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trbl-will-find-me · 7 years ago

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Every Exit, An Entrance (13/?)

There are two (and only two) possibilities: either she led XCOM to victory and they are now engaged in a clean up operation of alien forces, or XCOM was overrun, clearing the way for an alien-controlled puppet government to seize control of the planet.

She’d really like to figure out which it is, but asking hardly seems the prudent option.

Read from the beginning here

She watches from behind glass as three sealed containers are loaded off the Skyranger by technicians in hazmat suits. Shen had pushed his team hard to complete the isolation labs ahead of schedule, and she’s grateful. She’s hoping with Vahlen’s own insatiable curiosity propelling the research team, they might soon have some answers.

Her tablet beeps and she cringes; her most recent requests have fallen on deaf ears, and she doesn’t foresee a different outcome for this latest one.

Officially, XCOM has no authority to examine the medical records of civilians. It also lacks the authority to order medical quarantines, exams, or procedures. She herself had insisted on that very protection; giving an international black ops military organization that much sway over civilian lives seemed a set up for an egregious abuse of power.

She stands by that decision, but right now, she’d give her left arm to have made a different one.

She’d like to say she can’t blame the Council nations for refusing to intervene; they have a duty to protect their citizens’ privacy, a duty she’d like to think they take seriously. The whole of human history, however, tells her that it is less about governments acting for the greater good, and more about punitive bullshit.

Central has always been the better diplomat, the one with a gift for defusing tensions and parrying concerns. His edges have never been as rough as hers, his tongue not quite as sharp. She thinks, not for the first time, that he should have taken Commanding Officer when the role was offered to him.

She finally checks her tablet, pulling up the notifications. The Australian government has predictably denied her request. She huffs a sigh, and darkens the screen. She’s going to need coffee if she intends to make it through this shift.

She wakes to the sound of someone knocking at her door. When she opens it, Wallace is there, face drawn.

Oh no.

“Ma’am, um,” he breathes. “Dr. Tygan sent me up. He wanted me to tell you that Asha’s … She’s not going to be with us a lot longer.”

She nods. “Thanks, Wallace. I’ll get a hold of him.”

She screws her eyes shut after she watches him go. She remembers how to do this all too well.

She’d gotten more than her fair share of practice writing condolences during the invasion. Sorry, I didn’t see the alien coming. Sorry, I was sure someone else would make the shot. Sorry, I screwed up and got your loved one killed. Yes, the words themselves are prettier, more eloquent, but the sentiment is always the same.

“Tygan,” she says, pressing a finger to her comm.”Someone with her?”

“Krieger is, ma’am.”

“Alright,” she sighs. “You have any idea what happened?”

“I can only speculate, Commander.”

“Shoot.”

“Epidural hematoma --- a kind of bleeding between the skull and the outer lining of the nervous system.”

“Jesus. Alright, keep me updated.”

She reaches for her tablet, moving Krieger to inactive status. Death bed vigils aren’t the kind of thing you cycle back onto duty in the aftermath of. She knows there is no way to quantify the emotional labor the specialist has undertaken, or its particular toll.

She reaches for a pad of paper and a pen. Even after all this time, it still feels strange to write directly onto a tablet. It is too removed, too impersonal. Her words stare back at her, blinking and ephemeral. There is no time to think, only the demand to produce, to put the right words in the right order. Pen and paper has always been more forgiving in that regard, more patient and less strident. Make the marks, and think. Cross your words out. Rewrite them. Scratch out six different attempts and then scratch them all out in the hope that you’ll find something meaningful, something that doesn’t sound so hollow, something better than I’m sorry because, god, if that isn’t the worst cliché.

Everyone’s sorry, she thinks. I’m sorry. Tygan’s sorry. The man in the moon is sorry. At the end of the day, it doesn’t change anything. It’s as empty a platitude as anything else.

But it is the best she can offer.

The best, she thinks, bitterly. What a joke. What an empty superlative. You did your best when the aliens first landed, and it wasn’t enough. XCOM still fell and the governments of earth still collapsed. We’re still facing a battle of unfathomable odds. You did your best today --- there are still whole families waiting to be buried and Gunda still lays dying. Best, best, best, but what good did it really do? Does it matter if nothing changes? It’s a word, a concept without any real meaning, the thing you tell yourself at night when those sneaking suspicions you’d prefer to ignore grow too loud to avoid

She thinks of Strike One, of Hershel and Molchetti, of Royston and Martin and Bernard; of Raymond Shen and Moira Vahlen; of Gunda and the civilians. Her best had not been enough to save any of them.

