Chapter one

Alexander Beagle looked towards the heavens, through the metal roof of the Skyranger, and prayed. He was by no means a believing man but for some reason it always helped calm his fraying nerves. He had always been afraid of heights and knowing about the three highly-unstable elerium generators sitting above his head did not help, nor did his aerophobia. Over eighty-seven tactical operations and he had still not gotten used to it. Well over two hundred hours. It was a miracle that no one had ever figured it out, but instead they had mistaken his discomforted features to be hard set determination.

It was why he had gained his reputation of an ironclad, confident, and near invincible commander. It was a reputation he liked and vigorously maintained around his troops and personnel. It had given him the respect he needed to keep X-com on its feet. His soldiers did not question his command even when each and everyone of them knew he commanded them to die… respected but not loved, a fact he did not mind, it was probably why he managed to weather all the losses, all the pain. The fact that his own troops kept a professional distance from him was probably a godsend. After five years each dead face was simply a faceless ghost, he could not remember them, and to be honest he did not want to either.

The Skyranger shook as it hit an especially nasty turbulence, shacking Alexander out of his melancholy thoughts. But it was not much of a relief as it only reminded him how high up in the air he was and how much potential explosives was too close for comfort.

"LZ's insight commander, going in for a landing." the 'ranger's pilot said over the comm.

'Thank god!' he whispered in relief, thankful that the VTOL's twin-engines drowned out his break of character.

"Understood, Ranger." He replied.

Alexander felt the Skyranger roll and pitch into a smooth and quick landing approach, again the feeling brought up old memories of the alien conflict.

Soon the 'ranger touched down with a metallic clank as its shock-absorbers stressed to its limits against the heavily armoured plane's weight. With practiced ease he unbuckled himself from his seat. The ramp detached with a low 'thunk' and cold air rushed inside as the air pressure equalized with the outside. The air condensed into a thick billowing mist as it met the 'ranger's own warm and pressurized air met the freezing one from outside.

The ramp lowered he looked out over his soldiers shoulders as they prepared to rush out to secure the landing zone. The ramp hit the ground and sparks flew as it scraped against the ground, the Skyranger still rolling with its own momentum. He heard the all to terrifying sound of plasma and green flashes, and hit both armoured flesh and the metal inside of the ranger with wet splashes, each hit sizzled uncomfortably similar to a fryer. Cries of pain was heard both through the air and through his headset as men and women burned alive from the inside out. Then one of those deadly green bolts filled his vision.

And time ground to a halt. This was it, he was as good as dead, not even Titan armour could withstand a full on plasma bolt face first, and he had none.

Then suddenly he felt a hand grab hold of his shoulder that pulled hard. His vision blurred as the brave and very stupid man shouldered the hit and then the world flashed into blinding hot pain.

"Commander?" Ranger softly said and equally gently shook his shoulder.

Alexander stared blinking at the pilot, confused for a moment before reality set in and the ghosts of the past vanished. He saw his own disturbed face reflected on the pilot's visor, his own disfigured face. He had John Shepard to thank for that. Not that he could compare what happened to the young assault officer. The bolt had unfortunately hit perfectly between the armoured plates of his heavyset armour. The only thing that held him together was the very armour that should have on any other day tanked the damage… but it was never designed to take hits from behind at that angle.

The man had died five days later. He lived up to his call-sign 'Hero'. Alexander on the other hand came out with mostly superficial damage. Over half his face was scared eerily similar to Two-face from the batman live action movie, just less symmetrical.

No one except probably Ranger, Bradford and Shen knew of his troubles.

"I'm fine." He answered the unasked question as he swept the hand off of him. He drew a deep breath before he set the little movable flesh he still had into a small scowl. A handful of his troopers came jogging towards them through the light dusting of snow that had yet to be cleaned away from the Antarctic ice.

Adjusting his greatcoat to fight the extreme cold he stepped of the craft. The Titan clad soldiers made a quick salute and shouldered their gauss rifles when they confirmed it was him.

With quick, wide, and confident steps Alexander made his way towards the lit camouflaged hangar.

Engineers and other X-com personnel was scrambling to clear enough space for the Skyranger. X-com had for all intents gone underground after the invasion, the council had successively cut X-Com's funding over the last three years when it became clear they were not needed anymore.

