Chapter 31

Year 3, Day 342, Alexandria, Virginia, Earth 29 (Codename Stalingrad)

It was the middle of a dark and wet night when Alexander faded back into reality. He felt naked without his armour, dressed only in dark normal clothing, he didn't even have a blaster-rifle, only a pair of vibroblades and a small hold-out blaster pistol. His advisors had argued that showing up in full armour with enough firepower to slag a mechanized infantry division would send the wrong message, and he'd reluctantly agreed.

He reached up and gently touched the small silver device on the right side of his neck. The XCOM sourced mind-shields still creeped him out. He remembered his first instructions on delivering them to the ESRO; "Rip it apart, down to the monocular level if you have to, until you find the bomb, because I guarantee you there will be something nasty in there" And he was right, while it wasn't an explosive, the mind shields did contain sophisticated malware capable of calling home and granting remote access to XCOM. Alexander supposed it was prudent of them, but it still annoyed him, he didn't put any time-bombs in his half of the trade.

Alexander pouted thinking about how he'd been harangued by his 'loyal advisors' over his poor bartering skills; couldn't they see he got what he wanted, though he admitted he might have overpaid a little.

Shaking his head, Alexander focused on his mission, it had been proven time and again that LVIOS' stealth functions weren't the most reliable of the capabilities that the God-Machine possesed.

According to the recon he'd performed earlier in the day, there should only be a handful of guards patrolling the large house that housed his target, but they were trained professional, Secret Service agents, and he didn't want to get shot because he got sloppy.

Waiting for one of the agents to finish their circuit of the grounds and head inside the house proper, Alexander ghosted in behind the man, before turning off and heading towards the east wing of the house. It was a nice house, over a century old and elegantly decorated; a painting caught Alexander's eye and he paused for a moment to make a note of it, it was of a Napoleonic era warship firing a broadside, he'd have to see about picking up a copy from another universe when he got a chance.

Alexander pulled up short when he reached his target's bedroom, checking for guards, before gently turning the doorknob and slipping into the room. His target was sleeping alone tonight, his wife was out of town at some event or other, he didn't recall what exactly, and that was why Alex had picked that night for his mission. Well that and the fact time was running out, his mission to the Kromagg world hadn't provided much in the way of updated intelligence on their timetable, or rather it had, but Alexander doubted its continued accuracy given he'd managed to trash their military HQ.

The man on the bed was dressed in flannel pajamas, that make Alexander's life easier, he didn't need to wait for him to get dressed. Stepping next to the bed Alexander made a final check before putting his hand over his target's mouth and holding a finger to his own lips as the man startled awake.

"Shhh, I'm not going to hurt you," Alexander whispered, "if I take my hand away will you stay quiet?"

The man's eyes were wild as he looked around the room for his security, before he regained his calm and nodded, eyes narrowed at Alexander who removed his hand and took a step back.

"Who are you?" the man on the bed asked in a quiet voice.

"My name is Lord Alexander Harlow, and I'm hear to save your world" Alexander said, reaching out to grab the man's shoulder at the same time he activated a transit marco.

***

John Archer, fifty three year old former US Navy Aviator and current Secretary of Agriculture for the Unite States government swore like the sailor he once was as he suddenly found himself laying flat on damp grass. He jumped to his feet and rounded on his aducture and was about to start laying into him when he stopped dead.

He was standing on a clifftop, in the middle of the day when only moments ago it was night, but what really stunned him was the three suns high in the sky.

"I'm sorry for doing it this way" His abductor said suddenly, jerking him back to reality, "but there really isn't much time"

"What's going on?" Archer demanded.

"That's a long story" The man said, he was tall, with a serious face and brown hair cut close to his head, a large jaggard nose was his most prominent feature. "Why don't we sit down and I'll explain?" He said, and John noticed for the first time they weren't alone, there were two men dressed in suits standing next to a large wooden table that was covered with papers.

***

An hour later Archer felt like his entire world was exploding around him, and if what these strangers were saying was accurate it wasn't far from the truth either.