She shrugs on a fleece and makes her way through the ship, through engineering, down the ramp, and out into the night air. She settles on one of the rocks and draws a matchbook from her pocket, reigniting the camp fire.

It’s a slow process, a frustrating one. She throws each failed attempted into the flames, taking some perverse satisfaction in the way the offending papers blacken and burn.

The sun rises halfway through draft number seven. Her twelfth draft roasts away on the flames as night shift changes to morning. After twenty-three drafts, she has run out of paper and douses the flames before returning to the ship.

She is on comms duty when Tygan’s voice sounds in her ear. “She’s passed, Commander.”

She can feel tears well behind her eyes and a lump grow in her throat. “Did she suffer?”

“Not as far as I can tell."

She swallows hard. “Thanks, Doctor. I’ll let the rest of the crew know.”

Digging the heels of her hands into her eyes, she draws in a deep breath, trying to regain her rapidly slipping composure. “Attention, all hands,” she says, pressing the comm in her ear. She can hear the tears at the edge of her voice, and wishes she could keep them at bay. “We just lost Asha. There’ll be a memorial at nineteen hundred local tonight.” She draws another shuddering breath. “I know this is hard, but try to push through. It’s a big ask, I know, but we have to find some way to finish this first. We’ve got people counting on us.”

She scrubs at her eyes, and tries to focus on the task at hand. Vaguely, she hopes her twenty-fourth attempt at a letter will go better.

��Commander,” Central’s voice cuts in, quiet. “What are we doing about burial?”

She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to remember Gunda’s personnel file. “The haven where her family lives is still standing, isn’t it? We’ll finish what we need to do to get into the black site, and then take her home.”

“And in the meantime?”

She sighs. “I don’t like doing it, but Tygan’s cold storage is no different than a mortuary freezer.”

“You’re gonna put her with those things?”

“I don’t like it either, but if it means giving her family a chance to say goodbye, then yes.”

“Understood,” he says, voice clipped.

What do you want me to do? She feels like asking him. What would be enough? Do you want me to bury her here, surrounded by strangers? Do you want me to order Tygan to dump his samples? What do I have to do to make you see that I’m trying? Tell me.

She shakes her head. Won’t help anyone, she tells herself. And it won’t bring her back.

“I realize this makes me an enormous hypocrite,” she says, handing him a cup of coffee, “but I kind of wish I hadn’t insisted on such strict limitations on civilian access.”

He takes the cup from her, shaking his head. “Not a hypocrite, just frustrated.”

“It was the right thing to do, but god, did I hobble us when it comes to research this time around.”

“You were expecting Council support. We didn’t realize how unrealistic that would be until we were in the thick of things.”

“I don’t even need identifying data, you know. I just. I need blood samples. I didn’t think it would be this hard. It’s not like we’re asking for money this time.”

“It’s about power,” he tells her.

Even in hushed tones, it’s a stupid discussion to be having in Mission Control. Technically, outside of personnel quarters and her office, everything they say or do is liable to be recorded and reviewed by the Council in the event of an inquiry. They are already playing fast and loose in their subterfuge. There’s no need to add to the risk.

He quickly seems to come to the same realization, settling his hand on the small of her back, and leading her towards the hallway, all the while making some excuse about expansions to the Skyranger hangar. He maneuvers them deftly through the halls, stopping at her office door, and waiting as she unlocks it. She’s momentarily disappointed when his hand drops back to his side, but chases the feeling from her mind. Really? She chides herself. That’s what you’re thinking about?

He settles into a chair and waits for her to close the door. “I have samples coming for you.”

“What?” She asks, turning to face him. “How?”

He offers her a small grin. “I have ways.”

“This is one of those situations where I’m better off not knowing the details, isn’t it?”

Bradford nods. “Plausible deniability.”

She settles into her own chair, learning her elbows on the desk. “I thought we were done with cloak and dagger after we dealt with EXALT.”

“Another day, another challenge.”

She shrugs. “Welcome to XCOM, I guess.”

He chuckles. “Chin up, Regan. Comms have been quiet.”