At first they had helped clean up the remaining UFO's still flying around, causing havoc. Then they refocused their effort on removing any remaining traces of Exalt cells still in operation. But for three whole years they, under command of the council, had started to disarm, dismantle and remove any traces of their own existence… or rather alter it.

And now nothing remained of the original HQ, it being caved in and completely destroyed just hours before.

It had crushed most of every one of his subordinates' wills. Many had thought that after the war they would all be hailed as heroes, that they would go down in history, but now…

Alexander shook his head as he entered the main elevator that would bring him down towards the Holo-globe, his escort and Ranger gave a salute as the elevator doors closed. Ranger would oversee that his baby would be properly taken care of.

Very few of his crew remained, most accepting the quiet resignation and the fat bribe the council gave them in return for their silence. It was hard to let Vahlen go together with most of the best and brightest minds of the time.

Those who stayed for the most part had nothing to return to, their homes and families gone, victims like most of them. Though a considerable number stayed because they simply wanted to; it had actually surprised him how many of his soldiers decided to remain behind, and almost everyone of the engineering crew had followed Shen's example and remained. He credited it towards them being young and adventurous. But now he knew they would remain loyal because of what they were currently working on.

The elevator pinged as it reached its destination. The doors slid apart to reveal the blue hologram showing Earth in all its glory.

"Welcome back, Commander." Bradford said, hands clasped behind at the small of his back. Bradford wasn't much for smiles and his demeanour was that of a commanding officer. He wore his title of XO on the sleeves of his shirt. He was a no nonsense kind of guy that, much like Alexander, kept himself from getting attached to his subordinates by radiating authority. The base assault had affected Bradford the most. The aliens had managed to do something they thought impossible if not inconceivable, the aliens had managed to infiltrate and control a large portion of the base's personnel, it almost ground the X-com project into the ground.

The man had since then never let down his guard, eying his subordinates with a cold suspicion, only the psi-supressed was excepted.

"Bradford," Alexander offered a nod in greeting to his XO, "Status report."

"All green, Commander. Shen has reported that project Starscape is nearing completion." He answered the inquiry and motioned the commander to follow towards the base access tunnel. It would take them deep underground towards Starscape's hangar. "Our research team think they have solved the Elerium issue."

"They have?" Alexander looked shocked, it was no small feat as his face, more or less, lacked the necessary muscles and tissue nowadays to form facial expressions.

Elerium had until now been a finite resource that was quickly dwindling more and more as the world struggled to research new areas of its use. All but a few test plasma weapons had been dismantled in hopes to preserve the little supply there were. But now it seemed X-com had achieved yet another ground breaking piece of revolutionary science.

"How far away are the completion of the necessary facilities, I want this tested and proofed for mass production." Alexander gave his rapt orders. He shook his head. It was too easy to slip into the old 'war mode'. What was the hurry? There were no more aliens on Earth's soil, no alien loving terrorists to stop and the world's nations had settled down as repairs had begun to set in and people had started to fall into a sense of normalcy.

"Shen has put his boys on clearing out space for it," Bradford's lips twitched into a smirk he struggled to supress, "the facilities are expected to be done in a week or two, if all goes to plan."

Alexander gave a grunt in confirmation as the tunnel lift finally slowed to a halt four levels below command level.

The big doors leading into project Starscape's hangar was huge to accommodate the equally huge materials and modules that was constantly shipped down from engineering to support the massive project.

Bradford lead the way pushing the doors apart to reveal the craft they had spent the last year building from scratch. The eerily UFO lookalike was huge, easily out sizing and out weighing any carrier class ship that had been in service prior to the invasion.

It had been Shen's idea to pool all resources they could skim of off X-Com's supplies as every single bit of alien alloy, elerium, flight computers. Heck even the UFO/fighter hybrids they had built had been scavenged and moved under the noses of the council. Even if they knew that Alexander had been stealing resources from them, they certainly did not care enough to stop him from doing so.

And with the idea of this super heavy carrier classed space craft the three of them put together the plan to move X-Com into space. They would take to the stars, explore it, map it and make it safe for when Earth finally took to the stars themselves. Who knew what awaited them up there, was there other alien collectives out there? One thing was for certain, whatever was out there it would never reach Earth again, it would never scar Earth's surface like the Ethereals had. Come hell come sunshine.

Vigilo, Confido!