Ashes and Temples

We do not bow.

Bogey 001 burst into flames and rained upon our planet, the herald of our first righteous triumph over the alien aggressors. They had chosen us and we showed them they had chosen poorly. They believed we would fall to bended knee before them. By God, would we show them. We were strong and we threw off the chains they attempted to bind us with. In that moment, it was sure that humanity would never fall.

Our victory was sweet, but it was short lived.

We spent weeks hunting down rogue elements, rooting Thin Men out of society and splashing any UFO that came up on radar. They fought so desperately to survive, but they could not withstand us. We were tenacious. We had souls of fire and fury of storms. We ripped through them without pity. We showed them we would not be conquered.

We never expected that humanity would seal its own fate.

I will never forget the day when the hologlobe flashed. One new contact. Two. Four. Eight. Sixteen. The number kept multiplying. Hundreds of ships filled our orbit and entered our airspace. Satellites began to go down across the world, starting in Asia and moving west. The interceptors were scrambled, but very few made it back.

I remember what it looked like just before the hologlobe went down. Alien ships swarming every hangar and base across the planet, taking down every satellite. They knew where everything was. The earth rumbled and the hologlobe flickered away. The blast doors burst open and they flooded in the base. Christ, I couldn't hear the alarms over the screaming.

What tore my heart most was not the death of the security teams or the fall of XCOM. What broke my heart was seeing human operators among the aliens. The world did not believe in XCOM any longer. We had been betrayed.

The squads came out of the barracks en masse, equipped with what little they could find as rage boiled within them. They flooded the base, crashing into the alien assault like two great waves colliding in an angry sea. It was not enough.

I remember little of the fight. It all happened so fast, a blur of kinetic motion and violence. I stepped over so many corpses of my fallen brethren. I remember slipping on a blue hat, crashing down into a pool of blood. I was stunned momentarily as I looked upon the security member, his entire waist eaten through. I could see his spine and lower ribs, the plasma slowly sizzling into the bones. The look in his glazed eyes haunts my dreams to this day. I felt he was watching me as I scrambled to my feet to get away.

Ten squads were sent out into the base to recover mission critical personnel and equipment. Three squads returned, none without casualties. Dr. Shen and Dr. Vahlen were recovered, though the former grumbled and cursed as he held the burn on his side, the wound cauterized by the laser. Bradford was still trying to manage Central and coordinate the teams. He fought and growled and barked as our last Captain dragged him towards the hangar. He wasn't ready to let XCOM go. None of us were.

We entered the hangar with them hot on our heels, the blast doors serving only as a temporary buffer. Most of our ships and interceptors were out of commission if not destroyed. Critical personnel were loaded onto the Skyranger first, though Bradford was too stubborn to get aboard until everyone else had been seated and secured. We didn't have time to argue before the doors burst open and they swarmed in.

We took up defensive positions as the few left were loaded and the engines flared to life. It didn't matter for much. I watched metal drip away like ice in a Spring thaw. I watched men's bodies open up and slowly eat outwards, unable to scream as their lungs liquified and mixed with the rest of them.

The hangar door was sealed above and the console was below. Bullets flew as we fought to reach it. The panel was our only salvation. I barely saw Bradford out of the corner of my eye as he vaulted the railing off the platform and landed down below. He was at the terminal before I could even reach the stairs and, only a moment later, the bay doors groaned open.

I was not fast enough to reach him before the aliens did. A berserker, towering two feet over him, roared its guttural vocalization and fit a single hand around his waist, lifting him off the ground. Though he is not a grunt, I will never dismiss Bradford's bravery. The courage a man must have to not only face death, but also snarl and unload an entire pistol magazine into its face. Courage does not make up for the low piercing ability of hollow-points.

The beast ripped its hand up the Central Officer, gashing clear up the side of his face. His sweater tore away, caught by the claw, and he fell with a crash to the ground, palm to his mangled visage. We laid suppressing fire as Oda carried him up the steps. We fell into a fighting retreat as the poor Jap caught a bolt in his spine and saw him falling, landing in a bent position that no human should be able to manage. I wish I did not see how his backbone had melted with the hit. Holburn dragged the Central Officer into the ship. We were out of time.

The Skyranger couldn't fit all of us and we didn't have time to gather the wounded left outside. We left them. The engines roared and the ship lifted from the ground. I watched in grim silence as Kasyanov stood at the door and gave a final mercy to those left below who could not fight. They would not be taken alive. The shots still ring in my ears.

The dogfight outside was intense and hopeless. I remember thinking it was over as a shot of plasma hit the rear, causing the door hydraulics to fail and fall open. Thanks to the bravery of the few remaining interceptors, we managed to escape relatively intact.

We sat and watched silently as an explosion rocked our mountain home in Germany, the backdraft bursting out of the hangar. XCOM was gone, and with it, Earth.

"She's gone... we lost." Garcia whispered in disbelief, his voice crackling over the radio. "Earth's gone."

"Kiss her goodbye, gentlemen." Holburn spoke, watching the sun set over the Rhine from the back of the Skyranger. "She won't be back again."

The remnants of XCOM flew into the falling darkness. The finest heroes of humanity's finest hour, defeated. The only trial that ever really mattered and we failed, our bodies still warm around the blade that stuck out of our back.

But that did not stop us. No amount of alien propaganda or promises of pardon will break our resolve. No pleading, no bargaining, no threats. The fire that destroyed our base did not destroy our cause. It set us ablaze, our eyes full of fire, able to burn off even the rain as we found ourselves in the eye of the storm. Our fight is all that keeps us from bursting into flames. It is all we are. It is all we have left. By God, we will win it or we will die. We are and forever will be XCOM. The war is not over.

We do not bow.