the main river, the Limmat. The river veers east just above the railway station. Farther down, there are a lot of bridges over that river. Now at the moment, all the aliens are still on the east bank, as far as we know. So I’m going to have Rosie take us through town in two passes. The first one is to take out that Battleship, if God smiles on us and the big ugly thing is still sitting where it was reported. I’m not likely to get more than one shot without it knowing exactly where I am, so that one’s got to count. I’m hoping that will be enough.” The hope was fervent. The Avenger was carrying a fusion-ball launcher, and he had heard that one “good one” correctly placed was enough to take down a Battleship. But this was not a weapon he had worked with frequently, and there were so many variables. The worst one was that the ship was on the ground. A miss, if that ship decided to move at the wrong moment, could destroy buildings all around the strike site and kill a lot of civilians, while possibly not doing what had been intended. And then there would be six long seconds before he could reload and come about again. During which time, God only knew how many directions the Battleship would have splattered him and his people in.

He put that thought forcefully aside. “Then we have to drop you folks to best advantage. Now, the biggest concentration of civilians is going to be south of the train station. I’m sure the aliens know that perfectly well, and are concentrating on it, rather than the industrial area full of factories and train tracks that’s a little farther north, or the Zurichberg and the Uetliberg, the two hills just past it. Not worth their time, and any of them that go that way will be very exposed and easy to pick off. My guess is that our cuddly friends’ll be heading south, first down the left side of the river and then the right, if we let them. But if we seal off those bridges first, that’ll be a big help right there. It’ll confine everything but the Floaters and Cyberdiscs to this side of the water—and those guys we can hunt down later if we have to.”

“What about the train station itself, Boss?” said one of the sergeants.

“That’s a problem. A lot of the aliens will probably be down there right now, since at any given moment there are usually about five thousand people in it. They’ll be having a field day. But they’re going to have to get the people up out of there and get them into that Terror Ship. That won’t be easy, or quick, especially since they’ve trashed the upper levels. It’s a good thing that they won’t have had time to get too many into the Battleship…which makes me feel not completely like a bastard for blowing it up. Once it’s done, there won’t be any more captives taken from the train station, anyway, which is probably going to be the aliens’ best source.”

There was a mutter from the sergeants. No one liked the idea of killing civilians they were meant to save, but all of them realized the occasional necessity. “Don’t blow it completely to shit, Boss,” the captain said. “Her Nibs won’t like it. All that Elerium scattered all over town….”

“I’ll try not to,” Ari said, and fervently hoped he would somehow be able to confine the damage. But if it was a choice between utterly destroying the Battleship and attempting to keep the ship partially intact and then having it get up and go elsewhere, he much preferred the former. It would be much easier to shamefacedly say to Jonelle, “Sorry, it went off while I was cleaning it,” and to take the blame for losing a lot of potential funds, rather than let the aliens have back a Battleship that they would certainly use against X-COM again.

“So,” he said. “I’m assuming they haven’t made it all the way down to the bottom of the Bahnhofstrasse, where it hits the lake. We can only hope. But when we make our second pass, I’m going to drop you people in the neighborhood of these bridges, on the far side.” He showed them the six main bridges connecting the left and right banks of the Limmat, like sutures over a long, straggly scar. “Cross them, and secure them.”

“Any preferred method, Boss?” said another of the sergeants. “There are only twelve of us.”

“I know that. How do you think I meant? Just blow ‘em up. The one by the station is the main priority, and the two really big ones, two-thirds of the way down, and the one by the lake. Take the others out any way you like. A few good hits with a rocket launcher will probably do it—they’re not very big. Once over, I want two teams to cross the Bahnhofstrasse and start working their way up it, and through the main street paralleling it on the left side. The other teams, come at it from the right side. The middle bridge there is about on a level with where we think the Terror Ship is. It’s the only place where there’s really room for the thing to put down, anyway.”

He pointed at Paradeplatz on the map. “The right side of the Bahnhofstrasse is part of the Old Town. It’s partially residential. A lot of twisty little streets, a lot of them go uphill or downhill kind of steeply, especially over by this church with the big clock, St. Peter’s.”

“Residential, huh?” Captain Hecht looked thoughtful. “We’ve been monitoring police band. They say there’s a lot of fire coming from over there—not police.”

Ari chuckled grimly. “It’s the Swiss army.”

“Huh?”

“Just about every man in this country has his gun and ammo at home in case there’s need for a sudden call-up,” Ari said. “I have a feeling some of the locals have decided this constitutes a call-up. Good for them. Just watch your backs and make sure they don’t shoot you in an excess of enthusiasm.”

The team leaders nodded. “OK. The southern teams push north, up the Bahnhofstrasse. We try to get them concentrated in one place, to make it a little easier for the reinforcements when they show up. And for us, of course.”

“When are the reinforcements going to show up, Boss?”

Ari looked at them. “Before we’re finished, I hope,” he said, and let them take the pun as they pleased. “We may just have to handle this ourselves—no telling.”

The sergeants looked at one another. “Just passing Basel, Boss,” said Rosie.

“Very good. Let me know when we hit Colmar.” To the team leaders, he said, “Are we all clear on the order of battle? Blow those bridges. Then come up around the bottom of the Bahnhofstrasse and start pushing upwards.”

“If reinforcements do show, Boss, where you going to put them?”

“East side,” Ari said, “and they can keep the aliens from breaking out that way, and push toward us. Then more for the train station. When we’ve handled the ones in the streets, we’re going to have a lot of mopping up to do, I’m afraid. It’s just strategically sound, from their point of view, to head down into the station’s lower levels. Hundreds of nooks and crannies, offices and hallways to hide in….” Ari shook his head.