She sighs. “Yeah, but when comms were chatty, we knew what to expect. We didn’t like it, but aside from that little incident with Molchetti, there haven’t been surprises in a long time. I can’t shake the feeling we’re in for a bad one.”

“It might just be combat stress talking, Lizzie.”

“You really think so?”

“Do you want an honest answer?”

“Always.”

His face falls. “Probably not. If you’re right, I don’t think we’re gonna like what we find when we crack the Fog Pods open.”

She buries her face in her hands. “Shen and Vahlen are predicting two weeks for a complete initial analysis. That’ll put us just before Christmas.”

“You’re worried there’ll be trouble.”

“With the way the energy spikes are picking up, and with how quiet things have been, it’d be a hell of a way to re-emerge.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t think we can go to the Council. Not without solid evidence, and even then, I’m not sure that would be enough.”

“Strike One’s still on standby.”

She nods. “And we’ve got air and satellite coverage across the globe. We’re as prepared as we can be. I just wish it felt like it. Thank you,” she adds, after a moment. “For having my back through all of this.”

“I’m just doing my job.”

“It’s a little more than that.”

“If I can take some of the stress off of you,” he says, standing. “It’s worth it. I’ll be in Mission Control, if you need anything.”

Just you, she thinks.

There are not many possibilities that give her pause these days, not after the sights they have seen and the horrors they have survived, but the possibility of a Council inquiry, and the resulting court martial proceedings she suspects would follow, leave her with a sick pit in her stomach.

Could you speculate on Central Officer Bradford’s motives? She imagines them asking.

He believed me. He believed in me.

The past tense of the sentence stirs an ache in her chest, something on her periphery that she’s tried to forget.

He still believes in you, says a voice that both is and isn’t her own.

She shakes her head. You’re being ridiculous. There’s nothing to suggest the Council even knows something’s afoot. You weren’t prohibited from contacting non-Council nations. You weren’t prohibited from obtaining a Fog Pod. You’ve done nothing to violate the explicit terms of the charter.

But subterfuge is subterfuge, and she can’t imagine the Council would appreciate their authority being so flagrantly undermined. She led XCOM to this place and he followed her, confident in her ability to play the game. If she falters now, if she fails, she’ll have dragged him into the fallout right beside her, implicated him in whatever punishment should be hers and hers alone.

The thought absolutely terrifies her.

#xcom #fic #every exit an entrance #commander/central

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trbl-will-find-me · 7 years ago

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Every Exit, An Entrance 4/?

She’d really like to figure out which it is, but asking hardly seems the prudent option.

In nine months, they have broken protocol once and only once, and even then, she’d argue extraordinary circumstances absolved them.

They had transgressed far more egregiously in the process of building XCOM. There were the little things, like the drawer in his dresser she’d claimed as her own, that they could pass off as matters of efficiency, practicality. Then, there are the incidents that are harder to ignore: November in Zurich, August in Rome, and of course, June in Berlin.

So, by comparison, they have behaved with absolute professionalism.

Time and place, she tells herself. Get through the clean up, deal with the Council, and you can deal with it then.

“Commander,” Shen’s voice crackles over the comm, snapping her from her thoughts. “Looks like we’ll be on target to deliver the new Firestorms by the end of the month.”

“Seems like that new art inspired the whole team. Give your daughter our thanks.”

The engineer chuckles. “I’m sure she’ll be pleased.”

“And so will Europe and Africa. Good work, Doctor.”

She breathes a small sigh of relief. Firestorms are bargaining chips --- good bargaining chips. Even if the plans were released, the crafts are still to resource-heavy to be built by a single member nation, and without Shen’s expertise, they’re far too difficult.

Even then, Shen’s brilliance hadn’t spared them a rocky first construction. Between salvaging enough parts and learning to negotiate the alien machinery, there had been more mishaps, accidents, and notably, explosions originating in engineering than anyone had thought possible. They’re all fortunate the fire containment system is well-maintained.

She shakes her head, smiling to herself, and turns her attention back to the tracking terminal in front of her. The skies are quiet, but they’ve begun to detect strange energy readings from cities that had previously been sites of alien incursions. Something is nagging at the back of her mind, something she’s forgotten, something that she hopes this might snap back into focus.

