Diane Duane: X-COM: UFO Defense

Other things still needed doing, too. She wanted to build more hangar space. She also needed more research space. One of her people was doing really sterling work on Ethereals, and other scientists from all over were fighting to come work for him, but she had nowhere to put them. They needed more containment space for captured aliens, too. She sighed. A commander’s work is never done…

Until you get something like this.

She stared at the paper. The next paragraph said:

YOU ARE ALSO REQUIRED TO DELEGATE LOCAL AUTHORITY TO YOUR STAFF AS NECESSARY SOONEST PURSUANT TO YOUR IMMEDIATE RELOCATION TO SWITZERLAND FOR LOCATION SCOUTING AND BEGINNING CONSTRUCTION ON NEW MAJOR BASE. PLANNING PARAMETERS REQUIRE NEW BASE TO BE SITED AND ESTABLISHED WITHIN TWO MONTHS.

Jonelle swore softly and opened one of her desk drawers, where she felt around for a spare dart. It was all her own fault, of course. She had complained, privately to Ari, and more publicly in reports to Central, that the base at M’goun was insufficient to handle terror attacks in central and northern Europe. Granted, attacks down this way had fallen off somewhat after the base got its mindshield in. But Europe had been heating up, and her teams were badly stretched getting up there in time to do anything useful. Yes, she knew how badly the Frankfurt and Moskva bases had just been hit, but it was hardly fair for M’goun to hold the bag for two continents at once. It barely had enough resources for North Africa.

And here was her answer, in black and white. Central had listened to her. She swore again. “Save us from bureaucrats with ears,” she muttered, “and brains. Two months! Two goddam months’ She sighted on the picture of the former base commander, let fly, and hit him unerringly in the nose.

This is my reward, for being right, Jonelle thought bitterly. For getting this job done correctly, and whipping this place into shape. It was just beginning to work smoothly, things were settling down, it’s not fair.

And I hate the cold!

She got out another dart. “If I ever meet you in the flesh,” she said conversationally to the picture, “you’d better pray there’s nothing sharp nearby.”

In her ear, someone said, “Twenty Mutons dead.”

“Twenty!”

“We were busy.”

Jonelle nodded. Her teams had learned good habits. Or simply relearned them. Either way, they were doing their jobs. She felt sure that some of the tension she had felt when she first came to M’goun was attributable to a lot of people feeling that they weren’t doing their jobs, weren’t being pushed past their own fears by a commander who knew what they were all there for: defending the Earth as though every battle was the last one. Any single, chance skirmish or interception could be the hidden turning point that would make all the difference to the planet’s survival. The teams were missing that vital sense that they made a difference in what was going on. There had been resistance to Jonelle’s pushing, at first, though not from the people who counted. Ari, in particular, had listened to some of Jonelle’s more savage pep talks, to her flying and fighting teams and had come away with an expression of silent, grim approval, the look of a man who has wanted to say something similar to his teams for a long time, but has lacked the support from Higher Up. That support, Jonelle knew, meant everything to a base. A base with a lackadaisical boss gets nothing done, loses its purpose…dies under stupid circumstances.

Whatever happens, that’s not going to happen to my people.

But, oh God, who the hell am I going to leave in charge here?

And then, in her earpiece, the scream. Very close. And another sound, a kind of shocked grunt: Ari. The sound she had heard him make when surprised or badly hurt. Silence—

—followed by an explosion that blew the connection dead.

Jonelle sat very still behind her desk for a few seconds. The connection did not come back. “Joel?” she said.

“Lost it, Boss.”

“All right,” she said, as though nothing was the matter. “Reestablish when you can. Call down to the library—I need some maps. Europe, at one to fifty-thousand, and some big-scale ones of Switzerland. One to ten-thousand, if they’ve got them.”

“Right, Boss,” Joel said, very softly, and cut the connection.

Jonelle laid aside the second dart, felt around for a pen, turned over that piece of paper, and very deliberately started to make two lists. One was a list of people she would take with her when she left—tomorrow, or the next day—for Switzerland. The other was a list of officers who might be trusted to take over the handling of Irhil M’goun while she was away.

She started to put Ari’s name on the first list. Jonelle stopped, looked at it, and at the second list. Then she most deliberately put them both aside and started to make a third one, a list of projects for her new sub-commander to start work on at M’Goun. There’s going to be a lot to do here, she thought, and ignored the way her eyes were starting to sting.

The light was everywhere. For a moment there wasn’t anything else, just that and the heat, a great wash of it, and a smell of hot stone and cloth and metal singeing. Ari blinked, trying to figure out which way he was facing. Up? Down? He still couldn’t see.

Something grabbed him from behind. He struggled briefly, but then got a glimpse of the right color for an armored suit: Paula, of course. She was yelling, “Get the Chryss! Get it!”

Ari blinked hard, able to see some shapes and movement now, though not much of it in the dimness. One of Paula’s other armored people—probably Matt—must have been carrying a rocket launcher with an incendiary round loaded. “What the hell was he thinking of letting it off at such close range—”

“Better fried than wind up as a host for one of those, Boss,” Paula said. Ari looked around and saw what she meant. The blackened, burnt shape that had been poor Doris before a Chryssalid got her now lay on the cobbles, straining and squirming like a horrible pupa of some giant moth. The seared skin split with a sound like tearing paper. In a shower of thin, serous fluid and boiled blood, out burst another crablike Chryssalid, young and hungry. Snarling, its claws snapping, it jumped right for Paula. It never saw Matt, standing off to one side with something a little more suitable than a rocket launcher. The smaller autocannon incendiary rounds hit the monster, stitching it in four or five places in front. So many of them hit it so close together that a pyrophoric reaction began. The Chryssalid simply burst into one hot flame, burnt fiercely for a moment, and then blew itself to pieces, the pressure of the interior organs shattering the fire-damaged carapace outward.

The fumes and smoke choked Ari for a moment while he shook loose of Paula. “Thanks,” he said.

“Hey, think nothing of it,” Paula said as the rest of the team gathered around, all looking rather scorched around the edges but otherwise none the worse for wear. “What now, Boss?”

“Let’s go help the others. They’re working up toward the top of the piazza. Any more Chryssalids behind us?” Ari looked back the way Doris had come.

“Don’t think so,” Paula said, though she sounded doubtful. She was plainly thinking what Ari was: none of them knew how or when the Chryssalid had hit Doris.

“We’ll find out in a few days,” Ari said, grim. “Meanwhile we’ve got other problems. Plenty of our cuddly little friends up that way at the moment, and I want to make a clean sweep of them.”

“Wouldn’t mind some more light,” Paula muttered as they headed around the corner and into the square.

Ari grinned and gestured to Matt, who picked up Ari’s heavy-plasma weapon from where it had fallen and tossed it to him. “I’ve got an idea about that,” he said. “You guys stay close to me. See the big church up top there? That’s where I’m headed.”