How did this happen?
I didn't join the armed forces to lead.
I joined up to find something to write about. Do a tour of duty,
muster out, write a bestseller about life on the frontlines of a
modern conflict – that was the plan.
So I jumped when a position on the XCOM
Project came up. After all, there'd already been plenty of books out
of Iraq and Afghanistan, from better writers and better soldiers than
me. Speculative defence, on the other hand, our efforts to prepare
for war with the unknown: that was untouched – and as modern as you
could get. A couple of years with XCOM, I thought, and the book
would be all but written: complete with internal bureaucracy,
international tensions, crackpot theories et al. I had the
name and everything: SPACE MARINE: The men and women defending you
from what you don't know is out there, and neither do we.
Maybe it was a
little clunky.
They
were out there,
though, and we certainly didn't know about them. But they knew about
us.
The first alien
attacks on civilians began in February, but they'd already torn
through XCOM by then. Bases the world over, gutted from the inside
out. I have the black boxes in my office – they're difficult to
watch.
We were very lucky.
Our base, built into a hillside near the village of Knowle, Devon,
in the UK, had not yet been completed. Construction of the base was
concealed by a major new windfarm project on the crown of the hill,
and progress was being repeatedly interrupted by the lobbying of
local NIMBYs. Not yet up to spec, we weren't on any of the official
records – the only thing, I think, which saved us from the alien
sneak attack.
All the brass are
dead, killed in the US and Asia. We've got some engineers, some
scientists who were here to oversee facility installation; we've
soldiers and some birds, but that's it. XCOM was meant to be the
world's first line defence against the unknown, an international
initiative to protect the Earth. Now we're it's only hope, and we're
down to a single, half-specced stronghold.
When the Council of Nations activated the Project, I didn't have the heart to tell them. They were always kept in the dark about our full capabilities, for security reasons (little good it did us), so they'll never know the difference. As it is, we're the only thing standing in the way of total panic.
When the Council of Nations activated the Project, I didn't have the heart to tell them. They were always kept in the dark about our full capabilities, for security reasons (little good it did us), so they'll never know the difference. As it is, we're the only thing standing in the way of total panic.
But the truth is,
we're undermanned, outgunned, and fighting an enemy about which we
know next to nothing. Of the whole squad I sent to investigate an
alien incursion in Germany, only one man came back alive.
And
there's the rub. I sent.
I am the highest ranked commanding officer to survive, and it has
been my duty to take command, whether I like it or not.
I guess I'll have a
lot to write about.
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