Her fear, her greatest fear, is another ambush, a new landing of alien forces even stronger than the ones they have already seen. She fears being overwhelmed, unable to defend effectively against an invader whose technological prowess still greatly outstrips their own. It is why the psi ops still train, why the lab has nearly free reign to pursue more in-depth analyses of recovered artifacts, and why she intends to have global Firestorm coverage by the end of February. She just has to keep the Council off their tail long enough to make it happen.

The energy reading flashes across her screen, but it’s gone too quickly for their recon network to pinpoint a location beyond the most general level. Asia, she thinks. Good. Very helpful. Not like Asia’s huge, or anything.

Still, she sets her datapad on the console and opens the media aggregator. Scanning the headlines, she’s at a loss to find anything out of the ordinary. Even a more detailed search of side stories fails to add anything to the puzzle. Whatever’s happening, it’s not a problem yet.

“Commander,” Vahlen’s voice sounds in her ear. “We’ve completed the protein analysis of the carapace armor. We believe we may be able to resynthesize it in a flexible form, but we’ll need more time.”

“Excellent, Doctor. Thanks for the update. Keep working at it.”

“Understood.”

Moira Vahlen has always worried her. It’s not that she doubts the woman’s intelligence or capability, and certainly not her absolute dedication to her work, a passion bordering on reverence. Without her keen mind, they would never have made the kinds of gains that they had in the fight against the invaders. Still, her sheer delight in employing the interrogation device was unsettling to say the least.

“High intelligence, low wisdom,” Central once said to her when she’d expressed her misgivings.

“More like: high intelligence, wisdom is a dump stat.”

“That’s what they pay you for.”

She thinks back on that conversation more often than she would like to admit.

There are other worries, though. Allowing the men brief periods of leave to make their way through downtown Manhattan always has its risks, chief among them the risk of exposure. Kansas State provides a veneer of plausible deniability for the range of accents and languages, but one drink too many, and her soldiers are liable to expose them all with one too many tales told just a little too loudly. There is the matter of the Council and the research, a matter that eventually cost her her freedom.

And there is the fact that, at the end of the day, she’s forgotten how to relax. She doesn’t know what to do with herself if there’s not some crisis to respond to. She’s afraid she’ll lose her edge, go soft, and when something does happen, as she’s certain it will, she won’t be ready.

It’s not that she misses the invasion, not at all. She is grateful that the world is safe, for now, save for its own machinations. She is grateful to no longer sleep with the sounds of screaming in her ears, the images of soldiers and civilians alike cut down in their tracks by plasma weapons at best, a Berserker’s fists at worst.

But she can’t shake the feeling that this isn’t the end, that it isn’t over. This is a respite, a lull, and they’re wildly unprepared for what’s next. It’s just a feeling, of course. There is no evidence to back it, save for the energy readings and even she can admit those might be harmless anomaly.

That knowledge does nothing to soothe the pit in her stomach every time she wakes. Always with a start. Always with the feeling that something is wrong.

She knows she isn’t the only one the war has taken a toll on. She doesn’t see Hershel without medkits hanging from her belt, or Bernard without a shoulder holster. Martin’s reliance on Aleve to keep the headaches associated with suppressed psionic abilities is getting to be all too common knowledge. Even on the best of days, there’s a haunted look in Royston’s eye, something the Commander doubts will ever truly disappear.

Then there’s Central, whose smile is a little less easy, whose jokes have taken on a darker edge, who still thinks nothing of taking a double shift as insurance.

Yes, they’ve won the battle, no doubt, but they’ve all paid in blood.

And she can’t shake the sense that the real war is still coming.

Two days later, and he still isn’t speaking to her, outside of the most necessary interactions. They keep to separate shifts on the bridge, and he makes himself scarce when she’s out and about. He goes on a bender that leaves them low on liquor and Kelly breaking up ever escalating Royston-Bradford shouting matches.

She is lucky the crew has not followed his lead.

If anything, the men and women under her command have embraced her, adopted her as one of their own. She has been called on to mediate disputes about the world before ADVENT, to prove her worth at darts, to entertain them all with stories of their predecessors. She has had company at lunch and dinner, and more quietly proffered cups of coffee than she can count. In truth, she suspects Kelly and Royston of having more than a hand in the gestures, though she can only feel gratitude towards them for their efforts.

She is not alone.