“Thinking of blowing the place, Boss?” Rosie said from behind him.

“No…just too many civilians. It’s going to be the underground shopping center version of house-to-house fighting, I’m afraid.”

“‘Shopping center’?”

“There are about a hundred stores down there. Stay out of the deli in the front, by the escalators,” Ari said “The prices are god-awful.”

“Colmar, Boss,” Rosie said. “Coming about.”

“All right, everybody,” Ari said, “rejoin your teams. One pass for me, as I said. Three stops for you and your teams. You’ve got thirty seconds each before I button up and go. After that, I’m going to take a run at that Terror Ship and see whether I can’t disable it without killing all the kidnapped people inside. If I’m lucky, if it’s where I think it is…we’ll see. Good luck, all of you!”

They saluted and went out. Ari sat himself down, looking out. The cockpit windshield was a blur of charcoal-gray cloud. The Black Forest beneath them was lost in it, visible to radar but to nothing else. “How low are we?” Ari said to Rosie.

“Fifty feet above treetop, Boss. I’d rather not push it any further. Some of these trees get tall without warning.”

“Don’t push it on my account,” Ari said. He strapped himself in at the gunnery console, wiped his hands on his uniform, and got himself settled. This one shot was going to matter profoundly. If that Battleship got up in the air again, he was going to have a lot more trouble than he wanted.

“Schaffhausen,” Rosie said. “I’m starting descent. Increasing to two hundred knots.”

Ari had to swallow. Even though they were less than forty feet above the streets of the small city, he couldn’t even see the lights of the town, the fog was so thick. “Just be sure you don’t hit anything pointy.”

“No chance, Boss. I’ve got a nice, direct run-in. I’m running right down the S-bahn tracks, the local light rail. It’s just like playing with slot cars.”

It was beginning to feel like it, too. Rosie made a rather abrupt left turn that would have knocked Ari out of his seat had he not been strapped in. He gulped and got busy with the gunnery console. This was one of the few problems he had in this business: letting someone else fly It drove him crazy

“Feeding heads-up to gunnery,” Rosie said. Overlaying the green of the radar on the gunnery screen, the false-color images of the heads-up display now appeared. “Two minutes to primary target. I’ll warn you at one. Passing the military airfield at Dübendorf.” She listened to something in her earpiece. “They see us, but they’re not doing anything.”

It’s all taken care of, said that cheerful voice in Ari’s memory. Was this prearranged, he wondered. Or had someone in the government received a quick phone call from a UN PR office down in Andermatt, or from “the Hall of the Mountain King”? No telling now No time to think about it.

Ari settled himself in the chair, did his best to become one with the gunnery screen. Odd, to be able to concentrate on shooting and not have to think about flying, as well—. That was the only good thing about this.

“One minute, boss. Acquisition.”

Up over the “virtual horizon” of the gunnery screen came the image of the Katenberg on the right, the Zurichberg on the left, and between them the depression marking the old river delta of the Limmat, on which Zürich was built. At the end of it all lay the Zürichsee, Lake Zürich, stretching off in a long blob of residual heat, now that they were close enough to get a residual heat signature, as well. Closer, brighter, a smaller blob of light. Concentrated. Other signatures, as well: the presence of Elerium was registering.

Ari hunched himself over the joystick, ignoring the thought of what the “real world” looked like through the windshield at the moment. This was all that mattered, those slowly rising octagons emerging from what once was the Hauptbahnhof.

“Trouble, Boss!” Rosie said. “Getting some movement.”

Ari swallowed. The Battleship had acquired their signal by now, he was very sure. He had hoped that approach from this side would win them a few precious seconds. Maybe it had. But the Battleship was moving, shouldering its way upward—though slowly. Very slowly.

Ari uncapped the fire button on the joystick. Range isn’t optimum, he thought. If I let loose with a fusion ball at this range, and I miss, the whole station and everybody in it’ll—

Plasma fire stitched the air all around them. Rosie did something sudden at her console, and the Avenger lurched upward and sideways through the air as she plunged toward the ruined train station. The ferocious lines of fire stitched along and upwards after them, the only thing visible through the fog. “Gonna drop her real quick, Boss,” she said. “Three seconds—two—”

Fire or not? Hold it just for a second more— The bottom dropped out of the world. Ari swallowed and kept his eye on the screen, on his target. The Battleship was still rising, but not as fast as it should have. What the hell—is it caught on something? An infrared trace was showing, a faint network of residual heat, like a spiderweb tangled around the leftward end of the Battleship, and the right-ward one, where the ship had sunk into the structure of the building— .

Now, Ari thought, and fired.

There was always a moment after you hit the fire button, some X-COM people said, when the fusion-ball projector seemed to hold its breath and think about whether to blow up what you fired it at, or to blow you up. That moment came and went. A blur, a blob of light like a small sun, leapt away from the Avenger and struck the Battleship just right of its middle.

The night lit up, and everything around the half-destroyed train station showed clear in an actinic light like lightning for a long, long few seconds as the fusion ball did its work. Rosie veered east to miss the glare, then plunged on past the station, now visible (if nothing else was) through the fog. She had a look at it while Ari stared at his screen and tried to make sense of it.

“Half a minute to your first stop, Boss,” she said. “Looks like you left some of that ship, but I don’t think it’ll be going anywhere soon. That stuff was all tangled around it—some kind of iron or steel reinforcement, I think. Meantime, the buildings around are still standing. Nice shooting.”

“Super,” Ari said. “Let’s get the first team out. When we’ve dropped everybody, we’ll go have a shot at that Terror Ship and see if we can’t cripple it, too. Meanwhile, I’m going to go put on my armor.” He undid the straps, got up, headed downstairs. “And then I’m going to get me a psi-amp and go hunting.”