"Why me?" He asked after a time of silence.

"Your position" His abductor, Lord Alexander, said curtly.

"What? You need corn to fight them?" John asked incredulously.

One of the advisors, Clayworth, shook his head, "I wish matey, I wish, no, it was considered that you were high enough to a good contact, but not high enough to have a watcher on you"

Archer scowled, "My job might not be as dramatic as State or the DOD but it is important"

Alexander laughed, "Of course it is, vitally so, you can't do shit without food after all"

Clayworth nodded, "Aye, but they've got limited resources on your world, out of operational requirements if not any logistical reason, if they slapped a minder on every high official they up the chances of discovery, no they'll have limited themselves to keeping tabs on a few 'key' players"

Archer nodded slightly, it made sense, and it explained a lot of things that had happened over the last few years, diplomatic incidents that seemingly blew up out of nowhere, political scandals showing up almost every few weeks, companies and countries doing things that made no sense.

"Where do we go from here?" He asked.

Alexander smiled, "Well, here is what we were thinking..."

***

Excerpt from Alexander Harlow's Personal Journal. Year 3, Day 356, Solitude, Terra Prime

I hadn't thought it was possible to hate the Kromaggs anymore than I already did, but at this moment if I had access to a button that would wipe them from existence, everywhere, I'd push it.

Since recruiting Archer I've been busy as hell, getting by on maybe three or four hours sleep a night. Between moving people to and from his world, acting as a show pony for people in different governments as they build up their own counter-infiltration forces, all on top of my normal administrative duties I'm almost at my wits ends.

The people at the ESRO really need to pull their thumbs out, if we don't get that sliding drive working soon I'm going to drop dead, enhanced body or not. I simply can't move enough material and people to make a difference in the time frame we've got. We stepped up our recruiting massively, Endeavour now boasts a population of three thousand working adults, but it's still not enough. No where near enough.

Our production lines are managing to churn out maybe a half dozen mind shields a day, and we were lucky to get that many, if it wasn't for all the people we'd started training to produce energy weapons we'd be really screwed, but it's not even a drop in the bucket of what we need. I ever swallowed my pride and asked the FSU people for help; I had to make some serious concessions, but it's going to be months before they can start making them.

On the plus side Archer has managed to get in contact with people in a few major governments; so far we've got people in Russia, France, and the UK, along with a few other minor players, still no joy on China, Pakistan, or India though, which is a bitch because we really need to lock down the nuclear powers.

We unmasked one Kromagg operative, well Antaros Westriver and his people managed to track down one. I'm starting to think that man might have some psychic gift, because for a former roman slave he's scarcely good at blending into more contemporary societies. Three years ago he didn't even know what a computer was, now he can give me a run for my money, and started with my first when I was five years old.

Granted he has some major advantages, the SWU computers we have can make mincemeat of NSA level encryption in seconds. That's how they managed to find our Kromagg, they did a check on a bunch of newer employees in various government services, starting at the top, and found a man working in the White House, of all bloody places, as a page that simply didn't exist before five years ago.

Oh his electronic records were perfect, and there was even a paper trail for him, but Antaros went the extra mile and found the insertion point by checking against backups, something I never even considered because of the sheer amount of computation required. I guess I spent too much time using contemporary tech, Antaros didn't have my blind points and realised he could do it quickly.

Then again he wasn't the one who had to make sixteen god-damn trips to carry all the crap required to do it.

We haven't done anything to the Kromagg spy, we're pretty sure he's a human operative, hoping instead to track him back to his handlers, or maybe using him to feed bad intel to his higher ups.

Mark shot down my idea of buying time, and I'm half relieved actually, I wasn't looking forward to nuking a half dozen Kromagg worlds, killing billions of human slaves doesn't sit well with me. Though I'm working on a back up plan if we need to stall their invasion, I'm thinking a few gigaton enhanced EMP devices detonated in low orbit over their major military worlds might mess up a few plans.