Herlihy gets the debris cleared, making way for Rilke to start on the Proving Grounds facility. There is a minimum of difficulty, save for a few busted knuckles. Tygan and Shen come through with a means of contacting other Resistance cells, and they are off and running with some scavenged equipment, and a full facility next on the build queue. For being a week out of the tank, things are progressing well enough.

She is not sure whether she should take this as a sign of imminent danger. She has learned time and time again not to underestimate the aliens. If they could decimate the Kansas base, it is well within their power to rip the Avenger from the skies, to turn its crew on each other, to dash them into the ocean somewhere far from land --- or worse, into a city center.

She wakes one night to the roll of thunder and the patter of rain against the hull. She laces her boots and shrugs on a nylon shell, then makes her way out and down. She passes Royston, half asleep on a monitoring console, Central’s coat draped over her shoulders, likely by the man himself.

It is third shift and the ship is quiet. ROV-R chirps at her as she passes through engineering.

“I’ll be right back,” she says, as if the tiny robot might harbor concerns. “I just need a minute.”

Undeterred, it buzzes alongside her, hesitating only as she crosses to exit onto the ramp.

“I’ll be fine, ROV-R. Go back to Shen.”

After a moment’s thought, it pushes on at her side.

Gently, she lowers herself onto the deck of the ramp, the chill of the metal seeping through her pants. She pulls her knees towards her chest, wrapping her arms around them, and draws in a deep breath, enjoying the petrichor hanging heavy in the night air.

She tries not to focus on loss. It’s not productive, and it fails to take into account all of the good that still remains. She’s been freed from the aliens’ control, she’s been shown kindness, and she has capable senior staff. Save for the damnable headache, she’s in good health --- maybe even better than before she was taken. The memory of wires and needles blinks into existence, but she shakes her head, willing it away.

Not now. We’re not thinking about that now.

She scrubs at her eyes. The new crop of rookies is good – better than good, even. They’re brave and ferocious and dedicated, even if their aim does leave something to be desired. They know the odds, and yet, here they are. She is grateful for each and every one of them, for the sacrifice they are willing to make in the hopes of a better world.

She’s seen what happened to former XCOM personnel, at least insofar as Central’s been able to ascertain, thanks to the archives. Bernard was killed defending civilians outside of Nice six weeks after the base was attacked. Hershel and Molchetti took their own way out once ADVENT began seeking XCOM’s psionic operatives. Martin was captured, tortured and experimented on; the file on the incident is attached to his service record, but she’s had neither the heart nor the stomach to read it. Royston was the last surviving member of Strike One, working as a Resistance operative until the end. She’d been killed during a retaliation, though the wound had been suspiciously inconsistent with ADVENT’s weaponry. Her file notes she’d been tracking an informant; the Commander wonders if it’s the same one Sally had hunted.

She doesn’t want the new faces she’s surrounded by to meet the same ends.

Her train of thought is cut short by the sounds of rustling in the bushes not far from the ship and she realizes too late that she’s completely unarmed. ROV-R bobs overhead, his capacitors beginning to crackle in preparation for discharge. She imagines dying here, on the ramp of the Avenger, to some unknown thing in the dark because she was too stupid to remember a pistol; the idea probably shouldn’t make her laugh, but that’s what eeks out amidst the terror. She can’t move, she can’t yell, but she can sit and laugh at her own stupidity.

It is neither a ferocious animal nor a crazed madman that emerges from the bushes. It is not some lost ADVENT bastard, either. Instead, it is Krieger and Thomas, covered in dirt and leaves, one looking self-satisfied and the other underwhelmed. They both turn a bright shade of red upon noticing her, tripping over one another’s words to explain themselves.

She just shakes her head. “I didn’t see anything, and I don’t know anything. Though, I’d get back inside before you trip the perimeter alarm.”

She takes comfort in the fact that some things never change.

Lighting cleaves the sky in two and rain begins to pour slantwise onto the ramp. ROV-R nudges at her shoulder, the message clear: time to go inside. She pushes herself up slowly, reluctant to let the storm pass without an audience, simultaneously loath to leave and absolutely unwilling to traipse through the bridge soaking with rain water.

Outside of engineering, she pries off her boots, hoping to avoid making an excess of noise as she passes the bar. She has no idea where her XO is, but she’d prefer not to have a confrontation at this time of night. She makes it back to her quarters without incident, and drapes the shell over her desk chair, then slips off to sleep to the sounds of the storm.

#xcom #every exit an entrance #commander/central

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