Part 3: The Target

  LK-1132-0082 walked into the briefing room 45 minutes after the team had landed. She had a frustrated look on her face as she entered the small room with long rectangle table on the opposite end of the room and a single small round table in the middle. “Sorry maintenance wanted to run some tests,” announced the pilot with and edge of irritation in her voice as the door slammed closed behind her. Her voice caused the other members to glance up at her for a second before returning to what they had been doing. The director that had escorted the rest of the team to the room was not in the room, making it clear the pilot missed the brief. Squad leader AZ-1030-1221 motioned the pilot over to the small round table with a swift gesture of his muscular arm. He, 4423, and 1767 were standing around the elaborate wooden table with a boxy metal holographic device in the middle that was projecting several images, a video, and paragraphs of information several feet into the air at the same time. Walking over to the table the pilot’s eyes grew big as she was able to make out the images of the subject that the holograms were focused on.

Before she could speak 1221 said in his gruff voice, “This is the target, our mission is to capture it.” He then touched the holographic video rewinding it to display a helmet camera video that showed the alien’s brilliant energy attacks disarming of an entire squad of soldiers at once. The image focused on the alien as she approached the soldiers after her attacks had burned through the personal shields and coil rifles the soldiers were using on the eurians.

“She looks almost human,” said the baffled pilot. Just then the alien spoke to the soldiers in the videos making the pilot exclaim, “She can speak terran! Where did she come from?” The pilot leaned in to inspect the image closer, while everyone stared at her silently.

1221 sighed in irritation at 0082’s interest in the alien as 4423 answered her question in his monotone voice, “We do not know where she comes from. This is the first and only encounter with her species.” 4423’s glaze turned from 0082 to their leader, whose hand was covering his face at this point.

The pilot cocked her head to the side as she inspected the images of the alien. She suddenly thought out loud, “She is beautiful in a strange way… she makes me think of one of those creatures of fantasy… one with the long ears.” The pilot then pulled out her PDD and started to use it to look up the name of the fantasy creatures the alien reminded her of.

1221 dropped his hand from his face for as he said with a frustrated voice, “It is dangerous, it effortlessly disarmed an entire security force team, and it could have easily killed them.” The leader then took a deep breathe before continuing in a calm serious tone, “SyCorp doesn’t care how we capture it, as long as the alien isn’t killed or too badly damaged in the process. They made it clear if we kill it, we will never recover from the failure. We are only allowed to use the special issue non-lethal weapons on this mission, “said 1221 motioning over to the rectangular table off to the side of the room that had several compact rifles on it. The team’s sniper, 6132, and heavy weapons expert, 9123, where inspecting the weapons and both of them seemed less than pleased with them.

“Why are we capturing her?” asked 0082 as she glanced up at 1221 for a second before returning to her PDD.

“Research and development wants to study it,” replied 1221 without hesitation.

“To study what makes her able to use those abilities. I would guess that both her unique energy manipulation skills mixed with her human like appearance have peaked the interest of company’s geneticists,” added 1767 confidently, his words dancing off his tongue as he spoke while his arms laid crossed on his chest.

1221 nodded toward 1767 to agree with his assessment and then added, “We are currently on alert status. We need to be able to launch within an hour of an alert if the target is found. Command is hoping the eurian’s semiannual rituals they preform around this time will draw out the target.”

“I still say we set a trap by attacking an eurian village and wait for her to come to their defense like we saw here,” said the cold heartless voice of 6132 as he motioned toward the video.

“That is the backup plan, I would prefer to catch her when she is not ready for a fight,” said 1221 as he glanced over at the sniper who had disassembled one of their dart launching weapons.

“Elf… that is what she kind of looks like… the ears at least,” suddenly added the pilot as she held up her PDD to the hologram to compare the two. 4423 at this point had taken control of the hologram and was slowly going through each frame inspecting the alien’s attack on the soldiers. When 0082 held up her PDD, he glanced at it then the hologram before nodding at 0082 in agreement. He then returned his focus to the slowly playing video.

“Either way the brief is over, I recommend everyone getting some food and rest. We need to be ready to move at any moment,” said the squad’s leader ignoring 0082’s attempts to compare the alien to a creature of fantasy.

9123 nodded her head and walked over to 0082 and put a hand on her shoulder before saying, “Let’s go get some food.” 0082 shook her head as she tried to showed 9123 the PDD. The older woman watched 6132 walk out of the room with his weapon before glancing at the PDD as she asked, “Why are you all so interested in this alien?”

“Studying the target, trying to figure out how it might think so I can try to predict its actions,” said 4423 his dull voice failing to reflect any interest in his self-imposed task.

“It’s an alien, save your time, we will not be able to understand it,” said 1221’s rough voice as he turned toward the door. “If you do happen to discover any interesting information let me know,” ordered the leader as he walked out of the room.  

“What are you trying to figure out exactly?” inquired the team’s medic as he looked over at the team’s second in command. 1767 stared at the other man then the hologram to try in figure out what was interesting the man about this alien.

“Why it did not kill its enemies? Looking at its attack, it could have easily wiped out the squad instead of just destroying their weapons. They were slaughtering its allies, but it still did not kill the soldiers,” said 4423 neither his voice nor his face showing any curiosity, but it was clear he was by the words he spoke.

“Likely she does not like killing,” replied 1767 his voice filled with sincere consideration of the question. “I would not assume she will stick to those beliefs once we try to capture her. Like a cornered animal she will likely lash out in desperate self-protection when we try to take her down. Considering her level of power, I would recommend against making her feel cornered at any time. When we capture her, maybe you should ask her why she did not kill those security guards,” added the man his voice transforming to a casual almost mocking tone as he finished the last sentence.

“Capturing her without cornering her might be tough,” said 0082 looking up at the medic. The medic was looking at the other members of the team as he propped himself up with arms firmly braced against the table.

“Well if those pieces of junk do as advertised and, the drugs work. She will only realize she is cornered when she is drifting off into a drug induced sleep. Can we discuss this over a hot meal? I want to eat something other than a MRE,” added the tall brown haired woman impatiently as she looked toward the door longingly.

“Sure why not,” replied 1767 casually as he stood up straight. 0082 nodded in response as she continued to stare at the alien. 4423 turned off the hologram device by pressing on a small black button on the base of the metal device casing diverting 0082’s attention back toward her friend behind her. The four then left the room in order to search for food while discussing the alien.

As the Acquisition Team waited for the alert to call them into action, they studied the environment, discussed tactics for capturing the target, prepared and trained with their new equipment, and assisted the local SyCorp security forces. Free time was a waste of SyCorp resources, and was not tolerated for any of the company’s clone soldiers so the team kept themselves useful at all times.

In the meantime, SyCorp unmanned drones scoured the skies above the forests of Eur. The thick forest canopies and size of the forest make acquisition of the target difficult. However these drones were in constant patrol in SyCorp controlled territory as their mechanical “eyes” searched the alien surface below at all hours of the day and night.  

Six days and eight hours after landing on Eur, the members of the Acquisition team were alerted and within 37 minutes their Succubus’ quad engines were coming to life as the team loaded up fully equipped for the operation. A drone monitoring a growing Eurian gathering had spotted the target. Its powerful camera allowed spotted the target as it joined the celebrating Eurian.

The hidden landing bay’s doors opened, the roar of engines intensified as the transport, call sign Ghost 09 for this mission, quickly climbed into the air. The team onboard were double checking their equipment when a male command and control agent came over their helmet’s transmitters, “Acquisition Team Nine, your updated SITREP and ROEs are as follows; Target is surrounded by Eurians. You are allowed to engage the Eurians at will, but remember to conserve sleeper darts for the target. If the situation gets hot, GHOST 09 is cleared weapons hot to engage the Eurians, but you will not fire on any hostile within 30 meters of the target or the target itself. Remember killing target will result in complete failure. Good hunting.”  As the transmission ended the noise dampeners kicked in reducing the powerful engine’s whines to murmur as they rotated into forward flight mode in less than a second. The team members tried to commit the situation report and rules of engagement to memory as the transport started forward toward their target. A red timer over the ramp and door spat out in big red numbers that showed they had less than twenty minutes until they would be engaging the target. The hunt was on…